The Blatant Truth - Archive - July 2003

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

“All of the answers, all of the clues allowing us to dismantle Osama Bin Laden's organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia.”—Former FBI deputy director John O'Neill

read this and forward to everyone on your list: 16 Words and 28 Pages
Maureen Farrell
BuzzFlash.com, July 29, 2003

Each year, Project Censored lists the top 25 stories ignored by the mainstream media. Their 2003 release, which chronicled overlooked news items from 2001–2002, ranked the Bush administration's role in thwarting pre-Sept.11 terrorist investigations at No. 4. “Bush Administration Hampered FBI Investigation into Bin Laden Family Before 9/11,” [LINK], they announced, using scattered news reports and former FBI deputy director John O’Neill's testimony to back claims that the government obstructed terrorism investigations and placed oil concerns above citizens’ safety. “The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it,” O’Neill told French intelligence analysts Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie.

Though O’Neill died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, questions linger. . . .

Greg Palast's reports into ways FBI and military intelligence officials were instructed to "back off" investigations involving members of the bin Laden and Saudi royal families were also noted, and he revisited this story on the eve of Gulf War II. Addressing both Clinton's and Bush's reluctance to unearth the Saudis' connections to terrorists, he wondered why Bush was even more skittish than his predecessor. . . .

The convoluted ties that connect Poppy Bush's Carlyle Group and George W. Bush's Arbusto to the bin Ladens and the Saudis are ones this administration would probably prefer everyone just overlook. “When President Bush announced he is hot on the trail of the money used over the years to finance terrorism, he must realize that trail ultimately leads not only to Saudi Arabia, but to some of the same financiers who originally helped propel him into the oil business and later the White House,” Wayne Madsen wrote. [LINK] The late James Hatfield, who committed suicide 15 days after the following article was published, was considerably less delicate. Exposing a “plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic [G-8] summit of world leaders,” which could entail “a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives,” he asked, “Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?” . . .

Report after report of the White House's stonewalling and use of 9/11 to promote their preplanned agenda are made all the more poignant by Families of September 11 advocacy group cofounder Carie Lemack's recent observation in Newsweek. “[T]he fact that President Bush has chosen to classify [a section of the report] for what he says is national security makes me question just whose security he is protecting: our nation's or the Saudis?” . . .

Sen. Graham explained the connection this way: “The Saudis and the United States have had a relationship that goes back to World War II and the essential agreement was that the United States would supply security and defense for the Saudi regime and the Saudi regime would assure that we had an open spigot for all the petroleum that we wanted. That's been the deal for better than 50 years.” . . .

The cascade of lies [LINK], hype [LINK] and deliberate manipulation of information [LINK] are conveniently reduced to “16 words,” and “28 pages” as symbols of this administration's secrecy and deceit. There is no “leveling with the American people,” as lawmakers have requested or “owning up to mistakes,” as USA Today would like [LINK], but a series of frustrating, systematic and calculated means of pulling the wool over our collective eyes.

“The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse,” Hunter S. Thompson recently wrote, bemoaning various troubles (and the return of “the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world”). “The Stock Market will never come back, our Armies will never again be No. 1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of our lives,” he predicted. “The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it.” . . .

Bring ’em on!
The Bush administration Top 40 Lies about war in Iraq
Steve Perry
[Minneapolis] CityPages.com, July 30, 2003

Friday, July 25, 2003

As my Dad said in an e-mail recently, “Find myself sleeping better these days, even smiling when I wake up in the middle of the night.” For an optimistic good read on the vulnerabilities, lunatic strategies, and incompetencies of BushCo/PNAC, I do recommend this:

“Shallow Throat” Advises Democrats to Bring It On Big-Time
Bernard Weiner
The Crisis Papers, July 18, 2003

Shallow Throat [“from inside the belly of the beast”] appeared for our rendezvous at a park bench in a D.C. suburb . . . “There's blood in the water, and the political and media sharks are circling. With their arrogant self-righteousness, the Bushies have made a lot of enemies in two-plus years—including among my traditional conservative friends—and, if the Bush juggernaut continues to be seriously weakened, it's going to be payback time. So tell your friends to keep bringing it on; the assault is working: The Bush Administration is finally having to use a good share of its energies and time on defense instead of being able to focus totally on offense.” . . .

“But what if it continues to get worse and worser for the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle cabal?”

Shallow Throat took a long swig of Snapple. “It's like Watergate, in a way. Nixon was trapped, it was obvious to all that he was going down, but he refused to resign until the impeachment train was in the station, and it was then that the GOP leaders abandoned him and sought a meeting. These Bush guys are not going to leave until impeachment is staring them in the face—and, even then, they're desperate and greedy enough to be capable of anything, including trying to impose martial law on the country and ruling from the bunkers, postponing the 2004 election, whatever.

“But my guess is that it will never come to that. . . .”

“Do you think that Bush&Co. can be defeated in 2004?”

“Sure,” said Shallow Throat, “given some givens: That the 9/11 and WMD coverups continue to unravel. That the economy continues to tank as the deficits keep climbing to astronomical heights. That as popular social programs get cut (Head Start, Medicare, Social Security, pollution controls, etc.), and states keep going broke, with no funds to fix the bridges and the roads and the schools. That the American people grow tired of permanent war and body bags being shipped home. That someone discovers how to make the computer-voting software tamperproof and with verifiable paper trails. And on and on. “The short answer is yes, because the Rove in-your-face approach works only as long as people are afraid of you; when they stand up and tell you to go to hell, the foundations holding up that deck of cards will topple and down will come baby, cradle and all. If they haven't resigned or been impeached by November of 2004, the Bush forces may well lose the election, provided, of course, that the Democrats put up someone who isn't afraid to speak truth to power but who also is able to mobilize not only the activist Democratic base but also can reach out to middle-class, middle-of-the-road type voters.

“If my Republican conservative friends and colleagues are examples—just itching to feel secure but not with reckless crazies in charge—the Democrat could win a fair election.” . . .

As I mention below, Howard Dean, of all the Dem candidates, has that appeal for disenchanted Republicans (try googling “republicans for kerry”). And look at what the jimlog 2.0 blog says:

. . . It's not the Democrats that are ga-ga for Dean. It's the Independents. The evidence is in the New Hampshire polling data. Amongst Independents, Dean leads Kerry 26% to 15%, but among Democrats, Kerry leads Dean 31% to 16%. Democrats are getting behind Dean, but it's because he's resonating with those ticked off at the party for not standing up to Bush.

6 months before the first primary, Dean is tapping a base of support that transcends party boundaries. Even Republicans are coming to Dean events, and switching to Democrats so they can vote for him in the primary. Maybe it's all part of this grand Republican scheme, but I doubt it.

I saw that look in their eye.

Which means the hardest part for Dean will be winning the nomination—the general election is easy. So let's see that Republican money. Hell, just give us your tax cut. We're giving ours, but it's not all that much. I hear you got a lot more. Remember, there is a $2,000 cap. . . .

Dean is among those saying, rightly, that deaths of Qusai and Udai won't curb attacks on American troops in Iraq. For a very good analysis of the deep-seated cultural psychology of BushCo manifest in the display of the images of their dead bodies, see Making a Spectacle of Ourselves in The Plaid Adder's Journal for July 25:

. . . The Bush administration kissed modernity goodbye the moment it set out on this war of conquest. Bush may or may not have known what he was doing when he called the war against terrorism a “crusade,” but subsequent events have proved him right. We are back in ye olde tymes now: our wars are being fought by professional mercenaries (Mother Jones has a great article on how the military is farming a lot of the business of war out to private contractors); our troops are heavily dependent on armor; looting, pillaging, fire and the sword are all the rage, and there is nothing considered too barbaric or demeaning to be done to a conquered enemy. So why not? Take out the king, kill the whole royal family, and then put the heads of the two princes on spikes in the town square, just to prove that the line is dead. . . .

