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.

 

One more administration official against Bush

From David Kay Boston Globe

The underlining is mine.

CAMBRIDGE -- The former chief US weapons inspector in Iraq warned yesterday that the United States is in "grave danger" of destroying its credibility at home and abroad if it does not own up to its mistakes in Iraq.

"The cost of our mistakes . . . with regard to the explanation of why we went to war in Iraq are far greater than Iraq itself," David Kay said in a speech at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

"We are in grave danger of having destroyed our credibility internationally and domestically with regard to warning about future events," he said. "The answer is to admit you were wrong, and what I find most disturbing around Washington . . . is the belief . . . you can never admit you're wrong."

posted by Richard at 12:12 PM

 

Slate on Clarke

This needs to be widely stated. Clarke got it right. Then Kaplan got Clarke right.

Richard Clarke KOs the Bushies
The ex-terrorism official dazzles at the 9/11 commission hearings.
By Fred Kaplan
Updated Wednesday, March 24, 2004, at 3:49 PM PT

Richard Clarke made his much-anticipated appearance before the 9/11 commission this afternoon and, right out of the box, delivered a stunning blow to the Bush administration—the political equivalent of a first-round knockout.

The blow was so stunning, it took a while to realize that it was a blow. Clarke thanked the members for holding the hearings, saying they finally provided him "a forum where I can apologize" to the victims of 9/11 and their loved ones. He continued, addressing those relatives, many of whom were sitting in the hearing room:

Your government failed you … and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn'tmatter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask … for your understanding and for your forgiveness.

End of statement. Applause. KO.

Among the many feckless or snarky statements that Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and White House spokesman Scott McClellan have issued about Clarke the past few days, the observation they've recited with particular gusto is that this disgruntled ex-official was in charge of counterterrorism policy during the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on the U.S.S. Cole, and the bombing of our East African embassies. Their implication was: How can this guy, who allowed so much bloodshed on his watch, be blaming us?

And so now here's Clarke, in an official, nationally broadcast forum, announcing: I failed, I'm sorry, please forgive me. Which, as one member of the panel noted, is more than any official in the Bush administration has said to any victims of the far more devastating 9/11 attacks.

I am not suggesting that Clarke's apology was cynical or purely tactical. I'm sure it was sincere. This is a guy who was obsessive about terrorism when he was the national coordinator for counterterrorism during the Bush 41, Clinton, and—briefly—Bush 43 administrations. His obsessiveness—and his frustration over the fact that his bosses didn't share his sense of urgency—made him genuinely passionate about the issue and genuinely distraught when inadequate policies led to tragedy.

But in his 30 years of service in the upper rungs of the national-security apparatus, Clarke was such a formidable player of bureaucratic politics precisely because he combined eloquent advocacy and shrewd tactics. So, there's little doubt that Clarke truly meant his plea for forgiveness—but also that he knew he was twisting his dagger into Bush a little deeper.

Three of the panel's Republicans tried to throw some punches Clarke's way, but they didn't land.
James Thompson entered the ring with a swagger, holding up a copy of Clarke's new book in one hand and a thick document in the other. "We have your book and we have your press briefing of August 2002," he bellowed. "Which is true?" He went on to observe that none of his book's attacks on Bush can be found anywhere in that briefing.

Clarke calmly noted that, in August 2002, he was special assistant to President Bush. White House officials asked him to give a "background briefing" to the press, to minimize the political damage of a Time cover story on Bush's failure to take certain measures before 9/11. "I was asked to highlight the positive aspects of what the administration had done and to play down the negative aspects," Clarke said, adding, "When one is a special assistant to the president, one is asked to do that sort of thing. I've done it for several presidents."
Nervous laughter came from the crowd—or was it from the panel? The implication was clear: This is what I used to do and—though he didn't mention them explicitly—this is what Condi Rice and Stephen Hadley are doing now when they're defending the president.

John Lehman, Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan and a former colleague of Clarke's, came out not just swaggering but swinging. The 16 hours of classified testimony that Clarke gave to the commission—and the six hours he testified before the joint congressional inquiry on 9/11—were nothing like what's in the book. There is, Lehman said, "a tremendous difference, and not just in nuance," adding, "You've got a real credibility problem!" You look like "an active partisan selling a book."

Clarke began with a playful shuffle. "Thank you, John," he said, to laughter. First, he denied that he's campaigning for John Kerry and swore, under oath, that he would not take a job in a Kerry administration if there is one. Then he admitted there was a difference between his earlier testimony and his book. "There's a very good reason for that," he went on. "In the 15 hours of testimony, nobody asked me what I thought of the president's invasion of Iraq." The heart of his book's attacks surrounds the war. "By invading Iraq," he said, taking full advantage of Lehman's opening, "the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terror." End of response. Lehman said nothing.

In the second round of questioning, Thompson returned to the August 2002 press briefing. "You intended to mislead the press?" he asked, perhaps hoping to pound a wedge between the media and their new superstar.

"There's a very fine line that anyone who's been in the White House, in any administration, can tell you about," Clarke replied. Someone in his position had three choices. He could have resigned, but he had important work yet to do. He could have lied, but nobody told him to do that, and he wouldn't have in any case. "The third choice," he said, "is to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts. That's what I did."

Well, Thompson asked in a bruised tone, is there one set of moral rules for special assistants to the White House and another set for everybody else?

"It's not a question of morality at all," Clarke replied. "It's a question of politics." The crowd applauded fiercely. To invoke another sports metaphor: Game, set, and match.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate.


Slate
posted by Richard at 4:45 AM

 

Clarke on the Clinton successes against terrorism

This is from Joe Conason's interview with Richard Clarke published March 24, 2004 in Salon. [Note: you can get a one-day right to view the articles by watching a commercial.]

The vice president commented that there was "no great success in dealing with terrorists" during the 1990s, when you were serving under President Clinton. He asked, "What were they doing?"

It's possible that the vice president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn't know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States, through military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States, through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert action program against al-Qaida; it also launched military strikes against al-Qaida. Maybe the vice president was so busy running Halliburton at the time that he didn't notice.

This is from the guy who was the White House Counter Terrorism Czar in both the Clinton and Bush White Houses. It certainly exposes the lie the Bush administration has been peddling that Clinton did not do anything against terrorists except send out a few cruise missiles against the training camps in Afghanistan.

Clarke goes on to explain why he was given the job in the Bush White house:

Why did they keep you on, if they were so uninterested in what you were focused on? And then why did they downgrade your position?

They said, in so many words, at the time, that they didn't have anyone in their Republican coterie of people that came in with Bush, who had an expertise in this [counterterrorism] area [and] who wanted the job. And they actually said they found the job a little strange -- since it wasn't there when they had been in power before.

Dr. Rice said that.

Yes, Dr. Rice said that. And the first thing they asked was for me to look at taking some of the responsibilities, with regard to domestic security and cyber-security, and spinning them off so that they were no longer part of the National Security Council.

Why do you think Cheney -- and the Bush administration in general -- ignored the warnings that were put to them by [former national security advisor] Sandy Berger, by you, by George Tenet, who is apparently somebody they hold in great esteem?

They had a preconceived set of national security priorities: Star Wars, Iraq, Russia. And they were not going to change those preconceived notions based on people from the Clinton administration telling them that was the wrong set of priorities. They also looked at the statistics and saw that during eight years of the Clinton administration, al-Qaida killed fewer than 50 Americans. And that's relatively few, compared to the 300 dead during the Reagan administration at the hands of terrorists in Beirut -- and by the way, there was no military retaliation for that from Reagan. It was relatively few compared to the 259 dead on Pan Am 103 in the first Bush administration, and there was no military retaliation for that. So looking at the low number of American fatalities at the hands of al-Qaida, they might have thought that it wasn't a big threat.

Dr. Rice now says that your plans to "roll back" al-Qaida were not aggressive enough for the Bush administration. How do you answer that, in light of what we know about what they did and didn't do?

I just think it's funny that they can engage in this sort of "big lie" approach to things. The plan that they adopted after Sept. 11 was the plan that I had proposed in January [2001}. If my plan wasn't aggressive enough, I suppose theirs wasn't either.

It should be very obvious why so many members of the White House are running to the media to attack Richard Clarke. He is the person with the best standing to show how very outrageous their effort to run Bush for reelection based on his war against terror really is.





posted by Richard at 3:01 AM

 

The Bush admins' attack is a confused, panicky failure

Claim vs. Fact: Administration Officials Respond to Richard Clarke Interview

March 22, 2004

In the wake of Richard Clarke's well-supported assertions that the Bush
Administration neglected counterterrorism in the face of repeated terror
warnings before 9/11, the Bush Administration has launched a frantic
misinformation campaign - often contradicting itself in the process.

