No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

Texas Redistricting

Rick Perry has just called the second special session of the Texas Legislature this year for the specific purpose of redistricting the congressional districts so that five or six of the current Democratic incumbents will not be able to be reelected. The Democratic Senators have moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico so that the Senate cannot get a quorum needed to pass legislation.

Perry is beginning to look very bad from this. The special sessions cost $1.7 million per month, and Texas is in the position of already cutting nursing home reimbursements and Medicaid for children because there isn't enough money.

This was brought about by Tom Delay, the Republican Leader of the federal House of Representatives who is elected from the 22d Texas Congressional district. Prior to the elections in November 2002 he arranged for several million dollars of corporate soft money to be sent to Austin, TX and used to target 42 Democratic Texas Legislators. It was probably also used to help get Rick Perry elected as Governor. This allowed the Republican Party to take control of all three branches of government for the first time since Reconstruction after the Civil War.

In my opinion, the redistricting fight is payback to Tom Delay for the money he provided that put them into power. I also suspect that the campaign finance law in federal elections meant that the same money could no longer be used in federal elections. In particular, it could no longer be used to target Texas Democratic Congressmen in the US House, so this is an end run around the campaign finance laws. The money that couldn't be collected to defeat Democratic congressmen was instead used to take control of the State of Texas Legislature, and the redistricting is designed to get rid of the Congressmen that Tom Delay can no longer use the soft money against directly.
posted by Richard at 11:13 PM

 

Aw, Fuck!

Ever wonder about the history of the term "fuck"? Actually, I hadn't either. But if you have a somewhat unconventional sense of humor, I suggest that you read the defense this attorney prepared for his client.
The Defense.

Now my only remaining question - do I add the term "fuck" to the dictionary that checks spelling here?


posted by Richard at 8:05 PM

 

More on Bush's unwillingness to listen to scientists

Tapped has an interesting discussion of the downgrading of all kinds of scientific input to the policy decisions of the Bush administration. It supports my previous post.
posted by Richard at 12:45 PM

 

What motivates Conservatives?

Several researchers have arrived at an explanation of the underlying motivations for taking conservative attitutdes.
press release

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

Fear and aggression

Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity

Uncertainty avoidance

Need for cognitive closure

Terror management

"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.

The avoidance of uncertainty, for example, as well as the striving for certainty, are particularly tied to one key dimension of conservative thought - the resistance to change or hanging onto the status quo, they said.

The terror management feature of conservatism can be seen in post-Sept. 11 America, where many people appear to shun and even punish outsiders and those who threaten the status of cherished world views, they wrote.

Concerns with fear and threat, likewise, can be linked to a second key dimension of conservatism - an endorsement of inequality, a view reflected in the Indian caste system, South African apartheid and the conservative, segregationist politics of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South S.C.).


We can expect conservatives to reject this since they don't like scientists to begin with.

prior post

posted by Richard at 10:40 AM

 

The Bush administration doesn't like scientists

Washington Monthly
I had wondered why so many of the decisions made by George Bush seemed to be simply scientifically illiterate. This article give a reason.

Here is an excerpt:

Evan Snyder, director of the stem-cell program at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif., says, "I don't think science entered into Bush's decision at all."

The administration's stem-cell stand is just one of many examples, from climate change to abstinence-only sex-education programs, in which the White House has made policies that defy widely accepted scientific opinion. Why this administration feels unbound by the consensus of academic scientists can be gleaned, in part, from a telling anecdote in Nicholas Lemann's recent New Yorker profile of Karl Rove. When asked by Lemann to define a Democrat, Bush's chief political strategist replied, "Somebody with a doctorate." Lemann noted, "This he said with perhaps the suggestion of a smirk." Fundamentally, much of today's GOP, like Rove, seems to smirkingly equate academics, including scientists, with liberals.

In this regard, the White House is not necessarily wrong. Most scientists today do lean Democratic, just as most of the uniformed military votes Republican--much to the annoyance of Democrats. And like the latter cultural divide, the former can cause the country real problems. The mutual incomprehension and distrust between the Pentagon and the Clinton White House, especially in its early years, led to such debacles as Somalia and the clash over allowing gays to serve openly in the military. The Bush administration's dismissiveness toward scientists could also have serious consequences, from delaying vital new medical therapies to eroding America's general lead in science. The Clinton administration quickly felt the sting of the military's hostility and worked to repair the relationship. It's not clear, however, that the Bush administration cares to reach out to scientists--or even knows it has a problem.

Karl Rove is, of course, a college dropout. Bush was a legacy who drifted through what little education he did get. These are people for whom everything that they need to know is found in political propaganda and religion.
posted by Richard at 7:54 PM

 

The Financial Times is less charitable about what the long-delayed Congressional report on what the US government knew before 9/11 than is the American Media

Financial Times

Investigation undermines Bush's claims

By Edward Alden and Marianne Brun-Rovet
Published: July 24 2003 20:52 | Last Updated: July 24 2003 20:52

For the past 18 months the administration of President George W. Bush has clung firmly to the argument that whatever the failings of intelligence, the September 11 2001 attacks could not have been prevented.

The release�on Thursday�of the declassified final report of the congressional investigation will make that argument much harder to sustain and could ignite fresh controversy for an administration already under scrutiny for manipulating intelligence information before the war on Iraq.

The report does not contain any wholly new revelations about the missed opportunities to unravel the plot of the 19 hijackers. But the detailed narrative of just how much the US knew of their movements before the attacks is more than enough to belie the assertion made to the investigators last year by Robert Mueller, Federal Bureau of Investigation director, that "as far as we know, they contacted no known terrorist sympathisers in the US".

The congressional report makes it clear that was not the case, as Mr Mueller acknowledged a few months later. The report points out that five of the hijackers had met a total of 14 people who had come to the FBI's attention as part of counter-terrorism investigations. Four of those 14 were under FBI investigation when the hijackers were in the US.

The six hijackers who led the attacks were not isolated but maintained a number of contacts in the US.

The report reveals that an informant for the FBI had maintained close contacts with two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, when they were living in San Diego. But the San Diego FBI was unaware that the Central Intelligence Agency had identified the two men as al-Qaeda operatives, so never acted on the information.

The FBI had also opened in 1998 a counter-terrorism investigation of Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi who co-signed the lease on an apartment in San Diego rented by the two hijackers, paid the first month's rent and organised a party to welcome them into the community.

Mr Bayoumi became the subject of attention late last year after it was revealed that the wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the US, had indirectly deposited tens of thousands of dollars to an account held by Mr Bayoumi's wife. The Saudis have said they had no knowledge that the money, which was part of the government's large charitable contributions, had ended up in her accounts.

The report says that although Mr Bayoumi was a student, he "had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia", and at one time made a $400,000 (?348,000, �249,000) donation to a Kurdish mosque in San Diego. "One of the FBI's best sources in San Diego informed the FBI that he thought that Mr Bayoumi must be an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power."

The most controversial element of the report will be what it does not contain. At the insistence of the Bush administration, 28 pages discussing evidence of foreign government support for the hijackers was deleted from the declassified version.

"The Bush administration has done everything they can do to make sure that's not the focus," said William Wechsler, a former White House official who co-authored a recent Council on Foreign Relations report critical of the Saudi failure to cut off financing for terrorist groups.

"They want to talk about tactical breakdown but they don't want to talk about the elephant in the room."

US officials note that Saudi co-operation in counter-terrorism investigations has improved markedly, particularly following the al-Qaeda attack in Riyadh in May that left more than 30 people dead.

But the investigation showed that even well after the September 11 attacks, Saudi Arabia continued to block US efforts in such areas as shutting down financing for terrorism. "There is an almost intuitive sense that things are not being volunteered," David Aufhauser, the Treasury Department's general counsel, told the inquiry last July.

While the congressional investigation was a bipartisan undertaking, its conclusions are likely to fuel a partisan battle over whether the Bush administration has responded fully to the lessons of September 11. Democrats have homed in on intelligence failures, both in the war on terrorism and prior to the war on Iraq, as the vulnerable spot for an administration that has been widely trusted by Americans on national security since the attacks.

