Justice Is Duckblind
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Saturday, May 01, 2004
May 2, 2004
THE TROOPS
National Guard Officer Offers Criticism of Bush's Iraq Plans
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
National Guard officer from Manhattan who recently returned from combat in Iraq delivered the Democratic Party's response to President Bush's radio address yesterday, saying that while progress was being made in Iraq, the American effort was poorly planned and poorly executed.
The officer, First Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, spoke in a radio spot usually reserved for members of Congress and political figures.
"The people who planned this war were not ready for us," he said in his address. "There were not enough vehicles, not enough ammunition, not enough medical supplies, not enough water."
Lieutenant Rieckhoff's address was broadcast on the first anniversary of Mr. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech and came directly after the president's weekly radio address.
Lieutenant Rieckhoff, a 1998 graduate of Amherst College and former president of the student government there, is a registered Democrat. He approached the Democratic Party about his concerns about the war, but has not yet decided whether to endorse Senator John Kerry for president. He is one of only a few nonpolitical figures to deliver the Democrats' response, said a Kerry campaign official
In his remarks, recorded in Manhattan, Lieutenant Rieckhoff said two images kept replaying in his mind: the scrolling list of war dead and Mr. Bush's April 14 news conference in which he said he would "stay the course."
"Well, it is time for a change," Lieutenant Rieckhoff said in his address. "Our troops are still waiting for more body armor. They are still waiting for better equipment. They are still waiting for a policy that brings in the rest of the world and relieves their burden."
In an interview after his address, he said he was speaking as a private citizen who wanted to convey the mixed situation in Iraq.
"The Iraqi people are making progress and the American military is helping them make that progress," he said. "But at what cost to the American military and what cost to the American people? I'm not sure that our country is better off now. I'm pretty sure that our military is not better off now."
He said he was speaking out because he felt American soldiers in Iraq, many of them working-class people or immigrants, were not being heard. "Not too many people from Amherst in the military," he said, adding, "these are the guys who are stuck interpreting foreign policy on a corner in Baghdad in Arabic."
Lieutenant Rieckhoff returned from Iraq in February but said he still kept in touch through e-mail and telephone calls with his unit: Company B of the Third Battalion, 124th Infantry. "I got an e-mail from a guy who used to be in my platoon recounting to me a story about an R.P.G. round that came through the center of his Humvee and blew apart a kid next to him." An R.P.G. is a rocket-propelled grenade.
As part of a light infantry unit, his men did not use heavy armored vehicles, Lieutenant Rieckhoff said, but they still needed transportation. Two men in his unit whom he described as a former car thief and a former mechanic happened upon a fleet of Land Rovers and Nissan sport utility vehicles that they requisitioned.
"So we ripped doors off them to roll around Baghdad," he said. "We were like the A-Team, and the kids put on Eminem on the stereo."
But there were some 500 soldiers in his battalion and only two or three armored Humvees. The soldiers "would pretty much drew straws as to who was going to ride in the armor who was going to ride in the other ones."
He said he did not know for sure what he planned to do in the near future, but would probably apply to graduate school in public policy. But if he is called back to Iraq again, which could be as early as June, he would serve again, he said. "If I get the call tomorrow, I'm going."
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE TROOPS
National Guard Officer Offers Criticism of Bush's Iraq Plans
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
National Guard officer from Manhattan who recently returned from combat in Iraq delivered the Democratic Party's response to President Bush's radio address yesterday, saying that while progress was being made in Iraq, the American effort was poorly planned and poorly executed.
The officer, First Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, spoke in a radio spot usually reserved for members of Congress and political figures.
"The people who planned this war were not ready for us," he said in his address. "There were not enough vehicles, not enough ammunition, not enough medical supplies, not enough water."
Lieutenant Rieckhoff's address was broadcast on the first anniversary of Mr. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech and came directly after the president's weekly radio address.
Lieutenant Rieckhoff, a 1998 graduate of Amherst College and former president of the student government there, is a registered Democrat. He approached the Democratic Party about his concerns about the war, but has not yet decided whether to endorse Senator John Kerry for president. He is one of only a few nonpolitical figures to deliver the Democrats' response, said a Kerry campaign official
In his remarks, recorded in Manhattan, Lieutenant Rieckhoff said two images kept replaying in his mind: the scrolling list of war dead and Mr. Bush's April 14 news conference in which he said he would "stay the course."
"Well, it is time for a change," Lieutenant Rieckhoff said in his address. "Our troops are still waiting for more body armor. They are still waiting for better equipment. They are still waiting for a policy that brings in the rest of the world and relieves their burden."
In an interview after his address, he said he was speaking as a private citizen who wanted to convey the mixed situation in Iraq.
"The Iraqi people are making progress and the American military is helping them make that progress," he said. "But at what cost to the American military and what cost to the American people? I'm not sure that our country is better off now. I'm pretty sure that our military is not better off now."
He said he was speaking out because he felt American soldiers in Iraq, many of them working-class people or immigrants, were not being heard. "Not too many people from Amherst in the military," he said, adding, "these are the guys who are stuck interpreting foreign policy on a corner in Baghdad in Arabic."
Lieutenant Rieckhoff returned from Iraq in February but said he still kept in touch through e-mail and telephone calls with his unit: Company B of the Third Battalion, 124th Infantry. "I got an e-mail from a guy who used to be in my platoon recounting to me a story about an R.P.G. round that came through the center of his Humvee and blew apart a kid next to him." An R.P.G. is a rocket-propelled grenade.
As part of a light infantry unit, his men did not use heavy armored vehicles, Lieutenant Rieckhoff said, but they still needed transportation. Two men in his unit whom he described as a former car thief and a former mechanic happened upon a fleet of Land Rovers and Nissan sport utility vehicles that they requisitioned.
"So we ripped doors off them to roll around Baghdad," he said. "We were like the A-Team, and the kids put on Eminem on the stereo."
But there were some 500 soldiers in his battalion and only two or three armored Humvees. The soldiers "would pretty much drew straws as to who was going to ride in the armor who was going to ride in the other ones."
He said he did not know for sure what he planned to do in the near future, but would probably apply to graduate school in public policy. But if he is called back to Iraq again, which could be as early as June, he would serve again, he said. "If I get the call tomorrow, I'm going."
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May 2, 2004
Officer Suggests Iraq Jail Abuse Was Encouraged
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, May 1 — An Army Reserve general whose soldiers were photographed as they abused Iraqi prisoners said Saturday that she knew nothing about the abuse until weeks after it occurred and that she was "sickened" by the pictures. She said the prison cellblock where the abuse occurred was under the tight control of Army military intelligence officers who may have encouraged the abuse.
The suggestion by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski that the reservists acted at the behest of military intelligence officers appears largely supported in a still-classified Army report on prison conditions in Iraq that documented many of the worst abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, including the sexual humiliation of prisoners.
The New Yorker magazine said in its new edition that the report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba found that reservist military police at the prison were urged by Army military officers and C.I.A. agents to "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses."
According to the New Yorker article, the Army report offered accounts of rampant and gruesome abuse from October to December of 2003 that included the sexual assault of an Iraqi detainee with a chemical light stick or broomstick.
While reports of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American and British soldiers have come to light in the last several days, the report cited by The New Yorker indicates a far more wide-ranging and systematic pattern of cruelties than previously reported.
General Karpinski was formally admonished in January and "quietly suspended" from commanding the 800th Military Police Brigade, the New Yorker article reports. while under investigation.
In a phone interview from her home in South Carolina in which she offered her first public comments about the growing international furor over the abuse of the Iraq detainees, General Karpinski said the special high-security cellblock at Abu Ghraib had been under the direct control of Army intelligence officers, not the reservists under her command.
She said that while the reservists involved in the abuses were "bad people" who deserved punishment, she suspected that they were acting with the encouragement, if not at the direction, of military intelligence units that ran the special cellblock used for interrogation. She said that C.I.A. employees often joined in the interrogations at the prison, although she said she did not know if they had unrestricted access to the cellblock.
According to the New Yorker article, by the investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh, one of the soldiers under investigation, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, an Army reservist who is a prison guard in civilian life, may have reinforced General Karpinski's contention in e-mails to family and friends while serving at the prison.
In a letter earlier this year, Sergeant Frederick wrote, "I questioned some of the things that I saw." He described "such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell." He added, "The answer I got was, `This is how military intelligence wants it done.' "
Prisoners were beaten and threatened with rape, electrocution and dog attacks, witnesses told Army investigators, according to the report obtained by The New Yorker. Much of the abuse was sexual, with prisoners often kept naked and forced to perform simulated and real sex acts, witnesses testified. Mr. Hersh notes that such degradations, while deeply offensive in any culture, are particularly humiliating to Arabs because Islamic law and culture so strongly condemn nudity and homosexuality.
General Karpinski said she was speaking out because she believed that military commanders were trying to shift the blame exclusively to her and other reservists and away from intelligence officers still at work in Iraq.
"We're disposable," she said of the military's attitude toward reservists. "Why would they want the active-duty people to take the blame? They want to put this on the M.P.'s and hope that this thing goes away. Well, it's not going to go away."
The Army's public affairs office at the Pentagon referred calls about her comments to military commanders in Iraq.
General Karpinski said in the interview that the special cellblock, known as 1A, was one of about two dozen cellblocks in the large prison complex and was essentially off limits to soldiers who were not part of the interrogations, including virtually all of the military police under her command at Abu Ghraib.
She said repeatedly in the interview that she was not defending the actions of the reservists who took part in the brutality, who were part of her command. She said that when she was first presented with the photographs of the abuse in January, they "sickened me."
"I put my head down because I really thought I was going to throw up," she said. "It was awful. My immediate reaction was: these are bad people, because their faces revealed how much pleasure they felt at this."
But she said the context of the brutality had been lost, noting that the six Army reservists charged in the case represented were only a tiny fraction of the nearly 3,400 reservists under her command in Iraq, and that Abu Ghraib was one of 16 prisons and other incarceration centers around Iraq that she oversaw.
"The suggestion that this was done with my knowledge and continued with my knowledge is so far from the truth," she said of the abuse." I wasn't aware of any of this. I'm horrified by this."
She said she was also alarmed that little attention has been paid to the Army military intelligence unit that controlled Cellblock 1A, where her soldiers guarded the Iraqi detainees between interrogations.
She estimated that the floor space of the two-story cellblock was only about 60 feet by 20 feet, and that military intelligence officers were in and out of the cellblock "24 hours a day," often to escort prisoners to and from an interrogation center away from the prison cells.
"They were in there at 2 in the morning, they were there at 4 in the afternoon," said General Karpinski, who arrived in Iraq last June and was the only woman to hold a command in the war zone. "This was no 9-to-5 job."
She said that C.I.A. employees often participated in the interrogations at Abu Ghraib, one of Iraq's most notorious prisons during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
General Karpinski noted that one of the photographs of abused prisoners also showed the legs of 16 American soldiers — the photograph was cropped so that their upper bodies could not be seen — "and that tells you that clearly other people were participating, because I didn't have 16 people assigned to that cellblock."
The photographs of American soldiers smiling, laughing and signaling "thumbs up" as Iraqi detainees were forced into sexually humiliating positions provoked outrage just as the American military was trying to pacify a rising insurgency and gain the trust of more Iraqis before turning over sovereignty to a new government on June 30.
General Karpinski, who has returned home to South Carolina and her civilian life as a business consultant, said she visited Abu Ghraib as often as twice a week last fall and had repeatedly instructed military police officers under her command to treat prisoners humanely and in accord with international human rights agreements.
"I can speak some Arabic," said General Karpinski, a New Jersey native who spent almost a decade as an active duty soldier before joining the Army Reserve in 1987. "I'm not fluent, but when I went to any of my prison facilities, I would make it a point to try to talk to the detainees."
But she said she did not visit Cellblock 1A, in keeping with the wishes of military intelligence officers who, she said, worried that unnecessary visits might interfere with their interrogations of Iraqis.
She acknowledged that she "probably should have been more aggressive" about visiting the interrogation cellblock, especially after military intelligence officers at the prison went "to great lengths to try to exclude the I.C.R.C. from access to that interrogation wing."
She was referring to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been given access over time to Iraqi detainees at the prison.
General Karpinski's lawyer, Neal A. Puckett, a former military trial judge, said he believed that she was being made a scapegoat for others in the military, especially for military intelligence officers who knew what was going on in Cellblock 1A.
He said General Karpinski had repeatedly insisted that troops under her command in Iraq receive instruction in proper treatment of detainees, but that despite her best efforts, some reservists joined in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. "All you can do is give training, give guidance and assume that your soldiers are going to follow orders and are not going to become sick bastards," he said.
After the first allegations of abuse circulated earlier this year, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq, ordered sweeping inquiries into whether any commanders — including General Karpinski — should be held responsible. He also ordered a review of policies and procedures at all of the prisons controlled by occupation forces in Iraq.
__________________________________________________________________________
Officer Suggests Iraq Jail Abuse Was Encouraged
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, May 1 — An Army Reserve general whose soldiers were photographed as they abused Iraqi prisoners said Saturday that she knew nothing about the abuse until weeks after it occurred and that she was "sickened" by the pictures. She said the prison cellblock where the abuse occurred was under the tight control of Army military intelligence officers who may have encouraged the abuse.
The suggestion by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski that the reservists acted at the behest of military intelligence officers appears largely supported in a still-classified Army report on prison conditions in Iraq that documented many of the worst abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, including the sexual humiliation of prisoners.
The New Yorker magazine said in its new edition that the report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba found that reservist military police at the prison were urged by Army military officers and C.I.A. agents to "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses."
According to the New Yorker article, the Army report offered accounts of rampant and gruesome abuse from October to December of 2003 that included the sexual assault of an Iraqi detainee with a chemical light stick or broomstick.
While reports of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American and British soldiers have come to light in the last several days, the report cited by The New Yorker indicates a far more wide-ranging and systematic pattern of cruelties than previously reported.
General Karpinski was formally admonished in January and "quietly suspended" from commanding the 800th Military Police Brigade, the New Yorker article reports. while under investigation.
In a phone interview from her home in South Carolina in which she offered her first public comments about the growing international furor over the abuse of the Iraq detainees, General Karpinski said the special high-security cellblock at Abu Ghraib had been under the direct control of Army intelligence officers, not the reservists under her command.
She said that while the reservists involved in the abuses were "bad people" who deserved punishment, she suspected that they were acting with the encouragement, if not at the direction, of military intelligence units that ran the special cellblock used for interrogation. She said that C.I.A. employees often joined in the interrogations at the prison, although she said she did not know if they had unrestricted access to the cellblock.
According to the New Yorker article, by the investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh, one of the soldiers under investigation, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, an Army reservist who is a prison guard in civilian life, may have reinforced General Karpinski's contention in e-mails to family and friends while serving at the prison.
In a letter earlier this year, Sergeant Frederick wrote, "I questioned some of the things that I saw." He described "such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell." He added, "The answer I got was, `This is how military intelligence wants it done.' "
Prisoners were beaten and threatened with rape, electrocution and dog attacks, witnesses told Army investigators, according to the report obtained by The New Yorker. Much of the abuse was sexual, with prisoners often kept naked and forced to perform simulated and real sex acts, witnesses testified. Mr. Hersh notes that such degradations, while deeply offensive in any culture, are particularly humiliating to Arabs because Islamic law and culture so strongly condemn nudity and homosexuality.
General Karpinski said she was speaking out because she believed that military commanders were trying to shift the blame exclusively to her and other reservists and away from intelligence officers still at work in Iraq.
"We're disposable," she said of the military's attitude toward reservists. "Why would they want the active-duty people to take the blame? They want to put this on the M.P.'s and hope that this thing goes away. Well, it's not going to go away."
The Army's public affairs office at the Pentagon referred calls about her comments to military commanders in Iraq.
General Karpinski said in the interview that the special cellblock, known as 1A, was one of about two dozen cellblocks in the large prison complex and was essentially off limits to soldiers who were not part of the interrogations, including virtually all of the military police under her command at Abu Ghraib.
She said repeatedly in the interview that she was not defending the actions of the reservists who took part in the brutality, who were part of her command. She said that when she was first presented with the photographs of the abuse in January, they "sickened me."
"I put my head down because I really thought I was going to throw up," she said. "It was awful. My immediate reaction was: these are bad people, because their faces revealed how much pleasure they felt at this."
But she said the context of the brutality had been lost, noting that the six Army reservists charged in the case represented were only a tiny fraction of the nearly 3,400 reservists under her command in Iraq, and that Abu Ghraib was one of 16 prisons and other incarceration centers around Iraq that she oversaw.
"The suggestion that this was done with my knowledge and continued with my knowledge is so far from the truth," she said of the abuse." I wasn't aware of any of this. I'm horrified by this."
She said she was also alarmed that little attention has been paid to the Army military intelligence unit that controlled Cellblock 1A, where her soldiers guarded the Iraqi detainees between interrogations.
She estimated that the floor space of the two-story cellblock was only about 60 feet by 20 feet, and that military intelligence officers were in and out of the cellblock "24 hours a day," often to escort prisoners to and from an interrogation center away from the prison cells.
"They were in there at 2 in the morning, they were there at 4 in the afternoon," said General Karpinski, who arrived in Iraq last June and was the only woman to hold a command in the war zone. "This was no 9-to-5 job."
She said that C.I.A. employees often participated in the interrogations at Abu Ghraib, one of Iraq's most notorious prisons during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
General Karpinski noted that one of the photographs of abused prisoners also showed the legs of 16 American soldiers — the photograph was cropped so that their upper bodies could not be seen — "and that tells you that clearly other people were participating, because I didn't have 16 people assigned to that cellblock."
The photographs of American soldiers smiling, laughing and signaling "thumbs up" as Iraqi detainees were forced into sexually humiliating positions provoked outrage just as the American military was trying to pacify a rising insurgency and gain the trust of more Iraqis before turning over sovereignty to a new government on June 30.
General Karpinski, who has returned home to South Carolina and her civilian life as a business consultant, said she visited Abu Ghraib as often as twice a week last fall and had repeatedly instructed military police officers under her command to treat prisoners humanely and in accord with international human rights agreements.
"I can speak some Arabic," said General Karpinski, a New Jersey native who spent almost a decade as an active duty soldier before joining the Army Reserve in 1987. "I'm not fluent, but when I went to any of my prison facilities, I would make it a point to try to talk to the detainees."
But she said she did not visit Cellblock 1A, in keeping with the wishes of military intelligence officers who, she said, worried that unnecessary visits might interfere with their interrogations of Iraqis.
She acknowledged that she "probably should have been more aggressive" about visiting the interrogation cellblock, especially after military intelligence officers at the prison went "to great lengths to try to exclude the I.C.R.C. from access to that interrogation wing."
She was referring to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been given access over time to Iraqi detainees at the prison.
General Karpinski's lawyer, Neal A. Puckett, a former military trial judge, said he believed that she was being made a scapegoat for others in the military, especially for military intelligence officers who knew what was going on in Cellblock 1A.
He said General Karpinski had repeatedly insisted that troops under her command in Iraq receive instruction in proper treatment of detainees, but that despite her best efforts, some reservists joined in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. "All you can do is give training, give guidance and assume that your soldiers are going to follow orders and are not going to become sick bastards," he said.
After the first allegations of abuse circulated earlier this year, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq, ordered sweeping inquiries into whether any commanders — including General Karpinski — should be held responsible. He also ordered a review of policies and procedures at all of the prisons controlled by occupation forces in Iraq.
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Contempt and ignorance caused this and it comes from the top. But you'll never see Bush accept responsibility.
washingtonpost.com
U.S. Tries to Calm Furor Caused by Photos
Bush Vows Punishment for Abuse of Prisoners
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 1, 2004; Page A01
Arab countries reacted with rage and revulsion yesterday after images of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners were broadcast around the world.
Bush administration and U.S. military officials scrambled to contain the furor and to assuage concerns among allies. The photos showed U.S. troops celebrating as prisoners were sexually humiliated and otherwise abused.
"I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated," President Bush said in a Rose Garden appearance with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. "Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That's not the way we do things in America. And so I didn't like it one bit." Bush said the abuses will be investigated and the perpetrators "will be taken care of."