---

CLAIM #1: "Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the
administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong
direction and he chose not to."
- National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04

FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked "urgent" asking
for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending Al Qaeda attack. The White
House acknowledges this, but says "principals did not need to have a formal
meeting to discuss the threat." No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11.
- White House Press Release, 3/21/04

---

CLAIM #2: "The president returned to the White House and called me in and said,
I've learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between
Saddam Hussein and 9/11."
- National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04

FACT: If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly
claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a
letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted
specifically under legislation that authorized force against "nations,
organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11." Similarly, Vice President
Cheney said on 9/14/03 that "It is not surprising that people make that
connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said "we don't know" if there
is a connection.

---

CLAIM #3: "[Clarke] was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the
cybersecurity side of things."
- Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04

FACT: "Dick Clarke continued, in the Bush Administration, to be the National
Coordinator for Counterterrorism and the President's principle counterterrorism
expert. He was expected to organize and attend all meetings of Principals and
Deputies on terrorism. And he did."
- White House Press Release, 3/21/04

---

CLAIM #4: "In June and July when the threat spikes were so high.we were at
battle stations.The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on
this before 9/11."
- National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04

FACT: "Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism
top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes
the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put
fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a
sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's
predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism 'the most challenging threat in the
criminal justice area.'"
- Washington Post, 3/22/04

---

CLAIM #5: "The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11."
- National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04

FACT: "In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House
cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the
FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. The papers show that
Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his
predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism
funding before and immediately after the attacks."
- Washington Post, 3/22/04

---

CLAIM #6: "Well, [Clarke] wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/22/04

FACT: "The Government's interagency counterterrorism crisis management forum
(the Counterterrorism Security Group, or "CSG") chaired by Dick Clarke met
regularly, often daily, during the high threat period."
- White House Press Release, 3/21/04

---

CLAIM #7: "[Bush] wanted a far more effective policy for trying to deal with
[terrorism], and that process was in motion throughout the spring."
- Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04

FACT: "Bush said [in May of 2001] that Cheney would direct a government-wide
review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and 'I will
periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these
efforts.' Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took place." By comparison, Cheney
in 2001 formally convened his Energy Task Force at least 10 separate times,
meeting at least 6 times with Enron energy executives.
- Washington Post, 1/20/02 , GAO Report, 8/22/03, AP, 1/8/02

---

CLAIM #8: All the chatter [before 9/11] was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda
attack overseas.
- Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, 3/22/04

FACT: Page 204 of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 noted that "In May
2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters
were planning to infiltrate the United States" to "carry out a terrorist
operation using high explosives." The report "was included in an intelligence
report for senior government officials in August [2001]." In the same month, the
Pentagon "acquired and shared with other elements of the Intelligence Community
information suggesting that seven persons associated with Bin Laden had departed
various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States."
[Joint Congressional Report, 12/02]


Source

posted by Richard at 11:46 PM

 

Ltc. Kwiatkowski describes the propaganda used by the Bush Administration in lieu of Intelligence

Now retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski is a lifelong conservative who was in the Pentagon for four and a half years as a political/military desk officer at the Defense DepartmentÂ’s office for Near East South Asia (NESA). That is a policy arm of the Pentagon. She describes the process used by Bush conservatives to push their agenda to attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein.
LA Weekly

"Like most people, I've always thought there should be honesty in government. Working 20 years in the military, IÂ’m sure I saw some things that were less than honest or accountable. But nothing to the degree that I saw when I joined Near East South Asia."

The Pentagon's Office of Special Plans pushed an agenda on Iraq, and "they developed pretty sophisticated propaganda lines which were fed throughout government, to the Congress, and even internally to the Pentagon to try and make this case of immediacy. This case of severe threat to the United States. "

"This was creatively produced propaganda spread not only through the Pentagon, but across a network of policymakers, the State Department, with John Bolton; the Vice President's Office, the very close relationship the OSP had with that office. That is not normal, that is a bypassing of normal processes. Then there was the National Security Council, with certain people who had neoconservative views; Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff; a network of think tanks who advocated neoconservative views, the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy with Frank Gaffney, the columnist Charles Krauthammer was very reliable. So there was just not a process inside the Pentagon that should have developed good honest policy, but it was instead pushing a particular agenda; this group worked in a coordinated manner, across media and parts of the government, with their neoconservative compadres."

The article reports a number of instances when the Bush administration revised the intelligence reports to show that there were a number of nations who were enemies of the US when the intelligence showed that they were actually trying to become accepted by the world as responsible nations. Libya was particularly pointed out.

"Abe was the director of the Office of Special Plans. He comes from an academic background; he's definitely a neoconservative. He is a student of Leo Strauss from the University of Chicago, so he has that Straussian academic perspective. He was the final proving authority on all the talking points that were generated from the Office of Special Plans and that were distributed throughout the Pentagon, certainly to staff officers. And it appears to me they were also distributed to the Vice President's Office and to the presidential speechwriters. Much of the phraseology that was in our talking points consists of the same things I heard the president say."

"We had a whole staff to help him do that, and he was the approving authority. I can give you one example of how the talking points were altered. We were instructed by Bill Luti, on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, on behalf of Abe Shulsky, that we would not write anything about Iraq, WMD or terrorism in any papers that we prepared for our superiors except as instructed by the Office of Special Plans. And it would provide to us an electronic document of talking points on these issues. So I got to see how they evolved."

"It was very clear to me that they did not evolve as a result of new intelligence, of improved intelligence, or any type of seeking of the truth. The way they evolved is that certain bullets were dropped or altered based on what was being reported on the front pages of the Washington Post or The New York Times."

As an example, "one item that was dropped was in November [2002]. It was the issue of the meeting in Prague prior to 9/11 between Mohammed Atta and a member of Saddam Hussein's intelligence force. We had had this in our talking points from September through mid-November. And then it dropped out totally. No explanation. Just gone. That was because the media reported that the FBI had stepped away from that, that the CIA said it didn't happen."

In other words, the war on Iraq was based on lies put out or approved by Vice President Dick Cheney. He knew what he wanted, and facts and reality need not apply, because it was not to be considered.

posted by Richard at 4:21 PM

 

Clark - A major reason for the War in Iraq was for Republicans to run on the security issue in 2002

Today's Washington Post has more from Richard Clark.

First, according to Clark the war on Iraq has not advanced the war against terror. It has, in fact, strengthened the hands of the various terrorists.

Although expressing points of disagreement with all four presidents, Clarke reserves by far his strongest language for George W. Bush. The president, he said, "failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks." The rapid shift of focus to Saddam Hussein, Clarke writes, "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide."


Second, Clark presented the first explanation for attacking Iraq that is clear enough and powerful enough to justify the decision make by Bush:

"Among the motives for the war, Clarke argues, were the politics of the 2002 midterm election. "The crisis was manufactured, and Bush political adviser Karl Rove was telling Republicans to 'run on the war,' " Clarke writes.

Unlike the search for WMDs, overthrowing a brutal dictator and freeing the Iraqi people, taking control of Iraq's oil, or preventing attacks on the US by Saddam, this reason fits the motivations that the Bush administration have consistently demonstrated. Bush, Rove and Cheney have never taken any action that was not intended to lead to Bush's reelection or perhaps his initial election, depending on how his rise to the White House is viewed.

This is an utterly cynical view of the Bush administration, that they would start an unnecessary war in order to regain control of the Senate, expand control of the House, and lead to his reelection in 2004. It also fits with everything that is known about Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Tom Delay.

I'll buy that explanation.

posted by Richard at 6:10 AM

 

Why reality does not interfere with Bush administration decisions

This is from Richard Clark's discussion with Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes today (March 21, 2004). Note the part I underlined:

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

"I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."

Richard Clark is stating that if the Bush administration does not want something to be true, or does not want something done, they simply do not give the President memos that contradict what they want.

America and the world are much too complicated to have a President who remains insulated from uncomfortable reality. For the sake of both America and the World, Bush needs to be replaced as soon as possible.
posted by Richard at 12:19 AM

 

First Paul O'Neill, Now Richard Clark. The Bush administration does not let reality effect their actions.

Richard Clark, the career civil servant in charge of anti-terrorist activities, tried to get the new Bush administration to go after Osama bin Laden before 9/11, but they had their agenda. Getting Saddam was on the agenda, getting Osama bin Laden was not.