The report challenges whether the administration has yet made sufficient efforts to improve intelligence-gathering and sharing. It details case after case where the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency did not pass to other agencies crucial details of their counter-terrorist investigations.

On foreign support for terrorists, the report says "only recently", and in part due to the pressure from the congressional inquiry, had the agencies tried to determine the extent of the problem.

"This gap in US intelligence coverage is unacceptable, given the magnitude and immediacy of the potential risk to US national security," the report says.

Democratic hopefuls for the next presidential election, including Senator Bob Graham, the former intelligence committee chairman, are already seizing on the problems identified by the inquiry.

A report card released Wednesday by the Democratic Progressive Policy Institute gave the Bush administration a "D" for its efforts to protect the US against further terrorist attacks.

The study charged that, in particular, the administration had failed to implement the core recommendation of the committees' investigation that intelligence-sharing be overhauled.

We really need to get the FBI out of the Intelligence business. They simply can't do the job, and never have been able to.


posted by Richard at 12:50 PM

 

Who is attacking US Troops in Iraq?

Jonathan Steele in the Guardian has a view of who is attacking US troops and why that is very different from that we get from the Bush administration or the American Media. What he says makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately.

Here is one excerpt:

Before the war critics argued that invading Iraq would encourage fundamentalism throughout the Islamic world. This seems to be happening, as al-Qaida elements and other antiwestern groups see the American presence in Iraq as a new source of easy targets.

If he is closer to right than the bush administration, then the problems in Iraq will be getting larger, not smaller. Considering the track record of accurate predictions by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz ....

The Bush people like clarity and simplicity. The story they want us to buy is a simple "Us versus Them" story, with us as the good guys and "them" as the bad guys. Iraq is in the middle east, however. There aren't two clear groups. There are all kinds of groups with all kinds of goal, motives, and methods. Some are with us, some are against us, some don't care either way - and the mix will be different by sundown. It doesn't make the kind of story the Neocons will be able to sell to the media and the American people, even if they are able to step out from behind their ideologies long enough to get a grip on it themselves.

Anyone who makes a long-term prediction regarding what is going to happen in Iraq will be wrong.
posted by Richard at 12:25 PM

 

How Bad are things really going with the War on Terror and the Bush Administration?

Seymour Hersh was interviewed and had some extremely interesting things to say.

First - the US really screwed up big time when we attacked the convoy 40 miles inside of Syria back on the night of June 18th and 19th. Syria has been sharing Intelligence with the US, especially about terrorists, the Muslim Brotherhood (which is almost the same as Al Quada now) and Saudi Arabia. To top it off, all we got was a bunch of low-level smugglers who had nothing to do with the war in Iraq.

The statements by Bush threatening the Syrians have not helped, nor have the similar statements by Rumsfeld.

Second - the Bush administration is so set on the Iraq war that it is ignoring the war on terrorism and putting terrorism on the back burner.

Third - the Bush administration says that most of Iraq is pacified, that the only remaining problem is some Ba'athist dead-enders. The Kurds and Shiites are quite calm. True, but only at the moment. We are at this time doing the Shiites work for them by getting rid of the Ba'athists. As soon as they are gone, then the Shiites will move to take over Iraq, and we will by lucky to get a moderate as opposed to radical Shiite state there.

He has more to say, too. I don't always agree with Hersh, but I have found that he is an excellent and very knowledgeable reporter and he should always be listened to.
posted by Richard at 10:57 AM

 

Bad News for Bush

I have been asking when the media would wake up to how it is failing to do its job. Well, Gene Lyons offers a positive note for the country. Not good for Bush, but quite positive for the US.

The bad news for President Junior is that the intelligence agencies are fighting a bureaucratic rearguard action, the press has rediscovered its mission and Americans are awakening from a fearinduced post-9/11 trance to suspect that they were duped into an unnecessary war for dishonest reasons. A recent Harris poll shows 51 percent now "have doubts" that Bush is "a leader you can trust." Once lost, that trust is extremely hard to recover.

Read his article. He says a lot of what I have been trying to say, but he says it better.



posted by Richard at 10:17 AM

 

If Bush had sold cigarettes, would he decide to study lung cancer for two years more?

The Department of Commerce has just announced a two-year program to study Global warming.

Working within the core constructs, the plan outlines five overarching scientific goals aimed at addressing key questions and uncertainties.

They include:

Extend knowledge of the Earth’s past and present climate and environment, including its natural variability, and improve understanding of the causes of observed changes

Improve understanding of the forces bringing about changes in the Earth’s climate and related systems

Reduce uncertainty in projections of how the Earth’s climate and environmental systems may change in the future

Understand the sensitivity and adaptability of different natural and managed systems to climate and associated global changes

Explore the uses and identify the limits of evolving knowledge to manage risks and opportunities related to climate variability and change

You will notice that they do not intend to do anything radical - like actually take any actions that might reduce Global Warming.

This is probably a Public Relations gimmick to take off some of the heat after the White House (without any scientific assistance) removed the global warming portions of the report recently issued by the environmental protection agency before they would permit the report to be issued.
posted by Richard at 11:46 AM

 

Joel Achenbach - This is not yet a scandal

In his Washington Post editorial today, Joel Achenbach says the 16 words in the State of the Union does not yet make it to scandal status.

But if you put it together with the fact that the report released today shows that Intelligence had absolutely no evidence of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaida, when Bush said for a year prior to the war that there was such evidence, then it seems to me to be a lot closer to a true scandal.
posted by Richard at 8:38 AM

 

New War - White House vs. CIA

Have you wondered why the ordinarily so adroit white House has seemed so flat-footed when trying to handle the African yellow-cake uranium flap? Here is an exerpt of one view from todays' Washington Post .


For all the purported discipline and unity within the Bush administration, disputes among members of the national security team have been common, particularly in the run-up to the war with Iraq. Those disputes, however, generally pitted the State and Defense departments against one another, but once Bush made a decision, the combatants generally accepted that and moved on.

What is unusual about this episode is that the combatants are officials at the White House and the CIA -- and that the White House has tried without success to resolve the controversy. The biggest lesson learned so far, said one administration official, is that "you don't pick a bureaucratic fight with the CIA." To which a White House official replied, "That wasn't our intention, but that certainly has been the perception."

White House allies outside the government have expressed surprise at the administration's repeated missteps over the past two weeks, using phrases such as "stumbled," "caught flat-footed" and "can't get their story straight." Said one senior administration official, "These stories get legs when they're mishandled and this story has been badly mishandled."

Joe Lockhart, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton, said he has been equally surprised by the way this White House has dealt with the controversy. "Their every move has resulted in people being more interested in the story rather than less interested," he said.

Mary Matalin, a former Bush White House adviser, said, "It's impossible to have a consistent message when the facts keep changing. We forsook consistency for honesty, in an effort to be as forthcoming as possible in putting out new facts as they became available."

A senior White House official said there are mitigating circumstances, beginning with the fact that the president was traveling in Africa when the controversy took root, while Tenet was also traveling. The unstable environment in postwar Iraq and the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found provided a foundation for more questions over Bush's State of the Union claims. "And you learn it's difficult to control unnamed sources on both sides, including in the White House," he added.

Mary Matalin is, of course, a superb Spin Miester. She will always say what sounds positive rather then what is most explanatory, although if both are the same she will certainly use it. I do suspect the fact that Bush was in Africa when this blew up really is a part of it. Considering how adroitly the leaks have been coming out against the white House, I suspect that the leakers may have waited until bush was out of the Country.

Then, there is the fact that the White House has often gotten past political rough patches by covering up bad news with good news - but August is coming up, normally the most dead time in the news year. They may find that tactic very difficult to apply this year. So this may well continue.

And as it continues, the digging at the African uranium story is also likely to bring to light other things where the White House has been, shall we say, less than candid with the public.