Analysts said the strong response by Bush appeared directed less at an American audience than at an international audience skeptical about U.S. intentions in Iraq. The United States and Britain are struggling to meet a June 30 deadline for a transfer of sovereignty in Iraq, and the images threatened to undermine already tenuous international cooperation.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was "deeply disturbed" by the photos, and the British government called the matter appalling, though later it confirmed it was investigating allegations of abuse by British soldiers.
Arab countries were more strident, with the Arab League calling the mistreatment "savage acts" and Arab broadcast networks describing the incidents in similar terms. Arab newspapers and students and even a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council said the images could be pivotal in turning Iraqis against the United States.
"This is the logic and modus operandi of imperialist conquest and colonial occupation," the Tehran Times wrote. "The pictures of torture, brutality and sexual sadism are representative of the entire criminal operation being conducted in Iraq."
The photos, first broadcast Wednesday on CBS's "60 Minutes II," showed hooded prisoners piled in a human pyramid and simulating sex acts, as U.S. soldiers celebrated. One photo showed a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his hands; the prisoner was told, falsely, that he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box.
"It provides a graphic portrayal of many of the worst impressions that much of the world has about America," said Andrew Kohut, who, as director of the Pew Research Center, has polled extensively in Arab and European countries. "It's red meat to large numbers of people all around the world who are increasingly anti-American and don't think we represent the things Americans pride themselves on."
Foreign policy experts said the photos could cause lasting damage to U.S. efforts. "It is a disaster," said Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and until earlier this year a political adviser to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. "Five or six people have managed to soil the reputation of American soldiers worldwide."
Arab commentators said the images were particularly damaging because of Muslim restrictions on nudity. The photos also invited parallels to Saddam Hussein's regime because the abuse occurred in Abu Ghraib, a prison used by Hussein for torture.
Without detailing the abuses, the military brought criminal charges in March against six soldiers over incidents, allegedly the ones in the photos, at the prison in November and December 2003. Charges included indecent acts with another person, maltreatment, battery, dereliction of duty and aggravated assault. The military has also recommended disciplinary action against seven U.S. officers involved in running the prison.
In addition, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, is being sent to Iraq to take over the coalition detention facilities. And the CIA said yesterday that its inspector general has two long-standing probes into abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, including one investigation into a prisoner's death. But a CIA spokesman said there is "no direct evidence" connecting the CIA to the incidents in the photographs.
In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman, said he tried to limit the damage before the CBS show on Wednesday. "I talked with the Arab press two nights ago, before the '60 Minutes' show was broadcast because I wanted the Arab press to understand and possibly communicate to their fellow Iraqis a couple of key points," he said. Kimmitt said the U.S. military is "absolutely appalled" by the photos and that the perpetrators are facing criminal charges. He also said authorities believe the incident involves fewer than 20 of about 8,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
"Please don't for a moment think that that's the entire U.S. Army or the U.S. military, because it's not," Kimmitt said in remarks directed at Iraqis. "And if you think those soldiers that are walking up and down the street approve of what they saw, condone what they saw or excuse what they saw, I can tell you that I've got 150,000 other American soldiers who feel as appalled and disappointed as I do at the actions of those few."
Staff writers Sewell Chan in Baghdad and Glenn Kessler and Dana Priest in Washington contributed to this report.
__________________________________________________________________________________
washingtonpost.com
U.S. Tries to Calm Furor Caused by Photos
Bush Vows Punishment for Abuse of Prisoners
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 1, 2004; Page A01
Arab countries reacted with rage and revulsion yesterday after images of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners were broadcast around the world.
Bush administration and U.S. military officials scrambled to contain the furor and to assuage concerns among allies. The photos showed U.S. troops celebrating as prisoners were sexually humiliated and otherwise abused.
"I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated," President Bush said in a Rose Garden appearance with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. "Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That's not the way we do things in America. And so I didn't like it one bit." Bush said the abuses will be investigated and the perpetrators "will be taken care of."
Analysts said the strong response by Bush appeared directed less at an American audience than at an international audience skeptical about U.S. intentions in Iraq. The United States and Britain are struggling to meet a June 30 deadline for a transfer of sovereignty in Iraq, and the images threatened to undermine already tenuous international cooperation.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was "deeply disturbed" by the photos, and the British government called the matter appalling, though later it confirmed it was investigating allegations of abuse by British soldiers.
Arab countries were more strident, with the Arab League calling the mistreatment "savage acts" and Arab broadcast networks describing the incidents in similar terms. Arab newspapers and students and even a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council said the images could be pivotal in turning Iraqis against the United States.
"This is the logic and modus operandi of imperialist conquest and colonial occupation," the Tehran Times wrote. "The pictures of torture, brutality and sexual sadism are representative of the entire criminal operation being conducted in Iraq."
The photos, first broadcast Wednesday on CBS's "60 Minutes II," showed hooded prisoners piled in a human pyramid and simulating sex acts, as U.S. soldiers celebrated. One photo showed a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his hands; the prisoner was told, falsely, that he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box.
"It provides a graphic portrayal of many of the worst impressions that much of the world has about America," said Andrew Kohut, who, as director of the Pew Research Center, has polled extensively in Arab and European countries. "It's red meat to large numbers of people all around the world who are increasingly anti-American and don't think we represent the things Americans pride themselves on."
Foreign policy experts said the photos could cause lasting damage to U.S. efforts. "It is a disaster," said Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and until earlier this year a political adviser to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. "Five or six people have managed to soil the reputation of American soldiers worldwide."
Arab commentators said the images were particularly damaging because of Muslim restrictions on nudity. The photos also invited parallels to Saddam Hussein's regime because the abuse occurred in Abu Ghraib, a prison used by Hussein for torture.
Without detailing the abuses, the military brought criminal charges in March against six soldiers over incidents, allegedly the ones in the photos, at the prison in November and December 2003. Charges included indecent acts with another person, maltreatment, battery, dereliction of duty and aggravated assault. The military has also recommended disciplinary action against seven U.S. officers involved in running the prison.
In addition, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, is being sent to Iraq to take over the coalition detention facilities. And the CIA said yesterday that its inspector general has two long-standing probes into abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, including one investigation into a prisoner's death. But a CIA spokesman said there is "no direct evidence" connecting the CIA to the incidents in the photographs.
In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman, said he tried to limit the damage before the CBS show on Wednesday. "I talked with the Arab press two nights ago, before the '60 Minutes' show was broadcast because I wanted the Arab press to understand and possibly communicate to their fellow Iraqis a couple of key points," he said. Kimmitt said the U.S. military is "absolutely appalled" by the photos and that the perpetrators are facing criminal charges. He also said authorities believe the incident involves fewer than 20 of about 8,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
"Please don't for a moment think that that's the entire U.S. Army or the U.S. military, because it's not," Kimmitt said in remarks directed at Iraqis. "And if you think those soldiers that are walking up and down the street approve of what they saw, condone what they saw or excuse what they saw, I can tell you that I've got 150,000 other American soldiers who feel as appalled and disappointed as I do at the actions of those few."
Staff writers Sewell Chan in Baghdad and Glenn Kessler and Dana Priest in Washington contributed to this report.
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Friday, April 30, 2004
Transcript from Cheney/Bush Meeting with 9/11 Commissioners
4/30/2004
In a stunning coup, the NEW YORK TIMES has obtained an historic exclusive: a (confidential) transcript from yesterday's 9/11 commission interview with Cheney and Bush. There was no formal recording of the meeting, so the following text has been loosely pieced together from the notes of a 9/11 commission staffer.
CHAIRMAN THOMAS KEAN (R): Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, on behalf of the commission, I'd like to thank you for taking time to meet with us in the Oval Office this morning. I think we can all agree that this is of the utmost importance, even if these are unusual circumstances.
PRES. BUSH: Sure thing. The American people need to learn about these thugs and assassins, these enemies of freedom, these evildoing evildoers...
VICE PRES. CHENEY: [aside to Bush] Save some for later, George.
KEAN: Right, well, that being said, before we get started, I think I speak for all the commissioners here today when I say that, Mr. President, I think we'd all feel a little more comfortable if you weren't sitting on the vice president's lap.
[Cheney nods and Bush moves.]
COMMISSIONER SLADE GORTON (R): Gentlemen, what we're discussing today is a very serious issue. We're looking for difficult answers about our nation's greatest tragedy, and so my first question is this: Remember that time after 9/11 in New York when you grabbed that bullhorn and spoke to the people? Was that the greatest show of leadership ever, or what?
BUSH: Thanks Slady, that was good, wasn't it. I wanted to be sure to send a message to all those enemies of freedom, so I grabbed that bullhorn. At the time, it seemed the best thing to do. Later we figured the best way to send a message would be to attack a completely different country: Iraq.
CHENEY: [clears his throat, then shoots a disgusted look over at Bush] I think what the president meant to say was that there are many terrorists out there, in all shapes and sizes: al Qaeda members, Hussein loyalists, pro-choice demonstrators.
COMMISSIONER JAMIE GORELICK (D): President Bush, you have often said...[realizes the president has become preoccupied with a bug on the window]...um, Vice President Cheney then, people in this administration have repeatedly said that terrorism was your highest priority upon assuming office. Yet Attorney General John Ashcroft didn't include terrorism on his list of priorities, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appears to have done little to nothing to alert the president on the issue, and CIA Director George Tenet -whose hair was supposedly on fire - barely met with the president in the month before September 11. How can this be considered your highest priority?
CHENEY: Commissioner Gorelick, again, you must remember that terrorism takes many, many forms. Were we completely focused on al Qaeda? No. Did everyone in the administration [subtly gestures over to the president] even know who al Qaeda was? No. But that's not to say we weren't fighting terrorism. What about the terror inflicted on this great nation by the estate tax? Or astronomical taxes on special interests? Why is that never mentioned? We moved swiftly to eliminate these forms of evil terrorism, and everyone in the administration is proud of our record.
Or what about the terror inflicted by international abortion education programs? Talk about your global terror networks! That's why, within the first weeks of the Cheney/Bush administration, we moved to sign the Global Gag Rule, preventing any US funds from reaching any of these health clinics. Again, we are quite proud of these efforts.
[President Bush leaps off the couch to smack the bug on the windowsill. He misses badly, then slinks back to his seat next to Cheney.]
BUSH: Goshdarned flies. Tired of swatting.
COMMISSIONER JOHN LEHMAN (R): President Bush, what was your reaction when you saw the August 6, 2001 PDB entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike In US"?
BUSH: I skimmed it - actually didn't read it all. Stuck a copy of "Bassmaster" magazine inside of it and pretended to read it. Old high school trick. "Bassmaster" is a good magazine, written by good wholesome American people. Al Qaeda members don't fish.
[Bush's voice changes audibly to a familiar low grumble.] As Condoleezza Rice told you earlier, I requested that PDB because I was concerned about al Qaeda's efforts, but it did not contain any new threat information. It was based on historical evidence. The fact that I requested such a document is evidence of our commitment to fighting terror before 9/11.
[Commissioners sit in stunned silence. Finally Bob Kerrey speaks.]
KERREY: Mr. President, are you ok?
CHENEY: I'm...uh, he's fine.
[The fly has returned to the windowsill. President Bush is once again transfixed.]
KERREY: Nice trick, Mr. Vice President. From now on, we'll just ask you the questions directly and spare everyone some embarrassment. If counterterrorism was of such high importance to this administration, why did no one respond to Dick Clarke's reports? Why did your counterterrorism task force not meet even once before 9/11? Couldn't this be read as a sign of neglect?
CHENEY: We did everything we could, short of actually getting together and meeting face to face. It took awhile to decide on a task force logo, and creating a new letterhead and business cards is quite a time-consuming process with all that bureaucratic red tape that tree-hugging liberals love to put in place. My first antiterror business card read, "Vice President Cheny." Now what terrorist is going to respect that?
[Bush has resumed his war against the fly. He pulls a cigarette lighter in the shape of Texas out of his pocket and creeps toward the window.]
COMMISSIONER RICHARD BEN-VENISTE (D): What about the August 2001 CIA briefing paper entitled, "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly"? Did that provide any clues?
BUSH: I can answer that -
CHENEY: Shhh! Sorry. What the president was going to say is that he was completely focused on fighting the terror war from his ranch in Crawford, Texas at that time. The president finds that he does some of his best thinking about how best to fight terrorism while clearing brush from his ranch, fishing, and eating Texas BBQ. As for myself, at that point, my counterterrorism task force was still deadlocked over the important issue of where we should hold our first lunch meeting.
[Bush leaps off the couch and closes the window drapes, trapping the fly. The commissioners and Vice President Cheney watch in horror as Bush holds the drapes shut and lights them on fire to kill the bug. The room is quickly engulfed in smoke, and everyone is forced to evacuate the disaster area.]
KEAN: I guess that will be all for today. Gentlemen, thank you, I guess...
BUSH: Mission accomplished!
[end transcript]
End of April Fool!
--------------
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. -Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865)
___________________________________________________________
4/30/2004
In a stunning coup, the NEW YORK TIMES has obtained an historic exclusive: a (confidential) transcript from yesterday's 9/11 commission interview with Cheney and Bush. There was no formal recording of the meeting, so the following text has been loosely pieced together from the notes of a 9/11 commission staffer.
CHAIRMAN THOMAS KEAN (R): Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, on behalf of the commission, I'd like to thank you for taking time to meet with us in the Oval Office this morning. I think we can all agree that this is of the utmost importance, even if these are unusual circumstances.
PRES. BUSH: Sure thing. The American people need to learn about these thugs and assassins, these enemies of freedom, these evildoing evildoers...
VICE PRES. CHENEY: [aside to Bush] Save some for later, George.
KEAN: Right, well, that being said, before we get started, I think I speak for all the commissioners here today when I say that, Mr. President, I think we'd all feel a little more comfortable if you weren't sitting on the vice president's lap.
[Cheney nods and Bush moves.]
COMMISSIONER SLADE GORTON (R): Gentlemen, what we're discussing today is a very serious issue. We're looking for difficult answers about our nation's greatest tragedy, and so my first question is this: Remember that time after 9/11 in New York when you grabbed that bullhorn and spoke to the people? Was that the greatest show of leadership ever, or what?
BUSH: Thanks Slady, that was good, wasn't it. I wanted to be sure to send a message to all those enemies of freedom, so I grabbed that bullhorn. At the time, it seemed the best thing to do. Later we figured the best way to send a message would be to attack a completely different country: Iraq.
CHENEY: [clears his throat, then shoots a disgusted look over at Bush] I think what the president meant to say was that there are many terrorists out there, in all shapes and sizes: al Qaeda members, Hussein loyalists, pro-choice demonstrators.
COMMISSIONER JAMIE GORELICK (D): President Bush, you have often said...[realizes the president has become preoccupied with a bug on the window]...um, Vice President Cheney then, people in this administration have repeatedly said that terrorism was your highest priority upon assuming office. Yet Attorney General John Ashcroft didn't include terrorism on his list of priorities, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appears to have done little to nothing to alert the president on the issue, and CIA Director George Tenet -whose hair was supposedly on fire - barely met with the president in the month before September 11. How can this be considered your highest priority?
CHENEY: Commissioner Gorelick, again, you must remember that terrorism takes many, many forms. Were we completely focused on al Qaeda? No. Did everyone in the administration [subtly gestures over to the president] even know who al Qaeda was? No. But that's not to say we weren't fighting terrorism. What about the terror inflicted on this great nation by the estate tax? Or astronomical taxes on special interests? Why is that never mentioned? We moved swiftly to eliminate these forms of evil terrorism, and everyone in the administration is proud of our record.
Or what about the terror inflicted by international abortion education programs? Talk about your global terror networks! That's why, within the first weeks of the Cheney/Bush administration, we moved to sign the Global Gag Rule, preventing any US funds from reaching any of these health clinics. Again, we are quite proud of these efforts.
[President Bush leaps off the couch to smack the bug on the windowsill. He misses badly, then slinks back to his seat next to Cheney.]
BUSH: Goshdarned flies. Tired of swatting.
COMMISSIONER JOHN LEHMAN (R): President Bush, what was your reaction when you saw the August 6, 2001 PDB entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike In US"?
BUSH: I skimmed it - actually didn't read it all. Stuck a copy of "Bassmaster" magazine inside of it and pretended to read it. Old high school trick. "Bassmaster" is a good magazine, written by good wholesome American people. Al Qaeda members don't fish.
[Bush's voice changes audibly to a familiar low grumble.] As Condoleezza Rice told you earlier, I requested that PDB because I was concerned about al Qaeda's efforts, but it did not contain any new threat information. It was based on historical evidence. The fact that I requested such a document is evidence of our commitment to fighting terror before 9/11.
[Commissioners sit in stunned silence. Finally Bob Kerrey speaks.]
KERREY: Mr. President, are you ok?
CHENEY: I'm...uh, he's fine.
[The fly has returned to the windowsill. President Bush is once again transfixed.]
KERREY: Nice trick, Mr. Vice President. From now on, we'll just ask you the questions directly and spare everyone some embarrassment. If counterterrorism was of such high importance to this administration, why did no one respond to Dick Clarke's reports? Why did your counterterrorism task force not meet even once before 9/11? Couldn't this be read as a sign of neglect?
CHENEY: We did everything we could, short of actually getting together and meeting face to face. It took awhile to decide on a task force logo, and creating a new letterhead and business cards is quite a time-consuming process with all that bureaucratic red tape that tree-hugging liberals love to put in place. My first antiterror business card read, "Vice President Cheny." Now what terrorist is going to respect that?
[Bush has resumed his war against the fly. He pulls a cigarette lighter in the shape of Texas out of his pocket and creeps toward the window.]
COMMISSIONER RICHARD BEN-VENISTE (D): What about the August 2001 CIA briefing paper entitled, "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly"? Did that provide any clues?
BUSH: I can answer that -
CHENEY: Shhh! Sorry. What the president was going to say is that he was completely focused on fighting the terror war from his ranch in Crawford, Texas at that time. The president finds that he does some of his best thinking about how best to fight terrorism while clearing brush from his ranch, fishing, and eating Texas BBQ. As for myself, at that point, my counterterrorism task force was still deadlocked over the important issue of where we should hold our first lunch meeting.
[Bush leaps off the couch and closes the window drapes, trapping the fly. The commissioners and Vice President Cheney watch in horror as Bush holds the drapes shut and lights them on fire to kill the bug. The room is quickly engulfed in smoke, and everyone is forced to evacuate the disaster area.]
KEAN: I guess that will be all for today. Gentlemen, thank you, I guess...
BUSH: Mission accomplished!
[end transcript]
End of April Fool!
--------------
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. -Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865)
___________________________________________________________
THE WORLD
Wolfowitz Comes Up Short on Troop Deaths
By Esther Schrader
Times Staff Writer
April 30, 2004
WASHINGTON — Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, testifying Thursday before a congressional subcommittee, drastically underestimated the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began.
"It's approximately 500, of which — I can get the exact numbers — approximately 350 are combat deaths," said Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the war.
According to the Pentagon, 726 U.S. troops had died in Iraq as of Thursday morning. Of those, 524 were combat deaths. That figure does not include U.S. civilian deaths.
"He misspoke," Wolfowitz spokesman Charley Cooper said later. "We're correcting the record."
Wolfowitz provided the erroneous casualty figures while being questioned by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) during a hearing by the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations. Kaptur complained that many soldiers still used vehicles without doors for transportation, and asked Wolfowitz how many soldiers were killed in such vehicles.
Wolfowitz responded that "we are doing everything we can" to protect troops.
"There is nothing that guarantees protection, as I think you know," he added.
_________________________________________________________________
Wolfowitz Comes Up Short on Troop Deaths
By Esther Schrader
Times Staff Writer
April 30, 2004
WASHINGTON — Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, testifying Thursday before a congressional subcommittee, drastically underestimated the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began.
"It's approximately 500, of which — I can get the exact numbers — approximately 350 are combat deaths," said Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the war.
According to the Pentagon, 726 U.S. troops had died in Iraq as of Thursday morning. Of those, 524 were combat deaths. That figure does not include U.S. civilian deaths.
"He misspoke," Wolfowitz spokesman Charley Cooper said later. "We're correcting the record."
Wolfowitz provided the erroneous casualty figures while being questioned by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) during a hearing by the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations. Kaptur complained that many soldiers still used vehicles without doors for transportation, and asked Wolfowitz how many soldiers were killed in such vehicles.
Wolfowitz responded that "we are doing everything we can" to protect troops.
