October 25, 2005
Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report
By DAVID JOHNSTON, RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL
This article is by David Johnston, Richard W. Stevenson and Douglas Jehl.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.
Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.
The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.
Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.
Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet , the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.
It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry.
White House officials did not respond to requests for comment, and Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, would not comment on Mr. Libby's legal status. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, declined to comment on the case.
Mr. Fitzgerald is expected to decide whether to bring charges in the case by Friday, when the term of the grand jury expires. Mr. Libby and Karl Rove , President Bush's senior adviser, both face the possibility of indictment, lawyers involved in the case have said. It is not publicly known whether other officials also face indictment.
The notes help explain the legal difficulties facing Mr. Libby. Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program.
But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald's possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson - who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame - from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.
It is not clear why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so. At the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Bush pledged the White House's full cooperation and instructed aides to provide Mr. Fitzgerald with any information he sought.
The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson's wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and that she may have helped arrange her husband's trip.
Some lawyers in the case have said Mr. Fitzgerald may face obstacles in bringing a false-statement charge against Mr. Libby. They said it could be difficult to prove that he intentionally sought to mislead the grand jury.
Lawyers involved in the case said they had no indication that Mr. Fitzgerald was considering charging Mr. Cheney with wrongdoing. Mr. Cheney was interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what the vice president told Mr. Fitzgerald about the conversation with Mr. Libby or when Mr. Fitzgerald first learned of it.
But the evidence of Mr. Cheney's direct involvement in the effort to learn more about Mr. Wilson is sure to intensify the political pressure on the White House in a week of high anxiety among Republicans about the potential for the case to deal a sharp blow to Mr. Bush's presidency.
Mr. Tenet was not available for comment Monday night. But another former senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet had been interviewed by the special prosecutor and his staff in early 2004, and never appeared before the grand jury. Mr. Tenet has not talked since then to the prosecutors, the former official said.
The former official said he strongly doubted that the White House learned about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Tenet.
On Monday, Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby both attended a cabinet meeting with Mr. Bush as the White House continued trying to portray business as usual. But the assumption among White House officials is that anyone who is indicted will step aside.
On June 12, 2003, the day of the conversation between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby, The Washington Post published a front-page article reporting that the C.I.A. had sent a retired American diplomat to Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium there. The article did not name the diplomat, who turned out to be Mr. Wilson, but it reported that his mission had not corroborated a claim about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material that the White House had subsequently used in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.
An earlier anonymous reference to Mr. Wilson and his mission to Africa had appeared in a column by Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times on May 6, 2003. Mr. Wilson went public with his conclusion that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times.
The note written by Mr. Libby will be a crucial piece of evidence in a false-statement case against him if Mr. Fitzgerald decides to pursue it, lawyers in the case said. It also explains why Mr. Fitzgerald waged a long legal battle to obtain the testimony of reporters who were known to have talked to Mr. Libby.
The reporters involved have said that they did not supply Mr. Libby with details about Mr. Wilson and his wife. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, in his account of a deposition on the subject, wrote that he asked Mr. Libby whether he had even heard that Ms. Wilson had a role in sending her husband to Africa. Mr. Cooper said that Mr. Libby did not use Ms. Wilson's name but replied, "Yeah, I've heard that too."
In her testimony to the grand jury, Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, said Mr. Libby sought from the start of her three conversations with him to "insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's charges."
Mr. Fitzgerald asked questions about Mr. Cheney, Ms. Miller said. "He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interview with me or was aware of them," Ms. Miller said. "The answer was no."
In addition to Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller, Mr. Fitzgerald is known to have interviewed three other journalists who spoke to Mr. Libby during June and July 2003. They were Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and Tim Russert of NBC News.
Mr. Pincus and Mr. Kessler have said that Mr. Libby did not discuss Mr. Wilson's wife with them in their conversations during the period. Mr. Russert, in a statement, declined to say exactly what he discussed with Mr. Libby, but said he first learned the identity of Mr. Wilson's wife in the column by Mr. Novak.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Friday, September 02, 2005
United States of Shame
Bush sings an old camptown spiritual for the folks dying in New Orleans while at a fund raiser waaaay far away from the disaster.
September 3, 2005
United States of Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD
Stuff happens.
And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.
America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.
W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.
Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.
Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.
Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.
Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.
In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.
Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.
Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.
Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.
When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.
When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.
Who are we if we can't take care of our own?
Monday, August 22, 2005
THE SHURB AND THE HARD CASE-Y
WHAT GEORGE BUSH SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CASEY SHEEHAN
by Larry C. Johnson
There are some things that George Bush should know about Casey Sheehan should he choose to sit down and talk with his mom. One thing he could discuss is the fact that a distant relative of his was wounded at Casey's side. That boy, Brian Emmett, also is my second cousin. But more about that later.
Perhaps the conversation ought to start about the other seven men who died on April 4, 2004 in Sadr City.
From the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas were:
Sgt. Yihjyh L. Chen, 31, of Saipan, Marianas Protectorate.
Spc. Robert R. Arsiaga, 25, of San Antonio, Texas.
Spc. Stephen D. Hiller, 25, of Opelika, Ala.
Spc. Ahmed A. Cason, 24, of McCalla, Ala.
Spc. Israel Garza, 25, of Lubbock, Texas.
From the Army's 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Ray Barracks, Friedberg, Germany was Sgt. Michael W. Mitchell, 25, of Porterville, Calif.
And, from Casey's unit, the 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas was Cpl. Forest J. Jostes, 22, of Albion, Ill.