We are trying to produce truth, justice and power not just for the “once-frightened Iraqi people,” but for the newly-disgruntled American people, and for the court of world opinion. The fact that almost everyone who looks at these pictures, at least outside of America, is going to turn away in disgust is something that the crew in charge is willing to put up with. Disgusting or not, these pictures are our proof that we rule in Iraq now; that justice is what we say it is, and that we make the truth there.

So. The “once-frightened Iraqi people” can stop being afraid of the Hussein family, and start being afraid of the Bush family. That's what those photos really mean. Well, that, and, you know, the fact that human life and human dignity have been so devalued by this administration that the bottom has now fallen right out of the market. . . .

And the killing of the two was remarkably timed to coincide with release of the 9/11 report; I hear that Rumsfeld actually changed the time of his weekly press conference so it would overlap Bob Graham's testimony on C-SPAN regarding the 9/11 report. For access to a download of the complete report, see GPO Access (caution: 858 pages! but also “broken down based on the table of contents”).

In the report, among the most damning for Bush: No Iraq link to al-Qaida, as reported by Shaun Waterman, UPI, July 23. “U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida . . .” Most serious flaw: September 11 report raises Saudi question, by Marianne Brun-Rovet and Edward Alden, Financial Times, July 24, 2003:

The September 11 hijackers received foreign-government support while they were in the US plotting the attacks on New York and Washington, the leader of a congressional inquiry charged on Thursday.

The conclusion, which is hinted at in the declassified parts of the inquiry's 900-page report released on Thursday, will raise new questions about the role of Saudi Arabia in particular. The Bush administration insisted on deleting a 28-page section focusing on the link to foreign governments.

Senator Bob Graham, the former Democratic intelligence committee chairman who led the investigation, said the hijackers “received, during most of this time [in the US], significant assistance from a foreign government which further facilitated their ability to be so lethal.” He would not identify the government.

But he accused the Bush administration of refusing to release the information “to protect the country or countries . . . providing direct assistance to some of the hijackers.”

The report also contains new evidence that US intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew far more about some of the hijackers’ activities than has been revealed. . . .

But the Washington Post comes right out and says,

President Bush was warned in a more specific way than previously known about intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda terrorists were seeking to attack the United States, a report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks indicated yesterday. Separately, the report cited one CIA memo that concluded there was “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi individuals provided financial assistance to al Qaeda operatives in the United States. . . .

And this: Terror-Report Gaps May Add To Bush's Intelligence Woes
White House Cites Security Rationale,
But Critics Suggest Political Motives
Glenn R. Simpson, David Rogers, & Scot J. Paltrow
Wall Street Journal (subscription only), July 23, 2003
To see an excerpt and comments by progressive thinkers, see this Democratic Underground discussion. The fact that this kind of commentary appears in the PNAC-apologist WSJ is itself noteworthy.

Other headlines you've been waiting to see:

Top of the list: CIA probe finds secret Pentagon group manipulated intelligence on Iraqi threat
Jason Leopold
Online Journal, July 25, 2003

A half-dozen former CIA agents investigating prewar intelligence have found that a secret Pentagon committee, set up by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2001, manipulated reams of intelligence information prepared by the spy agency on the so-called Iraqi threat and then delivered it to top White House officials who used it to win support for a war in Iraq. . . .

[previously reported here; the story thankfully is growing legs]

Britons see “culture of deceit” at heart of British government
yahoo! news, July 25, 2003

White House Defense of Uranium Claim Produces Maze of Contradictions
An AP news analysis
Jennifer Loven
Associated Press, July 24, 2003

Oil groups snub US on Iraq deals
Carola Hoyos
Financial Times, July 24, 2003

. . . US inability to bring security and a legitimate transitional authority to Iraq has forced oil companies to shy away from setting up all but a low-level presence. . . .

Cheney's intelligence role scrutinized
Critics say VP’s influence in making case for war may have led to faulty statements
John Aloysius Farrell
Denver Post, July 23, 2003

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

An act of treason unraveling?

Who's Unpatriotic Now?
Paul Krugman
The New York Times, July 22, 2003

Pulls no punches explaining the repercussions of the lies to invade Iraq, in terms of our current weakened military capabilities, and summarizes the smear campaign of BushCo vs the wife of retired ambassador Joseph Wilson:

. . . Well, if we're going to talk about aiding the enemy: By cooking intelligence to promote a war that wasn't urgent, the administration has squandered our military strength. This provides a lot of aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden—who really did attack America—and Kim Jong Il—who really is building nukes.

And while we're on the subject of patriotism, let's talk about the affair of Joseph Wilson's wife. Mr. Wilson is the former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to investigate reports of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases and who recently went public with his findings. Since then administration allies have sought to discredit him—it's unpleasant stuff. But here's the kicker: both the columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine say that administration officials told them that they believed that Mr. Wilson had been chosen through the influence of his wife, whom they identified as a C.I.A. operative.

Think about that: if their characterization of Mr. Wilson’s wife is true (he refuses to confirm or deny it), Bush administration officials have exposed the identity of a covert operative. That happens to be a criminal act; it's also definitely unpatriotic. . . .

The story around Wilson’s wife is covered more in Columnist Names CIA Iraq Operative by Timothy M. Phelps in Newsday, July 21, 2003:

. . .“If what the two senior administration officials said is true,” Wilson said carefully, “they will have compromised an entire career of networks, relationships and operations.” What's more, it would mean that “this White House has taken an asset out of the” weapons of mass destruction fight, “not to mention putting at risk any contacts she might have had where the services are hostile.” . . .

“This might be seen as a smear on me and my reputation,” Wilson said, “but what it really is is an attempt to keep anybody else from coming forward” to reveal similar intelligence lapses.

Seems to me I remember scorn and derision being heaped on anyone's head who mentioned “George Bush” and “fascism” in the same sentence, or even the same paragraph, on a certain message board I used to frequent a few short months ago. Like everything else I was ridiculed about, I am feeling more and more vindicated lately. Here's a a piece by an emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University and appearing in the mainstreamish Newsday.com:

A Kind of Fascism is Replacing Our Democracy
Sheldon S. Wolin
Newsday.com, July 18, 2003

. . . No administration before George W. Bush's ever claimed such sweeping powers for an enterprise as vaguely defined as the "war against terrorism" and the "axis of evil." Nor has one begun to consume such an enormous amount of the nation's resources for a mission whose end would be difficult to recognize even if achieved.

Like previous forms of totalitarianism, the Bush administration boasts a reckless unilateralism that believes the United States can demand unquestioning support, on terms it dictates; ignores treaties and violates international law at will; invades other countries without provocation; and incarcerates persons indefinitely without charging them with a crime or allowing access to counsel. . . .

. . . the Nazis focused upon mobilizing and unifying the society, maintaining a continuous state of war preparations and demanding enthusiastic participation from the populace. In contrast, inverted totalitarianism exploits political apathy and encourages divisiveness. . . .

In institutionalizing the "war on terrorism" the Bush administration acquired a rationale for expanding its powers and furthering its domestic agenda. While the nation's resources are directed toward endless war, the White House promoted tax cuts in the midst of recession, leaving scant resources available for domestic programs. The effect is to render the citizenry more dependent on government, and to empty the cash-box in case a reformist administration comes to power. . . .

Lots more, make sure you read this.

As mentioned last week, the (UK) Independent ran a piece detailing 20 Lies About the War, which was followed a few days later by Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's 16 questions for the President. Here is the source for both, The 36 lies that launched a war, by Glen Rangwala, July 11, 2003.

Note this: the Republicans for Dean weblog. It really is fun to see why some Republicans want to see BushCo done away with, and why they support Howard Dean!