Even after 9/11, Bush and Rumsfeld wanted to go after Saddam. The only problem was finding justification to do what they had wanted to do even before Bush was appointed to office.

From the March 29 issue of Newsweek:

"It was the day after 9/11, and President Bush, like many Americans, was looking for someone to bomb. Wandering into the White House Situation Room, the president pulled aside Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism chief of the national-security staff who had been held over from the Clinton years. According to Clarke, Bush asked: was Iraq responsible for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington? Bush wanted the FBI and CIA to hunt for any evidence that pointed to Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Clarke recalls that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was also looking for a justification to bomb Iraq. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld was arguing at a cabinet meeting that Afghanistan, home of Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps, did not offer "enough good targets." "We should do Iraq," Rumsfeld urged."

The real issue pointed out by this anecdote is not that Bush failed to set adequate priority on the war against terrorism prior to 9/11. As Newsweek points out, Clinton didn't set a lot priority on getting Osama, either, even after the bombing of the two embassies in Africa. The real issue is that, even when faced by the immediate and clear problem presented by the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration was still so set on getting Saddam that they ignored any facts which contradicted what they already wanted to do! Instead, they were searching for justification to do what they already wanted to do even before 9/11.

This is a classic example of people out of touch with reality, folks. They consistently know what they want to do, and facts that contradict what they want are to be ignored, hidden, and kept away from both decision makers and the public. Only those facts which conform to what they already want to do are acceptable. Those conforming facts are repeatedly loud and long in hopes that they will drown out reality.

This is why they cooked the intelligence books to justify their preemptive war against Saddam. They used Chalabi because he told them what they wanted to hear. They even paid him to do it and set up the special Intelligence Analysis unit in the Department of Defense to massage his data. As Seymour Hersh pointed out, they "stove-piped" the intelligence which supported what they wanted to do.

This is why they were unable to present a clear and compelling reason for going into Iraq before the war or provide an adequate defense of their action since. Only repetition, accusing those who knew and tried to present the real facts of being unpatriotic, and political arm-twisting got the Congress to support the war against Iraq, and nothing worked on the rest of the world.

The difference between attacking Iraq as the key in the war on terror, and their failure to act to any degree to improve the American job situation are both based in their refusal to accept facts which disagree with their strongly-held beliefs. The difference is that their strongly-held beliefs led them to actively conduct an unnecessary and overly expensive war in the first case, while their beliefs have led them to extreme passivity in the face of the loss of American jobs.

Their only reactions to the loss of jobs have been to first blame the recession on Clinton, and second to tout the tax cuts as a stimulus tool to bring the economy back into growth. Since the recession very awkwardly did not officially start until March 2001 in Bush's administration, they have tried to lie about when it started (see the recent President's Economic Report to the Congress, February 2004).

The tax cuts were proposed to return a portion of the predicted surplus from the Clinton administration period to the taxpayers, and only after the recession cut the surplus was it transformed into the primary anti-recessionary program of the Bush administration.

Once again, in economics as in war, the Bush administration has had their intentions for government from the beginning, and when the facts show that what they wanted to do was not responsive, then the PR campaign was changed to reposition the justification for what they already intended to do.

The problem with the Bush administration is not that they are so often wrong, even though they are. That could be defensible. The problem is that they are so disconnected from the reality of how real people live they their behavior amounts to a collective mental illness.

For the sake of both America and the World, Bush needs to be replaced as soon as possible.

Addendum:
See Josh Marshal on the subject of the Bush administrations' inability to learn from reality. The key point in his article is:

The first months of the Bush administration were based on a fundamental strategic miscalculation about the source of the greatest threats to the United States. They were, as Clark suggests, stuck in a Cold War mindset, focused on Cold War problems, though the terms of debate were superficially reordered to make them appear to address a post-Cold War world.

That screw up is a reality -- their inability to come clean about it is, I suspect, is at the root of all the covering up and stonewalling of the 9/11 commission. And Democrats are both right and within their rights to call the White House on it. But screw-ups happen; mistakes happen. What is inexcusable is the inability, indeed the refusal, to learn from them.

Rather than adjust to this different reality, on September 12th, the Bush war cabinet set about using 9/11 -- exploiting it, really -- to advance an agenda which had, in fact, been largely discredited by 9/11. They shoe-horned everything they'd been trying to do before the attacks into the new boots of 9/11. And the fit was so bad they had to deceive the public and themselves to do it.

In essence, the Bush administration claims to already know everything that is important to know about running this country, and when something new comes along, their reaction will be to continue to act as they were before it came along, but to repackage the PR so that the old actions appear to be responses to the new conditions.

It was similar ideologues using Marxist ideology who ran the Soviet Union into the ground and had to be replaced by Gorbachev. You would really think that such strong anti-Communists as are running the Bush administration would have enough good sense not to let ideology override practicality. But Bush himself ran every business he ever operated into the ground in a similar manner and had to be bailed out by his fathers' friends. That isn't going to work this time.

Bush needs to go back to Crawford to the toy ranch his fathers' friends gave him and quit screwing up America and the rest of the world.

posted by Richard at 11:46 PM

 

The effect of the defeat of Spanish Prime minister Aznar on Bush

Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at the American Prospect Online interviewed Ivo Daalder, a well-respected foreign policy expert. This is an excerpt from the reported interview.
The American Prospect Online

Does being closely associated with the Bush administration mean you can lose an election?

This is the third election of a major ally in which the party running against George Bush won. Look at Germany in '02, South Korea in '03, and now Spain. The message is: If you want to get re-elected, don't go to Crawford. Bush is a political liability -- in Europe, in particular. His foreign policy has trampled on the European views and it's now resulting in the election of governments that do not support his approach.

You say foreign leaders shouldn't go to Crawford. What's your advice for Bush?

My advice to Bush is, "Start paying attention to your allies." Coalitions of the willing may have short-term benefits in terms of effectiveness in Iraq (for example), but they have long-term problems in terms of legitimacy. Being right is not the only thing that matters. And getting other countries to commit to you has benefits.

What effect will the Spanish elections have on Bush?

Bush had a very, very close relationship with Aznar -- as underscored by the fact that when he made his first presidential trip to Europe, his first stop was Madrid. He used to point to Aznar as a way to justify what he was doing in terms of foreign policy. He'd say, more or less, "Here's a man who supports me, even though 90 percent of his population is against what we're doing in Iraq. What a strong, principled leader." But the fact that 90 percent of the people did not support Aznar led to his downfall. So the defeat of one of the staunchest members of the "coalition of the willing" is a major defeat for George Bush. The Spanish election was a referendum not only on Aznar but on Bush as well. They both lost.


In short, Daalder sees the defeat of Aznar as a defeat for Bush, and also that the defeat exposes the weakness of Bush's position in Iraq and in Europe generally.

posted by Richard at 11:40 PM

 

Bush Administration's Lies

Rep Henry Waxman has a new website. It lists many of the lies told by members of the Bush admininstration leading up to the war in Iraq, and is searchable by name and by lie.

Iraq on the Record

Just another effort to force the Bush Administration to tell the truth, of course. They really don't want to, since they (rightly) fear the kind of reaction from the American voters that the Spanish voters gave the conservative PM there when it was made clear that his party was playing fast-and-loose with the truth in order to win the election.
posted by Richard at 4:58 AM

 

The Bush Pattern of Deceiving the Public

The Bush administration clearly overstated its case for the war in Iraq and misled the people and Congress about whether they would work to get UN backing for it in order to induce Members of Congress to vote to support the action.

Is it any surprise that when the Medicare drug benefit bill was before Congress they would lie about how much it was going to cost?

Knight-Ridder has now reported that the claims by the HHS Chief Actuary for Medicare that he was told he would be fired if he informed Congress of the true (much higher) estimates of the Cost of the prescription drug benefit prior to the extremely close vote that approved it.

So the White House has gone into damage control mode (they are good at it, but they have had so much practice!) and the investigation will be an internal one by Tommy Thompson, Secretary of HHS rather then the Congressional investigation that was asked for by prominent Congressmen.

Kevin Drum also points out that there are also formal investigations going on into:

(a) the outing of Valerie Plame by senior Republican officials in the White House,
(b) a possible bribery offer by the House Republican leadership to congressman Nick Smith,
(c) the pilfering of memos from the Senate Judiciary Committee by a Republican staffer,
(d) possible illegal use of funds by the Republican majority leader's PAC.

Bush really is the Enron-Haliburton President.

