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.

 

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