Maybe George Bush could clarify why these men died. According to several press reports, they were attacked and killed by forces loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. And where is al-Sadr today? He's a player in the Shiite community in Iraq which is on the verge of installing Islam as the basis of government in Iraq. In effect, Casey and his comrades were killed by people whose leaders are on the verge of taking control in Iraq. It would be one thing if George Bush could tell Casey's mom and the moms of the other boys who died that their sons gave their lives to create a secular Iraq. But we now know that is not true. They gave their lives in a cause that is allowing some Islamic extremists loyal to Iran to play a major role in the "new" Iraq.
I don't know if Casey Sheehan's mom is specifically angry about that fact, but my cousin, Kathy Emmett-Meek, is furious. Her son, Brian, was in Alpha Company of the 2-5 Cavalry on April 4, 2004 when Charlie Company from the same Division were ambushed. Brian and his buddies were alerted and entered Sadr City to rescue their comrades. As they lept from their vehicle they were hit with a hurricane of bullets and RPGs. One bullet shattered Brian's left tibia. An RPG exploded nearby and peppered his right ankle with shrapnel. Brian fired several clips at the enemy and only stopped shooting when he passed out from loss of blood. My cousin and his buddies were and are warriors.
Brian survived. He received a purple heart from George Bush himself during his Easter 2004 visit with wounded troops at Fort Hood. But Brian has not fully recovered. Brian's mom ratted on him, telling me about Brian's current state. Then, only after I badgered him did Brian himself admit his difficulties to me. Brian is trying to handle things quietly and bravely, just as he did that day in Sadr City. Yet, he still faces more reconstructive surgery. What is really tragic is that he battles the demon of survivor's guilt. His mom tells me that, on bad days, he wonders why he was allowed to live and his buddies died. The good news is he still loves his country and is getting on with his life. What really sucks is that he is fighting the VA Bureaucracy to get his benefits. They still have not assigned him a disability status. He described his separation from the Army as a boot in the ass and good luck.
Brian and the other wounded vets deserve more than best wishes and good cheer. They have shed their blood in service to their country and deserve our full commitment.
The ultimate irony of this story is that Brian is a distant relative of George W. Bush (his mother tells me she learned of it while doing genealogical research). Well, at least there is some good news--George W. Bush can now claim he may have a relative who was wounded in combat in Iraq.
----
Larry Johnson is former Deputy Director of Counter Terrorism under Bush Sr. and Clinton, former CIA and a Conservative Republican.
by Larry C. Johnson
There are some things that George Bush should know about Casey Sheehan should he choose to sit down and talk with his mom. One thing he could discuss is the fact that a distant relative of his was wounded at Casey's side. That boy, Brian Emmett, also is my second cousin. But more about that later.
Perhaps the conversation ought to start about the other seven men who died on April 4, 2004 in Sadr City.
From the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas were:
Sgt. Yihjyh L. Chen, 31, of Saipan, Marianas Protectorate.
Spc. Robert R. Arsiaga, 25, of San Antonio, Texas.
Spc. Stephen D. Hiller, 25, of Opelika, Ala.
Spc. Ahmed A. Cason, 24, of McCalla, Ala.
Spc. Israel Garza, 25, of Lubbock, Texas.
From the Army's 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Ray Barracks, Friedberg, Germany was Sgt. Michael W. Mitchell, 25, of Porterville, Calif.
And, from Casey's unit, the 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas was Cpl. Forest J. Jostes, 22, of Albion, Ill.
Maybe George Bush could clarify why these men died. According to several press reports, they were attacked and killed by forces loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. And where is al-Sadr today? He's a player in the Shiite community in Iraq which is on the verge of installing Islam as the basis of government in Iraq. In effect, Casey and his comrades were killed by people whose leaders are on the verge of taking control in Iraq. It would be one thing if George Bush could tell Casey's mom and the moms of the other boys who died that their sons gave their lives to create a secular Iraq. But we now know that is not true. They gave their lives in a cause that is allowing some Islamic extremists loyal to Iran to play a major role in the "new" Iraq.
I don't know if Casey Sheehan's mom is specifically angry about that fact, but my cousin, Kathy Emmett-Meek, is furious. Her son, Brian, was in Alpha Company of the 2-5 Cavalry on April 4, 2004 when Charlie Company from the same Division were ambushed. Brian and his buddies were alerted and entered Sadr City to rescue their comrades. As they lept from their vehicle they were hit with a hurricane of bullets and RPGs. One bullet shattered Brian's left tibia. An RPG exploded nearby and peppered his right ankle with shrapnel. Brian fired several clips at the enemy and only stopped shooting when he passed out from loss of blood. My cousin and his buddies were and are warriors.
Brian survived. He received a purple heart from George Bush himself during his Easter 2004 visit with wounded troops at Fort Hood. But Brian has not fully recovered. Brian's mom ratted on him, telling me about Brian's current state. Then, only after I badgered him did Brian himself admit his difficulties to me. Brian is trying to handle things quietly and bravely, just as he did that day in Sadr City. Yet, he still faces more reconstructive surgery. What is really tragic is that he battles the demon of survivor's guilt. His mom tells me that, on bad days, he wonders why he was allowed to live and his buddies died. The good news is he still loves his country and is getting on with his life. What really sucks is that he is fighting the VA Bureaucracy to get his benefits. They still have not assigned him a disability status. He described his separation from the Army as a boot in the ass and good luck.
Brian and the other wounded vets deserve more than best wishes and good cheer. They have shed their blood in service to their country and deserve our full commitment.
The ultimate irony of this story is that Brian is a distant relative of George W. Bush (his mother tells me she learned of it while doing genealogical research). Well, at least there is some good news--George W. Bush can now claim he may have a relative who was wounded in combat in Iraq.
----
Larry Johnson is former Deputy Director of Counter Terrorism under Bush Sr. and Clinton, former CIA and a Conservative Republican.