Saturday, July 19, 2003

Howard Dean has 16 very straightforward questions for Bush. This is a great list to ask right-wing deniers/apologizers—I'm sending it out to Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, and our local hate-and-disinformation jocks a little later today—or to include in a letter to an editor or Congressperson—just keep it in their faces:

1. Mr. President, beyond the NSC and CIA officials who have been identified, we need to know who else at the White House was involved in the decision to include the discredited uranium evidence in your speech, and, if they knew it was false, why did they permit it to be included in the speech

2. Mr. President, we need to know why anyone in your Administration would have contemplated using the evidence in the State of the Union after George Tenet personally intervened in October 2002, to have the same evidence removed from the President's October 7th speech. (The Washington Post, Walter Pincus and Mike Allen, 7/13/2003)

3. Mr. President, we need to know why you claimed this very week that the CIA objected to the Niger uranium sentence “subsequent” to the State of the Union address, contradicting everything else we have heard from your administration and the intelligence community on the matter. (The Washington Post, Priest, Dana and Dana Milbank, 7/15/2003)

4. Mr. President, we urgently need an explanation about the very serious charge that senior officials in your Administration may have retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson by illegally disclosing that his wife is an undercover CIA officer. (The Nation, Corn, David, 7/16/2003)

5. Mr. President, we need to know why your Administration persisted in using the intercepted aluminum tubes to show that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear program and why your National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, claimed categorically that the tubes were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs,” when in fact our own government experts flatly rejected such claims. (CNN, 9/08/2002, Knight Ridder News Service, 10/04/2002)

6. Mr. President, we need to know why Secretary Rumsfeld created a secret intelligence unit at the Pentagon that selectively identified questionable intelligence to support the case for war including the supposed link to al-Qaeda while ignoring, burying or rejecting any evidence to the contrary. (New Yorker, Seymour Hersh, 5/12/03)

7. Mr. President, we need to know what the basis was for Secretary Rumsfeld's assertion that the US had bulletproof evidence linking Al Qaeda to Iraq, despite the fact that U.S. intelligence analysts have consistently agreed that Saddam did not have a “meaningful connection” to Al Qaeda. (NY Times, Schmitt, Eric, 9/28/2002, NY Times, Krugman, Paul, 7/15/2003)

8. Mr. President, we need to know why Vice President Cheney claimed last September to have “irrefutable evidence” that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, an assertion he repeated in March, on the eve of war. (AP, 9/20/2002, NBC 3/16/2003)

9. Mr. President, we need to know why Secretary Powell claimed with confidence and virtual certainty in February before the UN Security Council that, “Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.” (UN Address, 2/05/2003)

10. Mr. President, we need to know why Secretary Rumsfeld claimed on March 30th in reference to weapons of mass destruction, “We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” (The Guardian, Whitaker, Brian and Rory McCarthy, 5/30/2003)

11. Mr. President, we need an explanation of the unconfirmed report that your Administration is dishonoring the life of a soldier who died in Iraq as a result of hostile action by misclassifying his death as an accident. (Time, Gibbs, Nancy and Mark Thompson, 7/13/2003)

12. Mr. President, we need to know why your Administration has never told the truth about the costs and long-term commitment of the war, has consistently downplayed what those would be, and now continues to try keep the projected costs hidden from the American people.

13. Mr. President, we need to know why you said on May 1, 2003, that the war was over, when US troops have fought and one or two have died nearly every day since then and your generals have admitted that we are fighting a guerrilla war in Iraq. (Abizaid, Gen. John, 7/16/2003)

14. Mr. President, we need to know why your Administration had no plan to build the peace in post-war Iraq and seems to be resisting calls to include NATO, the United Nations and our allies in the stabilization and reconstruction effort.

15. Mr. President, we need to know what you were referring to in Poland on May 30, 2003, when you said, “For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them.” (The Washington Post, Mike Allen, 5/31/2003)

16. Mr. President, we need to know why you incorrectly claimed this very week that the war began because Iraq would not admit UN inspectors, when in fact Iraq had admitted the inspectors and you opposed extending their work. (The Washington Post, Priest, Dana and Dana Milbank, 7/15/2003)

Why A Special Prosecutor's Investigation Is Needed to Sort Out the Niger Uranium and Related WMDs Mess
John Dean, former counsel to Richard Nixon
FindLaw's Writ legal commentary, July 18, 2003

Rebuts six “purported Bush facts” with the real facts and offers a legal analysis that includes comparison with James K. Polk's lies to get the country to go to war against Mexico, the fact that making false statements to Congress is a crime, and the challenge that “if President Bush is truly the square shooter he portrays himself to be, he should appoint a special prosecutor to undertake an investigation.”

From the genius Wizard of Whimsy

Friday, July 18, 2003

What is REALLY going on:

The [UK] Guardian spells out the role of the Office of Special Plans, set up by Donald Rumsfeld “to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon, and at the White House, including Vice President Dick Cheney.”

The spies who pushed for war
Julian Borger
Guardian, July 17, 2003

The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war. . . .

The president’s most trusted adviser, Mr Cheney, was at the shadow network’s sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was. . . .

Another frequent visitor was Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title. . . .

The OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. It came in part from "report officers" in the CIA’s directorate of operations whose job is to sift through reports from agents around the world, filtering out the unsubstantiated and the incredible. Under pressure from the hawks such as Mr Cheney and Mr Gingrich, those officers became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department.

There was a mountain of documentation to look through and not much time. The administration wanted to use the momentum gained in Afghanistan to deal with Iraq once and for all. The OSP itself had less than 10 full-time staff, so to help deal with the load, the office hired scores of temporary "consultants". They included lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous rightwing thinktanks in Washington. Few had experience in intelligence.

“They surveyed data and picked out what they liked," said Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department’s intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defence had this huge defence intelligence agency, and he went around it.”

In fact, the OSP’s activities were a complete mystery to the DIA and the Pentagon.

“The iceberg analogy is a good one,” said a senior officer who left the Pentagon during the planning of the Iraq war. “No one from the military staff heard, saw or discussed anything with them.” . . .

The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam’s Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.

“None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels,” said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith’s authority without having to fill in the usual forms.

The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel’s Likud party. . . .

How is it that this, like PNAC, ends up with a connection to Israel? For a compilation of articles on the Rumsfeld-Cheney OSP shadow government, please see my new section, “Office of Special Plans (OSP)” on the U.S. Wars and Foreign Policy page.

Think U.S. troops are “keeping the peace,” helping to restore basic infrastructural services, or protecting innocent Iraqi civilians? Buried deep in an article from the July 11, 2003 Augusta Chronicle is the fact that our troops are risking their lives, like so much slave labor, to protect not the Iraqi peace but Dick Cheney's private corporate interests:

. . . The 319th is now working for the Army’s 260th Quartermaster Battalion. It is stationed at Camp Arifjan, south of Kuwait City.

Soldiers say most of their work involves civilian contractor Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton Corp. The company has contracts to haul fuel, and 319th members are riding along as armed escorts.

“The main reason we're still here is to support Brown and Root,” said Sgt. 1st Class David Uthe, 45, of Augusta. . . .

Commentary on this story from the brief intelligence weblog:

When soldiers become cheap labor to corporations—or slaves of their own duty to obey orders, as the case may be—we have completely surpassed any suspicion of war being a racket, all dressed up in patriotic clothes. We’ve plunged our honor and the lives of military men and women into a dismal pit of despair, from which only those following orders have any real right to return.

I knew we had American companies working in Iraq, and I knew that at least one of them was connected to Dick Cheney, but I hadn’t quite allowed myself to put our soldiers and Marines into the same space with civilians making a corrupt profit on commandeered soil. That is to say, I never wanted to believe our civilian commanders would be so brazen as to directly enmesh the activities of the two. I was a fool. I was a fool to believe that those in command wouldn’t dare risk the public’s indignation at such an indecent scheme. . . .

Some Americans may not think this reflects as badly on our citizenry, as it does administration officials who make the decisions. There are degrees of dishonor in this thing and in that respect alone they’re right. But we do have some measure of responsibility for this, especially in light of new information. Our military has for centuries agreed to supplant its better judgment to civilian command. This leaves average Americans holding a tremendous responsibility to ensure that our representatives are not misusing the military’s power or people. The determining factor of our complicity will be found in the amount of outrage expressed by this citizenry, upon hearing that our soldiers have been essentially pressed into service as a slave labor force to corporations.

For an excellent analysis of Bush’s “mastery of emotional language,” see

Power of presidency resides in language as well as law
Renana Brooks
Seattle P-I.com, July 13, 2003

. . . Dominators use empty language to conceal faulty generalizations; to ridicule viable alternatives; to attribute negative motivations to others, thus making them appear contemptible; and to rename and “reframe” opposing viewpoints.

Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech contained 39 examples of empty language. He used it to reduce complex problems to images that left the listener relieved that George W. Bush was in charge. Rather than explaining the relationship between malpractice insurance and skyrocketing health care costs, Bush summed up: “No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit.” The multiple fiscal and monetary policy tools that can be used to stimulate an economy were downsized to: “The best and fairest way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it away in the first place.” The controversial plan to wage another war on Iraq was simplified to: “We will answer every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people.” In an earlier study, I found that in the 2000 presidential debates Bush used at least four times as many phrases containing empty language as Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush Senior or Gore had used in their debates.

Another of Bush’s dominant-language techniques is personalization. By personalization I mean localizing the attention of the listener on the speaker’s personality. Bush projects himself as the only person capable of producing results. In his post-9/11 speech to Congress he said, “I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.” He substitutes his determination for that of the nation’s. In the 2003 State of the Union speech he vowed, “I will defend the freedom and security of the American people.“ Contrast Bush’s “I will not yield” etc. with John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

The word “you” rarely appears in Bush’s speeches. Instead, there are numerous statements referring to himself or his personal characteristics of folksiness, confidence, righteous anger or determination as the answer to the problems of the country. Even when Bush uses “we,” as he did many times in the State of the Union speech, he does it in a way that focuses attention on himself. . . .

Poll after poll demonstrates that Bush’s political agenda is out of step with most Americans’ core beliefs. Yet the public, their electoral resistance broken down by empty language and persuaded by personalization, is susceptible to Bush’s most frequently used linguistic technique: negative framework. A negative framework is a pessimistic image of the world. Bush creates and maintains negative frameworks in his listeners’ minds with a number of linguistic techniques borrowed from advertising and hypnosis to instill the image of a dark and evil world around us. . .

And with this empty negative language, the greed-head murderers have gained the complicity of the American media:

The press gives Bush a free ride on his lies
Robert Kuttner
Boston Globe, July 16, 2003

. . . The back story of the politicization of intelligence has been hidden in plain view for months. Last fall, investigative reporter Robert Dreyfuss, writing in The American Prospect, where I am co-editor, exposed the efforts by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to take control of intelligence summaries from the CIA. In March, The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh exposed the forgery of the report, now belatedly in the headlines, that Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Niger.

John Judis, in The New Republic, a magazine that supported the war, pieced together other efforts to politicize intelligence to justify the Iraq war. The New Yorker has also exposed how George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, has compromised his mission in his fawning efforts to ingratiate himself with Bush and the Pentagon.

So last week when Tenet agreed to take the fall for Bush’s use of a long-discredited intelligence report, the maneuver stank to high heaven. But the press initially played the story with a straight face. On Friday, Bush declared that his speech “was cleared by the intelligence services.” Tenet, in a minuet that was obviously rehearsed and orchestrated, then issued a statement taking responsibility and expressing regret. Then, on Saturday, the president magnanimously expressed his full confidence in Tenet.

An innocent reader might have been forgiven for concluding that this “error” was the CIA’s lapse. In fact, the CIA was well aware that the Niger uranium story had been fabricated. The reference to the report in the Bush speech was the work of the war hawks at the Pentagon and the White House, not the CIA. Indeed, intelligence experts were so upset about this reference that the text was the subject of word by word negotiation. In the end, Bush’s actual text, disingenuously, attributed the report to British intelligence. . . .

The op-ed pages are intended for the expression of opinion. But in the Bush era, much of the reporting and analysis that should be Page 1 news are treated as if they were mere opinion.

Normally the press is not reluctant to challenge the lies of a president. The press hardly shrank from this challenge in the Vietnam and Watergate eras. . . .

But Bush gets a free pass time after time. The press holds back partly because of America’s vulnerability to terrorism, which Bush’s handlers exploit shamelessly. The administration is also very effective at pressuring and isolating reporters who criticize Bush, so working reporters bend over backwards to play fair. And the administration benefits from a stage-managed right-wing media machine that has no counterpart on the liberal left. . . .

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Memorandum for the President from retired CIA personnel—some of the most damning and credible evidence of massive corruption, calling for Cheney’s resignation. One of the authors is Raymond McGovern, 27-year veteran of the CIA, who recently gave Will Pitt an interview:

Intelligence Unglued
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
Information Clearing House, July 14, 2003

. . . your senior staff are alternately covering up for one another and gently stabbing one another in the back. CIA Director George Tenet’s extracted, unapologetic apology on July 11 was classic—I confess; she did it.

It is now dawning on our until-now somnolent press that your national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, shepherds the foreign affairs sections of your state-of-the-union address and that she, not Tenet, is responsible for the forged information getting into the speech. But the disingenuousness persists. Surely Dr. Rice cannot persist in her insistence that she learned only on June 8, 2003 about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s mission to Niger in February 2002, when he determined that the Iraq-Niger report was a con-job. . . .

Rice’s denials are reminiscent of her claim in spring 2002 that there was no reporting suggesting that terrorists were planning to hijack planes and slam them into buildings. In September, the joint congressional committee on 9/11 came up with a dozen such reports. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s credibility, too, has taken serious hits . . .

Whatever Rice’s or Powell’s credibility, it is yours that matters. And, in our view, the credibility of the intelligence community is an inseparably close second. . . .

There is just too much evidence that Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger at the behest of Vice President Cheney’s office, and that Wilson’s findings were duly reported not only to that office but to others as well.

Equally important, it was Cheney who launched (in a major speech on August 26, 2002) the concerted campaign to persuade Congress and the American people that Saddam Hussein was about to get his hands on nuclear weapons . . .

This was no case of petty corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro Agnew’s resignation. This was a matter of war and peace. Thousands have died. There is no end in sight. . . .

We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney “not guilty.” His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. . . . We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.

We repeat, with an additional sense of urgency, the recommendation in our last memorandum to you (May 1) that you appoint Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Chair of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board to head up an independent investigation into the use/abuse of intelligence on Iraq. . . .

We recommend that you immediately invite the UN inspectors back into Iraq. This would go a long way toward refurbishing your credibility. . . .

Sunday, July 13, 2003

Whopper of the Week: Donald Rumsfeld
Oh, that IAEA finding . . .
Timothy Noah
Slate, July 10, 2003

“Q: Secretary Rumsfeld, when did you know that the reports about [Iraq seeking] uranium coming out of Africa were bogus?

“A: Oh, within recent days, since the information started becoming available.”

—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, answering a question posed by Sen. Mark Pryor, D.-Ark., at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services committee, July 10.

“The [International Atomic Energy Agency] has made progress in its investigation into reports that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger in recent years. . . . The IAEA was . . . able to review correspondence coming from various bodies of the Government of Niger, and to compare the form, format, contents and signatures of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement-related documentation.

“Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents—which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger—are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.”

—Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a March 7 statement to the United Nations Security Council. ElBaradei’s statement was reported March 8 on the front page of the Washington Post, Rumsfeld’s hometown newspaper, and was also widely reported in other TV and print outlets around the world.

This match-up first appeared in Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, which I can’t recommend highly enough for ongoing commentary and analysis of the quickly unfolding, er, uncomfortableness of the evil administration of G.W. Bush. The latest entry (Sat. 7/12, 7:44 pm EDT) says, “If you watch the Sunday shows tomorrow, watch to see which if any of the hosts asks an administration guest this question: If Tenet and the CIA are guilty of not pushing hard enough to keep bogus or ‘highly dubious’ information out of the State of the Union speech, who was pushing on the other side?”

. . . we have a pretty clear idea what the interplay was between the CIA and the White House. The CIA expressed reservations about the Niger-uranium claims. The White House pressed to keep it in. Officials at the NSC, by several accounts, suggested getting around the CIA’s reservations by using public statements by the British government as a figleaf—even though the CIA believed the British assessment was incorrect.

Whose hands are dirtier? The folks who caved in to pressure and signed off on that figleaf? Or the folks who pressed for it?