"There is nothing that guarantees protection, as I think you know," he added.
_________________________________________________________________
April 30, 2004
NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
In Front of Your Nose
By PAUL KRUGMAN
We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." That's from George Orwell's 1946 essay "In Front of Your Nose." It seems especially relevant right now, as we survey the wreckage of America's Iraq adventure.
Tomorrow a year will have passed since George Bush's "Mission Accomplished" carrier landing. Throughout that year — right up to the surge in violence this month — administration officials assured us that things were going well in Iraq. Living standards, they said, were steadily improving. The resistance, they insisted, consisted of a handful of dead-enders aided by a few foreign infiltrators — and each lull in attacks brought pronouncements that the campaign against the insurgents had turned the corner.
So they lied to us; what else is new? But there's more at stake here than the administration's credibility. The official story line portrayed a virtuous circle of nation-building, one that could eventually lead to a democratic Iraq, allied with the U.S. In fact, we seem to be faced with a vicious circle, in which a deteriorating security situation undermines reconstruction, and the lack of material progress adds to popular discontent. Can this situation be saved?
Even among harsh critics of the administration's Iraq policy, the usual view is that we have to finish the job. You've heard the arguments: We broke it; we bought it. We can't cut and run. We have to stay the course.
I understand the appeal of those arguments. But I'm worried about the arithmetic.
All the information I've been able to get my hands on indicates that the security situation in Iraq is really, really bad. It's not a good sign when, a year into an occupation, the occupying army sends for more tanks. Western civilians have retreated to armed enclaves. U.S. forces are strong enough to defend those enclaves, and probably strong enough to keep essential supplies flowing. But we don't have remotely enough troops to turn the vicious circle around. The Iraqi forces that were supposed to fill the security gap collapsed — or turned against us — at the first sign of trouble.
And all of the proposals one hears for resolving this ugly situation seem to be either impractical or far behind the curve.
Some say we should send more troops. But the U.S. military doesn't have more troops to send, unless it resorts to extreme measures, like withdrawing a large part of the forces currently in South Korea. Did I mention that North Korea is building nuclear weapons, and may already have eight?
Others say we should seek more support from other countries. There may once have been a time — say, last summer — when the U.S. could have struck a deal: by ceding a lot of authority to the U.N., we might have been able to persuade countries with large armies, like India, to contribute large numbers of peacekeeping troops. But it's hard to imagine that anyone will now send significant forces into the Iraqi cauldron.
Some pin their hopes on a political solution: they believe that violence will subside if the U.N. is allowed to appoint a caretaker government that Iraqis don't view as a U.S. puppet.
Let's hope they're right. But bear in mind that right now the U.S. is still planning to hand over "sovereignty" to a body, yet to be named, that will have hardly any power at all. For practical purposes, the U.S. ambassador will be running the country. Americans may believe that everything will change on June 30, but Iraqis are unlikely to be fooled. And by the way, much of the Arab world believes that we've been committing war crimes in Falluja.
I don't have a plan for Iraq. I strongly suspect, however, that all the plans you hear now are irrelevant. If America's leaders hadn't made so many bad decisions, they might have had a chance to shape Iraq to their liking. But that window closed many months ago.
_____________________________________________________________
NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
In Front of Your Nose
By PAUL KRUGMAN
We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." That's from George Orwell's 1946 essay "In Front of Your Nose." It seems especially relevant right now, as we survey the wreckage of America's Iraq adventure.
Tomorrow a year will have passed since George Bush's "Mission Accomplished" carrier landing. Throughout that year — right up to the surge in violence this month — administration officials assured us that things were going well in Iraq. Living standards, they said, were steadily improving. The resistance, they insisted, consisted of a handful of dead-enders aided by a few foreign infiltrators — and each lull in attacks brought pronouncements that the campaign against the insurgents had turned the corner.
So they lied to us; what else is new? But there's more at stake here than the administration's credibility. The official story line portrayed a virtuous circle of nation-building, one that could eventually lead to a democratic Iraq, allied with the U.S. In fact, we seem to be faced with a vicious circle, in which a deteriorating security situation undermines reconstruction, and the lack of material progress adds to popular discontent. Can this situation be saved?
Even among harsh critics of the administration's Iraq policy, the usual view is that we have to finish the job. You've heard the arguments: We broke it; we bought it. We can't cut and run. We have to stay the course.
I understand the appeal of those arguments. But I'm worried about the arithmetic.
All the information I've been able to get my hands on indicates that the security situation in Iraq is really, really bad. It's not a good sign when, a year into an occupation, the occupying army sends for more tanks. Western civilians have retreated to armed enclaves. U.S. forces are strong enough to defend those enclaves, and probably strong enough to keep essential supplies flowing. But we don't have remotely enough troops to turn the vicious circle around. The Iraqi forces that were supposed to fill the security gap collapsed — or turned against us — at the first sign of trouble.
And all of the proposals one hears for resolving this ugly situation seem to be either impractical or far behind the curve.
Some say we should send more troops. But the U.S. military doesn't have more troops to send, unless it resorts to extreme measures, like withdrawing a large part of the forces currently in South Korea. Did I mention that North Korea is building nuclear weapons, and may already have eight?
Others say we should seek more support from other countries. There may once have been a time — say, last summer — when the U.S. could have struck a deal: by ceding a lot of authority to the U.N., we might have been able to persuade countries with large armies, like India, to contribute large numbers of peacekeeping troops. But it's hard to imagine that anyone will now send significant forces into the Iraqi cauldron.
Some pin their hopes on a political solution: they believe that violence will subside if the U.N. is allowed to appoint a caretaker government that Iraqis don't view as a U.S. puppet.
Let's hope they're right. But bear in mind that right now the U.S. is still planning to hand over "sovereignty" to a body, yet to be named, that will have hardly any power at all. For practical purposes, the U.S. ambassador will be running the country. Americans may believe that everything will change on June 30, but Iraqis are unlikely to be fooled. And by the way, much of the Arab world believes that we've been committing war crimes in Falluja.
I don't have a plan for Iraq. I strongly suspect, however, that all the plans you hear now are irrelevant. If America's leaders hadn't made so many bad decisions, they might have had a chance to shape Iraq to their liking. But that window closed many months ago.
_____________________________________________________________
Bush's TV ads slam Kerry for "voting against giving body armor to our troops in Iraq" while witholding the info that Kerry was trying to cut back the wealthy elite's tax cuts to pay for it! That means putting the burden OFF the Middle Class and have the wealthiest people in America help pay for a war many are profiting from. NOW we learn of how Bush's leadership has left our troops without the proper armored vehicles because they were trying to play it cheap over safety. That's American's lives they are wasting! This administration is a moral failure trying to hide behind an obscene veil of hyprocisy.
April 30, 2004 NY TIMES EDITORIAL
Troops Without Armor in Iraq
It's hard to imagine what the Pentagon was thinking when it told the American Army and Marine replacement divisions bound for Iraq earlier this year to leave their tanks and other heavily armored vehicles behind. American military planners seem to have ignored evidence that armed resistance to the occupation was far from suppressed. As a result, they failed to anticipate the kinds of ambushes and urban firefights these troops are now caught up in and against which tanks and armored personnel carriers afford the best protection.
That costly miscalculation has left American soldiers in their thin-skinned Humvees nearly defenseless against the rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and AK-47 rifle fire they face almost daily. While political spokesmen have played down the seriousness of the fighting that has killed 126 Americans just this month, field commanders have been pleading desperately for more armor.
This week, the Pentagon finally ordered that thousands of armored vehicles be sent to Iraq, from 70-ton Abrams tanks to lighter and faster Bradley and Stryker combat vehicles, plus an armored version of the Humvee, whose production is now being accelerated. Every effort must be made to speed the movement of this badly needed equipment to minimize future American casualties.
The Defense Department now tries to justify its earlier mistake of leaving the heavy armor behind by arguing that tankbound soldiers are poorly suited to engaging with the Iraqi civilian population and winning hearts and minds. True enough, but having the tanks on hand would not have prevented such efforts in more secure areas, and would have saved lives in battle zones like Falluja and Najaf.
More than American troop reinforcements and heavier armor will be needed to resolve the underlying political problems in Iraq. That will take, at a minimum, a credible transfer of sovereignty to a representative Iraqi governing body backed by the legitimacy of full United Nations involvement. Meanwhile, for as long as American troops are needed, they must be properly equipped.
This latest military planning fiasco seems yet another example of the Pentagon's damaging insistence that American ground forces make do with fewer troops and lighter equipment than they really need to carry out the mission they have been assigned in Iraq. This page shares the long-term goal of transforming the Army into a more mobile and agile fighting force, but not at the expense of American soldiers' lives.
From the first days of the Iraqi conflict, the Pentagon's stubborn refusal to face up to the realities of the battlefield there has compounded the political and military problems of occupation and needlessly endangered American soldiers. It is past time for those lessons to be digested and for American forces to be given the reinforcements and equipment they sorely need.
_____________________________________________________________
April 30, 2004 NY TIMES EDITORIAL
Troops Without Armor in Iraq
It's hard to imagine what the Pentagon was thinking when it told the American Army and Marine replacement divisions bound for Iraq earlier this year to leave their tanks and other heavily armored vehicles behind. American military planners seem to have ignored evidence that armed resistance to the occupation was far from suppressed. As a result, they failed to anticipate the kinds of ambushes and urban firefights these troops are now caught up in and against which tanks and armored personnel carriers afford the best protection.
That costly miscalculation has left American soldiers in their thin-skinned Humvees nearly defenseless against the rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and AK-47 rifle fire they face almost daily. While political spokesmen have played down the seriousness of the fighting that has killed 126 Americans just this month, field commanders have been pleading desperately for more armor.
This week, the Pentagon finally ordered that thousands of armored vehicles be sent to Iraq, from 70-ton Abrams tanks to lighter and faster Bradley and Stryker combat vehicles, plus an armored version of the Humvee, whose production is now being accelerated. Every effort must be made to speed the movement of this badly needed equipment to minimize future American casualties.
The Defense Department now tries to justify its earlier mistake of leaving the heavy armor behind by arguing that tankbound soldiers are poorly suited to engaging with the Iraqi civilian population and winning hearts and minds. True enough, but having the tanks on hand would not have prevented such efforts in more secure areas, and would have saved lives in battle zones like Falluja and Najaf.
More than American troop reinforcements and heavier armor will be needed to resolve the underlying political problems in Iraq. That will take, at a minimum, a credible transfer of sovereignty to a representative Iraqi governing body backed by the legitimacy of full United Nations involvement. Meanwhile, for as long as American troops are needed, they must be properly equipped.
This latest military planning fiasco seems yet another example of the Pentagon's damaging insistence that American ground forces make do with fewer troops and lighter equipment than they really need to carry out the mission they have been assigned in Iraq. This page shares the long-term goal of transforming the Army into a more mobile and agile fighting force, but not at the expense of American soldiers' lives.
From the first days of the Iraqi conflict, the Pentagon's stubborn refusal to face up to the realities of the battlefield there has compounded the political and military problems of occupation and needlessly endangered American soldiers. It is past time for those lessons to be digested and for American forces to be given the reinforcements and equipment they sorely need.
_____________________________________________________________
Bush is not only a baby he's an intellectual midget whose lack of curiosity and shallow capacity for understanding the "big picture" was recognized by people within his own ranks.
Bremer Faulted Bush Before Terror Attacks
Thu Apr 29,10:58 PM ET
WASHINGTON - L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, said in a speech six months before the Sept. 11 attacks that the Bush administration was "paying no attention" to terrorism.
"What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this,'" Bremer said at a McCormick Tribune Foundation conference on terrorism on Feb. 26, 2001.
Bremer spoke at the conference shortly after he chaired the National Commission on Terrorism, a bipartisan body formed by the Clinton administration to examine U.S. counterterrorism policies.
The remarks drew attention on the same day Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appeared before the Sept. 11 commission to explain the precautions they took to prevent a terrorist attack after taking office in January 2001.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan did not comment on the Bremer remarks directly.
But he said, "The actions we took prior to Sept. 11 demonstrate that we took the terrorist threat seriously. The first major foreign policy directive was a comprehensive, aggressive strategy to eliminate al-Qaida."
The foundation is a charitable organization founded by Robert McCormick, former editor and publisher of The Chicago Tribune.
At the speech, delivered in Wheaton, Ill., Bremer, whose diplomatic jobs included a stint as ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism, said a war against terrorism would be unending.
"If you call it a war, you suggest there's a victory," he said. "I would argue there is no final victory in the war against terrorism any more than there is in the so-called war against crime."
_________________________________________________________
Bremer Faulted Bush Before Terror Attacks
Thu Apr 29,10:58 PM ET
WASHINGTON - L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, said in a speech six months before the Sept. 11 attacks that the Bush administration was "paying no attention" to terrorism.
"What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this,'" Bremer said at a McCormick Tribune Foundation conference on terrorism on Feb. 26, 2001.
Bremer spoke at the conference shortly after he chaired the National Commission on Terrorism, a bipartisan body formed by the Clinton administration to examine U.S. counterterrorism policies.
The remarks drew attention on the same day Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appeared before the Sept. 11 commission to explain the precautions they took to prevent a terrorist attack after taking office in January 2001.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan did not comment on the Bremer remarks directly.
But he said, "The actions we took prior to Sept. 11 demonstrate that we took the terrorist threat seriously. The first major foreign policy directive was a comprehensive, aggressive strategy to eliminate al-Qaida."
The foundation is a charitable organization founded by Robert McCormick, former editor and publisher of The Chicago Tribune.
At the speech, delivered in Wheaton, Ill., Bremer, whose diplomatic jobs included a stint as ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism, said a war against terrorism would be unending.
"If you call it a war, you suggest there's a victory," he said. "I would argue there is no final victory in the war against terrorism any more than there is in the so-called war against crime."
_________________________________________________________
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Los Angeles Times
COMMENTARY
'I Want to Know the Ugly Truth'
By Monica Gabrielle
Monica Gabrielle is a member of the Family Steering Committee.
April 29, 2004
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will sit down this morning with the entire 9/11 Independent Commission to give their account of events leading up to Sept. 11 — a day that took the life of my husband, along with 3,000 other innocent people. Bush and Cheney will appear together because they refuse to appear separately. It will be behind closed doors because they don't want to speak publicly. There will be a "note taker," no recorded transcript.
But I want to know the whole ugly truth. My husband, Richard Gabrielle, died on the 103rd floor of Tower 2 that day; I want to know what was done beforehand to prevent it from happening, and I want to know what we're doing to prevent it from happening again. My great fear is that their answers will never find their way to the public.
I can't be at the meeting. I'm not allowed in. But if I were, this is what I would ask.
For President Bush:
1. Why was our nation so utterly unprepared for an attack on our own soil?
2. On the morning of 9/11, who was in charge while you were away from the National Military Command Center? Were you informed or consulted about all decisions made in your absence?
3. At what time were you made aware that other planes were hijacked in addition to Flight 11 and Flight 175? What was your course of action?
4. Beginning with the transition period between the Clinton administration and your own, and ending on 9/11/01, specifically what information about terrorists, possible attacks and targets did you receive?
5. Please explain why no one in our government has yet been held accountable for the failures leading up to and on 9/11.
6. From May 1 until Sept. 11, 2001, did you receive any information from any intelligence agency official that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack this nation on its own soil? That terrorists were planning to use airplanes as weapons? That New York City landmarks were being targeted?
7. What defensive measures did you take in response to pre- 9/11 warnings and/or threats from 11 nations about a terrorist attack, many of which cited an attack in the continental U.S.?
8. From May 1, 2001, until Sept. 11, 2001, did you or any agent of the U.S. government carry out any negotiations or talks with Bin Laden, an agent of Bin Laden or Al Qaeda?
For Vice President Cheney:
1. On Sept. 11, when did you first become aware that the U.S. was under attack?
2. The Hart-Rudman report, released in January 2001, predicted a terrorist attack within the U.S. Yet the White House set aside report recommendations and announced in May that you would study the issue of domestic terrorism. Apparently, responsibility was then passed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency director. Congress had been willing to support the recommendations. What happened?
3. Besides ensuring the succession to the presidency, is there a defense protocol in the event our nation is attacked? What is it and was it followed?
4. What subsequent actions did you take to defend our nation?
a. Did you have open lines with the Secret Service, NORAD, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense?
b. Who was in the Situation Room with you?
c. Was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or anyone at the Pentagon informed that we were under attack? If so, at what time was the Pentagon informed? If not Rumsfeld, who?
d. Why wasn't the Pentagon defended?
e. Did you consult with President Bush about all decisions?
5. Please describe any discussions/negotiations between the Taliban and either public or private agents before Sept. 11 regarding Bin Laden and/or rights to pass a pipeline through Afghanistan, or any other subject pertaining to Afghanistan.
_______________________________________________________________
COMMENTARY
'I Want to Know the Ugly Truth'
By Monica Gabrielle
Monica Gabrielle is a member of the Family Steering Committee.
April 29, 2004
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will sit down this morning with the entire 9/11 Independent Commission to give their account of events leading up to Sept. 11 — a day that took the life of my husband, along with 3,000 other innocent people. Bush and Cheney will appear together because they refuse to appear separately. It will be behind closed doors because they don't want to speak publicly. There will be a "note taker," no recorded transcript.
But I want to know the whole ugly truth. My husband, Richard Gabrielle, died on the 103rd floor of Tower 2 that day; I want to know what was done beforehand to prevent it from happening, and I want to know what we're doing to prevent it from happening again. My great fear is that their answers will never find their way to the public.
I can't be at the meeting. I'm not allowed in. But if I were, this is what I would ask.
For President Bush:
1. Why was our nation so utterly unprepared for an attack on our own soil?
2. On the morning of 9/11, who was in charge while you were away from the National Military Command Center? Were you informed or consulted about all decisions made in your absence?
3. At what time were you made aware that other planes were hijacked in addition to Flight 11 and Flight 175? What was your course of action?
4. Beginning with the transition period between the Clinton administration and your own, and ending on 9/11/01, specifically what information about terrorists, possible attacks and targets did you receive?
5. Please explain why no one in our government has yet been held accountable for the failures leading up to and on 9/11.
6. From May 1 until Sept. 11, 2001, did you receive any information from any intelligence agency official that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack this nation on its own soil? That terrorists were planning to use airplanes as weapons? That New York City landmarks were being targeted?
7. What defensive measures did you take in response to pre- 9/11 warnings and/or threats from 11 nations about a terrorist attack, many of which cited an attack in the continental U.S.?
8. From May 1, 2001, until Sept. 11, 2001, did you or any agent of the U.S. government carry out any negotiations or talks with Bin Laden, an agent of Bin Laden or Al Qaeda?
For Vice President Cheney:
1. On Sept. 11, when did you first become aware that the U.S. was under attack?
2. The Hart-Rudman report, released in January 2001, predicted a terrorist attack within the U.S. Yet the White House set aside report recommendations and announced in May that you would study the issue of domestic terrorism. Apparently, responsibility was then passed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency director. Congress had been willing to support the recommendations. What happened?
3. Besides ensuring the succession to the presidency, is there a defense protocol in the event our nation is attacked? What is it and was it followed?
4. What subsequent actions did you take to defend our nation?
a. Did you have open lines with the Secret Service, NORAD, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense?
b. Who was in the Situation Room with you?
c. Was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or anyone at the Pentagon informed that we were under attack? If so, at what time was the Pentagon informed? If not Rumsfeld, who?
d. Why wasn't the Pentagon defended?
e. Did you consult with President Bush about all decisions?
5. Please describe any discussions/negotiations between the Taliban and either public or private agents before Sept. 11 regarding Bin Laden and/or rights to pass a pipeline through Afghanistan, or any other subject pertaining to Afghanistan.
_______________________________________________________________
When Iraq loses someone like this man, it loses the support from millions of moderates. Democracy in Iraq loses the longer we give them their people reasons to doubt our interest in bringing real self-control to them. America is viewed as occupiers not liberators now.
Baghdad blast claims intellectual ally of U.S.
Thu Apr 29, 9:40 AM ET
By Evan Osnos Tribune foreign correspondent
When war arrived, 70-year-old professor Gailan Ramiz set out to protect the small, refined world he cherished.