We'll see.
posted by Richard at 8:15 AM

 

No Connection between Iraq and Al Qaida

Josh Marshall just posted this excerpt from an interview with ex-Senator Max Clelland about the investigation of what the Federal Government knew and did prior to 9/11. The report was completed in December 2002 but the release was held up by the Bush people until July 24th.

Do you think that Americans would have supported the invasion of Iraq as readily if this report had been released as scheduled?

Former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Clelland, who was a member of the joint congressional committee that produced the report, confirmed the official's statement.

Asked whether he believed the report will reveal that there was no connection between al-Qaida and Iraq, Clelland replied: "I do ... There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of (al-Qaida leader Osama) bin Laden's terrorist followers."
...

"The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaida) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war," said Clelland. "What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends."
...

Although the committee completed its work at the end of last year, publication of the report has been delayed by interminable wrangles between the committees and the administration over which parts of it could be declassified.

Clelland accused the administration of deliberately delaying the report's release to avoid having its case for war undercut.

"The reason this report was delayed for so long -- deliberately opposed at first, then slow-walked after it was created -- is that the administration wanted to get the war in Iraq in and over ... before (it) came out," he said.

"Had this report come out in January like it should have done, we would have known these things before the war in Iraq, which would not have suited the administration."
...

[A government official who's read the report] went on to suggest that the conclusions drawn from the information about [a key piece of alleged evidence for a Iraq-al Qaida connection] was indicative of a wider-ranging problem with the administration's attitude to intelligence on the alleged Iraq al-Qaida link.

"They take a fact that you could draw several different conclusions from, and in every case they draw the conclusion that supports the policy, without any particular evidence that would meet the normal bar that analytic tradecraft would require for you to make that conclusion," he concluded.

Next question - why hasn't the media been all over this since January? They have known that the report was due out and being delayed.
posted by Richard at 6:46 PM

 

Iraq - Is the past prologue?

July 20, 2003
Britain Tried First. Iraq Was No Picnic Then.
By JOHN KIFNER


The public, the distinguished military analyst wrote from Baghdad, had been led "into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor."

"They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information," he said. "The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows."

He added: "We are today not far from a disaster."

Sound familiar?

That was T. E. Lawrence — Lawrence of Arabia — writing in The Sunday Times of London on Aug. 22, 1920, about the British occupation of what was then called Mesopotamia. And he knew. For it was Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence and the intrepid British adventuress Gertrude Bell who, more than anyone else, were responsible for the creation of what was to become Iraq. A fine mess they made of it, too.

During the First World War, Lawrence had been present at the birth of modern Arab nationalism and fought alongside its guerrillas to victory against the Ottoman Empire, only to see the same guerrilla tactics turned against the British in a rebellion in Iraq.

It is perhaps instructive to look back on that earlier effort by the leading Western power to remake the Middle East as the American occupation of Iraq appears increasingly beset.

It has not been going well, especially in Sunni-controlled central Iraq. Rather than being hailed as liberators, the American troops face "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" there that is increasingly organized, their new regional commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, said last week. A Pentagon-approved independent body of experts criticized the lack of postwar planning. Soldiers of the Army's Third Infantry Division, have been told they are not going home as planned. The cost, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld now says, is running about $3.9 billion a month, nearly twice earlier estimates, and tens of thousands of troops may have to remain for years to come.

At the same time, the rationale for war is increasingly questioned. Terror weapons have not yet been found in Iraq, nor have links to Al Qaeda. The Bush administration is scrambling to explain how allegations based on forged documents purporting to show Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger found their way into the State of the Union address. All this has not helped build global support: last week, India rejected an American request to send some 17,000 peacekeeping troops.

Meanwhile, clashes and increasingly sophisticated ambushes have been running at a rate of a dozen a day; by week's end, at least 33 American soldiers had been killed in hostilities since May 1, the date when President Bush declared that major combat was over.

Ominously, Iraqi crowds have emerged to dance and cheer around burned-out American Humvees.

Many American officers had sensed trouble ahead. As their armor clanked north to Baghdad, officers in the First Marine Division said over and over that the war was no problem; the difficulties would come with the rebuilding of Iraq. Indeed, in the face of American might and technology, the enemy, for the most part, simply did not show up for the big battles.

The British had a tougher time of it in World War I; they lost thousands of troops — most of them Indian — in a five-month Turkish siege of Kut. But they regrouped and captured Baghdad on March 11, 1917. Maj. Gen. Stanley Maude greeted the populace with a speech that could have been written today: "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators."

Well, not quite, General.

When World War I began in 1914, most Arab lands were under the decaying Ottoman Empire, whose ruler, the caliph, was also Islam's supreme authority. The Ottomans were Germany's allies, and Britain saw a chance to seize the Middle East; its interests were to command the trade routes to India and, as it would develop, to control the emerging resource of oil. Lord Kitchener, the war minister, wanted to set up his own caliph — an Arab — as Britain's ally among the Muslims. Attention focused on Hussein ibn Ali, who as sherif of Mecca was the guardian of Islam's holiest sites.

Enter the Arab Bureau, a special intelligence unit set up in Cairo. It had little expertise, and its early efforts to inspire an Arab revolt failed. Then Lawrence, a young captain at the time, volunteered to take a look on his vacation time. He recruited Hussein's second son, Feisal, as the charismatic leader of what became known as the Great Arab Revolt. His raiders crossed the desert to capture the port of Aqaba from the rear, repeatedly blew up the Turks' railroad tracks and harassed their troops, and finally entered Damascus in triumph (although this had to be staged because the Australian cavalry got there first).

The British had promised Feisal that he would be king of the Arabs in Damascus and he arrived at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference as the chief Arab spokesman. But Britain and France had secretly agreed to divide up the Middle East, and Feisal's reign in Damascus lasted just months — until the French came over the mountains from Lebanon.

Meanwhile, things were not going well for the British in Mesopotamia. Bell was arbitrarily drawing lines on the map to make a new country out of three former Ottoman provinces — Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the center and Basra in the south. The districts were composed, respectively, of Kurds, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims, all of whom hated each other — and the British even more. For one thing, the British were more efficient than the Turks in collecting taxes.

By 1920, the country was in full rebellion, from Shiite tribesmen in the south to Kurds in the north. There were some 425 deaths on the British side and an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 among the Iraqis.

Hoping to restore order, the British, at the urging of Bell and Lawrence, switched Feisal's franchise to Iraq in 1921, although he had never set foot there. In a rigged plebiscite, the new king got 96 per cent of the votes. King Feisal and his strongman prime minister, Nuri as-Said, managed to solidify Sunni minority control over the rest of the country. But there was frequent turmoil.

IN response, the British turned to technology, with their air force commander, Arthur (Bomber) Harris, boasting that his biplanes had taught Iraqis that "within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or wounded." Winston Churchill, who, as colonial secretary, presided over the creation of Iraq, Trans-Jordan and Palestine, called Iraq an "ungrateful volcano."

Still, it took 35 years for the disaster that Lawrence predicted to become total. Iraq gained independence in 1931, but the British-sponsored monarchy hung on and guarded British interests until 1958, when the royal family was murdered and dragged through the streets. That ushered in a period of successive military and Baath Party coups, all brutal, and by 1979 Saddam Hussein had assumed total control.

Like the Arab Bureau, neoconservative policy makers in the Defense Department, who have long been the most prominent advocates of removing Mr. Hussein, have a vision of the Middle East and a candidate. The vision is of a democratic Iraq that would be an example of change to other, undemocratic, Arab nations — the kind of change they believe would remake the region and make easier an Arab-Israeli peace.

They have promoted as a leader Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite from a wealthy family that had been close to the old monarchy, even though some Middle East specialists in the State Department distrust him and consider him ineffectual. As the head of the Iraqi National Council, Mr. Chalabi recently returned to Iraq after living in exile for decades. The American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has appointed a 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, with Mr. Chalabi among them.