And for an interesting commentary on those Sunday talk shows, see this General summary and analysis of the Sunday shows at the Democratic Underground think-tank. “The Bush Administration was completely on the defensive,” says PeteNYC.

1. Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks
2. Iraq and al-Qa’ida were working together
3. Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons programme
4. Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop nuclear weapons
5. Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War
6. Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British forces in Cyprus
7. Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox
8. US and British claims were supported by the inspectors
9. Previous weapons inspections had failed
10. Iraq was obstructing the inspectors
11. Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes
12. The “dodgy dossier”
13. War would be easy
14. Umm Qasr
15. Basra rebellion
16. The “rescue” of Private Jessica Lynch
17. Troops would face chemical and biological weapons
18. Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD
19. Iraq’s oil money would go to Iraqis
20. WMD were found

Saturday, July 12, 2003

From the brilliant Wizard of Whimsy

Mr. Bush, You Are A Liar
William Rivers Pitt
truthout editorial, July 11, 2003

. . . When a leader sends troops out into the field of battle, they become his responsibility. When his war planning is revealed to be profoundly faulty, flawed in ways that are getting men killed, he should not stick his banty rooster chest out to the cameras and speak with the hollow bravado of a man who knows he is several time zones away from the violence and bloodshed.

Such behavior is demonstrably criminal from a moral standpoint. The events that led to this reprehensible display were criminal in a far more literal sense.

Bush and the White House told the American people over and over again that Iraq was in possession of vast stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Bush and the White House said over and over again that this was a direct threat to the United States. Bush and the White House told the American people over and over again that Iraq was directly connected to al Qaeda terrorism, and would hand those terrible weapons over to the terrorists the first chance they got. Bush and the White House told Congress the same thing. Very deliberately, Bush and the White House tied a war in Iraq to the attack of September 11.

It was all a lie. All of it. . . .

There are many who believe that blaming George W. Bush for the errors and gross behavior of his administration is tantamount to blaming Mickey Mouse for mistakes made by Disney. There is a great deal of truth to this. Groups like Rumsfeld’s ‘Cabal,’ and the right-wing think tanks so closely associated to the creation of administration foreign policy, are very much more in control of matters than Bush.

Yet Bush knew the facts of the matter. He allowed CIA Director Tenet to lie to Congress with his bare face hanging out in order to get that body to vote for war. He knew the facts and lied himself, on countless occasions, to an American people who have been loyally supporting him, even as he beats them over the head with the image of collapsing towers and massive death to stoke their fear and dread for his own purposes. In doing these things, he consigned 212 American soldiers to death, along with thousands of innocent bystanders in Iraq. Given the current circumstances, there will be more dead to come.

There is no “The President wasn’t told” justification available here, no Iran/Contra loophole. He knew. He lied. His people knew. They lied.

Death knows no political affiliation, and a bloody lie is a bloody lie is a bloody lie. The time has come for Congress to fulfill their constitutional duties in this matter, to defend the nation and the soldiers who live and die in her service. The definition of ‘is’ has flown right out the window. This ‘is’ a crime. George W. Bush lied to the people, and lied to Congress. There are a lot of people dead because of it. . . .

Drip, drip, drip is turning to a steady flow as George Tenet falls on his sword for the neocons. The Daily KOS weblog gives an excellent summary and analysis:

Tenet Takes One for the Team
RonK, Seattle, June 12, 2003

IA Director George Tenet issued a statement yesterday taking personal and agency-level responsibility for failing to block an ill-advised 16 words from appearing in Bush’s SOTU address.

Tenet’s gambit may give the White House—and the Agency—a moment’s respite from the fulminating Yellowcake scandal . . . just as an athlete’s feigned injury might buy his team’s foundering defense precious moments to catch a breath and get their signals straight.

I’m loathe to give the topic any time at all, as the mainstream scandal-hounds will catch the scent soon enough ... but here’s a little fast-forward for the dailyKos community.

On key points of interagency fingerpointing, Tenet asserts:

(1) CIA did in fact review the text in question.

(2) CIA cleared the text, in the technical sense that they formally refrained from formally rejecting it.

(3) CIA acknowledged the text as hypertechnically true. [As others very energetically note, the text is hypertechnically not hypertechnically true, given the semantic distinction between "learned" and "reported".]

(4) The CIA should have formally disapproved the text.

Case closed? Not exactly.

Before Tenet’s statement, the inner circle had circled its wagons around a cover story that the text originally rested on the Niger forgeries ... that for almost a year, everybody but the WH knew these were crude fakes ... that the WH found out a few days too late ... and no retraction was warranted since the WH thought it had other satisfactory intelligence supporting the same conclusion, until some time last week.

On Tenet’s statement, the new cover story is that the text in question never had anything to do with the Niger forgeries ... that the text rested on no US intel whatsoever ... that the text simply, factually and nonjudgmentally observed that our coalition partner across the pond had reached certain conclusions.

How bad is that? If Tenet’s version stands, the public defense to date has been a pack of lies (and not just by the departing Ari Fleischer).

And if Tenet’s version stands, somebody’s got a lot more ’splainin’ to do. . . .

And just in case anyone thinks it is only about the phony Iraq-Niger connection, something else we’ve known all along is becoming official:

Former intelligence officials question Bush Iraq-al Qaida claims
WCAX-TV Channel 3 News, Burlington, VT via AP

. . . a former State Department intelligence official says intelligence agencies agreed there wasn’t a “meaningful connection to al-Qaida”—and said so to the White House and Congress.

Another former Bush administration intelligence official said there was no clear link between Saddam and al-Qaida and that any connections were “episodic, not continuous.”

These remarks come as President Bush works to quiet the controversy over his discredited claim of Iraqi uranium shopping in Africa.

Critics attacked the purported Saddam-al-Qaida link from the beginning, for being counter to the ideologies of both the Iraqi leader and the terror network and for being short on evidence.

Thursday, July 10, 2003

An unexpected must-read essay: Welcome to Nigeria! Welcome to Africa!! President Bush
Paul I. Adujie, Nigerian Lawyer, IT Professional
Niger Delta Congress

Nigerians, Africans and indeed, all peoples of African descent in America and elsewhere, are delighted and immensely pleased, that you are visiting our continent!

We appreciate with profound and keen interest, your foray into Africa and we will be watching, as you embark on this all-important visit to our continent. . . .

Mr. President, as you are probably already aware, Nigeria has a large economy, it is very large and diverse indeed! There many American Companies that are already benefiting from their being engaged and involved in these great opportunities, for the mutual benefits of Americans and Nigerians, the Nigerian economy is replete with limitless and bountiful opportunities for the very experienced American individuals and Corporations with their world-renowned can do attitude!

American Companies are presently, primarily engaged in Nigeria’s extensive and vibrant petroleum exploration and exploitation sector, and such great American Companies, as, Exxon-Mobil, Texaco, Chevron, Halliburton just to mention a few of them, currently participate actively and effectively in Nigeria, hence Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of the energy needs to the industrial base and the engine-room of the very versatile and resilient American economy.

However, there are other multifarious sectors or other areas of the Nigerian economy with open arms and invitation to great American Companies\Corporations and individuals involvements and participation in, areas such as, Agricultural Sector relating to food production and distribution, Automobile and the Transportation Sub-sector etc; Additionally, American Companies can derive enormous benefits from participation in the Construction sector . . .

Nigeria, unlike Vietnam has never fought any wars with America! And yet Vietnam war led to the unfortunate untimely death of more than 53,000 American troops/service persons, and yet, Vietnam manage to have better trade relations with America compared with any African Countries!

North Korea that is at odds with the United States over its nuclear weapon acquisition and sale ambitions, managed to have received more help and all manners of US aid from the US, during the last 10 years compared with Nigeria! Why should those in the axis of evil manage to get more US help favorable attention, than say Nigeria, a friendly nation?

Mr. President sir, Please include the CEOs and representatives of the American Auto Makers, in your entourage! The Big Three of Detroit Motor City, will be glad and delighted that they accompanied you, there are vast roads in Nigeria . . .