Tall, reedy and avuncular, with a fondness for tweed jackets, he built a brick wall around his prized possession, the elegant but timeworn 1930s-era yellow-brick home he shared with his wife and their decades' collection of books from Princeton, Harvard and Oxford, where he studied, and Baghdad University, where he taught political science.
Then the respected political scientist nurtured his intellectual treasure--democracy--penning opinion articles that were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein, meeting with foreign journalists and heralding the dream, as Ramiz wrote in the International Herald Tribune a year ago, of an Iraq "whose democratic values and institutions would be a shining example to the entire Middle East."
This week, the chaotic and brutal world outside finally reached him.
While he sat with his wife and their daughter in their stately, high-ceilinged drawing room Monday, an explosion tore through his home, reducing most of it to rubble. Ramiz was killed, pulling one more member from Baghdad's once-hopeful ranks of moderate thinkers and leaving a bitter legacy for relatives who say their faith in America has worn thin. His wife was injured.
U.S. soldiers had come to investigate a tip that munitions were being produced in a perfume factory that rented the rear of the basement of Ramiz' house. U.S. officials still do not know what caused the blast, which left two Americans dead and eight wounded. But a U.S. official in Washington told The Associated Press that it was believed to be accidental, an ignition of poorly stored flammable chemicals.
Another AP report suggested the troops might have been lured there on a false tip. But military authorities in Baghdad say they have no evidence that Ramiz knew what was thought to be unfolding in his basement.
For the professor, it was the catastrophic end to a year of diminishing hope that mirrored in many ways the feelings of the city and nation he spent a lifetime analyzing.
By the next day, all that remained of Ramiz's rarified world were mounds of broken bricks and scorched furniture, mixed with torn, yellowed pages of international law journals and volumes of Russian history. The house's facade, with its delicate wood arches, had survived, but a bloody scarf lay on the spot where the family was sitting at the time of the blast.
Children scampered over torn books and rooted through the ruins for anything of value. Relatives said the jewelry, gold and silver were taken before anyone thought to protect them.
Nervous-looking soldiers
Three U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles arrived Tuesday afternoon with a tow truck to remove the charred hulls of three Humvees, now swarmed by looting children.
For the nervous-looking soldiers who fanned into the street, this was the site of a tragic and mysterious incident. The two Americans who died were members of the Iraq Survey Group, a government team that is searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, an unnamed defense official told the AP.
Soldiers stood with their guns at the ready as one ordered relatives to get out of the house so the Humvees could be hauled from the rubble. Ramiz's father-in-law, Qassim Murad, in a rumpled black suit, rose from a bench by the front door of the ruined house and walked away, sobbing.
"This is democracy? Democracy sounds like that?" spat Jamaal Qassim, an electrical engineer and Ramiz's brother-in-law, as the Bradleys rumbled to a halt.
"Look, we are afraid of them, and they are afraid of us," Qassim said of the soldiers. "We do not hate the Americans, but we hate the policy of Mr. Bush. I see the young soldiers with their baby faces, and sometimes I feel sorry for them."
Engineers, professors and other professionals, many of Ramiz's relatives are just the sort of middle-class moderates who the U.S.-led coalition has looked to for a bedrock of support. But these family members say the U.S. military and civilian authority has failed them. The last straw, they said, was that no one from the coalition had come to talk to them about the deaths or the destruction of the house.
"In the beginning, when the Americans arrived, we were not happy and not unhappy," said Murad, who studied English in London a half-century ago. "But day after day, they take lives, and do nothing for us."
In the moments after the blast, local teenagers and young men flocked to the burning building shouting "God is greater," celebrating and taunting the U.S. soldiers evacuating their wounded. In the dark logic of Iraq, their joy at the Americans' loss outweighed the fact that an esteemed professor had been killed, said Nabil Emad, a 27-year-old neighbor, who said he was among those posing for television cameras.
"I couldn't control my emotion," he said in English. "When you see the people on television killed in Fallujah, that is the power of the United States. We know that something is more powerful than the United States, so we are happy. I have to say, `God is greater.'"
For Ramiz, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had crystallized the lifelong hope of modern political freedom in Iraq. In addition to Baghdad, he had taught in Malaysia and Jordan and served 10 years as director of research in the Foreign Ministry.
When American tanks rolled into Baghdad, he hid in the cellar of his home and prayed that the regime had fallen, he wrote. On the day that Hussein's statue came down in Firdaus Square, he screamed himself hoarse with the crowds of cheering men, women and children.
Favorite of journalists
"The sociological foundation of political power that will sustain democracy exists in Arab culture," he told CNN less than a week after the fall of Baghdad. "If the Americans are true liberators, they should not mind if people tell them `go' after liberation is done. But the Iraqi people, I think, are realistic enough, and they expect that American troops [will be] in Iraq for a temporary basis."
Witty and articulate, he fast became a favorite of foreign journalists groping for keen-eyed analysis of a confusing country. But as the months passed, Ramiz winced at what he considered American failings in Iraq.
"Life has become negative," he told the Christian Science Monitor in September.
As violence erupted this month, Ramiz apparently grew more despondent. He lamented to journalists that pursuing the militant cleric Moqtada Sadr had only elevated Sadr in the eyes of Iraqis who otherwise would ignore him, and that the Marines' move to surround Fallujah may have been an overreaction to the deaths of four U.S. contractors in the city.
In his last days, he seemed to believe that the situation was spinning beyond control.
"All of this has triggered outrage against the Americans," he said last week to a reporter from U.S. News and World Report. Iraqis were alienated. They were dissatisfied. And they had yet to glimpse a sovereign government.
The last two weeks of violence, he said, "was the straw that broke the camel's back."
_______________________________________________________________
Baghdad blast claims intellectual ally of U.S.
Thu Apr 29, 9:40 AM ET
By Evan Osnos Tribune foreign correspondent
When war arrived, 70-year-old professor Gailan Ramiz set out to protect the small, refined world he cherished.
Tall, reedy and avuncular, with a fondness for tweed jackets, he built a brick wall around his prized possession, the elegant but timeworn 1930s-era yellow-brick home he shared with his wife and their decades' collection of books from Princeton, Harvard and Oxford, where he studied, and Baghdad University, where he taught political science.
Then the respected political scientist nurtured his intellectual treasure--democracy--penning opinion articles that were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein, meeting with foreign journalists and heralding the dream, as Ramiz wrote in the International Herald Tribune a year ago, of an Iraq "whose democratic values and institutions would be a shining example to the entire Middle East."
This week, the chaotic and brutal world outside finally reached him.
While he sat with his wife and their daughter in their stately, high-ceilinged drawing room Monday, an explosion tore through his home, reducing most of it to rubble. Ramiz was killed, pulling one more member from Baghdad's once-hopeful ranks of moderate thinkers and leaving a bitter legacy for relatives who say their faith in America has worn thin. His wife was injured.
U.S. soldiers had come to investigate a tip that munitions were being produced in a perfume factory that rented the rear of the basement of Ramiz' house. U.S. officials still do not know what caused the blast, which left two Americans dead and eight wounded. But a U.S. official in Washington told The Associated Press that it was believed to be accidental, an ignition of poorly stored flammable chemicals.
Another AP report suggested the troops might have been lured there on a false tip. But military authorities in Baghdad say they have no evidence that Ramiz knew what was thought to be unfolding in his basement.
For the professor, it was the catastrophic end to a year of diminishing hope that mirrored in many ways the feelings of the city and nation he spent a lifetime analyzing.
By the next day, all that remained of Ramiz's rarified world were mounds of broken bricks and scorched furniture, mixed with torn, yellowed pages of international law journals and volumes of Russian history. The house's facade, with its delicate wood arches, had survived, but a bloody scarf lay on the spot where the family was sitting at the time of the blast.
Children scampered over torn books and rooted through the ruins for anything of value. Relatives said the jewelry, gold and silver were taken before anyone thought to protect them.
Nervous-looking soldiers
Three U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles arrived Tuesday afternoon with a tow truck to remove the charred hulls of three Humvees, now swarmed by looting children.
For the nervous-looking soldiers who fanned into the street, this was the site of a tragic and mysterious incident. The two Americans who died were members of the Iraq Survey Group, a government team that is searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, an unnamed defense official told the AP.
Soldiers stood with their guns at the ready as one ordered relatives to get out of the house so the Humvees could be hauled from the rubble. Ramiz's father-in-law, Qassim Murad, in a rumpled black suit, rose from a bench by the front door of the ruined house and walked away, sobbing.
"This is democracy? Democracy sounds like that?" spat Jamaal Qassim, an electrical engineer and Ramiz's brother-in-law, as the Bradleys rumbled to a halt.
"Look, we are afraid of them, and they are afraid of us," Qassim said of the soldiers. "We do not hate the Americans, but we hate the policy of Mr. Bush. I see the young soldiers with their baby faces, and sometimes I feel sorry for them."
Engineers, professors and other professionals, many of Ramiz's relatives are just the sort of middle-class moderates who the U.S.-led coalition has looked to for a bedrock of support. But these family members say the U.S. military and civilian authority has failed them. The last straw, they said, was that no one from the coalition had come to talk to them about the deaths or the destruction of the house.
"In the beginning, when the Americans arrived, we were not happy and not unhappy," said Murad, who studied English in London a half-century ago. "But day after day, they take lives, and do nothing for us."
In the moments after the blast, local teenagers and young men flocked to the burning building shouting "God is greater," celebrating and taunting the U.S. soldiers evacuating their wounded. In the dark logic of Iraq, their joy at the Americans' loss outweighed the fact that an esteemed professor had been killed, said Nabil Emad, a 27-year-old neighbor, who said he was among those posing for television cameras.
"I couldn't control my emotion," he said in English. "When you see the people on television killed in Fallujah, that is the power of the United States. We know that something is more powerful than the United States, so we are happy. I have to say, `God is greater.'"
For Ramiz, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had crystallized the lifelong hope of modern political freedom in Iraq. In addition to Baghdad, he had taught in Malaysia and Jordan and served 10 years as director of research in the Foreign Ministry.
When American tanks rolled into Baghdad, he hid in the cellar of his home and prayed that the regime had fallen, he wrote. On the day that Hussein's statue came down in Firdaus Square, he screamed himself hoarse with the crowds of cheering men, women and children.
Favorite of journalists
"The sociological foundation of political power that will sustain democracy exists in Arab culture," he told CNN less than a week after the fall of Baghdad. "If the Americans are true liberators, they should not mind if people tell them `go' after liberation is done. But the Iraqi people, I think, are realistic enough, and they expect that American troops [will be] in Iraq for a temporary basis."
Witty and articulate, he fast became a favorite of foreign journalists groping for keen-eyed analysis of a confusing country. But as the months passed, Ramiz winced at what he considered American failings in Iraq.
"Life has become negative," he told the Christian Science Monitor in September.
As violence erupted this month, Ramiz apparently grew more despondent. He lamented to journalists that pursuing the militant cleric Moqtada Sadr had only elevated Sadr in the eyes of Iraqis who otherwise would ignore him, and that the Marines' move to surround Fallujah may have been an overreaction to the deaths of four U.S. contractors in the city.
In his last days, he seemed to believe that the situation was spinning beyond control.
"All of this has triggered outrage against the Americans," he said last week to a reporter from U.S. News and World Report. Iraqis were alienated. They were dissatisfied. And they had yet to glimpse a sovereign government.
The last two weeks of violence, he said, "was the straw that broke the camel's back."
_______________________________________________________________
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Here's a question for the longtime fiscally conservative Republicans in the audience.
How you will pay for the war?
Historically, war causes inflation. The Bush administration's myopic deficit spending will only make matters worse.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By James K. Galbraith
April 20, 2004 | Well, it may be that the laws of economics remain in force. And one of them says: War causes inflation.
Every major war in the past century brought inflation to some degree. And so did two upheavals in the Middle East, the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which did not directly involve the United States, except through their effect on the price of oil. Why is this so? The big reason is that wars must be paid for, somehow. They require resources that civilians would otherwise use. Those resources must be diverted to the war effort. Usually, inflation is the easiest way. World War I was largely financed by inflation, and so were the Revolutionary and Civil Wars before that. So, though on a smaller scale, was Vietnam.
Inflation applies the law of the jungle to war finance. Prices and profits rise, wages and their purchasing power fall. Thugs, profiteers and the well connected get rich. Working people and the poor make out as they can. Savings erode, through the unseen mechanism of the "inflation tax" -- meaning that the government runs a big deficit in nominal terms, but a smaller one when inflation is factored in. GNP rises with the national debt, but living standards do not.
Are we seeing the start of this once again? It is too early to tell for sure. At only about 1 percent of GDP, the Iraq war remains small so far. (However, one might add another percent or so for military spending increases not directly related to Iraq. Notably, these include President Bush's ballistic missile defense -- militarily useless but sure to absorb construction materials on a tight market.)
In March, the Consumer Price Index hit 7.4 percent at an annual rate, up from only 1.4 percent over the previous year. No doubt there will be ups and downs in the months ahead. But one may well fear that a general trend toward higher inflation lies ahead. And this is true even if (as seems likely) there is no general wartime boom. That is partly because in a global economy even small price effects can be magnified in several ways, some of which we are now seeing. Here's why.
First, oil and gas prices -- a fundamental price in our economy -- are already high and still likely to rise. With gasoline averaging $1.80 around the country and hitting $2.49 at the hottest spots, transportation costs for all commodities are rising too. With oil at $37 per barrel -- up $10 in the past six months -- fertilizer and therefore food costs will be affected in the months ahead. Yes, as Bob Woodward reports in his new book, "Plan of Attack," the Saudis may try to rescue Bush by cutting prices this summer -- a feel-good gesture. And after the election, what do you think will happen?
Next, we find that inflation is breaking out in China -- a consequence of that country's boom and rising demand for oil, steel and other commodities it must purchase on the global market. There will be pass-through to the price of Chinese imports to the United States. So there goes the major brake on inflation in the prices of our manufactured goods, something American consumers have benefited from for many years.
Then we will feel the effects of the dollar's decline on the prices of goods from Europe, Japan and Canada. The dollar's decline is already, no doubt, a component of the rising dollar price of oil. And this fact assures that Europe suffers less than we do from the consequences of our occupation of Iraq. Markets reward the peaceable, as nations from Switzerland to Sweden to China have long known. Economically speaking, empire is a suckers' game.
And there is profiteering. Firms with monopoly power usually keep some in reserve. In wartime, if the climate is permissive, they bring it out and use it. Gas prices can go up when refining capacity becomes short -- due partly to too many mergers. More generally, when sales to consumers are slow, businesses ought to cut prices -- but many of them don't. Instead, they raise prices to meet their income targets and hope that the market won't collapse. Own a telephone? Cable TV? Electrical connection? Been to a doctor? Filled a prescription? Have a kid in college? Then you know what I mean.
Meanwhile, lurking in the background are Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve. They await the election and their moment to raise interest rates. The pressure is clearly building -- as reflected in the hortatory tone of the New York Times headline on Floyd Norris' story on April 16: "It's Time for an End to Super Low Interest Rates."
Really? Says who? The theory that higher interest rates control inflation is based on the idea that inflation is driven by too much civilian spending, by too much business investment, and especially by greedy workers demanding big raises. But business investment has barely started to recover. Wages are not rising these days -- how could they be? Real wages (adjusted for the price increases) are falling. Higher interest rates will add another injury to that one.
Think through what will actually happen when interest rates rise. For firms that administer prices, interest rates are just another cost. Like the rise in oil, the rise in rates will be passed through. Prices will rise. High interest rates may, indeed, choke off inflation eventually. But they do it in only one way: by forcing households and businesses to cut back, by squeezing people with debts, and therefore by slowing down the civilian economy. Expect this cure to come later, cheered on by the business press. It will be worse than the disease.
Higher interest rates, in other words, are not a way to fight inflation in the short run. They are, instead, part and parcel of the strategy of inflationary war finance. Their function is to help ensure that debtors pay, and creditors do not.
Is there another way? The answer is yes, but it isn't easy.
In wars past -- notably in World War II and Korea -- the job was done by steeply progressive taxes including taxes on excess profits, by "forced saving" (which was an essentially compulsory private holding of public debt), and by price control. Interest rates were frozen at 2 percent on government bonds -- and essentially at 0 on bank deposits. The principle was: No one profits from the war.
This combination kept inflation down -- prices were stable from 1942 through 1945. Not many grew rich off that war. Instead, my generation grew up with series EE bonds to our names. They were the promise that those working to win the war would see some of the material fruits of their labor later, when peacetime production returned. Together with progressive taxes and stable prices, they formed a bond between those leading the war effort, and those working to support it.
It's clear that we shouldn't expect anything of the kind from Team Bush.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
James K. Galbraith is Salon's economics correspondent. He teaches at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin.
__________________________________________________________________________
How you will pay for the war?
Historically, war causes inflation. The Bush administration's myopic deficit spending will only make matters worse.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By James K. Galbraith
April 20, 2004 | Well, it may be that the laws of economics remain in force. And one of them says: War causes inflation.
Every major war in the past century brought inflation to some degree. And so did two upheavals in the Middle East, the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which did not directly involve the United States, except through their effect on the price of oil. Why is this so? The big reason is that wars must be paid for, somehow. They require resources that civilians would otherwise use. Those resources must be diverted to the war effort. Usually, inflation is the easiest way. World War I was largely financed by inflation, and so were the Revolutionary and Civil Wars before that. So, though on a smaller scale, was Vietnam.
Inflation applies the law of the jungle to war finance. Prices and profits rise, wages and their purchasing power fall. Thugs, profiteers and the well connected get rich. Working people and the poor make out as they can. Savings erode, through the unseen mechanism of the "inflation tax" -- meaning that the government runs a big deficit in nominal terms, but a smaller one when inflation is factored in. GNP rises with the national debt, but living standards do not.
Are we seeing the start of this once again? It is too early to tell for sure. At only about 1 percent of GDP, the Iraq war remains small so far. (However, one might add another percent or so for military spending increases not directly related to Iraq. Notably, these include President Bush's ballistic missile defense -- militarily useless but sure to absorb construction materials on a tight market.)
In March, the Consumer Price Index hit 7.4 percent at an annual rate, up from only 1.4 percent over the previous year. No doubt there will be ups and downs in the months ahead. But one may well fear that a general trend toward higher inflation lies ahead. And this is true even if (as seems likely) there is no general wartime boom. That is partly because in a global economy even small price effects can be magnified in several ways, some of which we are now seeing. Here's why.
First, oil and gas prices -- a fundamental price in our economy -- are already high and still likely to rise. With gasoline averaging $1.80 around the country and hitting $2.49 at the hottest spots, transportation costs for all commodities are rising too. With oil at $37 per barrel -- up $10 in the past six months -- fertilizer and therefore food costs will be affected in the months ahead. Yes, as Bob Woodward reports in his new book, "Plan of Attack," the Saudis may try to rescue Bush by cutting prices this summer -- a feel-good gesture. And after the election, what do you think will happen?
Next, we find that inflation is breaking out in China -- a consequence of that country's boom and rising demand for oil, steel and other commodities it must purchase on the global market. There will be pass-through to the price of Chinese imports to the United States. So there goes the major brake on inflation in the prices of our manufactured goods, something American consumers have benefited from for many years.
Then we will feel the effects of the dollar's decline on the prices of goods from Europe, Japan and Canada. The dollar's decline is already, no doubt, a component of the rising dollar price of oil. And this fact assures that Europe suffers less than we do from the consequences of our occupation of Iraq. Markets reward the peaceable, as nations from Switzerland to Sweden to China have long known. Economically speaking, empire is a suckers' game.
And there is profiteering. Firms with monopoly power usually keep some in reserve. In wartime, if the climate is permissive, they bring it out and use it. Gas prices can go up when refining capacity becomes short -- due partly to too many mergers. More generally, when sales to consumers are slow, businesses ought to cut prices -- but many of them don't. Instead, they raise prices to meet their income targets and hope that the market won't collapse. Own a telephone? Cable TV? Electrical connection? Been to a doctor? Filled a prescription? Have a kid in college? Then you know what I mean.
Meanwhile, lurking in the background are Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve. They await the election and their moment to raise interest rates. The pressure is clearly building -- as reflected in the hortatory tone of the New York Times headline on Floyd Norris' story on April 16: "It's Time for an End to Super Low Interest Rates."
