IRAQ
Secrets Exposed, Lies Revealed

Exposing previous White House denials as lies, journalist Bob Woodward this weekend revealed parts of his new book which provide evidence the Bush Administration began plans for an Iraq invasion immediately after 9/11; overhyped intelligence; and appeared to circumvent the Constitution to pursue its goals. In Woodward's account, which includes a three-and-a-half hour interview with President Bush, it is revealed that the President personally ordered plans for the Iraq war to be drawn up in November of 2001. While the White House has called such statements "revisionist history," Woodward's account is consistent with accounts given by Richard Clarke, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Bush State Department official Richard Haass, former British Ambassador Christopher Meyer, and an earlier CBS News report. Woodward's book explores the depth of White House cover-up efforts, showing how the Administration persuaded even top military officials to lie. For instance, at the same time General Tommy Franks was secretly developing the President's Iraq war plan, he was "simultaneously publicly denying that he was ever asked to do any plan." For instance, at the same time General Tommy Franks was secretly developing the President's Iraq war plan, he was "publicly denying that he was ever been asked to do any plan." Just as troubling, Woodward points out that the decision to go to war with Iraq was shared with Saudi Prince Bandar (who has milked his ties to the Bush Administration despite being under the microscope for money laundering) and RNC consultant Karen Hughes before it was shared with Secretary of State Colin Powell.

UNANSWERED – DID THE WHITE HOUSE VIOLATE THE LAW?: Woodward reveals that in July 2002, Bush secretly approved diverting $700 million meant for operations in Afghanistan into war planning for Iraq. Bush kept Congress "totally in the dark on this," which raises serious legal questions reminiscent of Iran-Contra: Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution vests the power of the purse with Congress, and statutes bar the executive from unilaterally moving money out of areas explicitly mandated by spending bills. On CBS's Face the Nation, Rice tried to defend the move, claiming "resources were not taken from Afghanistan." Not only did this response contradict the fact that special forces were pulled out of Afghanistan in 2002 and moved to Iraq, but it did not address legal questions. As CBS anchor Bob Schieffer said, "Dr. Rice, you cannot take money that Congress has appropriated for one purpose and spend it on something else. That's against the law." One other note: In the same supplemental bill, Bush further ignored the will of Congress, blocking a bipartisan, House- and Senate-passed homeland security funding package.

UNANSWERED – MANIPULATING OIL PRICES FOR BUSH CAMPAIGN?: Woodward also reveals that the Saudi Arabian government – the same government with potential ties to terror - "promised Bush that his country would lower oil prices before the November 2 presidential election." Woodward said Bandar specifically wanted Bush to know that the Saudis hope to "fine-tune oil prices" for the 2004 election. Recently, the Saudis led the charge to cut OPEC oil production, which has raised gas prices in America. Was that move meant to artificially raise the price, so that it could be lowered closer to the election?

PROOF - BUSH/CHENEY DELIBERATELY OVERHYPED INTELLIGENCE: According to Woodward's book, the President told aides in December of 2002, "Make sure no one stretches to make our case" about WMD. But a look at the record shows it was Bush and Vice President Cheney who, well before this cautionary statement, were aggressively hyping intelligence. For instance, Bush claimed in October 2002 that Iraq had "a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons" – a claim that was rejected at the time by the Air Force intelligence unit most knowledgeable about the issue. He also claimed definitively that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons," despite warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that there was no solid proof. Similarly, Vice President Cheney was even more assertive, claiming without proof in August 2002 "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has WMD. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." Even after Bush made his cautionary statement, the overhyping continued, with Cheney saying, "Iraq has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons," Bush claiming "We found the WMD ," and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld saying "We know where the WMDs are." See other examples of how the White House ignored warnings that its WMD case for war was weak.