One other thing about Colonel Lawrence. While some of his exploits are doubtless exaggerated, his guerrilla tactics are still much studied. He came to realize that when a small band faced more powerful conventional forces, its strength lay in avoiding direct battles and instead conducting stealthy raids. His own guerrilla force, he wrote in his memoir, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," had "a sophisticated alien enemy, disposed as an army of occupation in an area greater than could be dominated effectively from fortified posts. It had a friendly population, in which some 2 in the 100 were active, and the rest quietly sympathetic to the point of not betraying the movements of the minority."

That larger army could be demoralized and worn down, its patrols and sentries made nervous and drawn, waiting for the next attack and never sure from where it would come. It is a feeling the weary soldiers of the Third Infantry Division are coming to know well.


posted by Richard at 9:40 AM

 

Mexico gets microchip for humans

Fort Worth Star-Telegram July 18, 2003

How many of you are familiar with the microchip that can be inserted under an animals' skin and provide proof of identity? Well, Mexicans who are afraid of kidnappers are now asking for it for themselves.

better yet, the company is developing a new version that can be tracked by satellite. Once that chip is under your skin, someone can check your location anywhere in the world 24 hours a day.

George Orwell would regret not having put that into 1984. It really is too good to be true. At least as a literary device. Otherwise - That is really scary.
posted by Richard at 12:24 PM

 

16 Words to Convince a Nation to go to War

Here is what CIA official Foley says happened when discussing the SOTU speech with Bob Joseph of the National Security Council (NSC).

New York Times July 17, 2003

"In his speech, the president said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Senior intelligence officials said today that in the closed-door hearing on Wednesday, Alan Foley, a C.I.A. expert on weapons of mass destruction, said he was asked by Bob Joseph, the director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council, whether the president's address could include a reference to Iraq's seeking uranium from Niger.

The officials said that Mr. Foley's testimony indicated that he told Mr. Joseph that the C.I.A. was not certain about the credibility of the evidence concerning Niger and recommended that it be taken out of the speech.

The officials said today that, according to Mr. Foley, Mr. Joseph then asked him if the speech could instead include a reference to British intelligence reports that Iraq was interested in seeking uranium from Africa. The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair included that information in an unclassified white paper on Iraq and illegal weapons published last September.

According to intelligence officials, Mr. Foley said he told Mr. Joseph that the C.I.A. had warned the British that it was not sure about the information when the paper was published. "

So at this point, Bob Joseph of the NSC knew that the CIA did not think the statement was supported so that it could be used in the SOTU speech. He ~also~ knew that the CIA did not think the report from British Intelligence was credible, either.

The story continues:

"According to Mr. Foley's account — which the White House has said it could not confirm — when Mr. Joseph ultimately asked him whether it would be accurate to state that the British had reported that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa, Mr. Foley agreed. However, Mr. Foley did not tell the Senate committee that he felt pressured by Mr. Joseph, officials familiar with his testimony said.

Mr. Foley's testimony about his conversations with Mr. Joseph closely tracks with the version of events described last week by other C.I.A. officials, but his testimony conflicts with the version provided by the White House. Officials have said that Mr. Joseph does not recall Mr. Foley's raising any concerns about the credibility of the information to be included in the speech. "

The Washington Post points out that Bush himself meticulously went over the SOTU speech word for word and made changes in it.

There seems to me to be no doubt that Bush and his people knew what they intended to do when he took office. What he gives the nation as reasons is no more than attempting to put a spin on decisions previously made for very different and as yet unknown for certain reasons.

Consider Bush's statements on the economy Paul Krugman. Again, we are given spin, not the real reasons.

E. J. Dionne points out the two contradictory reasons that Bush gave before passing his tax cuts - that the projected surpluses could handle it, and that they were needed to bring the economy out of recession. The Bush people now claim that the extreme deficits the government is facing are nothere result of the tax cuts, but of the war and the poor economy.

The history of the Bush administration is that they tell us there is a problem and they tell us their solution. Later, the problem seems to change, but the solution does not. It should be extremely clear to most people by now that the 'solutions' they offer are what they want to happen, but the reasons they give the public is pure spin. For the most part, we are left to guess why they "really" want the Tax Cut or to Invade Iraq, or whatever the project of the day is.

The arrogant people currently in the White House need to go before they mess to many other things up. Enough is quite enough.

posted by Richard at 11:32 AM

 

The Incompetent Bush Administration

One defense frequently heard for the lie about Iraq trying to buy uranium in Africa in the State of the Union speech has been "British intelligence *still stands by* the intel referenced by Bush."

Let's look first at the process by which it was included in the speech. British Intelligence reported that they had concluded that the statement was true, and I am told still (publicly) stands by the Intel. Our intelligence disowned it, and had in the previous September advised the British that it was a bad conclusion. Who was George Bush going to go with? We can ignore his advisors. Bush gave the speech and he had the final say regarding everything that went into it.

Well, The Africa uranium story was the only publicly uncontested evidence that Iraq was a threat to the US at the time of the SOTU speech, and Bush needed to get the nation behind him for the war he had already - for other reasons, possibly including orders from God - decided to take us in to. ~Our~ Intelligence Agencies are ~not~ giving the answers we want, but Bush had the report from the British that said what he wanted. He decided to say the British 'have recently learned' that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa. He used it ~knowing~ that it was doubtful, since our Intelligence professionals could not find support for it. That is lying to the public. Plain and simple. Bush and his crew ignored the Intelligence process to present the information that they political needed to present.

As for the British ~still~ standing by it, the issue is no longer relevant to MI6. No one needs their new opinion on Iraqi WMD because anyone can now just go over there an look for themselves. So there is no need to update the earlier report. Since Blair is in hot water over the war, for the MI6 to gratuitously issue a changed report that no one needs would only add to the problems Blair already has. No civil servant in his right mind is going to do that. If asked on the subject, they will most likely simply answer "Our last report said...." and quickly move to a safer and more current subject. They aren't so much standing by the report as simply not updating it with later and more reliable information.

In short - Bush lied. He did it to get the war he wanted before he took office.

Tell me - are we any safer now than we were before Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield invaded Iraq? If we are, it isn't because of the preemptive invasion of another country half-way around the world last Spring.

At the same time, the issue of the lie in the SOTU speech simply points out one more place in which the Bush administration has operated incompetently, as the entire diplomatic effort before the war (especially Turkey, but also the UN and NATO) and as the absence of any reconstruction plan for Iraq after the war both clearly demonstrate. India and France have both refused to send troops to Iraq, so our guys are still there and will be for the foreseeable future. This is a ~direct~ result of the Bush diplomatic ineptitude and the absence of post-war reconstruction plans.

They have gotten the Iraq war totally wrong (saved militarily by our superbly trained and equipped military - dating from the Clinton era because Rumsfield certainly had nothing to do with training and equipping it.), they have gotten the economy wrong, and they refuse to release the completed study on what the Federal Government did or failed to do that might have effected 9/11. If it had contained any news that put this administration in a good light, it would have been released last December when it was completed. This administration has proven its utter incompetence in everything it has touched.

The Bush administration is not just a failed Presidency. It is very likely the single worst Presidency the US has ever had of all 43.
posted by Richard at 11:09 AM

 

Hiding the Bad News

Want to know how the bush administration has concealed the bad news on the economy from the public? Slate has a description fo some of hte techniques.
posted by Richard at 11:28 AM

 

Grover Norquist Tells who can lobby the Republican Leadership in Congress

This from Slate

Who Cares If DeLay Bullies Lobbyists?

It's better than the other way around.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, July 11, 2003, at 4:02 PM PT


Every Tuesday morning, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., meets with a couple dozen Republican lobbyists. Here is how Nicholas Confessore describes the ritual in the July/August Washington Monthly:

[T]he lobbyists present pass around a list of the [lobbying] jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum's responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican—a senator's chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors.