Really? Says who? The theory that higher interest rates control inflation is based on the idea that inflation is driven by too much civilian spending, by too much business investment, and especially by greedy workers demanding big raises. But business investment has barely started to recover. Wages are not rising these days -- how could they be? Real wages (adjusted for the price increases) are falling. Higher interest rates will add another injury to that one.
Think through what will actually happen when interest rates rise. For firms that administer prices, interest rates are just another cost. Like the rise in oil, the rise in rates will be passed through. Prices will rise. High interest rates may, indeed, choke off inflation eventually. But they do it in only one way: by forcing households and businesses to cut back, by squeezing people with debts, and therefore by slowing down the civilian economy. Expect this cure to come later, cheered on by the business press. It will be worse than the disease.
Higher interest rates, in other words, are not a way to fight inflation in the short run. They are, instead, part and parcel of the strategy of inflationary war finance. Their function is to help ensure that debtors pay, and creditors do not.
Is there another way? The answer is yes, but it isn't easy.
In wars past -- notably in World War II and Korea -- the job was done by steeply progressive taxes including taxes on excess profits, by "forced saving" (which was an essentially compulsory private holding of public debt), and by price control. Interest rates were frozen at 2 percent on government bonds -- and essentially at 0 on bank deposits. The principle was: No one profits from the war.
This combination kept inflation down -- prices were stable from 1942 through 1945. Not many grew rich off that war. Instead, my generation grew up with series EE bonds to our names. They were the promise that those working to win the war would see some of the material fruits of their labor later, when peacetime production returned. Together with progressive taxes and stable prices, they formed a bond between those leading the war effort, and those working to support it.
It's clear that we shouldn't expect anything of the kind from Team Bush.
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About the writer
James K. Galbraith is Salon's economics correspondent. He teaches at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin.
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Letters to SALON on:
A Vietnam vet warns Bush backers are "playing a dangerous, self-destructive game" by trashing John Kerry's Purple Heart.
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April 22, 2004 | [Read "John Kerry's First Purple Heart," by Douglas Brinkley.]
It is hard to believe what the right won't do to discredit veterans of foreign war. During 2000, there was the scurrilous whispering campaign against John McCain. Then they poked fun at Al Gore as a reporter in the Army, even though he got a lot closer to a Viet Cong bullet than Bush ever did. Then there was the 2002 trashing of Max Cleland (led most appallingly by Ann Coulter).
And now it's John Kerry's Purple Heart. Papa Bush ought to hang his head in shame at what these chickenhawks are doing in his son's name. Military women and men, listen up: Your lives, your sacrifice means nothing to the right. You're just chum!
-- Deedee Arnelle
Folks, three things:
1. I don't recall anyone putting himself in for a Purple Heart. Mine arrived via shopping cart while I was bed-bound at a Quang Tre MASH. I didn't know that guys could ask for them. I did turn down two additional PHs once I got back to the States. (Or maybe they tried to give me the first medal two more times.) That pissed people off; the brass like to give out medals. So on that score alone, Hibbard's got shit in his mouth. He would have been a mighty proud lifer to have one of his boys rack a PH.
2. Concerning fakes: If any fuckhead is stupid enough to claim ownership of a PH that does not belong to him, there's a big cottage industry of really nasty people who will take pleasure in making his life one definitive hell. These would be the folks who actually earned Purple Hearts. Fakers get confronted in public, in front of their families, their co-workers, their Boy Scout troops, wherever it's possible to inflict the most humiliation. There's no sympathy for these people. So if Kerry had worked some kind of game on a Purple Heart, he would have been hideously outed long before this. There's an army of war vets (and the widows of war vets) with nothing better to do than to hunt down fakes and frauds. Kerry would have been toast in the '70s, courtesy of his work with the VVAW.
3. Regardless of politics, those who have PHs tend to be clannish. They're not nearly as exclusive as the CMH [Congressional Medal of Honor] crowd but their ties go well beyond Bill Mauldin's club "of them what's been shot at." (Mauldin was actually sheepish about his PH.) So when a drug addicted coward like Limbaugh, or any of those other vermin, talks trash about a guy's Purple Heart, he's insulting the rest of us. It's like taking on a biker gang that graduated from grenades and machine guns to lawsuits, Web sites and political campaigns. Same attitude, different toys.
The assholes who talk trash about Kerry's Purple Hearts are playing a dangerous, self-destructive game.
-- Dave Dike
You have to wonder about the mind and heart of a man and former soldier (Grant Hibbard) who is so partisan that he whines about a man who actually saw action in Vietnam, and he says nothing about a man who weasled himself out of the war by joining the National Guard.
-- Katherine Weber
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A Vietnam vet warns Bush backers are "playing a dangerous, self-destructive game" by trashing John Kerry's Purple Heart.
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April 22, 2004 | [Read "John Kerry's First Purple Heart," by Douglas Brinkley.]
It is hard to believe what the right won't do to discredit veterans of foreign war. During 2000, there was the scurrilous whispering campaign against John McCain. Then they poked fun at Al Gore as a reporter in the Army, even though he got a lot closer to a Viet Cong bullet than Bush ever did. Then there was the 2002 trashing of Max Cleland (led most appallingly by Ann Coulter).
And now it's John Kerry's Purple Heart. Papa Bush ought to hang his head in shame at what these chickenhawks are doing in his son's name. Military women and men, listen up: Your lives, your sacrifice means nothing to the right. You're just chum!
-- Deedee Arnelle
Folks, three things:
1. I don't recall anyone putting himself in for a Purple Heart. Mine arrived via shopping cart while I was bed-bound at a Quang Tre MASH. I didn't know that guys could ask for them. I did turn down two additional PHs once I got back to the States. (Or maybe they tried to give me the first medal two more times.) That pissed people off; the brass like to give out medals. So on that score alone, Hibbard's got shit in his mouth. He would have been a mighty proud lifer to have one of his boys rack a PH.
2. Concerning fakes: If any fuckhead is stupid enough to claim ownership of a PH that does not belong to him, there's a big cottage industry of really nasty people who will take pleasure in making his life one definitive hell. These would be the folks who actually earned Purple Hearts. Fakers get confronted in public, in front of their families, their co-workers, their Boy Scout troops, wherever it's possible to inflict the most humiliation. There's no sympathy for these people. So if Kerry had worked some kind of game on a Purple Heart, he would have been hideously outed long before this. There's an army of war vets (and the widows of war vets) with nothing better to do than to hunt down fakes and frauds. Kerry would have been toast in the '70s, courtesy of his work with the VVAW.
3. Regardless of politics, those who have PHs tend to be clannish. They're not nearly as exclusive as the CMH [Congressional Medal of Honor] crowd but their ties go well beyond Bill Mauldin's club "of them what's been shot at." (Mauldin was actually sheepish about his PH.) So when a drug addicted coward like Limbaugh, or any of those other vermin, talks trash about a guy's Purple Heart, he's insulting the rest of us. It's like taking on a biker gang that graduated from grenades and machine guns to lawsuits, Web sites and political campaigns. Same attitude, different toys.
The assholes who talk trash about Kerry's Purple Hearts are playing a dangerous, self-destructive game.
-- Dave Dike
You have to wonder about the mind and heart of a man and former soldier (Grant Hibbard) who is so partisan that he whines about a man who actually saw action in Vietnam, and he says nothing about a man who weasled himself out of the war by joining the National Guard.
-- Katherine Weber
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GOP "playa hatas"
Rush Limbaugh and other angry conservatives mock John Kerry and the Dems for hanging with hip-hop stars. But they're dissing a key (and mostly white) bloc of youth voters.
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By Eric Boehlert
April 23, 2004 | Republicans have never been able to rock. But can they learn to rap?
Bruce Springsteen told President Reagan's campaign in 1984 to stop using his anthem "Born in the USA" at rallies; he didn't want it to be associated with the Republicans. In the 2000 campaign George W. Bush received similar cease-and-desist requests from Sting, Tom Petty, John Fogerty, John Mellencamp and Los Lobos. Today, as the party unveils a major new push to land the 18- to 24-year-old vote, the GOP is again grappling with its fragile ties to pop culture. The party wants to appear open and hip while still waging a cultural war.
Prominent right-wing figures make a business of denouncing pop culture as coarse and crude, mocking the music and the message, especially hip-hop. (In the rap world, they'd be tagged as playa hatas.) That disconnect was highlighted last month when the Republican National Committee tried to put a fresh young face on the party by staging a high-profile voter registration drive outside MTV's studio in Times Square, complete with an 18-wheel rig that morphed into a soundstage and pumped out hip-hop hits. Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie even made a guest appearance on MTV's daily countdown show, "TRL."
On March 30, Sen. John Kerry appeared on an MTV news special for an interview, where he was asked about trends in popular music. "I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop," Kerry responded. "I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, because it's important."
Kerry's comments set off a furious backlash from conservatives, Rush Limbaugh being the loudest. "We need to understand rap, folks," Limbaugh told his listeners, in a mocking tone. "There's a lot of poetry and anger in this. Social energy. It's important. Look, it's one thing to say you like it, but to try to pass this off as something you've intellectually examined and assigned value to? Sorry, senator. Don't stand up for white music -- associate yourself with rap." (In the edited version of his comments on Limbaugh's Web site, his reference to defending "white music" is deleted.)
The animosity of culture warriors like Limbaugh (who is in the midst of a drug prosecution in Florida) could make it extremely difficult for the GOP to court young voters. Hip-hop, especially rap, long ago moved out of the ghetto into the center of mainstream suburban youth culture. That's why hip-hop record sales have surged in the last decade; why Sears, the purveyors of Main Street America, is rolling out hip-hop urban-wear sections for its stores this year; and why a spokesman for Sprite told the Wall Street Journal this week that rap "is the leader in terms of influencing pop culture today." Suddenly, being anti-rap means being anti-youth culture. That's not exactly where Republicans want to be as they make a play for college-age voters.
"When it comes to politics, Republicans have to take hip-hop seriously," says Bakari Kitwana, author of "The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture" and the forthcoming "Why White Kids Love Hip Hop."
An RNC spokesperson rejects the notion idea that the GOP has a rap problem. "There's no reason to perceive the Republican Party as being anti-rap or anti-hip-hop," says Mary Ellen Grant. "We're reaching out far and wide to youth voters regardless of their musical preference." One hip-hop envoy to the GOP, Dana Mozier, who once worked with legendary rap act NWA and now works as a political activist and self-proclaimed hip-hop ambassador for the Republican Party, insists Republicans are open-minded. "I've been to the White House, met with members of the Cabinet, met with the leadership of the Republican National Committee, and these folks don't have any qualms about the nature of hip-hop," he says. "I find the Republican Party is more accepting than most people think."
But even some grassroots Republicans, working hard to convert college students into GOP supporters, concede the party needs to do a better job understanding the crucial shift that's underway inside the youth culture. "Within the Republican community, they don't understand hip-hop," says Adam Hunter, founder of the Republican Club at predominantly black Howard University, in Washington. "Republicans are trying to marginalize the hip-hop experience. They think it's just music and don't understand it's a full-fledged culture. It's the way people communicate. And it's not specifically an African-American culture. Most people who buy hip-hop are white."
As rap has crossed over to the mainstream, record sales have increased by 75 percent during the last decade, from 8 percent of overall sales in 1994 to 14 percent in 2002, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. By comparison, rock's overall share of music sales has dropped from 35 percent in 1994 to 24 percent today. This week alone, Billboard's Hot 100 single chart, awash in Chingy, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Kanye West, D12, G-Unit and others, boasts 18 hip-hop-flavored songs among the top 20 singles.
"People can try to dismiss or ignore hip-hop if they want, but the truth is, it is youth culture in America, for blacks and whites," notes Hilary Rosen, the RIAA's former CEO.
As the Christian Science Monitor recently noted, "Teens living on cul-de-sacs and in small towns are increasingly taking fashion cues from rap music videos. Sales of hip-hop fashion, estimated by the NPD Group, a market information company, to be $2 billion in 2001, are considered one of the fastest growing segments of the apparel industry. That's mostly thanks to mall stores such as Sears, Nordstrom, and Target stocking more urban brands."
And Business Week weighed in: "Hip-hop music is not about race or place. It's an attitude, a state of mind. Marketing experts estimate that one-quarter of all discretionary spending in America today is influenced by hip-hop."
Any serious discussion among 18- to 24-year-old voters must at least acknowledge the legitimacy of hip-hop. And that's the point Kerry was making on MTV.
"Kerry was saying rap is a cultural language and is a valid part of the younger generation. That's an indisputable fact," says Danny Goldberg, CEO of Artemis records and former president of Atlantic Records. "He was sending an innocuous, symbolic message that he respects youth culture. It's a no-brainer."
Still, the reaction was swift from conservative commentators who mocked Kerry's interest in hip-hop. "Is there anything this guy won't say, anyone he won't lie to for a few more votes? He ain't hip-hop, he's flip-flop" (Boston Herald). "Really? You're "fascinated" by rap and "listening" to hip-hop? You're America's first flip-flopper hip-hopper?" (Chicago Sun Times). "Does anyone, especially under the age of 30, believe this crap?" (New York Press).
A day before Kerry's MTV interview, Joseph Farah, the editor of the right-wing Web tabloid WorldNetDaily, published a column attacking Democrats for inviting the rap act OutKast to perform at a recent party fundraiser. OutKast is the same group that won top honors at this year's Grammy awards and whose single "Hey Ya!" was the most listened-to song on American radio last year. Nonetheless, Farah claimed that Democrats, by associating with OutKast, "have declared themselves openly to be on the side of the enemy, the barbarians" in today's cultural war.
Of course, hip-hop is not above reproach: it's often shallow, violent, misogynistic and pro-drug. "I love rap, but it's hard to defend this shit," quipped Chris Rock in his recent HBO comedy special, referring to a recent, borderline pornographic rap hit by Lil Jon. Too often rap musicians do project negative, minstrel-like images of black America. And Kerry himself noted the lyrics have sometimes "stepped over what I consider to be a reasonable line."
But those types of distinctions can be lost on cultural conservatives, particularly Limbaugh, who expressed the most deep-seated contempt for Kerry and rap music.
"Rush Limbaugh is like those guys who used to smash Elvis Presley records in the 1950s and said rock 'n' roll has no importance. They're just throwback people," says David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in Washington, a policy institute that focuses on African-American issues. "And when you attack rap, you're not just attacking the performer but you're attacking the audience, the majority of which is white."
"The right wing fears the influence of hip-hop translating into political power, and they attack it every time there's a glimmer of a political connection," says Ben Chavis, who runs the nonprofit Hip-Hop Summit Action Network alongside hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons. "Rap baiting, race baiting, it's the same thing."
The network is in the midst of a nationwide voter registration drive. "Hip-hop transcends race in America," Chavis adds. "That's the greatest fear of the right wing: a generation who would dare to transcend racial division and embrace a vision of a new America that is more inclusive."
The hip-hop angle wouldn't matter if the Republicans weren't launching such a big campaign for the youth vote, hoping to register 3 million new Republican voters. With so many young voters having stayed home in 2000 (71 percent), the potential for outreach, at least in theory, is high. But this GOP effort highlights the party's uneasy relationship with pop culture, particularly youth culture. The tension is heightened by Republican fears that the association might offend its more conservative Christian base.
In 1976, Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter quoted Bob Dylan in his acceptance speech. Bill Clinton, a saxophonist, tapped into classic rock by using Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" as his theme song, and Al Gore hired music video director Spike Jonze to create a campaign biography for the 2000 convention. Earlier this year, when asked to select his favorite singer, former Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean turned some heads when he named Wyclef Jean, the socially conscious hip-hop singer.
By contrast, during the 2000 campaign Bush told Oprah his favorite song was the 1950s ditty, "Wake Up, Little Susie." During another campaign interview Bush was asked about his impression of Madonna, but he cut the conversation off: "I don't follow pop music." Bush's father's lone venture into pop culture extended to using Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy," as a campaign theme.
Hunter, the young Republican at Howard University, says the GOP has to adjust -- and fast: "Republicans need to wake up and realize they cannot ignore the hip-hop community, and that they're white, middle-class suburban voters, not black, poor and inner city. They need to get in step before it's too late and the hip-hop community has changed the political landscape."
"Are Republicans ever going to be cool? I don't think so," says Bositis, the D.C. policy analyst. "Republican have no connection to hip-hop. Some of them are openly hostile to it. Others are mute. But for most of them it just doesn't exist unless it's in the news."
Meanwhile, the RNC registration tour, featuring Reggie the Rig, motors on. Next week, Reggie will be parked in Florence, Ariz., for the four-day Country Thunder music festival -- starring Reba McEntire and Montgomery Gentry.
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About the writer
Eric Boehlert is a senior writer at Salon.
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Rush Limbaugh and other angry conservatives mock John Kerry and the Dems for hanging with hip-hop stars. But they're dissing a key (and mostly white) bloc of youth voters.
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By Eric Boehlert
April 23, 2004 | Republicans have never been able to rock. But can they learn to rap?
Bruce Springsteen told President Reagan's campaign in 1984 to stop using his anthem "Born in the USA" at rallies; he didn't want it to be associated with the Republicans. In the 2000 campaign George W. Bush received similar cease-and-desist requests from Sting, Tom Petty, John Fogerty, John Mellencamp and Los Lobos. Today, as the party unveils a major new push to land the 18- to 24-year-old vote, the GOP is again grappling with its fragile ties to pop culture. The party wants to appear open and hip while still waging a cultural war.
Prominent right-wing figures make a business of denouncing pop culture as coarse and crude, mocking the music and the message, especially hip-hop. (In the rap world, they'd be tagged as playa hatas.) That disconnect was highlighted last month when the Republican National Committee tried to put a fresh young face on the party by staging a high-profile voter registration drive outside MTV's studio in Times Square, complete with an 18-wheel rig that morphed into a soundstage and pumped out hip-hop hits. Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie even made a guest appearance on MTV's daily countdown show, "TRL."
On March 30, Sen. John Kerry appeared on an MTV news special for an interview, where he was asked about trends in popular music. "I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop," Kerry responded. "I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, because it's important."
Kerry's comments set off a furious backlash from conservatives, Rush Limbaugh being the loudest. "We need to understand rap, folks," Limbaugh told his listeners, in a mocking tone. "There's a lot of poetry and anger in this. Social energy. It's important. Look, it's one thing to say you like it, but to try to pass this off as something you've intellectually examined and assigned value to? Sorry, senator. Don't stand up for white music -- associate yourself with rap." (In the edited version of his comments on Limbaugh's Web site, his reference to defending "white music" is deleted.)
The animosity of culture warriors like Limbaugh (who is in the midst of a drug prosecution in Florida) could make it extremely difficult for the GOP to court young voters. Hip-hop, especially rap, long ago moved out of the ghetto into the center of mainstream suburban youth culture. That's why hip-hop record sales have surged in the last decade; why Sears, the purveyors of Main Street America, is rolling out hip-hop urban-wear sections for its stores this year; and why a spokesman for Sprite told the Wall Street Journal this week that rap "is the leader in terms of influencing pop culture today." Suddenly, being anti-rap means being anti-youth culture. That's not exactly where Republicans want to be as they make a play for college-age voters.
"When it comes to politics, Republicans have to take hip-hop seriously," says Bakari Kitwana, author of "The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture" and the forthcoming "Why White Kids Love Hip Hop."
An RNC spokesperson rejects the notion idea that the GOP has a rap problem. "There's no reason to perceive the Republican Party as being anti-rap or anti-hip-hop," says Mary Ellen Grant. "We're reaching out far and wide to youth voters regardless of their musical preference." One hip-hop envoy to the GOP, Dana Mozier, who once worked with legendary rap act NWA and now works as a political activist and self-proclaimed hip-hop ambassador for the Republican Party, insists Republicans are open-minded. "I've been to the White House, met with members of the Cabinet, met with the leadership of the Republican National Committee, and these folks don't have any qualms about the nature of hip-hop," he says. "I find the Republican Party is more accepting than most people think."
But even some grassroots Republicans, working hard to convert college students into GOP supporters, concede the party needs to do a better job understanding the crucial shift that's underway inside the youth culture. "Within the Republican community, they don't understand hip-hop," says Adam Hunter, founder of the Republican Club at predominantly black Howard University, in Washington. "Republicans are trying to marginalize the hip-hop experience. They think it's just music and don't understand it's a full-fledged culture. It's the way people communicate. And it's not specifically an African-American culture. Most people who buy hip-hop are white."