He bought and paid for the office, and now he is going to milk it for everything he can get out of it for as long as he is in office. Already it will take years to repair the damage he has done to the deficit, and when the stop-loss orders are lifted, the numbers of trained and experienced soldiers getting out of the Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard will destroy the effectiveness of those organizations.

How much more damage and criminality will we have to put up with? It really is time for Bush to go.
posted by Richard at 4:46 AM

 

What is the nature of the war on terrorism?

talking points memo

Josh Marshall had this to say today:






posted by Richard at 12:59 AM

 

Was the Madrid Bombing a Result of a Centuries Old Grievance?

Any so-called "centuries' old resentment." is an effort by currently living politicians to convince more people to become their supporters. Otherwise all of Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe would currently be blaming Mongolia for the depredations of the Huns and of Genghis Kahn's hordes. History, rewritten history, and their Running Dog, political propaganda, are the tools used today by one faction of today's politicians against another faction. That is why Communist countries and the Bush administration work so hard to rewrite history (or in the case of the Bush administration, simply try to prevent the facts from being collected and analyzed. Or remove them from reports, as they did to the Global Warming parts of the EPA report. )

To believe otherwise is to ignore cause-and-effect.

Anytime someone mentions a "centuries' old resentment" it is time to grab your wallet and lock up your women, because some political propagandist wants to you take you for a ride and get you to perform an illogical action that is most likely against your own best interest.

posted by Richard at 9:34 PM

 

Why Bomb Madrid?

The bombings in Madrid were another example of the horror of terrorism. Who did it is one unresolved question. There is not yet a clear decision between the possibilities that the attack was an al Qaida attack or an ETA attack. I have seen no discussion of that seems likely to me, that it was an attack primarily by ETA personnel using al Qaida resources for joint purposes. Additional facts will clarify this issue, I have no doubt, and I could be wrong.

What is clear to me is that the journalists writing at present are almost certainly wrong about who did it, certainly in the details, and as a result the reasons for the attack are not currently being written about with any clarity. Some of this comes from people who are anthropomorphizing the organizations involved, attempting to treat them as rational individuals rather than as organizations that rational but limited People use for their own purposes. At the same time, propaganda seems to me to be overwhelming facts at the present.

Assuming that it was an al Qaida operation, a lot of the reasons currently being presented as to why al Qaida might have attacked a target in Spain seem to revolve around blaming the Spanish government for its support of the US invasion of Iraq. Both al Qaida and supporters of the Bush administrations?ƒ‚’ irrational attack on Iraq when it was not in fact a real threat to the US have strong reasons for pushing the propaganda that the attack was the result of Spanish decisions to support the Iraq War.

I think that is mistaking propaganda for fact. While propaganda is a major tool in modern warfare, it is a mistake to base actions to defeat the enemy on propaganda rather than reality. If the reasons given in propaganda for actions are not true, then reactions based on the propaganda will be ineffective.

I think a better view of the motivation of the perpetrators (if they were al Qaida) would be provided by Organization Theory. Organization Theory would suggest that at the top, al Qaida has a few leaders who provide the rationale for the organization both to recruit support and followers, and they then attempt to use that organization thus created to achieve their (in my opinion) messianic goals for their brand of Islam.

But below top leadership is a large layer of middle management. Middle management is responsible for seeing that the organization continues to do what it has done most successfully in the past. The motivation of most middle managers is to keep the processes of the organization functioning, not to concern themselves with what those processes succeed or fail to do outside the organization. Relations with the world outside the organization are the responsibility of top management, and time spent by middle managers on such concerns is time taken away from ensuring the functioning of the organization itself.

I think k that the reasons for the attack on Madrid were more middle-management reasons than actual strategic top management reasons. The only strategic reason involved is probably the fact that there has not been a successful al qauda operation in a long time.

The organizational linkage between the goals of top management and of the actions of middle management are what we describe as methods of control. Management in general has three methods of control available to ensure that those further down the chain in the organization do those things that the leaders want done. They can (A.) provide resources for approved operations and evaluate the outcomes of such activities, rewarding those which are what they want with further resources, or (B.) they can observe the operations of the subordinates, using a model that if behavior X is expected to lead to outcome Y, then we want you doing more of behavior X and less of B, so they correct your behavior when you deviate from behavior X. This is the method most used in training.

The third method of control is (C.) social control. They can select likely candidates, bringing such people into groups and working with them over time, until they feel they understand what the people brought in will do in any given situation. They also get rid of those who do not fit the group. After an extended period of such socialization (ten to twenty years is not too much) they can send those people out and trust them to use their own judgment.

Method (B.) requires some form of protected sanctuary for training, such as was previously provided by the Taliban in Afghanistan. That is because it is the method most open to disruption by the opposition. So al Qaida rather clearly uses mostly the first and third control methods at this time, with emphasis on the method of socialization. The result is a lot of terrorists out there who have been trained and socialized to conduct terror. It is what they are very good at, and it is what they do. They are also mostly middle managers. They concern themselves with getting things done efficiently, but have little training in the forms of strategy appropriate to top management who decides what actions will be the most effective externally. But these peop[le are mostly independent operators, also. To get them to act generally requires negotiation rather than orders, and they will often have their own reasons for doing things that are different from those of top management.

It is much easier to train managers to conduct a specific set of actions (like acts of terror) than it is to teach them enough about society in general to understand what the long-term results of such actions are likely to be. Most people work to do the job they are given efficiently, but do not have the training, skills, or personal interest in deciding what actions will accomplish the goals of the overall organizationn most effectively.

The result is that most terrorists will focus on what potential targets are available and what tools can be used to get them. They simply assume that their normal operations will be effective.

In addition, the fact that a target is likely to be highly publicized will be a lot more important to the decision to go after it than will its' long-term effects. As in most decisions, those results that can be easily documented (like publicity potential in this case) are a lot more likely to be chosen than those which depend a lot of subjective judgment and experience. Younger managers with less experience simply can't apply judgment and experience, since they don't have enough of either to do so relaibly.

The result of applying those ideas in the Madrid bombing situation is that it is very likely that someone saw a chance to get a lot of publicity, and found that they could do so with the resources at hand. Whether those resources included the ETA has not yet been determined - but I'll bet they did. A joint operation fits the al Qaida MO and the timing is such that factions, probably younger managers, of the ETA who feel they are losing were very likely easily motivated to use resources provided by al Qaidaa.

Tying the action to the Spanish government support of the invasion of Iraq is simply the propaganda arm attempting to use an already planned operation for its effect on the Arab street opinion - or the propaganda arm of the Bush administration using the attack to motivate its base.

Counterterrorism actions, to be effective, need to be based on the actual motivation of the terrorist participants, not on the often contorted and self-justifying 'motivations' they try to sell as propaganda. I don't think the media is even trying to go after the real reasons why Madrid was selected and conducted. They are lost in the propaganda put out by all of the major organizations which were either involved or would like to use the bombing for their own purposes. What is clear is that the propaganda we are all being fed right now is almost pure and unadulterated crap.

posted by Richard at 9:30 PM

 

CIA Chief Tenet Says He has Objected to Cheney Use of 'Intelligence'

Knight-Ridder reports what the CIA Chief said about alleged Intelligence.

The CIA director disputes Cheney assertions on Iraq. This is about as close as a sitting CIA Chief can come to calling the Vice President a liar.

Knight-Ridder

By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Posted on Tue, Mar. 09, 2004

WASHINGTON - CIA Director George Tenet on Tuesday rejected recent assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq cooperated with the al-Qaida terrorist network and that the administration had proof of an illicit Iraqi biological warfare program.


Tenet's comments to the Senate Armed Services Committee are likely to fuel friction between the White House and intelligence agencies over the failure so far to find any of the banned weapons stockpiles that President Bush, in justifying his case for war, charged Saddam Hussein with concealing.

Tenet at first appeared to defend the administration, saying that he didn't believe the White House misrepresented intelligence provided by the CIA.

The administration's statements, he said, reflected a prewar intelligence consensus that Saddam had stockpiled chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear bombs.

But under sharp questioning by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Tenet reversed himself, saying there had been instances when he had warned administration officials that they were misstating the threat posed by Iraq.

"I'm not going to sit here and tell you what my interaction was ... and what I did and didn't do, except that you have to have confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it," Tenet said. "I don't stand up publicly and do it."

Tenet admitted to Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's senior Democrat, that he had told Cheney that the vice president was wrong in saying that two truck trailers recovered in Iraq were "conclusive evidence" that Saddam had a biological weapons program.