The procedure is even more unembarrassedly thuggish than Confessore—and, in a less-nuanced June 26 Washington Post story, Jim VandeHei and Juliet Eilperin—make it sound. For example, Grover Norquist, chairman of Americans for Tax Reform and a key Santorum ally in this effort, doesn't just maintain a database on the party affiliations and political contributions of Washington lobbyists. He puts his little lists online. (Click here for the law firms, here for the trade associations, and here for the corporations.)

The best-known heavy in the campaign to force lobby firms to displace Democrats with Republicans is House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. In 1999, DeLay had his wrist slapped by the House Ethics Committee for holding up an intellectual-property vote in order to pressure the Electronics Industries Alliance into hiring a Republican as its president. Although the ethics advisory memorandum didn't mention DeLay by name, it was widely observed that a member of the House leadership (DeLay was then majority whip) should not need reminding that "one of the fundamental rules of ethics for government service" is that "government officials … are prohibited from taking or withholding any official action on the basis of … partisan affiliation.

The effort to consolidate power into the Republican Party is in overdrive. None of the people involved are particularly nice, either.

posted by Richard at 11:20 AM

 

Who Cares about 16 words in the State of the Union Address?

Kevin Drum has summarized the issue better than anyone else I have read.

"Bush's problem is not that a single 16-word sentence of dubious provenance made it into his State of the Union address. His problem is that he promised us that Saddam was connected to al-Qaeda, he promised thousands of liters of chemical and biological weapons, he promised that Saddam had a nuclear bomb program, and he promised that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators. But that wasn't all. He also asked us to trust him: he couldn't reveal all his evidence on national TV, but once we invaded Iraq and had unfettered access to the entire country everything would become clear.

But it didn't. We've had control of the country for three months, we've had access to millions of pages of Iraqi records, and we've captured and interrogated dozens of high ranking officials. And it's obvious now that there were no WMDs, no bomb programs of any serious nature, and no al-Qaeda connections.

So while the uranium is only a symbol, it's a powerful one. George Bush says we live in an era of preemptive war, and in such an era — lacking the plain provocation of an attack — how else can the citizenry make up its mind except by listening to its leaders? In the end, we went to war because a majority of the population trusted George Bush when he presented his case that Iraq posed an imminent danger to the United States and the world.

Uranium-Gate is a symbol of that misplaced trust. If George Bush's judgment had been vindicated in Iraq, a single sentence in the State of the Union address wouldn't matter. But it hasn't, and he deserves to be held accountable for his poor judgment by everybody who believed him.

And that's why those 16 words matter.
posted by Richard at 9:33 AM

 

The Public Needs to do a Cost-Benefit Analysis of the invasion of Iraq

The cost to the US of invading Iraq has already been tremendous and is now on-going at about $4 billion a month and an average of an American life per day.

The war itself, handled by our professionals, was handled superbly. The diplomacy and the post-war planning, both the responsibility of the civilians of the Bush administration, has been a disaster, and the source of the disaster has been the policies from the White House.

The benefit to the Iraqi people, if they can get through the post-war period without an intense guerrilla war, don't fall under the sway of another dictator, and can maintain Iraq as a single nation (all somewhat iffy at the moment) ~may~ be worth it.

What makes it worth the cost to the US?

posted by Richard at 7:45 AM

 

Why hasn't the report been issued?

After 9/11 a commission was set up to determine what the government knew before 9/11 which might have led to preventing it. That report was ready for release in December 2002. It hasn't been released yet because the Bush administration is going over it carefully to make sure it says what they want it to say.

So what DID the government know before 9/11? 27-Year CIA Veteran Ray McGovern interviewed by Will Pitt tells what he knows in an interview. Several things stand out to me.

Here was an agency that was created expressly to prevent another Pearl Harbor. That was why the CIA was created originally in 1947. Harry Truman was hell-bent on making sure that, if there were little pieces of information spread around the government, that they all came to one central intelligence agency, one place where they could be collated and analyzed, and the analysis be given to policy people.

So here is September 11, the first time since Pearl Harbor that this system failed. It was worse than Pearl Harbor. More people were killed on September 11 than were killed at Pearl Harbor, and where were the pieces? They were scattered all around the government, just like they were before Pearl Harbor. For George Bush to go out to CIA headquarters and put his arm around George Tenet and tell the world that we have the best intelligence services in the world, this really called for some analysis, if you will.

My analysis is that George Bush had no option but to keep George Tenet on as Director, because George Tenet had warned Bush repeatedly, for months and months before September 11, that something very bad was about to happen.

McG: On August 6, the title of the briefing was, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US,” and that briefing had the word “Hijacking” in it. That’s all I know about it, but that’s quite enough. In September, Bush had to make a decision. Is it feasible to let go of Tenet, whose agency flubbed the dub on this one? And the answer was no, because Tenet knows too much about what Bush knew, and Bush didn’t know what to do about it. That’s the bottom line for me.

Bush was well-briefed. Before he went off to Texas to chop wood for a month like Reagan did in California, he was told all these things. He didn’t even have the presence of mind to convene his National Security Council, and say, “OK guys, we have all these reports, what are we going to do about it?” He just went off to chop wood.

So how does McGovern think the decision was made? Here is his take:

PITT: LetÂ’s bottom-line it here. In the situation regarding the question of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, where does the fault lie for the manner in which this has all broken down? Was it an intelligence failure on the part of the CIA, or are we talking about the Bush administration misusing both that institution and the information it provided?

McG: It’s both, really. Let’s take the chemical and biological stuff first. At the root of this, as I reconstruct it, is what I call ‘Analysis by Subtraction.’ Let’s take a theoretical example: Iraq had listed 50,000 liters of sarin nerve gas in 1995. The UN is known to have destroyed 35,000 liters of this. Subsequently, US bombing destroyed another 5,000 liters of this. Therefore, QED, they have 10,000 liters of sarin.

There’s no consideration given here to shelf life of sarin, what would be necessary to keep sarin active, where it would be stored, how it would be stored, the correct temperature and all that. Instead, it is, “We think they had this and here is the inventory. We think we destroyed this” or “We know we destroyed that, and so the difference, we assume, is there”

You don’t start a war on an assumption, and with the sophisticated collection devices the US intelligence apparatus has, it is unconscionable not to have verified that so they could say, “Yes sir, we know that it’s there, we can confirm it this and that way.” Instead, as I said, it was analysis by subtraction. We had the inventory here, and we know we destroyed that, so they must have this. Analysis like that, I wouldn’t rehire the analyst who did it if he were working for me. That’s the biological and chemical part.

To be quite complete on this, it encourages me that the analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency - who share this ethic of trying to tell the truth, even though they are under much greater pressure and have much less career protection because they work for Rumsfeld - to their great credit, in September of last year they put out a memo saying there is no reliable evidence to suggest that the Iraqis have biological or chemical weapons, or that they are producing them.

PITT: Was this before or after Vice President Cheney started making personal visits to the CIA?

McG: It was all at the same time. This stuff doesnÂ’t all get written in one week. It was all throughout the spring and summer that this stuff was being collected. When the decision was made last summer that we will have a war against Iraq, they were casting about. YouÂ’ll recall White House Chief of Staff Andy Card saying you donÂ’t market a new product in August. The big blast-off was CheneyÂ’s speech in Nashville, I think it was Nashville anyway, on August 26. He said Iraq was seeking materials for its nuclear program. That set the tone right there.

They looked around after Labor Day and said, “OK, if we’re going to have this war, we really need to persuade Congress to vote for it. How are we going to do that? Well, let’s do the al Qaeda-Iraq connection. That’s the traumatic one. 9/11 is still a traumatic thing for most Americans. Let’s do that.”

But then they said, “Oh damn, those folks at CIA don’t buy that, they say there’s no evidence, and we can’t bring them around. We’ve tried every which way and they won’t relent. That won’t work, because if we try that, Congress is going to have these CIA wimps come down, and the next day they’ll undercut us. How about these chemical and biological weapons? We know they don’t have any nuclear weapons, so how about the chemical and biological stuff? Well, damn. We have these other wimps at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and dammit, they won’t come around either. They say there’s no reliable evidence of that, so if we go up to Congress with that, the next day they’ll call the DIA folks in, and the DIA folks will undercut us.”