As rap has crossed over to the mainstream, record sales have increased by 75 percent during the last decade, from 8 percent of overall sales in 1994 to 14 percent in 2002, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. By comparison, rock's overall share of music sales has dropped from 35 percent in 1994 to 24 percent today. This week alone, Billboard's Hot 100 single chart, awash in Chingy, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Kanye West, D12, G-Unit and others, boasts 18 hip-hop-flavored songs among the top 20 singles.
"People can try to dismiss or ignore hip-hop if they want, but the truth is, it is youth culture in America, for blacks and whites," notes Hilary Rosen, the RIAA's former CEO.
As the Christian Science Monitor recently noted, "Teens living on cul-de-sacs and in small towns are increasingly taking fashion cues from rap music videos. Sales of hip-hop fashion, estimated by the NPD Group, a market information company, to be $2 billion in 2001, are considered one of the fastest growing segments of the apparel industry. That's mostly thanks to mall stores such as Sears, Nordstrom, and Target stocking more urban brands."
And Business Week weighed in: "Hip-hop music is not about race or place. It's an attitude, a state of mind. Marketing experts estimate that one-quarter of all discretionary spending in America today is influenced by hip-hop."
Any serious discussion among 18- to 24-year-old voters must at least acknowledge the legitimacy of hip-hop. And that's the point Kerry was making on MTV.
"Kerry was saying rap is a cultural language and is a valid part of the younger generation. That's an indisputable fact," says Danny Goldberg, CEO of Artemis records and former president of Atlantic Records. "He was sending an innocuous, symbolic message that he respects youth culture. It's a no-brainer."
Still, the reaction was swift from conservative commentators who mocked Kerry's interest in hip-hop. "Is there anything this guy won't say, anyone he won't lie to for a few more votes? He ain't hip-hop, he's flip-flop" (Boston Herald). "Really? You're "fascinated" by rap and "listening" to hip-hop? You're America's first flip-flopper hip-hopper?" (Chicago Sun Times). "Does anyone, especially under the age of 30, believe this crap?" (New York Press).
A day before Kerry's MTV interview, Joseph Farah, the editor of the right-wing Web tabloid WorldNetDaily, published a column attacking Democrats for inviting the rap act OutKast to perform at a recent party fundraiser. OutKast is the same group that won top honors at this year's Grammy awards and whose single "Hey Ya!" was the most listened-to song on American radio last year. Nonetheless, Farah claimed that Democrats, by associating with OutKast, "have declared themselves openly to be on the side of the enemy, the barbarians" in today's cultural war.
Of course, hip-hop is not above reproach: it's often shallow, violent, misogynistic and pro-drug. "I love rap, but it's hard to defend this shit," quipped Chris Rock in his recent HBO comedy special, referring to a recent, borderline pornographic rap hit by Lil Jon. Too often rap musicians do project negative, minstrel-like images of black America. And Kerry himself noted the lyrics have sometimes "stepped over what I consider to be a reasonable line."
But those types of distinctions can be lost on cultural conservatives, particularly Limbaugh, who expressed the most deep-seated contempt for Kerry and rap music.
"Rush Limbaugh is like those guys who used to smash Elvis Presley records in the 1950s and said rock 'n' roll has no importance. They're just throwback people," says David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in Washington, a policy institute that focuses on African-American issues. "And when you attack rap, you're not just attacking the performer but you're attacking the audience, the majority of which is white."
"The right wing fears the influence of hip-hop translating into political power, and they attack it every time there's a glimmer of a political connection," says Ben Chavis, who runs the nonprofit Hip-Hop Summit Action Network alongside hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons. "Rap baiting, race baiting, it's the same thing."
The network is in the midst of a nationwide voter registration drive. "Hip-hop transcends race in America," Chavis adds. "That's the greatest fear of the right wing: a generation who would dare to transcend racial division and embrace a vision of a new America that is more inclusive."
The hip-hop angle wouldn't matter if the Republicans weren't launching such a big campaign for the youth vote, hoping to register 3 million new Republican voters. With so many young voters having stayed home in 2000 (71 percent), the potential for outreach, at least in theory, is high. But this GOP effort highlights the party's uneasy relationship with pop culture, particularly youth culture. The tension is heightened by Republican fears that the association might offend its more conservative Christian base.
In 1976, Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter quoted Bob Dylan in his acceptance speech. Bill Clinton, a saxophonist, tapped into classic rock by using Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" as his theme song, and Al Gore hired music video director Spike Jonze to create a campaign biography for the 2000 convention. Earlier this year, when asked to select his favorite singer, former Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean turned some heads when he named Wyclef Jean, the socially conscious hip-hop singer.
By contrast, during the 2000 campaign Bush told Oprah his favorite song was the 1950s ditty, "Wake Up, Little Susie." During another campaign interview Bush was asked about his impression of Madonna, but he cut the conversation off: "I don't follow pop music." Bush's father's lone venture into pop culture extended to using Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy," as a campaign theme.
Hunter, the young Republican at Howard University, says the GOP has to adjust -- and fast: "Republicans need to wake up and realize they cannot ignore the hip-hop community, and that they're white, middle-class suburban voters, not black, poor and inner city. They need to get in step before it's too late and the hip-hop community has changed the political landscape."
"Are Republicans ever going to be cool? I don't think so," says Bositis, the D.C. policy analyst. "Republican have no connection to hip-hop. Some of them are openly hostile to it. Others are mute. But for most of them it just doesn't exist unless it's in the news."
Meanwhile, the RNC registration tour, featuring Reggie the Rig, motors on. Next week, Reggie will be parked in Florence, Ariz., for the four-day Country Thunder music festival -- starring Reba McEntire and Montgomery Gentry.
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About the writer
Eric Boehlert is a senior writer at Salon.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Right Hook
Conservatives say Bush is drifting on Iraq and that Fallujah should be crushed, but they've been conspicuously quiet about the photos of flag-draped coffins. Plus: O'Reilly bashes Rummy!
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By Mark Follman
April 28, 2004 | As the Bush administration continues to struggle with the daunting military and political puzzle of Iraq, where multiple factions launched deadly insurgencies during April, conservatives are growing anxious to unleash the full might of the U.S. military. To do anything less, they argue, now imperils long-term U.S. credibility and control.
Even so, some hawkish commentators seem wary of the vast political and strategic risks involved. As U.S. forces went on the offensive around Najaf on Tuesday aiming to root out Shiite militant leader Muqtada al-Sadr, National Review contributor Jed Babbin remained somewhat cautious about attacking that citadel of Islamic holy ground, arguing that the U.S. needs to "get the Iraqis ready to do it themselves in Najaf." He doesn't go into detail as to how, though he says the Coalition Provisional Authority's inability to gain clear support from prominent Iraqi Shia cleric Ali al-Sistani is "a failure of historic proportion."
But Babbit appears far less concerned about the potential fallout from launching an all-out attack on Fallujah. Calling the cease-fire there "phony," he says the Bush administration needs to replace its flat-footed leadership posthaste -- and then invite all the Iraqi civilians of Fallujah to get out of the way so that U.S. forces can level the city if they have to. (On Tuesday night, U.S. forces stepped up airstrikes, ending a shaky two-day extension to last week's cease-fire.)
"Any place -- mosque, hospital, school -- is a legitimate military target when the enemy is using it for a military purpose. The worst of it is that we've waited too long to strike, and are allowing the insurgents to trap us into the house-to-house fighting Saddam wanted us to face in Baghdad. We can still avoid the trap. But the leadership in Iraq -- Bremer and army old-think generals -- will have to be replaced before we can ...
"We are adrift, and our enemies are taking full advantage of it ... We could have, and should have, made a full-out attack on Fallujah two weeks ago. The longer we wait, the more casualties our men suffer while the Iranian, Syrian, and other imported terrorists entrench themselves among the innocents there. Our military operations should proceed without regard to damage to the city, only taking care to avoid inflicting casualties on the noncombatants. This can still be done, by requiring the women, children, and elders to leave now, and then use the full force we have available to kill the insurgents. No more ceasefires anywhere, please, until the insurgents are beaten decisively."
Ralph Peters, a regular contributor to the New York Post, is even more blunt about the current battle for Fallujah, blasting the Bush administration for a lack of foresight and planning.
"We created the problem of Fallujah -- through neglect. Had we had adequate forces on hand a year ago in the immediate aftermath of combat to permeate the Sunni Triangle with troops, and had the administration had the clarity of vision to declare martial law, the current violence would have been averted.
"Instead, we handed gold-plated lollipops to killers and worried about hurting the feelings of Saddam's hard-core supporters. We looked away as the terrorists gripped one Iraqi city after another -- because we lacked the forces to put a military 'cop' on every beat. Our enemies didn't need to hide -- we weren't around often enough to see them ...
"Since the cease-fire, our troops have had to endure the ludicrous charade of 'negotiations' with the Fallujah city fathers -- breaking the rule that we never negotiate with terrorists or their surrogates. The resulting 'agreement' to turn in heavy weapons led to the mockery of sending the Marines a pick-up truck full of junk while the terrorists gained weeks to prepare their defenses, construct ambushes and organize a far tougher resistance than they could have presented two weeks ago."
Peters says the only way to ultimately subdue U.S. enemies in Iraq is to spill their blood for all the world to see.
"Our insipid diplomacy plays into the hands of our enemies: It looks like cowardice. And it is. We must not only win, we must be seen to win, graphically and decisively. 'Experts' warn that we mustn't alienate the hard-core Sunnis or the fundamentalist Shia's. Wake up and smell the cordite: They're already alienated. They'll never love us. So we'd better make damned sure they fear us ...
"We must win. If the enemy fights from mosques, level the mosques. If they fight from hospitals, gut the hospitals. If they open fire from orphanages, turn them into blackened shells. We cannot allow terrorists any sanctuaries. The men we face -- and the watching world -- interpret our decency as weakness ...
"The president needs to lead, not equivocate. If there is any emerging resemblance to Vietnam, it isn't on the battlefield, but in the White House, where no one seems to have the will to win."
Out of sight, out of mind?
As the fighting in Iraq escalates, the number of U.S. casualties is also likely to rise. But as the human cost of the war began to come into view last week when photos of flag-draped coffins appeared in the press, pro-war bloggers were conspicuously quiet about the issue. (Steyn? Sullivan? Simon?) Rather than defending or criticizing the Bush ban on photographing fallen U.S. soldiers being returned home, some on the right simply resorted to cynical attacks on the press -- once it was reported that the Web site responsible for acquiring the photos through a Freedom of Information Act request had accidentally conflated the images of military casualties with some images of victims of the Columbia shuttle disaster.
"Falling all over themselves in an unseemly and ghoulish haste to publish photographs of American soldiers arriving home in coffins, the Washington Post, CNN, AP, and Reuters all ran pictures of Columbia shuttle disaster victims -- wrongly identified as Iraqi war dead," declared Charles Johnson, whose blog is called Little Green Footballs.
Johnson linked to the Drudge Report, the influential right-wing gossip outlet, which blared the news of the mistaken NASA photos on Friday -- even though Drudge was one of the first to publicize a photo of flag-draped coffins taken by a military contractor and published in the Seattle Times the day before.
High-profile conservative pundits may have been reticent on the issue, but there was ample discussion among the readers of Johnson's blog:
"Western civilization is under attack," bellowed one reader, who ripped the Seattle Times for "gleefully" flaunting the photos. "You abet the islamozoids with our war dead photos. Worse, you demonstrate your allegiance to those who would destroy us. We, as a nation, need to gird our loins to repel this insidious evil that is islam. You are pathetic and traitorous with your actions. cease and desist and let our families mourn our dead in peace and dignity."
Are they terrorists or Nazis?
After the pro-choice March for Women's Lives in Washington on Sunday, Bush operative Karen Hughes compared reproductive-rights supporters to terrorists while Randall Terry, president of the Society for Truth and Justice, opted for an analogy to Hitler. Joseph Farah, editor of the right-wing Web tabloid World Net Daily, prefers the latter comparison himself, arguing that "these bleeding-hands liberals continue to act like an oppressed majority," even though "for most of the last 31 years, they have gotten their way.
"They got what they wanted through intimidation, through authoritarianism, through top-down state control and by denying the people any say in the issue," Farah continued. "That's why I thought what the aging diva of the bleeding-hands liberals, Gloria Steinem, had to say was nearly comical.
"'The desire to control reproduction is the mark of authoritarian governments around the world and, unfortunately, it's ours, as well,' she said on CNN ...
"Steinem is right when she calls U.S. national policy authoritarian. It is so because judicial tyrants have taken the matter of abortion out of the hands of the people -- or at least the people have been bullied into believing they have."
Indeed, Farah takes the Nazi line and plummets to a new low.
"After listening to all the speeches, reading all the banners and listening to all the chanting at yesterday's rally in the capital. Just what is it these malcontent feminazis want now? Will they not be satisfied until all the unborn babies are torn apart?"
National Review editor Kathryn Jean Lopez was less brutal, but still dismissed the marchers as a bunch of misguided juveniles.
"What was desperately lacking at the March for Women's Lives was any sense of perspective.
"The most colorful signs were of the 'Get Bush Off My Bush' variety. That's one thing on young girls' tank tops, but one of my Amtrak companions in her middle age was longing for one, too. It's a crowd that needs some growing up."
With an interesting twist of logic, she argues that the pro-choice women, by definition, should have given airtime to their opponents, too.
"Quietly gathering around the march were women and men -- and college students -- organized under a group called Silent No More, which works with families suffering from abortion. Their permit request was denied after an effective effort from the supposedly freedom-loving sisters who organized the 'March for Women's Lives.' (Said Georgette Forney, president of NOEL, one of the groups that makes up the Silent No More coalition [the other being Priests for Life], 'It's ironic that they are marching to protect women's right to choose and at the same time working to deny us our right to talk about the pain abortion caused us. We are the faces of the choice they promote.')"
O'Reilly to Rummy: "What the hell is going on"?
He may have been a loud war backer, but lately he's been ripping the Bush administration for everything from the missing WMD to a looming quagmire in Iraq. And now, in addition to criticizing various Bush officials, Fox News star Bill O'Reilly is even going after his own colleagues in the media for skirting some serious issues regarding the war.
"Let me ask you a direct question: Do you get angry at politicians who avoid answering tough questions?" O'Reilly wrote in his weekly commentary on his personal Web site. "Here's an example. I would like to ask Defense Secretary Rumsfeld one simple question: Why didn't your department warn the country that the aftermath of the war could be very bloody? Was it another intelligence failure?
"I cannot get Rumsfeld to answer that question.
"That's simply wrong. All Americans, including the thousands of families who have sons and daughters serving in Iraq, deserve to know as Rummy might put it, 'what the hell is going on.'
"Speaking before the Hollywood Radio and Television Society, Ted Koppel said: 'I have no problem whatsoever with entertainers and comedians pretending to be journalists; my problem is with journalists pretending to be entertainers.'"
But even if his own "No Spin Zone" has helped make Fox News the entertainment king of cable news, O'Reilly doesn't specify which category he fits under -- though he does elaborate a bit as to how the current media zeitgeist seems to have tilted the news picture.
"With all due respect to Mr. Koppel, whom I do respect, most electronic journalists must have an entertainment component these days, or they are out of business. We can't all work for PBS. It is the rise of ideological entertainers doing quasi-news programs on cable and talk radio that has changed the playing field. Politicians now have many more sympathetic ears in the media than ever before."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Read more of "Right Hook," at Salon's weekly roundup of conservative commentary and analysis.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Mark Follman is associate news editor at Salon.
__________________________________________________________________
Conservatives say Bush is drifting on Iraq and that Fallujah should be crushed, but they've been conspicuously quiet about the photos of flag-draped coffins. Plus: O'Reilly bashes Rummy!
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By Mark Follman
April 28, 2004 | As the Bush administration continues to struggle with the daunting military and political puzzle of Iraq, where multiple factions launched deadly insurgencies during April, conservatives are growing anxious to unleash the full might of the U.S. military. To do anything less, they argue, now imperils long-term U.S. credibility and control.
Even so, some hawkish commentators seem wary of the vast political and strategic risks involved. As U.S. forces went on the offensive around Najaf on Tuesday aiming to root out Shiite militant leader Muqtada al-Sadr, National Review contributor Jed Babbin remained somewhat cautious about attacking that citadel of Islamic holy ground, arguing that the U.S. needs to "get the Iraqis ready to do it themselves in Najaf." He doesn't go into detail as to how, though he says the Coalition Provisional Authority's inability to gain clear support from prominent Iraqi Shia cleric Ali al-Sistani is "a failure of historic proportion."
But Babbit appears far less concerned about the potential fallout from launching an all-out attack on Fallujah. Calling the cease-fire there "phony," he says the Bush administration needs to replace its flat-footed leadership posthaste -- and then invite all the Iraqi civilians of Fallujah to get out of the way so that U.S. forces can level the city if they have to. (On Tuesday night, U.S. forces stepped up airstrikes, ending a shaky two-day extension to last week's cease-fire.)
"Any place -- mosque, hospital, school -- is a legitimate military target when the enemy is using it for a military purpose. The worst of it is that we've waited too long to strike, and are allowing the insurgents to trap us into the house-to-house fighting Saddam wanted us to face in Baghdad. We can still avoid the trap. But the leadership in Iraq -- Bremer and army old-think generals -- will have to be replaced before we can ...
"We are adrift, and our enemies are taking full advantage of it ... We could have, and should have, made a full-out attack on Fallujah two weeks ago. The longer we wait, the more casualties our men suffer while the Iranian, Syrian, and other imported terrorists entrench themselves among the innocents there. Our military operations should proceed without regard to damage to the city, only taking care to avoid inflicting casualties on the noncombatants. This can still be done, by requiring the women, children, and elders to leave now, and then use the full force we have available to kill the insurgents. No more ceasefires anywhere, please, until the insurgents are beaten decisively."
Ralph Peters, a regular contributor to the New York Post, is even more blunt about the current battle for Fallujah, blasting the Bush administration for a lack of foresight and planning.
"We created the problem of Fallujah -- through neglect. Had we had adequate forces on hand a year ago in the immediate aftermath of combat to permeate the Sunni Triangle with troops, and had the administration had the clarity of vision to declare martial law, the current violence would have been averted.
"Instead, we handed gold-plated lollipops to killers and worried about hurting the feelings of Saddam's hard-core supporters. We looked away as the terrorists gripped one Iraqi city after another -- because we lacked the forces to put a military 'cop' on every beat. Our enemies didn't need to hide -- we weren't around often enough to see them ...
"Since the cease-fire, our troops have had to endure the ludicrous charade of 'negotiations' with the Fallujah city fathers -- breaking the rule that we never negotiate with terrorists or their surrogates. The resulting 'agreement' to turn in heavy weapons led to the mockery of sending the Marines a pick-up truck full of junk while the terrorists gained weeks to prepare their defenses, construct ambushes and organize a far tougher resistance than they could have presented two weeks ago."
Peters says the only way to ultimately subdue U.S. enemies in Iraq is to spill their blood for all the world to see.
"Our insipid diplomacy plays into the hands of our enemies: It looks like cowardice. And it is. We must not only win, we must be seen to win, graphically and decisively. 'Experts' warn that we mustn't alienate the hard-core Sunnis or the fundamentalist Shia's. Wake up and smell the cordite: They're already alienated. They'll never love us. So we'd better make damned sure they fear us ...
"We must win. If the enemy fights from mosques, level the mosques. If they fight from hospitals, gut the hospitals. If they open fire from orphanages, turn them into blackened shells. We cannot allow terrorists any sanctuaries. The men we face -- and the watching world -- interpret our decency as weakness ...
"The president needs to lead, not equivocate. If there is any emerging resemblance to Vietnam, it isn't on the battlefield, but in the White House, where no one seems to have the will to win."
Out of sight, out of mind?
As the fighting in Iraq escalates, the number of U.S. casualties is also likely to rise. But as the human cost of the war began to come into view last week when photos of flag-draped coffins appeared in the press, pro-war bloggers were conspicuously quiet about the issue. (Steyn? Sullivan? Simon?) Rather than defending or criticizing the Bush ban on photographing fallen U.S. soldiers being returned home, some on the right simply resorted to cynical attacks on the press -- once it was reported that the Web site responsible for acquiring the photos through a Freedom of Information Act request had accidentally conflated the images of military casualties with some images of victims of the Columbia shuttle disaster.