Cheney made the assertion in a Jan. 22 interview with National Public Radio.

Tenet said that U.S. intelligence agencies still disagree on the purpose of the trailers. Some analysts believe they were mobile biological-weapons facilities; others think they may have been for making hydrogen gas for weather balloons.

Levin also questioned Tenet about a Jan. 9 interview with the Rocky Mountain News, in which Cheney cited a November article in the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, as "the best source of information" on cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaida.

The article was based on a leaked top-secret memorandum. It purportedly set out evidence, compiled by a special Pentagon intelligence cell, that Saddam was in league with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. It was written by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the third-highest Pentagon official and a key proponent of the war.

"Did the CIA agree with the contents of the Feith document?" asked Levin.

"Senator, we did not clear the document," replied Tenet. "We did not agree with the way the data was characterized in that document."

Tenet, who pointed out that the Pentagon, too, had disavowed the document, said he learned of the article Monday night, and he planned to speak with Cheney about the CIA's view of the Feith document.

In building the case for war, Bush, Cheney and other top officials relied in part on assessments by the CIA and other agencies. But they concealed disputes and dissents over Iraq's weapons programs and links to terrorists that were raging among analysts, U.S. diplomats and military officials.

They also used exaggerated and fabricated information from defectors and former Iraqi exile groups that was fed directly into Cheney's office and the Pentagon. Those groups included the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader, Ahmad Chalabi, was close to hawks around Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and the White House, but who was distrusted by the CIA and the State Department.

Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the military's main intelligence arm, said that "some" information provided by defectors had checked out, but that they also gave material that was "fabricated or embellished."

Bush has appointed a bipartisan commission to investigate what the CIA and other intelligence agencies knew about prewar Iraq, but wouldn't permit the commission to examine how intelligence was used by the White House and the Pentagon. Information from Iraqi defectors and exile groups, who contended that Saddam was a great threat, was also ruled off-limits.

Politics pervaded Tuesday's hearing. Democrats sought to prove that Bush and his top aides overstated prewar intelligence assessments of the threat posed by Saddam. Republicans insisted that the administration's arguments reflected the CIA's judgment, the views of most lawmakers and those of the former Clinton administration.

"Members of this committee, members of the Senate, as well as past and present administrations reached the same conclusions: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction," said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the panel chairman.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the Democratic presidential candidate, and other critics are linking the issue to Bush's credibility as the election campaign heats up and the toll of dead and injured U.S. soldiers rises.
posted by Richard at 10:35 PM

 

What to do with an obviously partial Supreme Court Justice

Two months after hearing oral arguments on the challenge to Texas law that outlawed sex between consenting adults of the same gender, Justice Antone Scalia addressed a dinner by the Urban Family Council. The Urban Family Council is an advocacy group currently bringing a lawsuit that seeks to overturn a Philadelphia city ordinance allowing same sex couples who work for the city to qualify for pension and health benefits as "life partners". The lawsuit, currently at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, is very likely to reach the supreme court later.

Unsurprisingly, Scalia voted against the challenge to the Texas law a month after the address.

Scalia refused comment on his appearance. Although such an action that appears to create an appearance of partiality in the Justice violates the Code of Conduct for Federal Judges, the Justices of the Supreme Court are not bound by that code.

palm Beach Post

It would seem that the only protection the American Public has from such highly partisan Justices is Impeachment, something that is unlikely as long as the House is under the control of Conservative Republicans.

Just dreaming - If Scalia is impeached and convicted for his unethical behavior, can his automatic second vote Clarence Thomas also be removed? They've been a team since the incompetent Thomas was confirmed. They should be a team when one or the other is removed.

posted by Richard at 4:55 PM

 

How Do Republicans Run Against the Truth about their Lies? Poorly.

This from Kos at Daily Kos.

"The Bush Administration is now in a quandary, never before faced by a political campaign. EVERY WORD IT UTTERS can be instantly fact checked and vetted against previous administration proclamations. And the press, lazy as it is, doesn't even have to do the research. They simply have to read the blogs (and they certainly do). The party can pick the best bits of the day and mold them into spin and talking points."

"For an administration and a party built on ignorance, short-term memory and outright lies (see post Daily Kos post by HippoRider below), the harsh glare of this new medium must be excruciating. "

Karl Rove, the Bush Boy Genius has been the master of the campaign built on ignorance and lies. But if that set of techniques he has so mastered is failing, where does he go? Can he adapt? The indications are so far that he cannot. Martin Sieff, Senior News Analyst at the Moonie-Owned
UPI questions if Rove may not be on the way out. If Rove can't adapt, then he needs to go before he drags the Bush reelection campaign into the ditch with him.

But where does the Bush campaign go if their campaign cannot succeed if it is based on ignorance and lies? The people who got them into office are not going to change into choirboys overnight. The normal reaction of people who are failing is to put greater effort into more extreme actions.

The Republicans have succeeded so far by skirting the edges of illegality, and successfully (in most cases) staying just to the right side of the line where unethical lies and actions cross over to illegal lies and actions. My prediction is that the Republicans will cross over the line into outright illegality, in hope that they don't get caught before the election.

That is exactly the mindset that Nixon (with a great deal less justification) had going into the 1972 election, and it led to Watergate.

So be on the lookout for Republican criminality. It is as predictable as the nasty nature of Republican conservatism. It is coming.
posted by Richard at 2:23 PM

 

Electronic Voting Will Solve the Florida 2000 Voting Problems - Uh, Wait One!

More proof that electronic voting systems make recounts impossible - not unnecessary, just impossible.

LA Times

Poll workers struggling with a new electronic voting system in last week's election gave thousands of Orange County voters the wrong ballots, according to a Times analysis of election records. In 21 precincts where the problem was most acute, there were more ballots cast than registered voters.

At polling places where the problem was most apparent because of turnouts exceeding 100%, an estimated 1,500 voters cast the wrong ballots, according to the Times' analysis of official county election data. Tallies at an additional 55 polling places with turnouts more than double the county average of 37% suggest at least 5,500 voters had their ballots tabulated for the wrong precincts.

This is apparently a problem of the training of the amateur poll workers, and none of the elections appear to have been close enough to be effected. The real point is that No Recount Was Possible.

Remember that if anyone tries to call Florida for Bush in November. He lost the vote in 2000 but won on the poor and fraudulent procedures, with a spurious Supreme Court decision use to cover up the problems. Electronic voting systems that cannot be audited or recounted effectively will only make that fraud easier.

Thanks to CalPundit.
posted by Richard at 1:49 PM

 

GOP begins eight months of smears

Where is Joe McCarthy when the Republican National Committee REALLY needs him? (Dead of alcoholism after being censured by the Full Senate, but why confuse panicky Republicans with facts. )

Only eight months to go until the election, and the economy isn't providing any jobs as promised by the Bush administration after he has squandered the deficit reductions given him by his Democratic predecessor on an unnecessary and ill-timed war in Iraq and tax-cuts for the wealthy that are merely payoffs to his Skull-and-Bones fraternity brothers.

This is the best the RNC can find??

Republican National Committee doing a really poor smear job.
posted by Richard at 1:20 PM

 

Employment - Bush's Promises vs reality

Thanks to Josh Marshall who pointed me to it, this is what the President has promised about jobs, graphed onto the real results. [Paul Krugman is worth his weight in gold thrice over. He presents FACTS.]

Paul Krugman

Note: the New York Times requires a free registration, then pulls the publication off the net after a week so that they can charge for it. This graph shows why Bush should not be reelected, but I can't copy it into my blog.




posted by Richard at 12:31 PM

 

Greenspan and the Republicans have been working twenty years to pick your pockets and kill Social Security

The following is a transcript of an interview between Lou Dobbs and David Cay Johnson about the shill game Alan Greenspan is using to increase taxes on the middle class, lower benefits provided to the middle class, and exempt the upper class from taxation as well as control.

The New York Times's David Cay Johnson gets it. And I mean really gets it:

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, AUTHOR, "PERFECTLY LEGAL": Well, in 1983 Alan Greenspan persuaded the Democrats who were in charge of Congress to overtax us on Social Security, that is to collect taxes in advance rather than on pay as you go system. The promise was that we would use the excess taxes to pay off the federal debt which was then about a trillion dollars. We have now paid 1.8 trillion dollars in excess Social Security taxes. This year the government will collect -- if you make $50,000, about $7,500 from you. It only needs 5,000 to pay current benefits. That other $2,500 wasn't used to pay off the federal debt, which is now 7 trillion dollars, instead it is being used to finance tax cuts for the super rich.