Friday, August 19, 2005
TELL AMERICANS WHAT WE STAND FOR & AGAINST!
I've been screaming this since Bush got into office. We need a Democratic CONTRACT WITH AMERICA! Take a #$%@ing stand, offer some anti-Washington rhetoric (bash the hell out of the lobbyist GOP congress and White House) and say THROW THOSE BUMS OUT!
What Democrats Should Be Saying
By David Ignatius
Friday, August 19, 2005; A21
This should be the Democrats' moment: The Bush administration is caught in an increasingly unpopular war; its plan to revamp Social Security is fading into oblivion; its deputy chief of staff is facing a grand jury probe. Though the Republicans control both houses of Congress as well as the White House, they seem to be suffering from political and intellectual exhaustion. They are better at slash-and-burn campaigning than governing.
So where are the Democrats amid this GOP disarray? Frankly, they are nowhere. They are failing utterly in the role of an opposition party, which is to provide a coherent alternative account of how the nation might solve its problems. Rather than lead a responsible examination of America's strategy for Iraq, they have handed off the debate to a distraught mother who is grieving for her lost son. Rather than address the nation's long-term fiscal problems, they have decided to play politics and let President Bush squirm on the hook of his unpopular plan to create private Social Security accounts.
Because they lack coherent plans for how to govern the country, the Democrats have become captive of the most shrill voices in the party, who seem motivated these days mainly by visceral dislike of George W. Bush. Sorry, folks, but loathing is not a strategy -- especially when much of the country finds the object of your loathing a likable guy.
The Democrats' problem is partly a lack of strong leadership. Its main spokesman on foreign policy has become Sen. Joseph Biden, a man who -- how to put this politely? -- seems more impressed with the force of his own intellect than an objective evaluation would warrant. Listening to Biden, you sense how hungry he is to be president, but you have little idea what he would do, other than talk . . . and talk.
The same failing is evident among Democratic spokesmen on economic issues. Name a tough problem -- such as energy independence or reform of Medicare and Social Security -- and the Democrats are ducking the hard choices. That may be understandable as a short-term political strategy: Why screw up your chances in the 2006 congressional elections by telling people they must make sacrifices? But this approach keeps the Democrats part of politics-as-usual, a game the GOP plays better.
Howard Dean is a breath of air as chairman of the Democratic National Committee -- but unfortunately a lot of it is hot air. Dean is admirably combative, and in that he reflects a party that is tired of being mauled by Karl Rove's divisive campaigning. The problem with Dean is that, like his party, he doesn't have much to say about solving problems. Pressed about Iraq last Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation," Dean passed the buck: "What we need is a plan from the president of the United States." Rather than condemn a NARAL Pro-Choice America ad against the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts that was so outrageous it was pulled from the air, Dean averred: "I'm not even going to get into that."
Today's Democrats have trouble expressing the most basic theme of American politics: "We, the people." Rather than a governing party with a clear ideology, they are a collection of interest groups. For a simple demonstration, go to the DNC's Web site and pull down the menu for "People." What you will find is the following shopping list: "African American, Asian Amer./Pacific Islanders, Disability Community, Farmers and Ranchers, Hispanics, GLBT (Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender) Community, Native Americans, Religious Communities, Seniors & Retirees, Small Business Community, Union Members & Families, Veterans & Military Families, Women, Young People & Students." That's most of the threads in the national quilt, but disassembled.
What can the Democrats do to seize the opportunities of the moment? I suggest they take a leaf from Newt Gingrich's GOP playbook and develop a new "Contract With America." The Democrats should put together a clear and coherent list of measures they would implement if they could regain control of Congress and the White House. If the Democrats are serious, some of these measures -- dealing with economics and energy -- will be unpopular because they will call for sacrifice. But precisely for that reason, they will show that the Democrats can transcend interest-group America and unite the country.
America doesn't need more of the angry, embittered shouting matches that take place on talk radio and in the blogosphere. It needs a real opposition party that will lay out new strategies: How to withdraw from Iraq without creating even more instability? How to engage a world that mistrusts and often hates America? How to rebuild global institutions and contain Islamic extremism? How to put the U.S. economy back into balance? A Democratic Party that could begin to answer these questions would deserve a chance to govern.
What Democrats Should Be Saying
By David Ignatius
Friday, August 19, 2005; A21
This should be the Democrats' moment: The Bush administration is caught in an increasingly unpopular war; its plan to revamp Social Security is fading into oblivion; its deputy chief of staff is facing a grand jury probe. Though the Republicans control both houses of Congress as well as the White House, they seem to be suffering from political and intellectual exhaustion. They are better at slash-and-burn campaigning than governing.
So where are the Democrats amid this GOP disarray? Frankly, they are nowhere. They are failing utterly in the role of an opposition party, which is to provide a coherent alternative account of how the nation might solve its problems. Rather than lead a responsible examination of America's strategy for Iraq, they have handed off the debate to a distraught mother who is grieving for her lost son. Rather than address the nation's long-term fiscal problems, they have decided to play politics and let President Bush squirm on the hook of his unpopular plan to create private Social Security accounts.
Because they lack coherent plans for how to govern the country, the Democrats have become captive of the most shrill voices in the party, who seem motivated these days mainly by visceral dislike of George W. Bush. Sorry, folks, but loathing is not a strategy -- especially when much of the country finds the object of your loathing a likable guy.
The Democrats' problem is partly a lack of strong leadership. Its main spokesman on foreign policy has become Sen. Joseph Biden, a man who -- how to put this politely? -- seems more impressed with the force of his own intellect than an objective evaluation would warrant. Listening to Biden, you sense how hungry he is to be president, but you have little idea what he would do, other than talk . . . and talk.