So they said, “What have we got? We’ve got those aluminum tubes!” The aluminum tubes, you will remember, were something that came out in late September, the 24th of September. The British and we front-paged it. These were aluminum tubes that were said by Condoleezza Rice as soon as the report came out to be only suitable for use in a nuclear application. This is hardware that they had the dimensions of. So they got that report, and the British played it up, and we played it up. It was front page in the New York Times. Condoleezza Rice said, “Ah ha! These aluminum tubes are suitable only for uranium-enrichment centrifuges.”

Then they gave the tubes to the Department of Energy labs, and to a person, each one of those nuclear scientists and engineers said, “Well, if Iraq thinks it can use these dimensions and these specifications of aluminum tubes to build a nuclear program, let ‘em do it! Let ‘em do it. It’ll never work, and we can’t believe they are so stupid. These must be for conventional rockets.”

And, of course, thatÂ’s what they were for, and thatÂ’s what the UN determined they were for. So, after Condoleezza RiceÂ’s initial foray into this scientific area, they knew that they couldnÂ’t make that stick, either. So what else did they have?

Well, somebody said, “How about those reports earlier this year that Iraq was trying to get Uranuim from Niger? Yeah…that was pretty good.” But of course if George Tenet were there, he would have said, “But we looked at the evidence, and they’re forgeries, they stink to high heaven.” So the question became, “How long would it take for someone to find out they were forgeries?” The answer was about a day or two. The next question was, “When do we have to show people this stuff?” The answer was that the IAEA had been after us for a couple of months now to give it to them, but we can probably put them off for three or four months.

So there it was. “What’s the problem? We’ll take these reports, we’ll use them to brief Congress and to raise the specter of a mushroom cloud. You’ll recall that the President on the 7th of October said, “Our smoking gun could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Condoleezza Rice said exactly the same thing the next day. Victoria Clarke said exactly the same thing on the 9th of October, and of course the vote came on the 11th of October.

Don’t take my word for it. Take Henry Waxman’s word for it. Waxman has written the President a very, very bitter letter dated the 17th of March in which he says, “Mr. President, I was lied to. I was lied to. I was briefed on a forgery, and on the strength of that I voted for war. Tell me how this kind of thing could happen?” That was March 17. He hasn’t received a response from the White House yet.

ThatÂ’s the way it worked, and you have to give them credit. These guys are really clever. It worked.

Then there are McGovern's coments on how the war was sold to the US and the reaction of the Press:

PITT: Where do you see this whole issue of the manner in which the war was sold to the American people going?

McG: The most important and clear-cut scandal, of course, has to do with the forgery of those Niger nuclear documents that were used as proof. The very cold calculation was that Congress could be deceived, we could have our war, we could win it, and then no one would care that part of the evidence for war was forged. That may still prove to be the case, but the most encouraging thing IÂ’ve seen over the last four weeks now is that the US press has sort of woken from its slumber and is interested. IÂ’ve asked people in the press how they account for their lack of interest before the war, and now they seem to be interested. I guess the simple answer is that they donÂ’t like to be lied to.

I think the real difference is that no one knew, or very few people knew, before the war that there werenÂ’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now they know. ItÂ’s an unavoidable fact. No one likes to be conned, no one likes to be lied to, and no one particularly likes that 190 US servicemen and women have been killed in this effort, not to mentioned the five or six thousand Iraqi civilians.

There’s a difference in tone. If the press does not succumb to the argument put out by folks like Tom Friedman, who says it doesn’t really matter that there are no weapons in Iraq, if it does become a quagmire which I believe it will be, and we have a few servicemen killed every week, then there is a prospect that the American people will wake up and say, “Tell me again why my son was killed? Why did we have to make this war on Iraq?”

So I do think that there is some hope now that the truth will come out. It wonÂ’t come out through the Congressional committees. ThatÂ’s really a joke, a sick joke.

PITT: During the Clinton administration, if there was going to be an investigation into something, it was going to come out of the House of Representatives. What would your assessment of the situation be at this point?

McG: It doesnÂ’t take a crackerjack analyst. Take Pat Roberts, the Republican Senator from Kansas, who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. When the Niger forgery was unearthed and when Colin Powell admitted, well shucks, it was a forgery, Senator Jay Rockefellar, the ranking Democrat on that committee, went to Pat Roberts and said they really needed the FBI to take a look at this. After all, this was known to be a forgery and was still used on Congressmen and Senators. WeÂ’d better get the Bureau in on this. Pat Roberts said no, that would be inappropriate. So Rockefellar drafted his own letter, and went back to Roberts and said he was going to send the letter to FBI Director Mueller, and asked if Roberts would sign on to it. Roberts said no, that would be inappropriate.

What the FBI Director eventually got was a letter from one Minority member saying pretty please, would you maybe take a look at what happened here, because we think there may have been some skullduggery. The answer he got from the Bureau was a brush-off. Why do I mention all that? This is the same Pat Roberts who is going to lead the investigation into what happened with this issue.

There is a lot that could be said about Pat Roberts. I remember way back last fall when people were being briefed, CIA and others were briefing Congressmen and Senators about the weapons of mass destruction. These press folks were hanging around outside the briefing room, and when the Senators came out, one of the press asked Senator Roberts how the evidence on weapons of mass destruction was. Roberts said, oh, it was very persuasive, very persuasive.

The press guy asked Roberts to tell him more about that. Roberts said, “Truck A was observed to be going under Shed B, where Process C is believed to be taking place.” The press guy asked him if he found that persuasive, and Pat Roberts said, “Oh, these intelligence folks, they have these techniques down so well, so yeah, this is very persuasive.” And the correspondent said thank you very much, Senator.

So, if you’ve got a Senator who is that inclined to believe that kind of intelligence, you’ve got someone who will do the administration’s bidding. On the House side, of course, you’ve got Porter Goss, who is a CIA alumnus. Porter Goss’ main contribution last year to the joint committee investigating 9/11 was to sic the FBI on members of that committee, at the direction of who? Dick Cheney. Goss admits this. He got a call from Dick Cheney, and he was “chagrined” in Goss’ word that he was upbraided by Dick Cheney for leaks coming out of the committee. He then persuaded the innocent Bob Graham to go with him to the FBI and ask the Bureau to investigate the members of that committee. Polygraphs and everything were involved. That’s the first time something like that has ever happened.

Be aware, of course, that Congress has its own investigative agencies, its own ways of investigating things like that. So without any regard for the separation of powers, here Goss says Cheney is bearing down on me, so letÂ’s get the FBI in here. In this case, ironically enough, the FBI jumped right in with Ashcroft whipping it along. They didnÂ’t come up with much, but the precedent was just terrible.

All IÂ’m saying is that youÂ’ve got Porter Goss on the House side, youÂ’ve got Pat Roberts on the Senate side, youÂ’ve got John Warner whoÂ’s a piece with Pat Roberts. IÂ’m very reluctant to be so unequivocal, but in this case I can say nothing is going to come out of those hearings but a lot of smoke.

PITT: So what is the alternative?

McG: The alternative would be an independent judicial commission, such as the one that a lot of the British are appealing for in London. You get a person who is not beholden to George Bush or to the Democrats, a universally respected figure, and let him pick the members of the commission, and you give them access to this material. Not restricted access, like what the 9/11 committee in Congress got. You give them everything, and you let them tell their story. It would take a while, but they would come up with a much better prospect of a fair judgment on what happened.

PITT: ThatÂ’s not going to come unless there is some pretty significant pressure put on the administration from outside Congress.

McG: I wouldnÂ’t see that coming at all, and surely not before 2004.

McGovern also comments on John ONeil and the ability of the FBI to operate as a counter-terrorism agency. Sidney Blumenthal, Presidential Aide to Clinton and author of the excellent boojudgmentinton Wars" calls the FBI the most dysfunctional agency in the FeNeil government. McGovern's comments confirm that judgement.