LOU DOBBS: We're putting up a graph right now which goes to the -- to that issue. Precisely what you're talking about. Now, why in the world would FICA be limited at $87,000 of earnings, taxing -- taxation on $87,000? Why not carry that straightforwardly through for everyone at higher levels?

JOHNSTON: Well, it's limited to the 90 percent of wages in the country. And the theory is that that's as high a benefit as the government is going to pay. So your benefit caps out, that's why the tax stops. If we simply had a pay as you go tax and it stopped at that end, Lou, I don't think there would be an issue. Since we were told you have to pay in advance. Of course a tax paid in advance costs you a lot more than when you can defer off into the future. That you are going to pay in advance for the benefits.
And now that money has not been spent to pay off the debt. Now Mr. Greenspan says you are not going to get those benefits but we should not raise taxes on those that make millions of dollars a year. It seems to me what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted in 1983 has come true. He said this was thievery and the middle class were going to have their pockets picked by the rich.

DOBBS: Indeed, with that analysis that is what is happening. And the middle class at this point, hardworking men and women in this country are no longer being surprised by some of the pressures, forces that are working against them. What is your best judgment for a solution?

JOHNSTON: Well, in the case of Social Security, if we were to go back to pay as you go, people making $50,000 a year would have $48 a week more in their pocket, particularly if we took it all out of the side paid by the worker. So we cut that in half, and the max instead being dollar for dollar by your employer, it would be two dollars to one dollar. People earning $50,000 would have $48 a week more in their pocket. They could choose whether to save that money or whether to spend that money. But it would be their money and their choice.

DOBBS: I'm sorry, go ahead.

JOHNSTON: It would also mean, however, that the federal government would either be spending vastly more than it is taking in, a couple hundred billion dollars a year. We would either have to deal with that or raise taxes on people who have higher incomes.
DOBBS: Let's put the graph up. We have a graphic of this from your book that we want to show you maxing Social Security taxes per person doing exactly what David suggested. This is a remarkable -- to look at the income growth from 1970 to 2000, for the bottom, if you will, 99 percent of this country versus the top ... one percent, is staggering. I follow these trends rather carefully but I had no idea of the discrepancy there. (editor's note: ROFLOL)

JOHNSTON: If you chart, Lou, the increase in income for the bottom 99 percent of Americans over that 30-year period, for each dollar that each person got in increased income -- and the average was $2,700, less than a hundred dollars a year -- you made it one inch high. For the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent, or 27,000 people, it is 625 feet high. 625 feet to one inch.
DOBBS: And the solution is there, the fact that Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman would raise the issue, I think, is commendable. The suggestion in my opinion that the first solution should be sought is to cut the benefits of future retirees is reprehensible. What is your reaction?

JOHNSTON: Well, we can choose in America, if you want, to have a system in which the middle class and the upper middle class, people making $30,000 to $500,000 a year subsidize people who make millions of dollars. And if Americans want to vote for that they should do it.

I just don't think, Lou, that Americans would have gone for this if they had known what is happening. And since it was Mr. Greenspan who said pay your tax in advance and now he says, no, we're not going to give you the benefits, but we can't raise taxes on the rich. That seems to me morally troubling.

The above is from The Whisky Bar


David Cay Johnson is the author of “Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich -- And Cheat Everybody Else”

Johnsons book

From the Publisher
One of the country's top investigative reporters reveals how the richest 1 percent of the country has rigged the tax code and other laws in its favor.

Since the mid-1970s, there has been a dramatic shift in America's socioeconomic system, one that has gone virtually unnoticed by the general public. Tax policies and their enforcement have become a disaster, and thanks to discreet lobbying by a segment of the top 1 percent, Washington is reluctant or unable to fix them. The corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the gift tax have been largely ignored by the media. But the cumulative results are remarkable: today someone who earns a yearly salary of $60,000 pays a larger percentage of his income in taxes than the four hundred richest Americans.

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston exposes exactly how the middle class is being squeezed to create a widening wealth gap that threatens the stability of the country. By relating the compelling tales of real people across all areas of society, he reveals the truth behind:
* "middle class" tax cuts and exactly whom they benefit
* how workers are being cheated out of their retirement plans while disgraced CEOs walk away with millions
* how some corporations avoid paying any federal income tax
* how a law meant to prevent cheating by the top 2 percent of Americans no longer affects most of them, but has morphed into a stealth tax on single mothers making just $28,000
* why the working poor are seven times more likely to be audited by the IRS than everyone else
* how the IRS became so weak that even when it was handed complete banking records detailing massive cheating by 1,600 people, it prosecuted only 4 percent of them

Johnston has been breaking pieces of this story on the front page of The New York Times for seven years. With Perfectly Legal, he puts the whole shocking narrative together in a way that will stir up media attention and make readers angry about the state of our country.
Author Biography: David Cay Johnston won a Pulitzer Prize and shared in another for his investigative reporting in The New York Times, for which he has written since 1995. Prior to that he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times, the Detroit Free Press, and the San Jose Mercury News. Johnston is a frequent guest on NPR's Fresh Air.
From The Critics
The New York Times
As Johnston knows, the real scandal of our federal tax system isn't so much what the rich didn't pay. It's what the rest of us now have to -- particularly the middle and upper middle classes, with incomes from $50,000 to $500,000. This is the group Bush is squeezing, to benefit what Johnston aptly calls the ''political donor class.'' This truly shocking story emerges later on in Perfectly Legal. — James K. Galbraith

Publisher's Weekly
Since he began writing about taxes for the New York Times in 1995, Johnston's investigative reporting has earned two Pulitzers. The journalistic legwork informs every page of this expos of the ways in which, he says, America's taxation system is stacked in favor of the wealthy. Johnston evades the imposing abstractness of the tax code by keeping the story focused on individuals, from working-class parents facing audits to Internal Revenue Service officials desperate for the resources to revamp their procedures. Chapters addressing the inability of the IRS to go after the worst tax cheats, thanks in part to opposition from grandstanding members of Congress, are particularly effective in putting a spotlight on the problem, but there's plenty of space given to revealing how canny tax attorneys come up with legal (and barely legal) ways to get around the system. And for those who can afford it, he reports, there's always a new dodge available once the law has caught up to the latest tricks. At some points, dealing with numbers becomes unavoidable, but even here Johnston displays a knack for breaking the story down into easily grasped components. Though the tax cuts engineered by Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush receive most of the criticism, Democrats come in for their fair share of opprobrium. Genuine reform, he suggests, will require serious and sustained attention from the public, not just reflexive griping. His book is a thoughtful overview for any citizens willing to educate themselves on the issue. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.


posted by Richard at 2:48 PM

 

Diebold Sells Voting Machines to Steal Elections

If you don't think that the Republicans are out to steal the November 2004 Presidential Election, then you simply haven't been watching them. Florida 2000 was just the most obvious, and they have learned to be less obvious and more effective since then.

Common Dreams

Published on Wednesday, February 25, 2004 by the Free Press, Columbus, Ohio

Diebold, Electronic Voting and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy by Bob Fitrakis

The Governor of Ohio, Bob Taft, and other prominent state officials, commute to their downtown Columbus offices on Broad Street. This is the so-called "Golden Finger," the safe route through the majority black inner-city near east side. The Broad Street BP station, just east of downtown, is the place where affluent suburbanites from Bexley can stop, gas up, get their coffee and New York Times. Those in need of cash visit BP?’s Diebold manufactured CashSource+ ATM machine which provides a paper receipt of the transaction to all customers upon request.

Many of Taft's and President George W. Bush's major donors, like Diebold's current CEO Walden Wally O'Dell, reside in Columbus' northwest suburb Upper Arlington. O'Dell is on record stating that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President" this year. On September 26, 2003, he hosted an Ohio Republican Party fundraiser for Bush's re-election at his Cotswold Manor mansion. Tickets to the fundraiser cost $1000 per couple, but O'Dell's fundraising letter urged those attending to 'Donate or raise $10,000 for the Ohio Republican Party.'

According to the Columbus Dispatch: ?“Last year, O?’Dell and his wife Patricia, campaigned for passage of two liquor options that made their portion of Tremont Road wet.

On November 5, Upper Arlington residents narrowly passed measures that allowed fundraising parties to offer more than beer, even though his 10,800-square-foot home is a residence, a permit is required because alcohol is included in the price of fundraising tickets. O'Dell is also allowed to serve 'beer, wine and mixed drinks' at Sunday fundraisers.