Nigeria is indebted to the governments and some private institutions United States and Western Europe, this debts is approximately Twenty Eight Billion US Dollars! In view of Nigeria’s GDP and national income per capita, this foreign debt and the servicing of these debts are stifling to Nigerians and Nigeria! These foreign debts has stymied economic growth and deprived the average Nigerian citizen, any semblance or modicum of decent living in Nigeria!

I plead with you, to add your voice, the power of your office and the prestige of the United States to the request of Africans for the urgent need for the United States and Europe to cancel or forgive these debts, some of these debts are bogus to begin with, and worse, the cost of servicing these debt are crushingly overwhelming to the average economy and humble Africans citizens bearing the liabilities and burden of these debts, the interests payments have outstripped the original debts!

Everyone realizes the gaping urgent needs in Africa!) Nigeria for example has more people and more needs than Egypt and Israel combined, but Egypt and Israel receive Billions of Dollars yearly in foreign aid, loan guarantees and material aid etc from the US, We do not begrudge them, but what about us? We are a friendly nation and we have maintained good relationship with the US forever!

Sometimes aid is just a drop in the bucket? Foreign aid will have impact, when all factors are taken into account, for example, it is no foreign justice, to give Five Billion Dollars yearly in aid, say a country of Five Million people as her population, and then offer a paltry One Hundred Million Dollars to another country with a population of 130 Million people, with more pressing needs and challenges! . . .

The truth, all through history is that, 99% of the governments and peoples of Africa have never been hostile to the people and government of the United States! But curiously, Africans do not receive aid, not even humanitarian food drops as the US has repeatedly done for citizens of countries that have been declared enemies of the United States, such as Afghanistan and Iraq! What gives? There appear to be the unspoken policy and attitude, that portrays Africa as the inconvenient part of the world, or just a mere nuisance and an irritant on the world . . .

Confirming that it IS in large part about the “petroleum exploration and exploitation sector” Oil&Gas Journal Online reports that Bush’s Africa visit to focus on oil supply, new natural gas sources:

HOUSTON, July 9—While mainly centered around a macroeconomic and humanitarian-based agenda, US President George W. Bush’s tour this week of certain key sub-Saharan African countries had “underlying US economic concerns” relating directly to the strategic importance of the US’s energy security, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

In a recently released study, CERA said, “Increasing economic and political stability in Africa supports a linchpin of US energy policy: diversifying oil and gas import sources.”

During 2002, Africa produced 7.05 million b/d of oil, or about 10.7% of total world oil output. The continent’s reserves, meanwhile, stood at 77.4 billion bbl of oil, or 6.4% of world reserves, CERA noted.

CERA said that West Africa“s oil and gas industry in particular is currently “at a threshold.” The region now supplies roughly 14% of all US oil imports, CERA said. “After several years of steady but unspectacular gains in oil output, West Africa is on the cusp of becoming a world leader in oil production growth. The region’s potential is manifested by large deepwater oil discoveries in recent years offshore Angola, Nigeria, and Equatorial Guinea. . . .”

Nothing new here; move along, move along . . .

A story that I believe has been completely overlooked or buried by the mass media—great example of how Bush Sr.’s policies of friendly relations with Hussein, the bin Laden enclave, and anybody else who was beneficial to him personally and politically have come back to bite Jr. in the butt—seems Poppy might have given Hussein and/or bin Laden some very nice software that allows them to pinpoint exactly where the global manhunt for themselves is going on and thus evade capture. NICE GOING, TRAITOR!!

Riddle as U.S. Spy Chief Quits
Gordon Thomas
[UK]Sunday Express, July 6, 2003

AMERICA’S top spy catcher, Paul Redmond, has suddenly resigned in the middle of his secret investigation into how Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden allegedly obtained US computer software, the SUNDAY EXPRESS claimed this weekend.

The software is said to enable the two most wanted men in the world to avoid capture because it can pinpoint every move in the global manhunt.

Redmond’s departure last week was accepted “without discussion” by President Bush, the man who had brought the spy catcher out of retirement to conduct the investigation.

Hours after Redmond had cleared his desk, Bush ordered a GBP 25million bounty on Saddam’s head. He wants Saddam “dead or alive” and the same goes for bin Laden. Already Bush has agreed to either man forgoing a trial and being shot after interrogation. The official reason given for Redmond’s abrupt departure was “health reasons.” But stunned colleagues in the Homeland Security department in Washington, where Redmond had his office, insist the former Associate Director of the CIA was in perfect health. His departure has led to intense speculation that he may have begun to uncover embarrassing details of how the software came into the hands of Saddam and bin Laden.

Documents obtained by the respected International Currency Review, a London-based newsletter for the financial community, allege that the software was provided for Saddam on the authority of President Bush’s father when he was in the White House—a time when relations between Iraq and Washington were close during Baghdad’s war with Iran. . . .

The rest of the story reads like something out of a good spy novel—but this is Real, and Evil.

Thank you to Political Strikes for the toon.

Several Washington insiders have made statements lately discrediting Bush’s phony tales about Iraqi WMD intelligence, yellowcake uranium, and the like. I was starting to think I’d have to start a list or a table to keep them all straight—but once again the brilliant William Rivers Pitt comes through, with a summary of allegations by various administration insiders—and there’s no surprises here:

The Insiders are Coming Out
William Rivers Pitt
truthout editorial, July 8, 2003

. . . Think about it. When was the last time we got a straight answer out of the Bush administration? When was the last time anyone with real power demanded answers from the folks in the White House? In the vacuum, we wind up getting answers like the one Don Rumsfeld delivered on February 12, 2002 when faced with pointed press questions about terrorism:

“As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

These boys could give lessons to Orwell. Without anyone in Congress slinging subpoenas, and with a press cowed by the threat of removal from the White House beat, there is no way to take an Imperial Presidency to task for its actions when deliberate gibberish is the rule of the news day.

There is no way, unless the White House insiders come out and start talking. Suddenly, that is exactly what is happening. . . .

Besides summarizing his already-published interview with Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA, Pitt includes remarks by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who, based on his 2002 trip to Niger to validate allegations that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium, remarked that “some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” Wilson reported that there were no transactions between Iraq and Niger, yet Bush flat-out stated that there was “clear evidence of peril” in his State of the Union address, referring to this bogus Iraq-Niger connection.

And another one:

Greg Thielmann, Director of the Office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Issues in the State Department, told Newsweek at the beginning of June 2003 that the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research had concluded the documents were “garbage.” . . .

Another White House insider has come out in spectacular fashion. Rand Beers served the Bush administration on the National Security Council at the White House as a special assistant to the President for combating terrorism. Mr. Beers served in government for more than 30 years working in international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, intelligence, and counter-terrorism. He worked for the National Security Council under presidents Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton. Beer’s service to his country began with two tours in Vietnam with the Marine Corps.

In a June 25 2003 interview with Ted Koppel on Nightline, Beers reported that the administration was failing dramatically to defend the United States against terrorism. According to Beers, al Qaeda presented a far greater threat to America than Hussein and Iraq, and that the Iraq war was a terrible and unnecessary distraction from what was truly needed to keep the nation safe. . . .

Beers’ position as special assistant to the President for combating terrorism meant he saw everything and knew everything. He was on Nightline for one reason: He quit his job, walked out the door, and joined the John Kerry for President campaign as National Security Advisor.

Today, everything Beers knows about the manner in which the administration acted towards Iraq, towards Afghanistan, towards September 11, is also known by a Senator from Massachusetts who is running for President on a very large and public stage.

Ray McGovern was right. The insiders are coming out, and the trickle has become a flood.

As mentioned last time, two British civilians are among the prisoners at Guantanamo and slated for military tribunal hearings that could result in their execution. BBC News World Edition reports that Tony Blair has been challenged to “put his foot down” and “tell the Americans that the British men currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay should be tried in the UK.” Blair’s response so far: “the nature of the trials planned for the prisoners held at the base in Cuba [has] yet to be decided.”

“He promised to continue making ‘active representations’ to the US Government to ensure the men had a fair trial.”