HEALTH CARE
Time To Talk About The Uninsured

According to the Institute of Medicine, the U.S. has a whopping health care problem which affects the entire nation. The swelling numbers of the uninsured in America is a problem which can no longer be ignored or brushed under the carpet as someone else's problem. The United States spends $35 billion every year to treat people with no insurance, while the economy loses between $65 billion and $130 billion in productivity. Over 18,000 25- to 64-year-olds die every year as a result lacking health insurance. Currently, 43.6 million Americans lack health insurance, and the trend is only getting worse. As costs spiral, more and more Americans, many of them children, are left to struggle for basic health care. The IOM has challenged Congress and the President to find a way to insure every American over the next decade.

CONSERVATIVE FOOT DRAGGING: Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson both said the IOM challenge to cover the uninsured was impossible; unbelievably, Thompson even claimed we already have universal coverage. Meanwhile, President Bush's tax credit proposal would potentially "cause more than 1 million people who have employer-based coverage to become uninsured."

LOWER CARE, HIGHER COSTS: Urban Institute researchers found the uninsured receive about half the care of those in private insurance. Since escalated cost causes many uninsured Americans to delay or defer treatment, the care they do get is the most expensive and least efficient, like emergency or hospital care. And according to a study by the California Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, uninsured Americans pay on average 68% more than the federal government for commonly prescribed drugs, such as those used to treat arthritis, high cholesterol and ulcers. And since many of the drugs in the survey treat chronic conditions, the price of refills can really add up quickly. For example, "an uninsured person regularly taking Zocor for high cholesterol...would pay at least $1,672 for a year's supply of Zocor. The government, on the other hand, must pay only $814 for the same quantity...a savings of $858." Which uninsured Americans are paying top dollar? The most expensive cities are Baltimore (at a whopping 84% higher average cost for medications), San Diego, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia.

SOME SUGGESTIONS TO FIX HEALTH CARE: Sen. Hillary Clinton proposed some basic structural changes to the health care system in this week's NY Times Magazine. First, change the way health care is delivered. One way to do this? Give Americans responsibility for keeping custody of their medical records, to create a "personal health record"; doing so would allow Americans to "assume more responsibility for improving their own health and lifestyles." Also, it's time for the medical field to harness technology. It's time to put health files – "test results, lab records, X-rays" – into a computer system accessible in seconds by doctors' offices and emergency rooms and to disseminate research. Finally, it's important to "recognize the larger factors that affect our health – from the environment to public health." A preemptive strike against factors which sicken Americans, like lead in the drinking water, obesity and smog, is more efficient than waiting for the effects to show in illness and injury.

CIVIL LIBERTIES
Justice for All?

As President Bush travels to Pennsylvania to tout his efforts to "expand the government's surveillance and detention powers," twice in the next ten days the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of those efforts. Since 2001, hundred of detainees have been held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, not as prisoners of war entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, but as so-called "enemy combatants" who, according to the Bush Administration, "may be held and interrogated for as long as the executive branch considers it necessary." Four detainees, two Australian and two British citizens, challenged in court the circumstances of their detention, in a case that will be heard by the Supreme Court tomorrow. But the detainees are not asking to be set free. Rather, they are merely "asking the Supreme Court to declare that their cases are not, in fact, outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts so that they may [at a later time] ask a federal judge to grant them some form of an opportunity to argue for their freedom." The decision, expected to be handed down mid-summer, will "extend well beyond U.S. borders, to allied governments and international public opinion, which often look to the United States as a symbol of freedom and the rule of law."

IGNORING THE LAW PUTS AMERICAN SOLDIERS AT RISK: The Administration claims that granting detainees the ability to contest their detention, "perhaps by producing evidence that they never actually fought against the United States," would compromise U.S. security interests. But, as a new column by American Progress Senior Vice President Mark Agrast notes, "thousands of such status hearings were held in Vietnam and during the first Iraq War." Refusing to provide detainees a forum to argue their innocence "could not only undermine the rule of law but could endanger American service members who are captured behind enemy lines."

ADMINISTRATION CREATED A PARALLEL LEGAL SYSTEM: Next week, the Supreme Court will hear the cases of Yasir Hamdi and Jose Padilla – two U.S. citizens who have been held in a military brig, under interrogation and without access to counsel, for nearly two years. When it became clear the Supreme Court would consider the circumstances of their detention, the Administration provided them limited access to counsel. The Supreme Court will decide if it was legal for the Bush Administration to create "a parallel legal system, separate from ordinary criminal justice and controlled almost exclusively by the executive" branch. Newsweek reports that Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued for more American citizens to be detained indefinitely without access to counsel or the court, including six men in Lackawanna, NY, even though "there was no evidence that they had actually carried out any terrorist act."