The same failing is evident among Democratic spokesmen on economic issues. Name a tough problem -- such as energy independence or reform of Medicare and Social Security -- and the Democrats are ducking the hard choices. That may be understandable as a short-term political strategy: Why screw up your chances in the 2006 congressional elections by telling people they must make sacrifices? But this approach keeps the Democrats part of politics-as-usual, a game the GOP plays better.
Howard Dean is a breath of air as chairman of the Democratic National Committee -- but unfortunately a lot of it is hot air. Dean is admirably combative, and in that he reflects a party that is tired of being mauled by Karl Rove's divisive campaigning. The problem with Dean is that, like his party, he doesn't have much to say about solving problems. Pressed about Iraq last Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation," Dean passed the buck: "What we need is a plan from the president of the United States." Rather than condemn a NARAL Pro-Choice America ad against the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts that was so outrageous it was pulled from the air, Dean averred: "I'm not even going to get into that."
Today's Democrats have trouble expressing the most basic theme of American politics: "We, the people." Rather than a governing party with a clear ideology, they are a collection of interest groups. For a simple demonstration, go to the DNC's Web site and pull down the menu for "People." What you will find is the following shopping list: "African American, Asian Amer./Pacific Islanders, Disability Community, Farmers and Ranchers, Hispanics, GLBT (Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender) Community, Native Americans, Religious Communities, Seniors & Retirees, Small Business Community, Union Members & Families, Veterans & Military Families, Women, Young People & Students." That's most of the threads in the national quilt, but disassembled.
What can the Democrats do to seize the opportunities of the moment? I suggest they take a leaf from Newt Gingrich's GOP playbook and develop a new "Contract With America." The Democrats should put together a clear and coherent list of measures they would implement if they could regain control of Congress and the White House. If the Democrats are serious, some of these measures -- dealing with economics and energy -- will be unpopular because they will call for sacrifice. But precisely for that reason, they will show that the Democrats can transcend interest-group America and unite the country.
America doesn't need more of the angry, embittered shouting matches that take place on talk radio and in the blogosphere. It needs a real opposition party that will lay out new strategies: How to withdraw from Iraq without creating even more instability? How to engage a world that mistrusts and often hates America? How to rebuild global institutions and contain Islamic extremism? How to put the U.S. economy back into balance? A Democratic Party that could begin to answer these questions would deserve a chance to govern.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
WHAT'S THAT TICKING UNDER BUSH'S ASS?
Tick, tick, tick...
Iraq on the Brink
Iraq on the Brink
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, August 17, 2005; A13
It looks increasingly as if President Bush may have been off by 74 years in his assessment of Iraq. By deposing the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, Bush assumed he would bring Iraq to its 1787 moment -- the crafting of a democratic constitution, the birth of a unified republic. Instead, he seems to have brought Iraq to the brink of its own 1861 -- the moment of national dissolution.
No, I don't mean that Iraq is on the verge of all-out civil war, though that's a possibility that can't be dismissed. But the nation does appear on the verge of a catastrophic failure to cohere. The more the National Assembly deliberates on the fundamentals of a new order, the larger the differences that divide the nation's three sub-groups appear to be.
It's not the small stuff that they're sweating in Baghdad. They can't agree on whether the new Iraq should be a federation, with a largely autonomous Shiite south and Kurdish north, or a more unified state, which the Sunnis prefer. They can't agree on just how Islamic the new republic should be, and whether the leading Shiite clergy should be above the dictates of mere national law. They can't agree on whether religious or state courts should hold sway in Shiite-dominated regions, or even the nation as a whole; they can't agree on the rights of women. They can't agree on the division of oil revenue among the three groups. They can't agree on whether there should be a Kurdish right to secede enshrined in the constitution.
In short, they can't agree on the fundamentals of what their new nation should be. And the more they deliberate, the less they agree on.
These are not unanticipated disagreements. Before the war began, many critics of Bush's rush to war, including some in the State Department and the CIA, argued that while overthrowing Hussein would be relatively easy, building a post-Hussein Iraq would be devilishly difficult. Bush's defenders argued that Iraq was a largely secular land in which many Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds lived together amicably and frequently intermarried. They weren't entirely wrong, but one could have made the same argument about Tito's Yugoslavia before it dissolved into genocidal violence. They missed the deep resentments and the growing fundamentalism that Hussein's thugocracy smothered, and that exploded once he was removed.
What neither Bush's critics nor defenders could foresee was his administration's mind-boggling indifference to establishing security in post-Hussein Iraq. In the absence of a credible central authority, the fragmentation of Iraq is already an established fact. Once-secular Basra, the largest city in the Shiite south, is now controlled by clergy sympathetic to Iran, with posters of the Ayatollah Khomeini adorning the town. Recently the mayor of Baghdad was forcibly removed from office, not by official forces but by a Shiite militia. Iraqi governmental officials protect themselves from terrorists with guards from their own tribes. And if the efforts to build a national republic founder, it's a safe bet that the Iraqi army, in which America has invested so heavily, will devolve into very well-armed factional militias. Should that happen, as Henry Kissinger recently observed on this page, "the process of building security forces may become the prelude to a civil war."
And what exactly is the role of U.S. forces, whether or not there's a civil war, in an Iraq that has split into a Shiite Islamic south, a Kurdish north and a violent and chaotic largely Sunni center? What is our mission? Which side are we on?
Indeed, the Bush presidency is perilously close to one of the greatest, and surely the strangest, foreign and military policy failures in American history. We lost in Vietnam, to be sure, but Vietnam would have gone to the Communists whether or not we intervened. The dissolution of Iraq, however, should it proceed further, is the direct consequence of Bush's decision to intervene unilaterally and of the particular kind of occupation that he mandated. And that dissolution, we should recall, goes well beyond the political. Unemployment in Iraq exceeds 50 percent. Electrical power is on, in midsummer Baghdad, for four hours a day.