O'Dell's fund-raising letter followed on the heels of a visit to President Bush's Crawford Texas ranch by 'Pioneers and Rangers,' the designation for people who had raised $100,000 or more for Bush's re-election.

If Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has his way, Diebold will receive a contract to supply touch screen electronic voting machines for much of the state. None of these Diebold machines will provide a paper receipt of the vote.

Diebold, located in North Canton, Ohio, does its primary business in ATM and ticket-vending machines. Critics of Diebold point out that virtually every other machine the company makes provides a paper trail to verify the machine's calculations. Oddly, only the voting machines lack this essential function.

State Senator Teresa Fedor of Toledo introduced Senate Bill 167 late last year mandating that every voting machine in Ohio generate a 'voter verified paper audit trail.' Secretary of State Blackwell has denounced any attempt to require a paper trail as an effort to 'derail' election reform. Blackwell's political career is an interesting one: he emerged as a black activist in Cincinnati supporting municipal charter reform, became an elected Democrat, then an Independent, and now is a prominent Republican with his eyes on the Governor's mansion.

Voter fraud

A joint study by the California and Massachusetts Institutes of Technology following the 2000 election determined that between 1.5 and 2 million votes were not counted due to confusing paper ballots or faulty equipment. The federal government's solution to the problem was to pass the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.

One of the law's stated goals was 'Replacement of punch card and lever voting machines.' The new voting machines would be high-tech touch screen computers, but if there's no paper trail, how do you know if there's been a computer glitch? How can the results be trusted? And how do you recount to see if the actual votes match the computer's tally?

Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century, argues that without a paper trail, these machines are open to massive voter fraud. Diebold has already placed some 50,000 machines in 37 states and their track record is causing Harris, Johns Hopkins University professors and others great concern.

Johns Hopkins researchers at the Information Security Institute issued a report declaring that Diebold's electronic voting software contained 'stunning flaws.' The researchers concluded that vote totals could be altered at the voting machines and by remote access. Diebold vigorously refuted the Johns Hopkins report, claiming the researchers came to 'a multitude of false conclusions.

Perhaps to settle the issue, someone illegally hacked into the Diebold Election Systems website in March 2003 and stole internal documents from the company and posted them online. Diebold went to court to stop, according to court records, the 'wholesale reproduction' of some 13,000 pages of company material.

The Associated Press reported in November 2003 that: 'Computer programmers, ISPs and students at [at] least 20 universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received cease and desist letters' from Diebold. A group of Swarthmore College students launched an 'electronic civil disobedience' campaign to keep the hacked documents permanently posted on the Internet.

Harris writes that the hacked documents expose how the mainstream media reversed their call projecting Al Gore as winner of Florida after someone 'subtracted 16,022 votes from Al Gore, and in still some undefined way, added 4000 erroneous votes to George W. Bush.' Hours later, the votes were returned. One memo from Lana Hires of Global Election Systems, now Diebold, reads: 'I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16,022 [votes] when it was uploaded.' Another hacked internal memo, written by Talbot Iredale, Senior VP of Research and Development for Diebold Election Systems, documents 'unauthorized' replacement votes in Volusia County.

Harris also uncovered a revealing 87-page CBS news report and noted, 'According to CBS documents, the erroneous 20,000 votes in Volusia was directly responsible to calling the election for Bush.' The first person to call the election for Bush was Fox election analyst John Ellis, who had the advantage of conferring with his prominent cousins George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Incestuous relationships

Increasingly, investigative writers seeking an explanation have looked to Diebold?’s history for clues. The electronic voting industry is dominated by only a few corporations, Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and Sequoia. Diebold and ES&S combined count an estimated 80% of U.S. black box electronic votes.

In the early 1980s, brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich founded ES&S's originator, Data Mark. The brothers Urosevich obtained financing from the far-Right Ahmanson family in 1984, which purchased a 68% ownership stake, according to the Omaha World Herald. After brothers William and Robert Ahmanson infused Data Mark with new capital, the name was changed to American Information Systems (AIS). California newspapers have long documented the Ahmanson family's ties to right-wing evangelical Christian and Republican circles.

In 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported, '. . . primarily funded by evangelical Christians' particularly the wealthy Ahmanson family of Irvine ' the [Discovery] institute's $1-million annual program has produced 25 books, a stream of conferences and more than 100 fellowships for doctoral and postdoctoral research.' The chief philanthropists of the Discovery Institute, that pushes creationist science and education in California, are Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.

According to Group Watch, in the 1980s Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. was a member of the highly secretive far-Right Council for National Policy, an organization that included Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, Major General John K. Singlaub and other Iran-Contra scandal notables, as well as former Klan members like Richard Shoff. Ahmanson, heir to a savings and loan fortune, is little reported on in the mainstream U.S. press. But, English papers like The Independent are a bit more forthcoming on Ahmanson's politics.

'On the right, figures such as Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson have given hundreds of millions of dollars over several decades to political projects both high (setting up the Heritage Foundation think-tank, the driving engine of the Reagan presidency) and low (bankrolling investigations into President Clinton's sexual indiscretions and the suicide of the White House insider Vincent Foster),' wrote The Independent last November.

The Sunday Mail described an individual as, '. . . a fundamentalist Christian more in the mould of U.S. multi-millionaire Howard Ahmanson, Jr., who uses his fortune to promote so-called traditional family values . . . by waving fortunes under their noses, Ahmanson has the ability to cajole candidates into backing his right-wing Christian agenda.

Ahmanson is also a chief contributor to the Chalcedon Institute that supports the Christian reconstruction movement. The movement's philosophy advocates, among other things, 'mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards.'

The Ahmanson family sold their shares in American Information Systems to the McCarthy Group and the World Herald Company, Inc. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the Chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. One of the BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.

In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as chairman and maintained a financial investment. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel?’s ES&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter out of the public eye. Hagel's first election victory was described as a 'stunning upset' by one Nebraska newspaper.

Hagel's official biography states, 'Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Hagel worked in the private sector as the President of McCarthy and Company, an investment banking firm based in Omaha, Nebraska and served as Chairman of the Board of American Information Systems.?” During the first Bush presidency, Hagel served as Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of the 1990 Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations (G-7 Summit).

Bob Urosevich was the Programmer and CEO at AIS, before being replaced by Hagel. Bob now heads Diebold Election Systems and his brother Todd is a top executive at ES&S. Bob created Diebold?’s original electronic voting machine software. Thus, the brothers Urosevich, originally funded by the far Right, figure in the counting of approximately 80% of electronic voting in the United States.

Like Ohio, the State of Maryland was disturbed by the potential for massive electronic voter fraud. The voters of that state were reassured when the state hired SAIC to monitor Diebold's system. SAIC's former CEO is Admiral Bill Owens. Owens served as a military aide to both Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, who now works with George H.W. Bush at the controversial Carlyle Group. Robert Gates, former CIA Director and close friend of the Bush family, also served on the SAIC Board.

Diebold's track record

Wherever Diebold and ES&S go, irregularities and historic Republican upsets follow. Alastair Thompson, writing for scoop.co of New Zealand, explored whether or not the 2002 U.S. mid-term elections were 'fixed by electronic voting machines supplied by Republican-affiliated companies.' The scoop investigation concluded that: 'The state where the biggest upset occurred, Georgia, is also the state that ran its election with the most electronic voting machines.' Those machines were supplied by Diebold.

Wired News reported that '. . . a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machine before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials.' Questions were raised in Texas when three Republican candidates in Comal County each received exactly the same number of votes 18,181.

Following the 2003 California election, an audit of the company revealed that Diebold Election Systems voting machines installed uncertified software in all 17 counties using its equipment.

Former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell writes that one of the favorite tactics of the CIA during the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s was to control countries by manipulating the election process. 'CIA apologists leap up and say, 'Well, most of these things are not so bloody.' And that's true. You're giving politicians some money so he'll throw his party in this direction or that one, or make false speeches on your behalf, or something like that. It may be non-violent, but it's still illegal intervention in other country's affairs, raising the question of whether or not we're going to have a world in which laws, rules of behavior are respected,' Stockwell wrote. Documents illustrate that the Reagan and Bush administration supported computer manipulation in both Noriega's rise to power in Panama and in Marcos' attempt to retain power in the Philippines. Many of the Reagan administration's staunchest supporters were members of the Council on National Policy.

The perfect solution

Ohio Senator Fedor continues to fight valiantly for Senate Bill 167 and the Holy Grail of the 'voter verified paper audit trail.' Proponents of a paper trail were emboldened when Athan Gibbs, President and CEO of TruVote International, demonstrated a voting machine at a vendor's fair in Columbus that provides two separate voting receipts.