PITT: Are you aware of the situation surrounding John O’Neill? He was a Deputy Director of the FBI, and was the chief bin Laden hunter. He investigated the first Twin Towers bombing, he investigated the Khobar Towers bombing, he investigated the bombing of our embassies in Africa, and he investigated the bombing of the USS Cole. He was the guy in government who knew everything about bin Laden, and he quit the FBI in protest three weeks before 9/11. He quit because he said he was not being allowed to investigate terror connections to Saudi Arabia, because such investigations threatened the petroleum business we do with that nation. O’Neill quit, took a job as chief of security at the World Trade Center, and died doing his job on September 11. The fact that he was thwarted in his terrorism investigations clearly left a hole in our intelligence capabilities regarding these threats – the guy who knew the most about it was not allowed to pursue those connections to the greatest possible degree.

McG: I am aware of that. There are other FBI folks who have spoken out about this same problem. There is an agent from Chicago named Robert Wright who has spoken out about his being hamstrung in his attempts to investigate these matters. Just read the book about the FBI labs that was written by Warren and Kelley. The corruption and deceit that goes on there, and the headquarters mentality where you can be completely incompetent and still get a Presidential award – which is what happened with the fellow who squashed the Minneapolis Bureau’s requests for action against Moussaoui – there’s something really insidiously wrong there. The problem is that if you ask Pat Roberts or the Judiciary Committee and the Congress to do something about it, well, lots of luck.

There is a great deal more in the interview, including McGovern's opinion on whether the Bush administration is likely to attempt to plant forged WMDs in Iraq and the difficulties of doing it well.

My previous discussion of the report by Ambassador Wilson is here.

My previous discussion of how we got into the war in Iraq is here

posted by Richard at 10:03 AM

 

How do we know what our national leaders are doing?

We have an administration for whom the Truth is something to be hidden if it is politically inconvenient. Dick Cheney is still fighting to keep from revealing who was at his meetings before the Presidents Energy Policy was released. Bush and his team were fully aware that the "evidence" supporting the allegation that Iraq had attempted to buy Yellow-cake Uranium in Africa was forged well before the State of the Union Address, so they said that was what British Intelligence had determined. It was a flat lie and they knew it.

The EPA had a report that included what was known about Global Warming. Since a sizeable section of Bush's constituency does not believe in Global Warming, the White House removed those reference from the report before it was released. This was a political action, without any consideration of the science involved, because it was politically inconvenient. The administration has cancelled routine economic reports because they revealed bad news, such as the report of business closings in December 2002. Such increases in unemployment are not politically palatable.

In short, this White House cannot be trusted.

So obviously this means that our media needs to be more investigative and careful about what they publish. They really need to look behind the mirror and let the public know what is true, what is false, and how many of the things they publish severely spin the truth, right?

Unfortunately, They don't. Susan J. Douglas, writing for In These Times, asserts: "It would hardly be an overstatement to say that the late spring and early summer of 2003 have been one of the lowest points in US media history. She talks about the Jayson Blair scandal, but says the "real disgrace" is the way the media seems to being reading a script handed out by "Team Bush."

This really is not a good time for the US either in politics or in the US media.
posted by Richard at 1:04 PM

 

How did we get into the war with Iraq?

from the July 11, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0711/p11s02-cojh.html

War under false pretenses?
By Daniel Schorr
WASHINGTON - Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who resigned from the cabinet over the Iraq war, told the House of Commons on June 17, "We used intelligence as the basis on which to justify a policy on which we had already settled."

Evidence is mounting that something of that sort happened in the Bush White House. A retired diplomat, Joseph Wilson IV, has come forward to say that the CIA sent him to Niger in February 2002 to investigate a reported uranium deal with Iraq, but ignored his finding that the story was a hoax.

In his State of the Union address 11 months later, the president was still talking of an African uranium deal and ignoring evidence to the contrary. In the face of this embarrassing revelation, the White House has now acknowledged that including the uranium story in the State of the Union address was a mistake. It would be fascinating to know how such a mistake came about.

On television, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner and ranking Democrat Carl Levin clashed over whether the Wilson revelation justified an investigation into possible intelligence manipulation to make the case for invading Iraq.

Recently released documents indicate that the invasion of Iraq was long in the planning. A 1992 Defense Policy Guidance paper drafted by Paul Wolfowitz, undersecretary of defense for policy under President Bush the elder, called for a preemptive strike against Iraq. The stated reason - to avert the spread of destructive weapons and to ensure "access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil." But nothing about an imminent threat from an Iraq defeated and disarmed in the Gulf War only a year earlier.

Sept. 11 provided momentum for an attack on Iraq, although no connection between the terrorist acts and the Saddam Hussein government has ever been convincingly established. According to Bob Woodward's book, "Bush At War," at a meeting of the war cabinet four days after Sept. 11, Mr. Wolfowitz pushed for an assault on Iraq rather than Afghanistan because it would be easier.

But not as easy as Wolfowitz hoped. And now, the continuing and escalating guerrilla war against US troops has raised the question of whether the administration took America into the war under false pretenses, with selective use of ambiguous intelligence.

The question of whether the president got congressional approval for a war against Iraq by manipulating intelligence comes at a delicate time. The White House may soon be asking to send troops to Liberia, and that is bound to reopen for Congress the whole issue of the administration's credibility.

• Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst at National Public Radio.

The Christian Science Monitor
posted by Richard at 12:34 PM

 

FAA spent Eight Hours Searching for Democratic Reps Plane

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports from its Washington Bureau that the Federal Aviation Administration played a much larger role in the search for the run-away Texas Democratic Legislators who were preventing a quorum on Tom Delay's redistricting bill. The report says that the FAA was responding to repeated calls from Tom Delay, Texas Law Enforcement, and the Department of Homeland Security.

The report also makes clear that the FAA employees involved were aware of the political nature of the search.

This makes the Federal Government simply an agency of the Republican Party, very much like the government of the USSR was an agency of the Communist Party there. Much of what Nixon was to be impeached for before he resigned was similar misuse of the CIA, FBI and IRS to conceal the connection of the Office of the President with the Plumbers who conducted the Watergate break in.

Addendum:
More articles on the Department of Transportation investigation into the business of chasing Democratic State lawmakers:
Washington Post This includes a statement:
In a civil deposition, DPS Lt. William Crais, a key player in the hunt, testified that he was told to try to initiate a federal search operation by state Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock, and by an aide to the state House speaker, Tom Craddick, R-Midland.

As Well as the further statement:
Mead's report pins principal responsibility for the FAA efforts on David Balloff, appointed by President Bush in 2001 as the FAA's assistant administrator for government and industry affairs. Balloff is a former adviser to Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) and a former Tennessee Republican Party official.
Mead's report said Balloff withheld critical information during several interviews and fostered an "appearance" of trying to hide information about his activities from his FAA superiors. Kirk K. Van Tine, the department's general counsel, promised that he and FAA Administrator Marion Blakey would counsel Balloff "appropriately regarding these issues."

Dallas Morning News
New York Times

Tom Delay and the Bush administration want to cover up what appears to be a political misuse of the federal agencies. The cover-up is unraveling, however.
posted by Richard at 11:05 AM

 

US failed to plan for Post-War Iraq

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram carries the report from Knight-Ridder news service that the failures in Post-War Iraq are a direct result of lack of planning.

Essentially, the Neocons in the Rumsfield had their rosy scenario [Iraqis welcome US GI's with flowers and kisses - US installs Chalabi as Iraqi Leader - all is hunky-dory.] but none of it happened. Since the State Department and the CIA had both predicted that the rosy scenario would not work, the Pentagon guys simply cut them out of the process and went forward with no real plan. The insistence by State and the CIA that we would need a lot more troops than Rumsfield accepted and they would have to be there a lot longer than Rumsfield expected also led the Pentagon civilians to cut the CIA and State out of effective planning.