At great expense in resources and human life, we have substituted one living hell for another in Iraq. Things may yet turn out better than I fear they will. But right now there's a sickeningly good prospect that we will have set in motion a predictable chain of events culminating in the creation of both a sphere of terrorist activity and a sub-state allied with the mullahs of Iran.
Last week U.S. forces in Iraq discovered what looked to be a cache of chemical weapons, but determined that the arsenal had been assembled by the insurgent thugs who emerged after Hussein's fall. We have created the very dangers we intervened to prevent. Some policy. Some president.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Lost On Vacation In Bad Texas Weather
Hello to the President in that airtight, soundproof, plastic bubble.
August 17, 2005
Biking Toward Nowhere
By MAUREEN DOWD - NYT
How could President Bush be cavorting around on a long vacation with American troops struggling with a spiraling crisis in Iraq?
Wasn't he worried that his vacation activities might send a frivolous signal at a time when he had put so many young Americans in harm's way?
"I'm determined that life goes on," Mr. Bush said stubbornly.
That wasn't the son, believe it or not. It was the father - 15 years ago. I was in Kennebunkport then to cover the first President Bush's frenetic attempts to relax while reporters were pressing him about how he could be taking a month to play around when he had started sending American troops to the Persian Gulf only three days before.
On Saturday, the current President Bush was pressed about how he could be taking five weeks to ride bikes and nap and fish and clear brush even though his occupation of Iraq had become a fiasco. "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life," W. said, "to keep a balanced life."
Pressed about how he could ride his bike while refusing to see a grieving mom of a dead soldier who's camped outside his ranch, he added: "So I'm mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I'm also mindful that I've got a life to live and will do so."
Ah, the insensitivity of reporters who ask the President Bushes how they can expect to deal with Middle East fighting while they're off fishing.
The first President Bush told us that he kept a telephone in his golf cart and his cigarette boat so he could easily stay on top of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. But at least he seemed worried that he was sending the wrong signal, as his boating and golfing was juxtaposed on the news with footage of the frightened families of troops leaving for the Middle East.
"I just don't like taking questions on serious matters on my vacation," the usually good-natured Bush senior barked at reporters on the golf course. "So I hope you'll understand if I, when I'm recreating, will recreate." His hot-tempered oldest son, who was golfing with his father that day, was even more irritated. "Hey! Hey!" W. snapped at reporters asking questions on the first tee. "Can't you wait until we finish hitting, at least?"
Junior always had his priorities straight.
As W.'s neighbors get in scraps with the antiwar forces coalescing around the ranch; as the Pentagon tries to rustle up updated armor for our soldiers, who are still sitting ducks in the third year of the war; as the Iraqi police we train keep getting blown up by terrorists, who come right back every time U.S. troops beat them up; as Shiites working on the Iraqi constitution conspire with Iran about turning Iraq into an Islamic state that represses women; and as Iraq hurtles toward a possible civil war, W. seems far more oblivious than his father was with his Persian Gulf crisis.
This president is in a truly scary place in Iraq. Americans can't get out, or they risk turning the country into a terrorist haven that will make the old Afghanistan look like Cipriani's. Yet his war, which has not accomplished any of its purposes, swallows ever more American lives and inflames ever more Muslim hearts as W. reads a book about the history of salt and looks forward to his biking date with Lance Armstrong on Saturday.
The son wanted to go into Iraq to best his daddy in the history books, by finishing what Bush senior started. He swept aside the warnings of Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell and didn't bother to ask his father's advice. Now he is caught in the very trap his father said he feared: that America would get bogged down as "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land," facing a possibly "barren" outcome.
It turns out that the people of Iraq have ethnic and religious identities, not a national identity. Shiites and Kurds want to suppress the Sunnis who once repressed them and break off into their own states, smashing the Bush model kitchen of democracy.
At long last, a senior Bush official admits that administration officials can no longer cling to their own version of reality. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning," the official told The Washington Post .
They had better start absorbing and shedding a lot faster, before many more American kids die to create a pawn of Iran. And they had better tell the Boy in the Bubble, who continues to dwell in delusion, hailing the fights and delays on the Iraqi constitution as "a tribute to democracy."
The president's pedaling as fast as he can, but he's going nowhere.
August 17, 2005
Biking Toward Nowhere
By MAUREEN DOWD - NYT
How could President Bush be cavorting around on a long vacation with American troops struggling with a spiraling crisis in Iraq?
Wasn't he worried that his vacation activities might send a frivolous signal at a time when he had put so many young Americans in harm's way?
"I'm determined that life goes on," Mr. Bush said stubbornly.
That wasn't the son, believe it or not. It was the father - 15 years ago. I was in Kennebunkport then to cover the first President Bush's frenetic attempts to relax while reporters were pressing him about how he could be taking a month to play around when he had started sending American troops to the Persian Gulf only three days before.
On Saturday, the current President Bush was pressed about how he could be taking five weeks to ride bikes and nap and fish and clear brush even though his occupation of Iraq had become a fiasco. "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life," W. said, "to keep a balanced life."
Pressed about how he could ride his bike while refusing to see a grieving mom of a dead soldier who's camped outside his ranch, he added: "So I'm mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I'm also mindful that I've got a life to live and will do so."
Ah, the insensitivity of reporters who ask the President Bushes how they can expect to deal with Middle East fighting while they're off fishing.
The first President Bush told us that he kept a telephone in his golf cart and his cigarette boat so he could easily stay on top of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. But at least he seemed worried that he was sending the wrong signal, as his boating and golfing was juxtaposed on the news with footage of the frightened families of troops leaving for the Middle East.