"Falling all over themselves in an unseemly and ghoulish haste to publish photographs of American soldiers arriving home in coffins, the Washington Post, CNN, AP, and Reuters all ran pictures of Columbia shuttle disaster victims -- wrongly identified as Iraqi war dead," declared Charles Johnson, whose blog is called Little Green Footballs.
Johnson linked to the Drudge Report, the influential right-wing gossip outlet, which blared the news of the mistaken NASA photos on Friday -- even though Drudge was one of the first to publicize a photo of flag-draped coffins taken by a military contractor and published in the Seattle Times the day before.
High-profile conservative pundits may have been reticent on the issue, but there was ample discussion among the readers of Johnson's blog:
"Western civilization is under attack," bellowed one reader, who ripped the Seattle Times for "gleefully" flaunting the photos. "You abet the islamozoids with our war dead photos. Worse, you demonstrate your allegiance to those who would destroy us. We, as a nation, need to gird our loins to repel this insidious evil that is islam. You are pathetic and traitorous with your actions. cease and desist and let our families mourn our dead in peace and dignity."
Are they terrorists or Nazis?
After the pro-choice March for Women's Lives in Washington on Sunday, Bush operative Karen Hughes compared reproductive-rights supporters to terrorists while Randall Terry, president of the Society for Truth and Justice, opted for an analogy to Hitler. Joseph Farah, editor of the right-wing Web tabloid World Net Daily, prefers the latter comparison himself, arguing that "these bleeding-hands liberals continue to act like an oppressed majority," even though "for most of the last 31 years, they have gotten their way.
"They got what they wanted through intimidation, through authoritarianism, through top-down state control and by denying the people any say in the issue," Farah continued. "That's why I thought what the aging diva of the bleeding-hands liberals, Gloria Steinem, had to say was nearly comical.
"'The desire to control reproduction is the mark of authoritarian governments around the world and, unfortunately, it's ours, as well,' she said on CNN ...
"Steinem is right when she calls U.S. national policy authoritarian. It is so because judicial tyrants have taken the matter of abortion out of the hands of the people -- or at least the people have been bullied into believing they have."
Indeed, Farah takes the Nazi line and plummets to a new low.
"After listening to all the speeches, reading all the banners and listening to all the chanting at yesterday's rally in the capital. Just what is it these malcontent feminazis want now? Will they not be satisfied until all the unborn babies are torn apart?"
National Review editor Kathryn Jean Lopez was less brutal, but still dismissed the marchers as a bunch of misguided juveniles.
"What was desperately lacking at the March for Women's Lives was any sense of perspective.
"The most colorful signs were of the 'Get Bush Off My Bush' variety. That's one thing on young girls' tank tops, but one of my Amtrak companions in her middle age was longing for one, too. It's a crowd that needs some growing up."
With an interesting twist of logic, she argues that the pro-choice women, by definition, should have given airtime to their opponents, too.
"Quietly gathering around the march were women and men -- and college students -- organized under a group called Silent No More, which works with families suffering from abortion. Their permit request was denied after an effective effort from the supposedly freedom-loving sisters who organized the 'March for Women's Lives.' (Said Georgette Forney, president of NOEL, one of the groups that makes up the Silent No More coalition [the other being Priests for Life], 'It's ironic that they are marching to protect women's right to choose and at the same time working to deny us our right to talk about the pain abortion caused us. We are the faces of the choice they promote.')"
O'Reilly to Rummy: "What the hell is going on"?
He may have been a loud war backer, but lately he's been ripping the Bush administration for everything from the missing WMD to a looming quagmire in Iraq. And now, in addition to criticizing various Bush officials, Fox News star Bill O'Reilly is even going after his own colleagues in the media for skirting some serious issues regarding the war.
"Let me ask you a direct question: Do you get angry at politicians who avoid answering tough questions?" O'Reilly wrote in his weekly commentary on his personal Web site. "Here's an example. I would like to ask Defense Secretary Rumsfeld one simple question: Why didn't your department warn the country that the aftermath of the war could be very bloody? Was it another intelligence failure?
"I cannot get Rumsfeld to answer that question.
"That's simply wrong. All Americans, including the thousands of families who have sons and daughters serving in Iraq, deserve to know as Rummy might put it, 'what the hell is going on.'
"Speaking before the Hollywood Radio and Television Society, Ted Koppel said: 'I have no problem whatsoever with entertainers and comedians pretending to be journalists; my problem is with journalists pretending to be entertainers.'"
But even if his own "No Spin Zone" has helped make Fox News the entertainment king of cable news, O'Reilly doesn't specify which category he fits under -- though he does elaborate a bit as to how the current media zeitgeist seems to have tilted the news picture.
"With all due respect to Mr. Koppel, whom I do respect, most electronic journalists must have an entertainment component these days, or they are out of business. We can't all work for PBS. It is the rise of ideological entertainers doing quasi-news programs on cable and talk radio that has changed the playing field. Politicians now have many more sympathetic ears in the media than ever before."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Read more of "Right Hook," at Salon's weekly roundup of conservative commentary and analysis.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Mark Follman is associate news editor at Salon.
__________________________________________________________________
The GOP's not-so-impartial hit man
Desperate to denigrate John Kerry's war record, Republicans have trotted out a "nonpartisan" Navy Vietnam vet -- who was a protege of Nixon dirty trickster Charles Colson and whose law firm is closely tied to the Bush White House.
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By Joe Conason
April 23, 2004 | Houston attorney John E. O'Neill, the Navy veteran who has emerged recently as a harsh and ubiquitous critic of John Kerry's military service, tells reporters that he has never really been interested in politics and isn't motivated by partisan interests. In the media, O'Neill is often described simply as a Vietnam vet still enraged by the antiwar speeches Kerry delivered more than 30 years ago. That was when O'Neill first came to public attention as a clean-cut, pro-war protégé of the Nixon White House's highest-ranking dirty trickster (aside from the late president himself), Charles Colson.
Colson, who went to prison for Watergate crimes, saw O'Neill as a perfect foil to Kerry, whom Nixon and his aides feared as a decorated, articulate and reasonable opponent of the war and their regime. Indeed, O'Neill was perfect -- a crewcut officer who had served on the same Navy swift boat that Kerry had commanded, although their stints in the Mekong Delta didn't overlap. In June 1971, Colson brought O'Neill up to Washington for an Oval Office audience with Nixon. His impressions live on in a memo filed later:
"O'Neill went out charging like a tiger, has agreed that he will appear anytime, anywhere that we program him and was last seen walking up West Executive Avenue mumbling to himself that he had just been with the most magnificent man he had ever met in his life."
Now O'Neill has emerged from those decades of silence, roaring denunciations of the man who will become the Democratic nominee for president this summer. "I saw some war heroes," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. "John Kerry is not a war hero."
To establish his nonpartisan credentials, O'Neill assured the CNN anchor that he was "never contacted" by the Bush-Cheney campaign. What he didn't mention, however, is that his law firm boasts long-standing and powerful connections with the Bush White House.
With an oil and litigation practice focused on the defense of major energy and industrial firms, the dozen partners in Clements, O'Neill, Pierce, Wilson & Fulkerson have clout that exceeds their firm's small size. Their corporate clients include Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Reliant Energy, Koch Industries and Eastman Kodak. More important, among the name partners is Margaret Wilson, the former general counsel to George W. Bush during his second term as Texas governor. (She succeeded Alberto Gonzales, who currently serves as White House counsel.)
In 2001, Wilson went to Washington with the new president, who appointed her deputy general counsel in the Department of Commerce. During her tenure as Bush's counsel in Austin, she was implicated in the Service Corporation International funeral home scandal. State government whistle-blower Eliza May accused Wilson of participating in an effort to "intimidate" her from pursuing an investigation of SCI, a major Bush campaign donor.
Among the firm's partners with close ties to Bush was "Tex" Lezar, who ran for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket with him in 1994, when Bush won and Lezar lost. An indefatigable conservative activist and lawyer sympathetic to the most extreme elements in Southern GOP circles, Lezar died last January at the age of 55. Before joining the Clements firm, Lezar served in the Reagan Justice Department, where he befriended Kenneth Starr, whom he often defended to the press when Starr was pursuing the Clintons as Whitewater independent counsel. In later years, Lezar held important positions in the Federalist Society, Empower America, the Texas Public Policy Foundation and various other right-wing organizations.
As for O'Neill, his Republican loyalties may well have been cemented in 1974. Three years after Colson first brought him to the White House to meet with Nixon, who encouraged the young O'Neill to "get" Kerry and the protesters in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he launched his legal career with a coveted clerkship in the United States Supreme Court. No doubt it was mere coincidence that O'Neill clerked with William Rehnquist, the controversial conservative who was Nixon's favorite justice and who went on to be appointed chief justice by President Reagan.
Nixon is gone, but his political heirs possess the White House -- and no doubt the disgraced politician would be pleased and proud that they are harassing Kerry with the same zeal that first brought Karl Rove to the attention of Watergate investigators. The young veteran he once showcased is now 58 years old, but O'Neill seems just as eager to battle Nixon's old enemies as he was back then.
The credibility of Vietnam veterans like O'Neill is crucial to Republican efforts to denigrate Kerry's war record. Those efforts suffered a setback yesterday when, after angry demands for disclosure from GOP chairman Ed Gillespie, the Democrat posted hundreds of pages documenting his service and decorations on his campaign Web site. Those pages from his Navy records show that Kerry's superiors consistently rated him as an outstanding and unusually talented officer. Those pages show that he volunteered for service in Vietnam and earned a Bronze and a Silver Star for valorous conduct under fire.
So far, at least, the attempts to smear Kerry have backfired. Looking over the citations and reports, and particularly those incidents when Kerry risked his life to protect his comrades, it is natural to contrast his experience with the National Guard career of George W. Bush -- and to wonder why veterans like O'Neill are not troubled by the difference.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Joe Conason writes a twice weekly column for Salon. He also writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His new book, "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth," is now available. Join Joe Conason along with Ann Richards, David Talbot and others on the Salon Cruise
____________________________________________________________________________________
Desperate to denigrate John Kerry's war record, Republicans have trotted out a "nonpartisan" Navy Vietnam vet -- who was a protege of Nixon dirty trickster Charles Colson and whose law firm is closely tied to the Bush White House.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason
April 23, 2004 | Houston attorney John E. O'Neill, the Navy veteran who has emerged recently as a harsh and ubiquitous critic of John Kerry's military service, tells reporters that he has never really been interested in politics and isn't motivated by partisan interests. In the media, O'Neill is often described simply as a Vietnam vet still enraged by the antiwar speeches Kerry delivered more than 30 years ago. That was when O'Neill first came to public attention as a clean-cut, pro-war protégé of the Nixon White House's highest-ranking dirty trickster (aside from the late president himself), Charles Colson.
Colson, who went to prison for Watergate crimes, saw O'Neill as a perfect foil to Kerry, whom Nixon and his aides feared as a decorated, articulate and reasonable opponent of the war and their regime. Indeed, O'Neill was perfect -- a crewcut officer who had served on the same Navy swift boat that Kerry had commanded, although their stints in the Mekong Delta didn't overlap. In June 1971, Colson brought O'Neill up to Washington for an Oval Office audience with Nixon. His impressions live on in a memo filed later:
"O'Neill went out charging like a tiger, has agreed that he will appear anytime, anywhere that we program him and was last seen walking up West Executive Avenue mumbling to himself that he had just been with the most magnificent man he had ever met in his life."
Now O'Neill has emerged from those decades of silence, roaring denunciations of the man who will become the Democratic nominee for president this summer. "I saw some war heroes," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. "John Kerry is not a war hero."
To establish his nonpartisan credentials, O'Neill assured the CNN anchor that he was "never contacted" by the Bush-Cheney campaign. What he didn't mention, however, is that his law firm boasts long-standing and powerful connections with the Bush White House.
With an oil and litigation practice focused on the defense of major energy and industrial firms, the dozen partners in Clements, O'Neill, Pierce, Wilson & Fulkerson have clout that exceeds their firm's small size. Their corporate clients include Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Reliant Energy, Koch Industries and Eastman Kodak. More important, among the name partners is Margaret Wilson, the former general counsel to George W. Bush during his second term as Texas governor. (She succeeded Alberto Gonzales, who currently serves as White House counsel.)
In 2001, Wilson went to Washington with the new president, who appointed her deputy general counsel in the Department of Commerce. During her tenure as Bush's counsel in Austin, she was implicated in the Service Corporation International funeral home scandal. State government whistle-blower Eliza May accused Wilson of participating in an effort to "intimidate" her from pursuing an investigation of SCI, a major Bush campaign donor.
Among the firm's partners with close ties to Bush was "Tex" Lezar, who ran for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket with him in 1994, when Bush won and Lezar lost. An indefatigable conservative activist and lawyer sympathetic to the most extreme elements in Southern GOP circles, Lezar died last January at the age of 55. Before joining the Clements firm, Lezar served in the Reagan Justice Department, where he befriended Kenneth Starr, whom he often defended to the press when Starr was pursuing the Clintons as Whitewater independent counsel. In later years, Lezar held important positions in the Federalist Society, Empower America, the Texas Public Policy Foundation and various other right-wing organizations.
As for O'Neill, his Republican loyalties may well have been cemented in 1974. Three years after Colson first brought him to the White House to meet with Nixon, who encouraged the young O'Neill to "get" Kerry and the protesters in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he launched his legal career with a coveted clerkship in the United States Supreme Court. No doubt it was mere coincidence that O'Neill clerked with William Rehnquist, the controversial conservative who was Nixon's favorite justice and who went on to be appointed chief justice by President Reagan.
Nixon is gone, but his political heirs possess the White House -- and no doubt the disgraced politician would be pleased and proud that they are harassing Kerry with the same zeal that first brought Karl Rove to the attention of Watergate investigators. The young veteran he once showcased is now 58 years old, but O'Neill seems just as eager to battle Nixon's old enemies as he was back then.
The credibility of Vietnam veterans like O'Neill is crucial to Republican efforts to denigrate Kerry's war record. Those efforts suffered a setback yesterday when, after angry demands for disclosure from GOP chairman Ed Gillespie, the Democrat posted hundreds of pages documenting his service and decorations on his campaign Web site. Those pages from his Navy records show that Kerry's superiors consistently rated him as an outstanding and unusually talented officer. Those pages show that he volunteered for service in Vietnam and earned a Bronze and a Silver Star for valorous conduct under fire.
So far, at least, the attempts to smear Kerry have backfired. Looking over the citations and reports, and particularly those incidents when Kerry risked his life to protect his comrades, it is natural to contrast his experience with the National Guard career of George W. Bush -- and to wonder why veterans like O'Neill are not troubled by the difference.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Joe Conason writes a twice weekly column for Salon. He also writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His new book, "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth," is now available. Join Joe Conason along with Ann Richards, David Talbot and others on the Salon Cruise
____________________________________________________________________________________
So Bush has a best pal from his Champagne Unit of the National Guard that was involved in the beginnings of his close ties with Saudi Arabia...and his name was blotted out of government papers for getting busted by the Guard for not submitting to a medical physical...just like Geo (his longtime nickname for Bush). To my conservative friends reading this. How much B.S. can you swallow without your eyes turning brown?
Mystery man
Why the White House deleted the name of Bush pal and Saudi go-between James Bath from the president's military records is a tantalizing but unanswered question.
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By Craig Unger
April 27, 2004 | Last month, before the 9/11 commission began its public hearings and Iraq exploded in renewed warfare, the White House tried to quell a gathering storm regarding President Bush's military service, releasing hundreds of documents about Bush's tenure in the Texas Air National Guard some 30 years ago. A close examination of the documents reveals that they not only fail to answer lingering questions about Bush's service but prompt a crucial new area of inquiry that could play a role in the presidential campaign -- a long and lucrative, but low-profile, relationship between Saudis and the Bush family that goes back 30 years.
The document that raises that question is dated Sept. 29, 1972, and notes that 1st Lt. George W. Bush was suspended from flying because of his "failure to accomplish [his] annual medical examination." Since he had just received hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of training as a jet fighter pilot, the fact that Bush let his medical certification lapse raises a troubling matter. Why did he allow himself to become ineligible to fly when he still had two years of service left? Given that random drug testing by the military had just started, some have suggested that Bush had not yet given up his partying ways and may have begged off because he had a substance abuse problem.
The records released by the White House last month fail to answer that question, but they do add one compelling fact to the story -- namely, that Bush was not the only man in his unit to be suspended for failing to take the physical, and that someone else at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston was suspended for exactly the same reason at almost the same time. However, in the documents, the second man's name was inexplicably redacted -- raising new questions.
Throughout the reams of documents released by the administration, standard practice was to allow each National Guardsman's name to be printed in full. Why did the White House make an exception in this case? Why would the Bush administration want to make sure this name in particular did not make it into the public eye?
The White House declined to answer these questions. However, the same document that was redacted by the White House had been the subject of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Marty Heldt, who was investigating the story before the 2000 presidential election. In the same document that the White House selectively censored for release to the public, the name of the man who was also suspended with Bush is clearly printed . His name: James R. Bath.
Reached at his home near Houston, Bath, who has been a business associate and friend of George W. Bush's for about 30 years, acknowledged to Salon that he was the man in question, but he dismissed the suspensions as trivial. "It happens all the time, especially in the Guard," he said. "In a regular squadron it is real easy to get your physical, but in a Guard unit, it is a different kettle of fish because the flight surgeon is also a civilian."
Bath, who referred to Bush as "Geo" because his first name appeared in that abbreviated form on his National Guard uniform, said that "the base is a ghost town except when the whole unit is there. When you fall out of requirements, it is no big deal; you are simply not able to be on the flying schedule. That is it, full stop."
Bath asserted that allegations that Bush had been using drugs are a "bogus issue," but declined to answer precisely why he and Bush failed to undergo their physicals. "I'm telling you that it [drug use] did not happen. It is beyond laughable. I wasn't with him 24/7, but Geo did not use drugs. Geo did not use drugs, and I really know the facts."
In addition to those still unanswered questions, there is now the issue of why the White House redacted Bath's name, an issue that has been absent from the mainstream media but that has been debated on weblogs such as Calpundit and Code Name: Monkey .
As it happens, when I interviewed Bath for my recently published book, "House of Bush, House of Saud," I discovered that the White House may not want to reveal his name because Bath, a Houston businessman who became friends with George W. Bush in the '70s, is the middleman in a story Bush doesn't particularly want told -- the saga of how the richest family in the world, the House of Saud, and its surrogates courted the Bush family. Bath was present at the birth of a relationship that would bring more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts from the House of Saud to the House of Bush over more than 20 years. The blotting out of Bath's name indicates President Bush's extreme sensitivity about his family's extensive connections with the Saudis.
About 6 feet tall, trim and balding, Bath mingles a wry, folksy Texas charm with the machismo of a veteran jet fighter pilot. It is a combination that has served him well in cultivating relationships with the greatest Texas power brokers of the last generation -- from former Gov. John Connally to the Bush family.
A native of Natchitoches, La., Bath moved to Houston in 1965 at age 29 to join the Texas Air National Guard. In 1968, he was hired by Atlantic Aviation, a Delaware company that sells business aircraft, to open an office in Houston. He went on to become an airplane broker on his own. Sometime around 1974 -- Bath doesn't recall the exact date -- he was trying to sell an F-27 turboprop when he received a phone call that changed his life.
The man on the phone was Salem bin Laden, heir to the great Saudi Binladin Group fortune. Then only about 25, Salem was also the older brother of Osama bin Laden, then 17.
Bath not only had a buyer for a plane no one else wanted but also had stumbled upon an extraordinary source of wealth and power. Bath ended up befriending both Salem bin Laden and his close associate, Khalid bin Mahfouz, then also about 25 and heir to the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, the biggest banking empire in the kingdom. Bath immediately took to the two men. "I like the Saudi mentality. They like guns, horses, aviation, the outdoors," he told me. "We had a lot in common."
In many ways, bin Mahfouz and bin Laden were Saudi versions of the well-heeled good old boys Bath knew so well. "In Texas, you'll find the rich carrying on about being just being poor country boys," he says. "Well, these guys were masters of playing the poor, simple Bedouin kid."