BELATEDLY DISCOVERING THE SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – in an announcement that you wouldn't expect the United States government to need to make – declared Tuesday that "immigrants detained in terrorism investigations can no longer be held indefinitely without evidence." The decision came as a result of an investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General which found that hundreds of immigrants of Middle Eastern descent, detained for months on alleged minor immigration violations, were denied "basic standards of due process" and were subject to "physical abuse and mistreatment." Asa Hutchinson, DHS undersecretary, said that the new procedures are intended to "create a system of 'checks and balances'" – apparently forgetting that the system of checks and balances was created by the Constitution more than 200 years ago. Meanwhile, the 9/11 commission "has concluded that immigration policies promoted as essential to keeping the country safe from future attacks have been largely ineffective, producing little, if any, information leading to the identification or apprehension of terrorists."

IRAQ – IMAGE WORSENING: According to a news analysis by the LA Times, the growing perception across much of Iraq is that "the ground is giving way beneath the Americans." Instead of winning the war for the hearts of the Iraqi people, a series of missteps on the part of the occupation forces leave a different picture. "More and more Iraqis who once resented — but tolerated — Americans now refuse to even talk to them." According to one Iraqi, the recent escalation in violence is indicative of a larger problem: "America won the war on April 9 last year; they lost the war on April 9 this year." As a result, "an increasingly anxious Congress has summoned Bush administration officials to testify this week on their plans for quelling violence in Iraq and for handing power over to Iraqis by June 30."

ECONOMY – THE WAL-MART EFFECT: The NYT writes, Wal-Mart isn't just a discount store, it's practically its own country. The mega-corporation is the largest employer in the world; "If it were an independent nation, it would be China's eighth-largest trading partner." However, the company doesn't use its massive influence for good. Unlike General Motors, the most influential company of the mid-20th century, Wal-Mart exerts a negative force on American workers. "G.M. helped build the world's most affluent middle class by paying wages far above the average and by providing generous health and pension plans...G.M.'s wage pattern spurred other companies to raise compensation levels, while Wal-Mart's relatively low wages and benefits — its workers average less than $18,000 a year — were doing just the opposite."

CORRUPTION – TAX BILL IS 'A NEW LEVEL OF SLEAZE': A bill that was supposed to settle a relatively minor trade dispute with Europe has been "packed with $170 billion in tax cuts aimed at cruise-ship operators, foreign dog-race gamblers, NASCAR track owners, bow-and-arrow makers and Oldsmobile dealers." It has gotten so bad that even a tax lobbyists said the bill "has risen to a new level of sleaze." Nevertheless, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) "supports all of the provisions that have been slipped in."

MILITARY – NEW PROBLEMS FOR PENTAGON CONTRACTOR: Northrop Grumman is in more hot water. According to the WSJ, new documents show the weapons company "covered up major accounting irregularities during the late 1980s to stay in the Pentagon's good graces." The documents, "which haven't been made public, form the heart of a U.S. government lawsuit against Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman that could result in penalties of hundreds of millions of dollars." At a time when Pentagon spending is on the rise, the company is under investigation by the Justice Department for, among other things, "falsely inflated, recorded and presented costs that were not actually incurred, including scrapping more parts than it had ordered. The company, according to the suit, also 'engaged in a secret effort to alter' inventory records 'to mislead and defraud' the government."

MEDIA – WASHINGTON TIMES NEEDS HELP, CITY PAPER DELIVERS: The Washington City Paper has decided to lend the Washington Times a helping hand. The City paper discovered that "over the past nine days, the Times hasn't published a single correction." Over the same period the "New York Times churned out at least 50 corrections. And the Washington Post clocked in with more than 25." So, the City Paper has decided "to run the [the Washington Times] corrections box."


Find these and other stories at the CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS.


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