"I just don't like taking questions on serious matters on my vacation," the usually good-natured Bush senior barked at reporters on the golf course. "So I hope you'll understand if I, when I'm recreating, will recreate." His hot-tempered oldest son, who was golfing with his father that day, was even more irritated. "Hey! Hey!" W. snapped at reporters asking questions on the first tee. "Can't you wait until we finish hitting, at least?"
Junior always had his priorities straight.
As W.'s neighbors get in scraps with the antiwar forces coalescing around the ranch; as the Pentagon tries to rustle up updated armor for our soldiers, who are still sitting ducks in the third year of the war; as the Iraqi police we train keep getting blown up by terrorists, who come right back every time U.S. troops beat them up; as Shiites working on the Iraqi constitution conspire with Iran about turning Iraq into an Islamic state that represses women; and as Iraq hurtles toward a possible civil war, W. seems far more oblivious than his father was with his Persian Gulf crisis.
This president is in a truly scary place in Iraq. Americans can't get out, or they risk turning the country into a terrorist haven that will make the old Afghanistan look like Cipriani's. Yet his war, which has not accomplished any of its purposes, swallows ever more American lives and inflames ever more Muslim hearts as W. reads a book about the history of salt and looks forward to his biking date with Lance Armstrong on Saturday.
The son wanted to go into Iraq to best his daddy in the history books, by finishing what Bush senior started. He swept aside the warnings of Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell and didn't bother to ask his father's advice. Now he is caught in the very trap his father said he feared: that America would get bogged down as "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land," facing a possibly "barren" outcome.
It turns out that the people of Iraq have ethnic and religious identities, not a national identity. Shiites and Kurds want to suppress the Sunnis who once repressed them and break off into their own states, smashing the Bush model kitchen of democracy.
At long last, a senior Bush official admits that administration officials can no longer cling to their own version of reality. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning," the official told The Washington Post .
They had better start absorbing and shedding a lot faster, before many more American kids die to create a pawn of Iran. And they had better tell the Boy in the Bubble, who continues to dwell in delusion, hailing the fights and delays on the Iraqi constitution as "a tribute to democracy."
The president's pedaling as fast as he can, but he's going nowhere.
Newt Gingrich Smears Today's GOP Leadership With Past Words
Anyone supporting a Republican congress and President today is supporting irresponsible government spending, irresponsible foreign policy, irresponsible national security policy and a leadership interested in holding power at any cost for the use of the corporate elite over the common citizen of this nation. Support of the GOP is a strike at the heart of American democracy.
More Than Minority Blues
More Than Minority Blues
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005; WASHINGTON POST
Recently I ran across a small book, a collection of essays called "A House of Ill Repute," that should strike fear in the heart of today's Republican majority in Congress. Its critique of the status quo is devastating.
Are you amazed at how little power the minority has, especially in the authoritarian House of Representatives? One shrewd contributor thundered against "the tyranny of the majority." He declared that "millions of Americans" were deprived of "their fair representation in the formulation of public policy" and that "the majority in the House has many ways to pass its pet legislation or stall other bills without due regard for proper debate and deliberation."
Are you astonished at the eagerness of this supposedly small-government Congress to lavish huge sums on a transportation bill and a slew of tax breaks for oil and gas interests? "In their effort to spend more money, spendaholics will use three basic defenses for their votes," says another writer. "First, it's the wrong time and the wrong place. Second, however bad this waste is, there is other waste that is worse. Third, whatever cuts you want to make are clearly extremism."
Another representative lamented: "I sense arrogance on the part of many of my colleagues. It is easy to see how much arrogance can take hold when members of Congress seem to be unaccountable for their actions."
The author of the introductory essay summed up the case by referring to the homeowner who realizes one day that his "entire house is shabby and needs major attention."
Perhaps you have already guessed that these attacks are not the work of frustrated, bloody-minded Democrats weary of their current minority status in Congress. They come from a book published in 1987 by a group of Republican House members. The authors of the above quotations are, in order, former representatives Vin Weber, Newt Gingrich, Barbara Vucanovich and Joseph J. DioGuardi.
The accepted wisdom in Washington 18 years ago was that cynical voters would never respond to a critique of Congress based on questionable ethics and unfair procedures. That this assumption was eventually overturned should shake any complacency in today's Republican majority.
But before Democrats get too buoyant, they should remember that it took years -- specifically, until the 1994 elections -- for the GOP critique to translate into a voter rebellion. Democrats should note that the earlier Republican criticisms of the Democratic majority were rooted in policy, not just procedure. Today's spendthrift Republicans make it easy to poke fun at Gingrich's critique of Democratic "spendaholics." Nonetheless, the Republican assault between 1987 and 1994 regularly linked the Democratic majority's abuse of power to big deficits and to what Gingrich called the "spending runaround." Whether they liked Gingrich or not, the voters felt they knew what he and his majority stood for.
Democrats have yet to make that leap. A survey this month by the Democracy Corps, a consortium of Democratic consultants, found that while 58 percent of Americans said they wanted Congress to move in a "significantly different direction," only 48 percent said they were likely to vote Democratic in congressional elections. With Republicans floundering at 41 percent, Democrats were pleased. But the 10-point gap between support for Democrats and opposition to Congress's current ways describes the difference between potential success and actual success -- between the Republican critics of 1987 and the Republican victors of 1994.
Democrats will never win as the party of small government. Their case will ultimately rest on a persuasive argument that they would wield power on behalf of a different set of causes and interests. That is why the party was wise to unite in defense of Social Security -- and why it would be foolish for Democrats to cave in to the evisceration of the estate tax, a move that would boost the deficit in the interest of a tiny number of very wealthy Americans. It is also why Democrats who would give in to big-money politics and abandon efforts to strengthen the reformed campaign finance system don't understand the implications of their own critique of today's Congress. And rhetoric about defending middle-class living standards must be rooted in a plausible set of policies.