Sunday, July 6, 2003

This is not going to work in Bush’s favor: several stories about upcoming military “trials” of alleged terrorists in detention at Guantanamo Concentration Camp. These are civilians, mind you, and the charges could lead to execution. At the top of the list for inexplicable reasons are one Australian and two Britons.

Anger as Britons Named for U.S. Terror Trials
Pete Harrison
yahoo news via Reuters, July 4 , 2003

LONDON (Reuters) - Two Britons will be among the first terror suspects to face U.S. military trials, Britain said Friday, sparking outrage among relatives, politicians and human rights groups who fear justice will not be done.

President Bush designated six prisoners at “Camp X-Ray” in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Thursday for military trial. Charges set out in the Pentagon’s instructions for the trials could bring the death penalty.

Britain’s Foreign Office said Moazzam Begg, 35, and Feroz Abbasi, 23, were among the six, whose names and nationalities U.S. defense officials have refused to reveal. . . .

Military officials have had preliminary discussions about building an execution chamber . . . , but say talk of executions is premature. . . .

In Brussels, the European Commission said the United States risked damaging the coalition it has tried to build in its “war on terrorism.”

“The death sentence cannot be applied by military courts as this would make the international coalition lose the integrity and credibility it has so far enjoyed,” said Commission spokesman Diego de Ojeda, recalling comments by external relations chief Chris Patten.

Stephen Jakobi, director of the British charity Fair Trials Abroad, said it was time for Europe to move beyond rhetoric.

“This is going to be a rigged trial—The U.S. is even choosing defense counsel,” he told Reuters. "What are the European Union going to do about this? This is the ultimate test about whether we protect our own citizens.” . . .

Then, in true banana-republic military-dictator style, the Bush administration issues its ultimatum:

Confess or die, U.S. tells jailed Britons
Martin Bright, Kamal Ahmed and Peter Beaumont
The Observer, July 6, 2003

The two British terrorist suspects facing a secret US military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay will be given a choice: plead guilty and accept a 20-year prison sentence, or be executed if found guilty.

American legal sources close to the process said that the prisoners’ dilemma was intended to encourage maximum “co-operation.”

The news comes as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, prepares to urge US Secretary of State Colin Powell to repatriate the two Britons. He will say that they should face a fair trial here under English law. Backed by Home Secretary David Blunkett, Straw will make it clear that the Government opposes the death penalty and wants to see both men tried “under normal judicial process.”

Lawyers acting for Moazzam Begg, 35, from Sparkbrook, Birmingham, and Feroz Abassi, 23, from Croydon, said that any confessions gathered while the men were kept without charge or access to lawyers in Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and Camp Delta in Cuba would have no status in international law and would be inadmissible in British courts.

Stephen Jakobi of Fair Trials Abroad, which is leading the campaign for the two men, said: “Our concern is that there will be no meaningful way of testing the evidence against these people. The US Defence Department has set itself up as prosecution, judge and defence counsel and has created the rules of trial. This is patently a kangaroo court.”

Begg’s family believe he was kidnapped in Pakistan by US authorities. He was taken to Bagram on suspicion of passing funds to al-Qaeda and later transferred to Camp Delta. He has not seen a lawyer since he was seized.

In a clear signal of the high lev els of concern within the Government, the acting British ambassador in Washington, Tony Brenton, will raise ‘official concern’ with the White House.

According to US legal and constitutional experts, the Final Rule, the regulations that will govern the military commissions, has rendered a fair trial almost impossible. . . .

Among other concerns about the 50-page Final Rule, which was published by the Department of Defence last week for governing the trials, are:

• that rules of evidence are so broad that it is left at the discretion of the trial’s presiding officer whether to allow any evidence he believes would be convincing to a “reasonable person” and that that would appear to allow the admission of hearsay evidence;

• that evidence can be admitted by telephone and by pseudonym;

• that it is insisted that only security-screened civil attorneys be allowed to appear before the court and they can also be removed at any time.

Shall we predict that Blair will be more worried about how this news affects his own “popularity” than about a fair trial for these people?

Important:

U.S. falling into bin Laden’s trap
Bogged down in a guerrilla war, Iraq may be George Bush’s Little Big Horn
Eric Margolis
Toronto Sun, July 6, 2003

. . . Asked on TV this week about steadily mounting attacks on U.S. occupation forces in Iraq, President Bush narrowed his eyes, and hunched forward aggressively - thrilling his ardent fans from Biloxi to Paducah - and growled, "Bring ’em on!" - a call to battle worthy of the famously dimwitted American general, George Armstrong Custer who, like Bush, knew what he knew and didn’t need advice.

I am appalled watching Bush and his neo-conservative handlers pursue an imperial war in Iraq that will kill or wound growing numbers of American GIs and turn Iraq into the ugly twin of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Decent, honest, good-natured American soldiers are now being turned into a colonial occupation army. All colonial wars - Algeria, Chechnya, Kashmir, Aceh, Palestine - are similar. Occupying forces in these dirty wars become brutalized, sadistic and cynical. Look back at Vietnam.

I shudder watching American GIs kicking down doors of civilian homes in the dead of night, threatening screaming children with their weapons, hooding suspects, firing into crowds of demonstrators, and calling air strikes on villages.

As night follows day, this nasty war will lead, as all colonial wars do, to torture, masked informers, reprisals against civilians, secret executions. That’s what happened in Indochina. Just last week, Amnesty International sharply rebuked the U.S. for brutalizing and humiliating captives.

White House propaganda

Bush’s claims that mounting attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq are the work of Saddam Hussein loyalists and "terrorists" belong in the same trash bin as White House propaganda about weapons of mass destruction. Yes, there are some Baath party loyalists fighting U.S. occupation, but so are many more ordinary Iraqis who are reacting as would any other proud people to an invasion of their country.

George Bush has well and truly stuck the U.S. into twin quagmires in both Afghanistan and Iraq. These ongoing guerrilla wars, and their logistical support, now tie down some 175,000 men, fully one third of total U.S. ground forces. Back in the 1980s, Osama bin Laden preached that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world was to bleed it in a score of small guerrilla wars. Bush, who now threatens to attack Iran, is falling right into bin Laden’s strategic trap. Bravo, Mr. President. . . .

Faced by the growing messes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration is trying to emulate its role model, the late, unlamented British Empire, by hiring mercenaries to do the dirty work in Iraq. Washington is offering billions to India and Pakistan to send 15,000 troops each to pacify Iraq’s unruly natives.

No one in the West will care if Indian or Pak mercenaries kill Iraqis or burn down their homes.

Other nations like Poland, Italy and Bulgaria are being pressured or bribed to send token forces to help pull Bush’s chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq. Canada has been browbeaten into sending troops to increasingly dangerous Afghanistan where they have no useful mission other than protecting the widely detested regime of U.S.-installed puppet ruler, Hamid Karzai.

The longer U.S. forces stay in Iraq, the uglier the guerrilla war will get. And the more Americans will realize they were led into this needless conflict by a second George Custer manipulated by a cabal of neo-conservatives whose primary loyalty is not to the United States.

Ironic, the way things turn out. I remember as a kid in the 50s, the word Pravda meant totalitarian, totally state-sponsored propaganda. It was the official voice of the old communist USSR. Now, as the American forces of repression, greed and fascism spin ever more elaborate webs of doublespeak and deceit, Pravda and other foreign news sources are the only ones telling the truth:

Bush and Lies and Drugs and Videos
When aggression walks where diplomacy belongs, everyone is a loser
Pravda, July 4, 2003

. . . Afghanistan is a good example of how blind interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state coupled with the thirst for revenge, instead of a steady and balanced campaign of negotiation and trade-offs, backed up by diplomacy, can cause a disaster.

Afghanistan, formerly the fiefdom of the Taliban, whose policy of imposing Pashtun lore and fundamentalist law on its people isolated the government almost completely, is now the fiefdom of the drugs barons. It is not that the Taliban disappeared; a few thousand were tortured to death by the Northern Alliance practically under the noses of their new western friends (who created the Taliban) and a few thousand others are incarcerated (and some have been tortured) in a US-controlled concentration camp in Cuba. However, some 35,000 ex-Taliban melted into the mountains together with their weapons.