As a result - no plan has led to no civilian infrastructure in Iraq for way too long, leading to general unhappiness at the American incompetence and the ability of old Baathists to begin efforts to fight a guerrilla war against our troops.

If ever there was a clear demonstration of what the Pentagon civilian leadership and the National Security Advisor should do in contrast to what the military people themselves do, it is this situation. In the conduct of the war itself, the military has performed superbly. In every instance that is the responsibility of the civilian leadership, Iraq has been an utter failure.

The Bush administration is a totally failed Presidency. There is no other American President who has failed so miserably.
posted by Richard at 10:52 AM

 

Why do Unions have Trouble Getting Things Through the Legislature?

I recently posted comments on www.NathanNewman.org. The subject was WHY UNIONS “HAVE TROUBLE ORGANIZING WORKERS”

If you really care about unionized workers, how about putting more money in their pockets by allowing them to not have to pay for unions political activities on behalf of abortion, dope legalization, nationalized healthcare, gay marriage or a host of other ideologically driven special interest which are never voted on, approved or even discussed with membership? If you are a company shareholder, you are most sure that the money the company spends on lobbying or campaigns is in the interest of making the company richer or more successful. But you can't make the case that having marijuana legalized in Nevada is benefiting AFL-CIO members.
Unions are now giant political powers and less and less advocates for their membership. It inevitably happens but it does not appear to be addressed in any substantive way. People making $20K a year are very likely not aware what is happening to the money they pay their union bosses. Unless you are do something about that, you aren't much better than Ken Lay. Just not working with as much money.
6- Posted by: bruce on June 26, 2003 09:34 PM

And my comment:
Bruce, Texas was recently (2002 election) treated to a takeover of the House of Representatives by the Republicans because of several million dollars of soft money from corporations directed by Tom Delay against 42 Democratic House members, most of whom lost. The current effort to redistrict to increase the number of Republican House members is a direct result.
Remember the Democrats who fled to Oklahoma? Guess what. They were responding to the excess of ~corporate~ political money. Many of us really don't LIKE to have our State bought out by wealthy and irresponsible corporations. We NEED union money in the process!
The unions can't match that kind of money, and you want to remove their right to try? Yeah, sure. Why don't we just give the top 100 Corporations (by number of employees) each their own Senator and provide them 100 electors in the Electoral College and be done with it? Forget this democracy garbage. It is costing the Corporations ~way~ too much to buy the politicians under current circumstances, and permitting a slight bit of competition from the unions simply raises the price. It is soooo inefficient.
Ken Lay for President! He can't be worse then Bush, or the Italian PM Bertoluci. Can he?




posted by Richard at 5:00 PM

 

New Confirmations on Typical North Korean Behavior

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article on the history of North Korea over the last 50 years as indicated in newly opened Eastern European and Russian archives. It isn't very pretty.

North Korea cannot support itself, and may never have been able to. They have cadged aid from the USSR and China until the collapse of the USSR. Now they are trying to extort aid from the US.

But they have never lived up to agreements made to get the aid, either to the USSR, to Chin, or to the US. As soon as they could possibly get away from it, they ignored any concessions they had made.

They still want to get control over South Korea, but are simply too weak to do so.

So what do we do with the efforts to extort aid by an untrustworthy enemy nation?

By the way, anyone interested in the history of the Korean peninsula since WW II should look at "The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History" by Dan Oberdorfer. It is well written and probably as objective as can be found. I strongly recommend it. It is worth the $18.00 US.
posted by Richard at 1:44 PM

 

Congressional Report on 9/11 due within two weeks

The Miami Herald is reporting that the report of the investigation into what the government knew before 9/11 is due out very soon.

Here is an excerpt from the newspaper article " The report will show that top Bush administration officials were warned in the summer of 2001 that the al Qaeda terrorist network had plans to hijack aircraft and launch a ``spectacular attack.''

Hill would not discuss details of the report, but said it will contain ''new information'' about revelations made last year, when the joint House-Senate investigation held nine public hearings and 13 closed sessions.

The final report was completed in December. Since then a working group of Bush administration intelligence officials has ''scrubbed'' the report, objecting to additional public disclosures.

Since we know that the Clinton administration people carefully warned the entering Bush people that the Al Quada and terrorism were the highest priority that the US faced, and we know that the Bush administration, led from the top, consciously acted as though their policy was to do whatever was the opposite of what the Clinton administration did, does the report indicate that the government should have taken more actions to prevent 9/11 but failed to do so for ideological reasons?

Notice that the report was complete in December 2002, and the administration has held up its publication for the last six months.

Inquiring minds want to know.
posted by Richard at 12:39 PM

 

Is the Media News Too Objective?

Brent Cunningham writes an analysis of today's news media organizations and the ways they are wrapped around the axle by the desire to be objective and unbiased. The original source seems to be The Columbia Journalism Review

This question is one I have been asking here for weeks. Cunningham's article may offer some answers. It is, in any case, a good read by a thoughtful person.
posted by Richard at 10:53 AM

 

The Lie that Led us to War

Robert Sheer asks the question:What could be more cynical and impeachable than fabricating a threat of rogue nations or terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons and using that to sell a war?

Yet he goes on: "The world is outraged at this pattern of lies used to justify the Iraq invasion, but the U.S. public still seems numb to the dangers of government by deceit. "


I don't think anyone really doubts the first. So why is the public "...numb to the dangers of government by deceit."? Is it that the media doesn't want the lead in asking the question? Has the public been so bludgeoned by the admininstration's propaganda that they don't realize what happened, or that they don't believe that can do anything about it?

Let me throw out some possibilities.

(1) Most of us thought that the Persian Gulf War I was ended too soon, and Saddam should not have been left in power. The war was declared over too soon. So now the public accepts Persian Gulf War II on any basis as simply cleaning up the mess left after Persian Gulf War I.

I really suspect that this is the reason why the admininstration went to war in the first place, and all the justifications presented in the press simply were excuses to do what hadn't been finished before.

(2) The public never bought the impeachment of Bill Clinton, as indicated by the continued high rating he got in the polls even in the middle of it, and the general acceptance (and relief) at his acquittal.

This has two possible results that I can see.

(2a) The public is exhausted at the idea of impeaching a President and doesn't want to go through it again.

(2b) The media feels used during the impeachment process (as they should) and isn't ready to dive in again, no matter what the justification.

I guess there is also a (3) All of the above.

I buy #3. The US public really doesn't like the continued existence of Saddam, and really didn't need much excuse to take him out. So the idea that it was done based on a lie - it was a good move even if done badly.

Then the public and the media are each waiting for a clear indication that the other is going to go ballistic over the lie we were fed to justify the war. The media isn't going to lead off, because they were ~so~ wrong and badly used in the Clinton impeachment. They were burned badly, and don't want to go there again. The public is unwilling to accept that the outcome was wrong ~even if they were lied to to make it happen~ partly because the media hasn't treated this like Watergate or whitewater, partly because they wanted the result anyway, and partly because there is a strong bunch of right wing supporters who are working hard to convince everyone that this war was justified.

America needs to decide if they want a government of ideologues who know what they believe and select the information that justifies their belief, or if we have a government run by people who solve real problems based on the facts of the problem and the most reasonable solution available. Right now we have the first, but I want the second.

posted by Richard at 3:29 AM

 

Investigation of Documents Alleging Sale of Uranium to Iraq

The New York Times has an editorial today (July 6, 2003) written by the Ambassador who investigated the documents President Bush later claimed in the State of the Union Speech proved that Iraq was buying uranium in Africa.

What I Didn't Find in Africa

By JOSEPH C. WILSON 4th


WASHINGTON

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and S?o Tomé and Pr?ncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.

It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.

The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.

I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.

(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)

Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.

Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.

Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.

Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.

The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.

I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program — all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.

But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.


Joseph C. Wilson 4th, United States ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, is an international business consultant.


posted by Richard at 10:03 AM