Gingrich's 1987 rebels knew how to link impatience with an abusive Congress to the cause of smaller government. If there is a line for the opposition to draw in politics now, it concerns whether government will defend the interests of the few or the interests of the many. Democrats who say they are studying how Gingrich succeeded need to take his entire course.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Well, DUH!
Bush, his administration and supporters were warned by generals,, vets, politicians and citizens that this would happen. Now they are trying to spin their failures while more Americans die and they throw money at the dark abyss that they created. Topping it off they have only created the means for growing terrorism, not stopping it.
U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq
Administration Is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says
By Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 14, 2005; A01
The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."
Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the chaos that followed the invasion and the escalating insurgency. "Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we're helping Iraqis succeed," President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.
Iraqi officials yesterday struggled to agree on a draft constitution by a deadline of tomorrow so the document can be submitted to a vote in October. The political transition would be completed in December by elections for a permanent government.
But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.
Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.
U.S. officials say no turning point forced a reassessment. "It happened rather gradually," said the senior official, triggered by everything from the insurgency to shifting budgets to U.S. personnel changes in Baghdad.
The ferocious debate over a new constitution has particularly driven home the gap between the original U.S. goals and the realities after almost 28 months. The U.S. decision to invade Iraq was justified in part by the goal of establishing a secular and modern Iraq that honors human rights and unites disparate ethnic and religious communities.
But whatever the outcome on specific disputes, the document on which Iraq's future is to be built will require laws to be compliant with Islam. Kurds and Shiites are expecting de facto long-term political privileges. And women's rights will not be as firmly entrenched as Washington has tried to insist, U.S. officials and Iraq analysts say.
"We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic," said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. "That process is being repeated all over."
U.S. officials now acknowledge that they misread the strength of the sentiment among Kurds and Shiites to create a special status. The Shiites' request this month for autonomy to be guaranteed in the constitution stunned the Bush administration, even after more than two years of intense intervention in Iraq's political process, they said.
"We didn't calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude," said Judith S. Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst at the National Defense University.
In the race to meet a sequence of fall deadlines, the process of forging national unity behind the constitution is largely being scrapped, current and former officials involved in the transition said.
"We are definitely cutting corners and lowering our ambitions in democracy building," said Larry Diamond, a Stanford University democracy expert who worked with the U.S. occupation government and wrote the book "Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq."
"Under pressure to get a constitution done, they've lowered their own ambitions in terms of getting a document that is going to be very far-reaching and democratic. We also don't have the time to go through the process we envisioned when we wrote the interim constitution -- to build a democratic culture and consensus through debate over a permanent constitution," he said.
The goal now is to ensure a constitution that can be easily amended later so Iraq can grow into a democracy, U.S. officials say.
On security, the administration originally expected the U.S.-led coalition to be welcomed with rice and rosewater, traditional Arab greetings, with only a limited reaction from loyalists of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The surprising scope of the insurgency and influx of foreign fighters has forced Washington to repeatedly lower expectations -- about the time-frame for quelling the insurgency and creating an effective and cohesive Iraqi force capable of stepping in, U.S. officials said.
Killings of members of the Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Iraq's ministry of health estimates that bombings and other attacks have killed 4,000 civilians in Baghdad since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's interim government took office April 28.
Last week was the fourth-worst week of the whole war for U.S. military deaths in combat, and August already is the worst month for deaths of members of the National Guard and Reserve.
Attacks on U.S. convoys by insurgents using roadside bombs have doubled over the past year, Army Brig. Gen. Yves Fontaine said Friday. Convoys ferrying food, fuel, water, arms and equipment from Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey are attacked about 30 times a week, Fontaine said.
"There has been a realistic reassessment of what it is possible to achieve in the short term and fashion a partial exit strategy," Yaphe said. "This change is dictated not just by events on the ground but by unrealistic expectations at the start."
Washington now does not expect to fully defeat the insurgency before departing, but instead to diminish it, officials and analysts said. There is also growing talk of turning over security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces even if they are not fully up to original U.S. expectations, in part because they have local legitimacy that U.S. troops often do not.
"We've said we won't leave a day before it's necessary. But necessary is the key word -- necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us," a U.S. official said.
Pressed by the cost of fighting an escalating insurgency, U.S. expectations for rebuilding Iraq -- and its $20 billion investment -- have fallen the farthest, current and former officials say.
Pentagon officials originally envisioned Iraq's oil revenue paying many post-invasion expenses. But Iraq, ranked among world leaders behind Saudi Arabia in proven oil reserves, is incapable of producing enough refined fuel amid a car-buying boom that has put an estimated 1 million more vehicles on the road after the invasion. Lines for subsidized cheap gas stretch for miles every day in Baghdad.
Oil production is estimated at 2.22 million barrels a day, short of the goal of 2.5 million. Iraq's pre-war high was 2.67 million barrels a day.
The United States had high hopes of quick, big-budget fixes for the electrical power system that would show Iraqis tangible benefits from the ouster of Hussein. But inadequate training for Iraqi staff, regional rivalries restricting the power flow to Baghdad, inadequate fuel for electrical generators and attacks on the infrastructure have contributed to the worst summer of electrical shortages in the capital.
Water is also a "tough, tough" situation in a desert country, said a U.S. official in Baghdad familiar with reconstruction issues. Pumping stations depend on electricity, and engineers now say the system has hundreds of thousands of leaks.