Afghanistan is a disaster zone. . . .

The pretext for this "crusade" was Osama bin Laden—or was it? In 1998, Mullah Mohammad Omar stated to the Pakistani daily Dawn that he knew the Americans would attack because he had refused to accept a billion-dollar bribe to allow a US-based firm to construct a gas pipeline across Afghanistan to Pakistan three years before September 11th. . . .

After two months in Iraq, how many [weapons of mass destruction] have been found? Oh sorry, Iraq is a big country. Or maybe, as Secretary of State Colin Powell said, the WMD are being driven around the countryside, “in vehicles,” complete with the delivery systems, warheads, launching ramps and all. Or maybe, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, the WMD was destroyed by the Iraqis before the attack, in which case, where was a causus belli?

Or maybe, the Bush administration was and is lying. These people have been lying to the United Nations, lying to its partners in the international community, lying to the Russian Federation, lying to its institutions, lying to its people. These people have been lying through their teeth, because the regime knew that the Ba’ath government of President Saddam Hussein constituted a danger neither to the USA, nor to the UK, nor to their allies, nor to anyone else. . . .

This attack was more than a monumental violation of international law; it was a violation of the integrity of the human race, a violation of the norms of decency and a violation of the fabric of confidence which human beings need to feel between themselves and their governments.

This attack was a set-up, a frame-up, right from the beginning. . . .

Saturday, July 5, 2003

Yesterday, on the 227th anniversary of the declaration of a free and independent United States of America, I received an e-mail from a WWII veteran, my Dad, attaching a handout he’d written to bring to a 4th of July barbecue. These are the true heroes and leaders: the people who bravely answered the call and put their lives on the line—unlike the Chickenhawks in Charge, who have come up with every conceivable excuse or—more to the point—simply exploited their privileged position in life to walk away from this duty—and now their sacrifices are being disrespected and devalued on an almost daily basis. But not without repercussions: my Dad is representative of millions who have served, and he’s progressed from bemused moderate to very very angry patriot, calling for Bush’s impeachment. This is a very well written, succinct list of the major reasons nothing short of impeachment will do.

Spent a good part of the day yesterday updating the Links, Blogs, and News page and also the Neocons satire and parody page and hope you will take a little time to browse those. Look for the entries with nearby. A couple of highlights: the fantastic photoshop cartoons of the Wizard of Whimsy and the very entertaining The Worried Shrimp links to political toons, blogs, and reviews (site is temporarily down as of 1:30 pm EDT Saturday, so try again later if necessary).

Wednesday, July 2, 2003

What the World Thinks of America
“The BBC hosted a unique global television debate about America’s place in the world with 10 other national broadcasters. What The World Thinks of America was broadcast in the UK on BBC Two on Tuesday, 17 June 2003. During the programme the results of an exclusive BBC poll, which asked 11,000 people in 11 countries what they thought of America, were revealed. The questions covered US foreign policies, military might, economic power and cultural influence.”

Many more graphs showing attitudes about politics, culture, economics, and military are on the BBC web site.

The Black Commentator presents a summary of the BBC poll results and concludes Blind, Deaf, Dumb, and Deluded: White America unfit for global rule

. . . Earthlings are awakening to the danger. In nearly every corner of the globe, perched or crouched in niches high and low, humanity hears the hounds barking and the master’s voice in the distance, shouting to the horizon, “This is all mine, and everybody in it!” . . .

At times maddeningly murky, involving questions and answers that require the reader to have some knowledge of conditions in the various nations, the survey does succeed in revealing the vast chasm that separates American public opinion from every other nation polled – with the dramatic exception of Israel.

On key questions relating to world security, only Israel and three other nations can be considered part of the American political conversation: Britain, Canada, and Australia. One is the “mother country,” the other three began as European settler states. And, leaving aside the Israeli “special relationship,” even the English-speaking nations only barely agree with much of what they hear from the Americans.

Eighty percent of Americans agree that the “U.S. military presence around the world helps bring international peace and stability.” Fifty-one percent think people living in countries where the U.S. military are based support that presence. Except for the English-speaking club and Israel, only South Korean majorities agree. (South Korea also thinks the U.S. is a bigger danger than North Korea – evidence of the South’s schizophrenia.) . . .

The crisis of disintegrating order that is gripping the globe, although initiated by the Bush Pirates and materially rooted in the contradictions of multinational capital, is made grotesquely more complicated by a cruel trick of history. The population of the superpower that seeks to subdue and reorder the world is cognitively damaged. Americans appear to be incapable of perceiving the social realities of other peoples and nations. It is a brain-lock so profound, so nearly perfect in its insulating mechanisms, as to be described as a society floating in a bubble.

To those on the outside, the bubble is transparent. From the Himalayan peaks of Bhutan to the jungles of Indonesia, humanity stares into a corporate television presentation of American life. It is much the same version as Americans watch. However, viewed from inside the bubble, the surrounding world is distorted, disconnected, chaotic, menacing and – most importantly – an inferior place.

Yet this is the world that the Bush men wish to conquer, sanctioned and empowered by a population of blind, deaf, dumb and deluded enablers. . . .

As outrageous proof of its profoundly disturbing arrogance regarding the rest of the world, the Bush Administration has now cut off military aid to 35 countries “because they back the International Criminal Court and have not exempted Americans from possible prosecution.”

The decision to suspend aid is the latest attack by the Bush administration on the international court, set up last year to try war crimes and acts of genocide.

The United States signed the 1998 treaty creating the court. But the Bush administration is afraid the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, backed by most European countries, might hear politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. military and civilian leaders. . . .

Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said the suspension of aid worked against some of the Bush administration’s other policy goals, such as intercepting drugs in the Caribbean and expanding NATO into eastern Europe.

“This campaign has brought resentment and bitterness from some of the U.S. government’s closest allies and comes at an extraordinarily high price,” Dicker told Reuters.

But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer indicated that the Bush administration would not compromise on the court.

“This is a reflection of the United States’ priorities to protect the men and women in our military,” he said.

“If delivering aid to those states endangers America’s servicemen and servicewomen, the president’s first priority is with the servicemen and servicewomen,” he added.

REAL-ly. Well, it’s no secret who that SOB’s first priority is—even a June 30th editorial in the Army Times took the position that Bush’s supposed devotion and loyalty to the troops is Nothing but lip service:

In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately. For example, the White House griped that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful and unnecessary — including a modest proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day.

Similarly, the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones. . . .

The chintz even extends to basic pay. While Bush’s proposed 2004 defense budget would continue higher targeted raises for some ranks, he also proposed capping raises for E-1s, E-2s and O-1s at 2 percent, well below the average raise of 4.1 percent. . . .

Despite Bush’s delusion that he can buy his own immunity from war-crimes prosecution, “a group of Japanese lawyers unveiled documents on Monday [June 30] ‘indicting’ U.S. President George W. Bush for war crimes allegedly committed against the Afghan people since the United States-led coalition began its antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001,” according to the Japan Times. “The charges against Bush . . . include aggression, attacks against civilians and nonmilitary facilities and the torturing and execution of prisoners. They said the indictment will be handed to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo next week.”

Also not fazed by Bush’s bullying tactics is Nelson Mandela, who back in January blasted Bush, calling him “a president who has no foresight” because of his chest-beating over Iraq against UN and world opinion. Sure enough, Bush delivers unprecedented snub to Mandela in Africa visit next week.

So he alienated the world with his fraudulent war and brazen and immoral Afghanistan and Iraq occupations, cut off military aid to countries unwilling to exempt him from war-crimes prosecution, turned his back on world leaders who tower over him in courage, morality, intellect, and compassion—and now Military analysts say U.S. needs foreign help in Iraq. Hey, as fizzana suggests in a Democratic Underground discussion, let the UN and NATO step in after insisting on the following: The U.S. is not exempt from war crimes prosecution, the U.S. immediately signs the Kyoto agreement, and the U.S. agrees to allow the UN to monitor the 2004 Presidential election.

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