The first paper receipt displays the voter's touch screen selection under plexiglass that falls into a lockbox after the voter approves. Also, the TruVote system provides the voter with a receipt that includes a unique voter ID and pin number which can be used to call in to a voter audit internet connection to make sure the vote cast was actually counted.

Brooks Thomas, Coordinator of Elections in Tennessee, stated, 'I've not seen anything that compares to the Gibbs' TruVote validation system. . . .' The Assistant Secretary of State of Georgia, Terrel L. Slayton, Jr., claimed Gibbs had come up with the 'perfect solution.?'

Still, there remains opposition from Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell. His spokesperson Carlo LoParo recently pointed out that federal mandates under HAVA do not require a paper trail: '. . . if Congress changes the federal law to require it [a paper trail], we'll certainly make that a requirement of our efforts.' LoParo went on to accuse advocates of a paper trail of attempting to 'derail' voting reform.

U.S. Representative Rush Holt introduced HR 2239, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003, that would require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail so that voters may verify that their screen touches match their actual vote. Election officials would also have a paper trail for recounts.

As Blackwell pressures the Ohio legislature to adopt electronic voting machines without a paper trail, Athan Gibbs wonders, 'Why would you buy a voting machine from a company like Diebold which provides a paper trail for every single machine it makes except its voting machines? And then, when you ask it to verify its numbers, it hides behind 'trade secrets.''

Maybe the Diebold decision makes sense, if you believe, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger, that democracy is too important to leave up to the votes of the people.

Dr. Bob Fitrakis is Senior Editor of The Free Press , a political science professor, and author of numerous articles and books.

© 1970-2004 The Columbus Free Press

posted by Richard at 6:01 AM

 

Bin Laden Already Captured? Look for an October Surprise!

You wouldn't expect the Defense Department to anything but deny, would you? But Bush is clearly in trouble for the November election, and capturing bin Laden might assure his election. But only if it happens at the right time! Earlier than October and his capture is wasted.

28 Feb 2004 13:40:55 GMT
U.S. denies Iran report of bin Laden's capture
Reuters

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TEHRAN, Feb 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Defense denied reports by Iran's official IRNA news agency on Saturday that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been captured.

IRNA quoted a story on Iran's state radio Pashtun service which reported "a very reliable source" as saying bin Laden had been captured in a tribal area of Pakistan.

A senior U.S. defense official denied the report, telling Reuters it was "another piece of stray voltage that's passing around out there."

And Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri told a news conference he was aware of the Iranian report, but added: "We cannot confirm it at all".

Washington says bin Laden masterminded the September 11, 2001, suicide hijack attacks in the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

The Iranian correspondent responsible for the report told Reuters the radio had also reported bin Laden's capture a year ago. But said a new source had told him on Friday the al Qaeda leader had been seized "a long time ago".

"It could be one month ago, it could be one year, but he has been arrested," he said.

While declining to reveal his source or how his source knew of the capture, he said: "My source said it and he knows it."

Pakistani troops earlier this week arrested 20 suspects in an operation against al Qaeda and Taliban militants in South Waziristan. Officials said none were leading al Qaeda militants.

The U.S. military said this month that U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan were moving toward coordinated operations along the border -- "a hammer and anvil approach" -- to prevent fleeing al Qaeda fighters from escaping simply by crossing from one country into the other.

Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, has stepped up efforts in recent weeks against al Qaeda and Taliban fighters as the 10,600-strong U.S. force in Afghanistan gears up for a spring offensive against Islamic militants.


AlertNet news is provided by Reuters


posted by Richard at 5:05 AM

 

Iraq War Illegal??

Army chiefs feared Iraq war illegal just days before start

The Guardian


• Attorney-General forced to rewrite legal advice
• Specialist unit dedicated to spying on UN revealed

Martin Bright, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday February 29, 2004
The Observer

Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears over its legality just days before the British and American bombing campaign was launched, The Observer can today reveal.

The explosive new details about military doubts over the legality of the invasion are detailed in unpublished legal documents in the case of Katharine Gun, the intelligence officer dramatically freed last week after Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, dropped charges against her of breaking the Official Secrets Act.

The disclosure came as it also emerged that Goldsmith was forced hastily to redraft his legal advice to Tony Blair to give an 'unequivocal' assurance to the armed forces that the conflict would not be illegal.

Refusing to commit troops already stationed in Kuwait, senior military leaders were adamant that war could not begin until they were satisfied that neither they nor their men could be tried. Some 10 days later, Britain and America began the campaign.
Goldsmith also wrote to Blair at the end of January voicing concerns that the war might be illegal without a second resolution from the United Nations. Opposition MPs seized on The Observer's revelations last night, accusing Goldsmith of caving in to political pressure from the Prime Minister to change his legal advice on the eve of war.

Senior Whitehall sources involved in putting together critical legal advice on the war told The Observer that Goldsmith was originally 'sitting on the fence' and that his initial advice was 'prevaricating'. This was 'tightened' up only days before the conflict began after concerns were raised by Sir Michael Boyce, the then Chief of Defence Staff, who told senior ministers of his worries. It is believed that Boyce demanded an unequivocal statement that the invasion of Iraq was lawful. It is understood that it was only after seeing Goldsmith's final legal advice, given days before the outbreak of war, that Boyce gave his approval.

Without this legal reassurace, military leaders and their troops could have laid themselves open to charges of war crimes. At the time, UK troops were already in Kuwait poised for an invasion.

Last week, Goldsmith controversially agreed to drop the Government's prosecution of the former GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. Her defence had demanded documents relating to his legal advice, including communications with the Prime Minister.
Although Goldsmith denied his decision to drop the case was political, critics of the war believe the Government was desperate to prevent these details from being revealed in open court.

Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman, said: 'These allegations go to the very heart of the Government's case for war, and inevitably its credibility. I have no doubt whatever that if Parliament had been told these things, the Government would not have achieved its majority and been unable to go to war. Public opinion, already deeply divided, would have swung overwhelmingly against the Government.'

Opposition MPs have demanded a statement in the Commons from the Prime Minister and will redouble the pressure for an explanation. The revelations will also increase pressure for the Butler inquiry, set up by the Prime Minister into intelli gence in the run-up to the war, to study the Gun case and subsequent revelations. It will take evidence in private.
Last night former Cabinet Minister Clare Short told The Observer that she knew of military doubts over the legality the war: 'I was told at the highest level in the department that the military were saying they wouldn't go, whatever the PM said, with out the Attorney-General's advice. The question is: was the AG lent on?

'This was a very personal operation by Tony Blair. The Attorney-General is a friend of Tony's, put in the Lords by Tony and made Attorney-General by Tony.'
The Observer has also established that GCHQ, the Government's top-secret surveillance centre, has a specialist unit dedicated to spying on the UN. The revelation will strengthen claims that the bugging of Britain's diplomatic allies at the UN was routine and is likely to trigger a fresh international furore over the legality of Britain's spying operations abroad.
The former Chilean ambassador to the UN, Juan Gabriel Valdes, said last night: 'All I can say is what I said at the time when asked if I had information about spying on Chile and I said yes, it has been proved.

'It [eavesdropping] was one more element of tension during some very tense weeks. Nobody was very surprised. But it is one thing not to be surprised and another to do clearly illegal things.'

Gun leaked a top-secret email published in The Observer last March revealing a joint British-American operation to spy on the UN in the run-up to war. She claimed she acted to prevent the loss of human life in an illegal war.

The political furore continued as Short's political future remains in the balance, with the Prime Minister reserving a final decision until he has seen the round of interviews she has planned for this weekend. 'Everyone has talked about the fact that they don't want her to be a martyr, but of course the only difficulty is that we are in her hands - what will she say tomorrow?' said one senior party figure.

However, it remains highly unlikely that she will face an organised attempt to unseat her, because of the months of upheaval it would cause in the Labour party. 'The pain of extraction might finish off the patient,' said one backbencher far from loyal to Short.
Downing Street last night refused to comment on the allegations. Blair's spokesman also refused to say whether the White House had been consulted over the dropping of the Gun case, despite growing conviction at Westminster that it would have been inconceivable for the Foreign Office not to have taken its closest ally's views into consideration.

Despite Blair's refusal to give a statement to the Commons, the Government is unlikely to escape further questioning. Both Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, are already due to answer questions next week while the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, will be grilled by a joint Commons inquiry into homeland security. Labour and Opposition MPs have also tabled a string of written questions.


posted by Richard at 4:42 AM