In fact, they were anything but poor. The Saudi Binladin Group was on its way to becoming the Saudi equivalent of Bechtel, the huge California construction and engineering firm. Likewise, bin Mahfouz had begun to build the National Commercial Bank into the Saudi version of Citibank, paving the way for it to enter the era of globalization.
Already close to the royal family in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden and bin Mahfouz sought to develop similar relationships in the United States. With Bath tutoring them in the ways of the West, they started coming to Houston regularly in the mid-'70s. Salem came first, buying planes and construction equipment for his family's company. He bought houses in Marble Falls on Lake Travis in central Texas' hill country and near Orlando, Fla. He started an aircraft services company in San Antonio, Binladen Aviation, largely to manage his small fleet of planes. He converted a BAC-111 for his personal use. For fun, he flew Lear jets, ultralights and other planes around central Texas. "He loved to fly, and spent more time trying to entertain himself than anyone I know," says Dee Howard, a San Antonio engineer who converted several aircraft for bin Laden.
Westerners who knew the family found them irresistible. "Salem was a crazy bastard -- and a delightful guy," says Terry Bennett, a doctor who attended the bin Ladens in Saudi Arabia. "All the bin Ladens filled the room. It was like being in the room with Bill Clinton or someone -- you were aware that they were there."
As the Saudis became entrenched in Texas in the '70s, bin Mahfouz bought an enormous, rambling $3.5 million faux chateau, later known as Houston's Versailles, in the posh River Oaks section of Houston. He also purchased a 4,000-acre ranch in Liberty County on the Trinity River near James Bath's ranch. "They loved the ranch and they loved the country life," says Bath. "There was a real affinity between Texas and life in the kingdom. Khalid would come out to the ranch with the family and the kids, to ride horses, shoot guns, [watch] fireworks. They'd been going to England forever. But Texas -- there was the novelty."
In the '70s, wealthy Saudis courted Democrats through prominent figures such as former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, a Washington super-lawyer, and Bert Lance, head of the Office of Management and Budget under Jimmy Carter. On the GOP side, they went to James Bath. Bath did not have nearly the stature that Clifford had. Nevertheless, he counted among his friends and business associates no fewer than five Texans who at one time or another would be considered presidential candidates.
Bath was friendly with the family of Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic senator who was the vice-presidential candidate in 1988 and became secretary of the Treasury. He was a partner of one of the senator's sons, Lan Bentsen, in a small real estate firm. While he served in the Texas Air National Guard, Bath also became friendly with George W. Bush, who had begun training in 1970 as a pilot of F-102 fighters at Ellington Air Force Base near Houston. They were members of the "Champagne Unit" of the National Guard, so called as the vehicle through which the sons of Houston society escaped serving in the Vietnam War.
In the mid-'70s, the young Bush introduced Bath to his father, George H.W. Bush, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee and, under President Ford, chief plenipotentiary of the U.S. mission to China. There was also Bath's duck-hunting buddy, James A. Baker III, then in his mid-40s, one of Houston's most powerful corporate attorneys and a true Texas patrician as a member of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city. Finally, there was John Connally, the former Democratic Texas governor who became secretary of the Treasury under Nixon in 1971 and had switched to the Republican Party.
By 1976, bin Laden had appointed Bath to be his American business representative. Bin Mahfouz drew up a similar arrangement with him. Bath was more than simply someone who could provide the Saudis with an entree to political power brokers. But exactly what he did beyond that, in the intelligence world and elsewhere, is shrouded in mystery. When asked about his career, Bath downplays his importance. By his account, he is merely "a small, obscure businessman." It has often been said that he was in the CIA, but Bath denied that to Time magazine. Later, he equivocated. "There's all sorts of degrees of civilian participation [in the CIA]," he told me. "It runs the whole spectrum, [from] maybe passing on relevant data to more substantive things. The people who are called on by their government and serve -- I don't think you're going to find them talking about it. Were that the case with me, I'm almost certain you wouldn't find me talking about it."
Bath's role in investing for the Saudis took various forms. "The investments were sometimes in my name as trustee, sometimes offshore corporations and sometimes in the name of a law firm," he says. "It would vary."
Bath generally received a 5 percent interest as his fee and was sometimes listed as a trustee in related corporate documents.
On behalf of Salem bin Laden, Bath purchased the Houston Gulf Airport, a small, private facility in League City, Texas, 25 miles east of Houston. He also became the sole director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing in the Cayman Islands, which was owned by bin Mahfouz.
Through Skyway, Bath brokered about $150 million worth of private aircraft deals to major stockholders in the Middle Eastern Bank of Credit and Commerce International, such as Ghaith Pharaon, a Saudi billionaire, and Sheik Zayed bin Sultan an-Nahayan, president of the United Arab Emirates. To incorporate his companies in the Cayman Islands, Bath used the same firm that set up a money-collecting front for Oliver North in the Iran-Contra affair. He also served as an intermediary between the Saudis and Connally, who, having served as Nixon's Treasury secretary, began to position himself for a shot at the White House in 1980.
In August 1977, Connally and Bath teamed up with bin Mahfouz and his friend Pharaon to buy the Main Bank of Houston, a small community bank with about $70 million in assets.
Through Main Bank, the young Saudis had established ties to Connally. They were now in business with a legitimate presidential contender who seemed well positioned for the 1980 campaign. Having business partnerships with an American presidential candidate elevated them enormously in the eyes of Saudis back home, especially the royal family.
At the time, Connally had only one serious political rival in Texas -- George H.W. Bush, a man with little of Connally's charisma. A Connecticut Yankee who constantly had to prove his Texas bona fides, Bush had a somewhat understated style that only accentuated his upper-class New England background. Connally was unabashed about being the biggest lawyer for Arab money in Texas. Bush kept his distance. Next to Connally, he seemed bland indeed. Nevertheless, within a few years, Saudis seeking access to the highest levels of American power soon forgot Lance, Clifford and Connally, realizing that Bush was the man to see.
Bath denies that money went from bin Mahfouz and bin Laden through him into Arbusto Energy, the first oil company started by George W. Bush. Bath had fronted for the two Saudi billionaires on other deals, but in this case, he says, "100 percent of those funds were mine. It was a purely personal investment." Bin Laden and bin Mahfouz, he insists, had nothing to do with either the elder Bush or his son. "They never met Bush -- ever," Bath says. "And there was no reason to. At that point, Bush was a young guy just out of Yale, a struggling young entrepreneur trying to get a drilling fund."
No evidence has emerged to contradict Bath. But in 1982, bin Mahfouz helped develop a 75-story skyscraper for the Texas Commerce Bank, which had been founded by Baker's family. That investment meant that the young Saudi now had shared business interests with the chief of staff to President Reagan.
Later in the '80s, bin Mahfouz's associates came to the rescue of Harken Energy, a struggling Dallas oil company of which George W. Bush was a director. And both the bin Mahfouz family and the bin Ladens participated in the Carlyle Group, the giant Washington private equity firm in which Bush Sr. and Baker were major figures. Over the next generation, more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts went from the Saudis to these companies that were so close to the Bushes.
In the end, we may never know why both Bush and Bath failed to have their medical exams and lost their eligibility to fly in the National Guard. During the 2000 presidential campaign, a Bush spokesman said that Bush did not take the exam because he was in Alabama at the time, while his personal physician was back in Texas. That answer did not hold up under scrutiny, however, because only flight surgeons perform the physicals. When the same question arose this year, White House communications director Dan Bartlett had a different response. He said Bush did not undergo the physical because he knew he would be on a nonflying status in Alabama.
Why Bath's name was blotted out in the records of Bush's military service is an entirely different question. But it leads to a story that figures even more prominently in the headlines today. After all, he was present at the birth of the Bush-Saudi relationship.
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About the writer
Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties."
_____________________________________________________________________________
Mystery man
Why the White House deleted the name of Bush pal and Saudi go-between James Bath from the president's military records is a tantalizing but unanswered question.
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By Craig Unger
April 27, 2004 | Last month, before the 9/11 commission began its public hearings and Iraq exploded in renewed warfare, the White House tried to quell a gathering storm regarding President Bush's military service, releasing hundreds of documents about Bush's tenure in the Texas Air National Guard some 30 years ago. A close examination of the documents reveals that they not only fail to answer lingering questions about Bush's service but prompt a crucial new area of inquiry that could play a role in the presidential campaign -- a long and lucrative, but low-profile, relationship between Saudis and the Bush family that goes back 30 years.
The document that raises that question is dated Sept. 29, 1972, and notes that 1st Lt. George W. Bush was suspended from flying because of his "failure to accomplish [his] annual medical examination." Since he had just received hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of training as a jet fighter pilot, the fact that Bush let his medical certification lapse raises a troubling matter. Why did he allow himself to become ineligible to fly when he still had two years of service left? Given that random drug testing by the military had just started, some have suggested that Bush had not yet given up his partying ways and may have begged off because he had a substance abuse problem.
The records released by the White House last month fail to answer that question, but they do add one compelling fact to the story -- namely, that Bush was not the only man in his unit to be suspended for failing to take the physical, and that someone else at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston was suspended for exactly the same reason at almost the same time. However, in the documents, the second man's name was inexplicably redacted -- raising new questions.
Throughout the reams of documents released by the administration, standard practice was to allow each National Guardsman's name to be printed in full. Why did the White House make an exception in this case? Why would the Bush administration want to make sure this name in particular did not make it into the public eye?
The White House declined to answer these questions. However, the same document that was redacted by the White House had been the subject of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Marty Heldt, who was investigating the story before the 2000 presidential election. In the same document that the White House selectively censored for release to the public, the name of the man who was also suspended with Bush is clearly printed . His name: James R. Bath.
Reached at his home near Houston, Bath, who has been a business associate and friend of George W. Bush's for about 30 years, acknowledged to Salon that he was the man in question, but he dismissed the suspensions as trivial. "It happens all the time, especially in the Guard," he said. "In a regular squadron it is real easy to get your physical, but in a Guard unit, it is a different kettle of fish because the flight surgeon is also a civilian."
Bath, who referred to Bush as "Geo" because his first name appeared in that abbreviated form on his National Guard uniform, said that "the base is a ghost town except when the whole unit is there. When you fall out of requirements, it is no big deal; you are simply not able to be on the flying schedule. That is it, full stop."
Bath asserted that allegations that Bush had been using drugs are a "bogus issue," but declined to answer precisely why he and Bush failed to undergo their physicals. "I'm telling you that it [drug use] did not happen. It is beyond laughable. I wasn't with him 24/7, but Geo did not use drugs. Geo did not use drugs, and I really know the facts."
In addition to those still unanswered questions, there is now the issue of why the White House redacted Bath's name, an issue that has been absent from the mainstream media but that has been debated on weblogs such as Calpundit and Code Name: Monkey .
As it happens, when I interviewed Bath for my recently published book, "House of Bush, House of Saud," I discovered that the White House may not want to reveal his name because Bath, a Houston businessman who became friends with George W. Bush in the '70s, is the middleman in a story Bush doesn't particularly want told -- the saga of how the richest family in the world, the House of Saud, and its surrogates courted the Bush family. Bath was present at the birth of a relationship that would bring more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts from the House of Saud to the House of Bush over more than 20 years. The blotting out of Bath's name indicates President Bush's extreme sensitivity about his family's extensive connections with the Saudis.
About 6 feet tall, trim and balding, Bath mingles a wry, folksy Texas charm with the machismo of a veteran jet fighter pilot. It is a combination that has served him well in cultivating relationships with the greatest Texas power brokers of the last generation -- from former Gov. John Connally to the Bush family.
A native of Natchitoches, La., Bath moved to Houston in 1965 at age 29 to join the Texas Air National Guard. In 1968, he was hired by Atlantic Aviation, a Delaware company that sells business aircraft, to open an office in Houston. He went on to become an airplane broker on his own. Sometime around 1974 -- Bath doesn't recall the exact date -- he was trying to sell an F-27 turboprop when he received a phone call that changed his life.
The man on the phone was Salem bin Laden, heir to the great Saudi Binladin Group fortune. Then only about 25, Salem was also the older brother of Osama bin Laden, then 17.
Bath not only had a buyer for a plane no one else wanted but also had stumbled upon an extraordinary source of wealth and power. Bath ended up befriending both Salem bin Laden and his close associate, Khalid bin Mahfouz, then also about 25 and heir to the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, the biggest banking empire in the kingdom. Bath immediately took to the two men. "I like the Saudi mentality. They like guns, horses, aviation, the outdoors," he told me. "We had a lot in common."
In many ways, bin Mahfouz and bin Laden were Saudi versions of the well-heeled good old boys Bath knew so well. "In Texas, you'll find the rich carrying on about being just being poor country boys," he says. "Well, these guys were masters of playing the poor, simple Bedouin kid."
In fact, they were anything but poor. The Saudi Binladin Group was on its way to becoming the Saudi equivalent of Bechtel, the huge California construction and engineering firm. Likewise, bin Mahfouz had begun to build the National Commercial Bank into the Saudi version of Citibank, paving the way for it to enter the era of globalization.
Already close to the royal family in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden and bin Mahfouz sought to develop similar relationships in the United States. With Bath tutoring them in the ways of the West, they started coming to Houston regularly in the mid-'70s. Salem came first, buying planes and construction equipment for his family's company. He bought houses in Marble Falls on Lake Travis in central Texas' hill country and near Orlando, Fla. He started an aircraft services company in San Antonio, Binladen Aviation, largely to manage his small fleet of planes. He converted a BAC-111 for his personal use. For fun, he flew Lear jets, ultralights and other planes around central Texas. "He loved to fly, and spent more time trying to entertain himself than anyone I know," says Dee Howard, a San Antonio engineer who converted several aircraft for bin Laden.
Westerners who knew the family found them irresistible. "Salem was a crazy bastard -- and a delightful guy," says Terry Bennett, a doctor who attended the bin Ladens in Saudi Arabia. "All the bin Ladens filled the room. It was like being in the room with Bill Clinton or someone -- you were aware that they were there."
As the Saudis became entrenched in Texas in the '70s, bin Mahfouz bought an enormous, rambling $3.5 million faux chateau, later known as Houston's Versailles, in the posh River Oaks section of Houston. He also purchased a 4,000-acre ranch in Liberty County on the Trinity River near James Bath's ranch. "They loved the ranch and they loved the country life," says Bath. "There was a real affinity between Texas and life in the kingdom. Khalid would come out to the ranch with the family and the kids, to ride horses, shoot guns, [watch] fireworks. They'd been going to England forever. But Texas -- there was the novelty."
In the '70s, wealthy Saudis courted Democrats through prominent figures such as former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, a Washington super-lawyer, and Bert Lance, head of the Office of Management and Budget under Jimmy Carter. On the GOP side, they went to James Bath. Bath did not have nearly the stature that Clifford had. Nevertheless, he counted among his friends and business associates no fewer than five Texans who at one time or another would be considered presidential candidates.
Bath was friendly with the family of Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic senator who was the vice-presidential candidate in 1988 and became secretary of the Treasury. He was a partner of one of the senator's sons, Lan Bentsen, in a small real estate firm. While he served in the Texas Air National Guard, Bath also became friendly with George W. Bush, who had begun training in 1970 as a pilot of F-102 fighters at Ellington Air Force Base near Houston. They were members of the "Champagne Unit" of the National Guard, so called as the vehicle through which the sons of Houston society escaped serving in the Vietnam War.
In the mid-'70s, the young Bush introduced Bath to his father, George H.W. Bush, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee and, under President Ford, chief plenipotentiary of the U.S. mission to China. There was also Bath's duck-hunting buddy, James A. Baker III, then in his mid-40s, one of Houston's most powerful corporate attorneys and a true Texas patrician as a member of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city. Finally, there was John Connally, the former Democratic Texas governor who became secretary of the Treasury under Nixon in 1971 and had switched to the Republican Party.
By 1976, bin Laden had appointed Bath to be his American business representative. Bin Mahfouz drew up a similar arrangement with him. Bath was more than simply someone who could provide the Saudis with an entree to political power brokers. But exactly what he did beyond that, in the intelligence world and elsewhere, is shrouded in mystery. When asked about his career, Bath downplays his importance. By his account, he is merely "a small, obscure businessman." It has often been said that he was in the CIA, but Bath denied that to Time magazine. Later, he equivocated. "There's all sorts of degrees of civilian participation [in the CIA]," he told me. "It runs the whole spectrum, [from] maybe passing on relevant data to more substantive things. The people who are called on by their government and serve -- I don't think you're going to find them talking about it. Were that the case with me, I'm almost certain you wouldn't find me talking about it."
Bath's role in investing for the Saudis took various forms. "The investments were sometimes in my name as trustee, sometimes offshore corporations and sometimes in the name of a law firm," he says. "It would vary."
Bath generally received a 5 percent interest as his fee and was sometimes listed as a trustee in related corporate documents.
On behalf of Salem bin Laden, Bath purchased the Houston Gulf Airport, a small, private facility in League City, Texas, 25 miles east of Houston. He also became the sole director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing in the Cayman Islands, which was owned by bin Mahfouz.
Through Skyway, Bath brokered about $150 million worth of private aircraft deals to major stockholders in the Middle Eastern Bank of Credit and Commerce International, such as Ghaith Pharaon, a Saudi billionaire, and Sheik Zayed bin Sultan an-Nahayan, president of the United Arab Emirates. To incorporate his companies in the Cayman Islands, Bath used the same firm that set up a money-collecting front for Oliver North in the Iran-Contra affair. He also served as an intermediary between the Saudis and Connally, who, having served as Nixon's Treasury secretary, began to position himself for a shot at the White House in 1980.
In August 1977, Connally and Bath teamed up with bin Mahfouz and his friend Pharaon to buy the Main Bank of Houston, a small community bank with about $70 million in assets.
Through Main Bank, the young Saudis had established ties to Connally. They were now in business with a legitimate presidential contender who seemed well positioned for the 1980 campaign. Having business partnerships with an American presidential candidate elevated them enormously in the eyes of Saudis back home, especially the royal family.
At the time, Connally had only one serious political rival in Texas -- George H.W. Bush, a man with little of Connally's charisma. A Connecticut Yankee who constantly had to prove his Texas bona fides, Bush had a somewhat understated style that only accentuated his upper-class New England background. Connally was unabashed about being the biggest lawyer for Arab money in Texas. Bush kept his distance. Next to Connally, he seemed bland indeed. Nevertheless, within a few years, Saudis seeking access to the highest levels of American power soon forgot Lance, Clifford and Connally, realizing that Bush was the man to see.
Bath denies that money went from bin Mahfouz and bin Laden through him into Arbusto Energy, the first oil company started by George W. Bush. Bath had fronted for the two Saudi billionaires on other deals, but in this case, he says, "100 percent of those funds were mine. It was a purely personal investment." Bin Laden and bin Mahfouz, he insists, had nothing to do with either the elder Bush or his son. "They never met Bush -- ever," Bath says. "And there was no reason to. At that point, Bush was a young guy just out of Yale, a struggling young entrepreneur trying to get a drilling fund."
No evidence has emerged to contradict Bath. But in 1982, bin Mahfouz helped develop a 75-story skyscraper for the Texas Commerce Bank, which had been founded by Baker's family. That investment meant that the young Saudi now had shared business interests with the chief of staff to President Reagan.
Later in the '80s, bin Mahfouz's associates came to the rescue of Harken Energy, a struggling Dallas oil company of which George W. Bush was a director. And both the bin Mahfouz family and the bin Ladens participated in the Carlyle Group, the giant Washington private equity firm in which Bush Sr. and Baker were major figures. Over the next generation, more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts went from the Saudis to these companies that were so close to the Bushes.
In the end, we may never know why both Bush and Bath failed to have their medical exams and lost their eligibility to fly in the National Guard. During the 2000 presidential campaign, a Bush spokesman said that Bush did not take the exam because he was in Alabama at the time, while his personal physician was back in Texas. That answer did not hold up under scrutiny, however, because only flight surgeons perform the physicals. When the same question arose this year, White House communications director Dan Bartlett had a different response. He said Bush did not undergo the physical because he knew he would be on a nonflying status in Alabama.
Why Bath's name was blotted out in the records of Bush's military service is an entirely different question. But it leads to a story that figures even more prominently in the headlines today. After all, he was present at the birth of the Bush-Saudi relationship.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties."
_____________________________________________________________________________
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