"The most thoroughly dashed expectation was the ability to build a robust self-sustaining economy. We're nowhere near that. State industries, electricity are all below what they were before we got there," said Wayne White, former head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team who is now at the Middle East Institute. "The administration says Saddam ran down the country. But most damage was from looting [after the invasion], which took down state industries, large private manufacturing, the national electric" system.
Ironically, White said, the initial ambitions may have complicated the U.S. mission: "In order to get out earlier, expectations are going to have to be lower, even much lower. The higher your expectation, the longer you have to stay. Getting out is going to be a more important consideration than the original goals were. They were unrealistic."
Knickmeyer reported from Baghdad.
U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq
Administration Is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says
By Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 14, 2005; A01
The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."
Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the chaos that followed the invasion and the escalating insurgency. "Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we're helping Iraqis succeed," President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.
Iraqi officials yesterday struggled to agree on a draft constitution by a deadline of tomorrow so the document can be submitted to a vote in October. The political transition would be completed in December by elections for a permanent government.
But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.
Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.
U.S. officials say no turning point forced a reassessment. "It happened rather gradually," said the senior official, triggered by everything from the insurgency to shifting budgets to U.S. personnel changes in Baghdad.
The ferocious debate over a new constitution has particularly driven home the gap between the original U.S. goals and the realities after almost 28 months. The U.S. decision to invade Iraq was justified in part by the goal of establishing a secular and modern Iraq that honors human rights and unites disparate ethnic and religious communities.
But whatever the outcome on specific disputes, the document on which Iraq's future is to be built will require laws to be compliant with Islam. Kurds and Shiites are expecting de facto long-term political privileges. And women's rights will not be as firmly entrenched as Washington has tried to insist, U.S. officials and Iraq analysts say.
"We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic," said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. "That process is being repeated all over."
U.S. officials now acknowledge that they misread the strength of the sentiment among Kurds and Shiites to create a special status. The Shiites' request this month for autonomy to be guaranteed in the constitution stunned the Bush administration, even after more than two years of intense intervention in Iraq's political process, they said.
"We didn't calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude," said Judith S. Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst at the National Defense University.
In the race to meet a sequence of fall deadlines, the process of forging national unity behind the constitution is largely being scrapped, current and former officials involved in the transition said.
"We are definitely cutting corners and lowering our ambitions in democracy building," said Larry Diamond, a Stanford University democracy expert who worked with the U.S. occupation government and wrote the book "Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq."
"Under pressure to get a constitution done, they've lowered their own ambitions in terms of getting a document that is going to be very far-reaching and democratic. We also don't have the time to go through the process we envisioned when we wrote the interim constitution -- to build a democratic culture and consensus through debate over a permanent constitution," he said.
The goal now is to ensure a constitution that can be easily amended later so Iraq can grow into a democracy, U.S. officials say.
On security, the administration originally expected the U.S.-led coalition to be welcomed with rice and rosewater, traditional Arab greetings, with only a limited reaction from loyalists of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The surprising scope of the insurgency and influx of foreign fighters has forced Washington to repeatedly lower expectations -- about the time-frame for quelling the insurgency and creating an effective and cohesive Iraqi force capable of stepping in, U.S. officials said.
Killings of members of the Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Iraq's ministry of health estimates that bombings and other attacks have killed 4,000 civilians in Baghdad since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's interim government took office April 28.
Last week was the fourth-worst week of the whole war for U.S. military deaths in combat, and August already is the worst month for deaths of members of the National Guard and Reserve.
Attacks on U.S. convoys by insurgents using roadside bombs have doubled over the past year, Army Brig. Gen. Yves Fontaine said Friday. Convoys ferrying food, fuel, water, arms and equipment from Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey are attacked about 30 times a week, Fontaine said.
"There has been a realistic reassessment of what it is possible to achieve in the short term and fashion a partial exit strategy," Yaphe said. "This change is dictated not just by events on the ground but by unrealistic expectations at the start."
Washington now does not expect to fully defeat the insurgency before departing, but instead to diminish it, officials and analysts said. There is also growing talk of turning over security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces even if they are not fully up to original U.S. expectations, in part because they have local legitimacy that U.S. troops often do not.
"We've said we won't leave a day before it's necessary. But necessary is the key word -- necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us," a U.S. official said.
Pressed by the cost of fighting an escalating insurgency, U.S. expectations for rebuilding Iraq -- and its $20 billion investment -- have fallen the farthest, current and former officials say.
Pentagon officials originally envisioned Iraq's oil revenue paying many post-invasion expenses. But Iraq, ranked among world leaders behind Saudi Arabia in proven oil reserves, is incapable of producing enough refined fuel amid a car-buying boom that has put an estimated 1 million more vehicles on the road after the invasion. Lines for subsidized cheap gas stretch for miles every day in Baghdad.
Oil production is estimated at 2.22 million barrels a day, short of the goal of 2.5 million. Iraq's pre-war high was 2.67 million barrels a day.
The United States had high hopes of quick, big-budget fixes for the electrical power system that would show Iraqis tangible benefits from the ouster of Hussein. But inadequate training for Iraqi staff, regional rivalries restricting the power flow to Baghdad, inadequate fuel for electrical generators and attacks on the infrastructure have contributed to the worst summer of electrical shortages in the capital.
Water is also a "tough, tough" situation in a desert country, said a U.S. official in Baghdad familiar with reconstruction issues. Pumping stations depend on electricity, and engineers now say the system has hundreds of thousands of leaks.
"The most thoroughly dashed expectation was the ability to build a robust self-sustaining economy. We're nowhere near that. State industries, electricity are all below what they were before we got there," said Wayne White, former head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team who is now at the Middle East Institute. "The administration says Saddam ran down the country. But most damage was from looting [after the invasion], which took down state industries, large private manufacturing, the national electric" system.
Ironically, White said, the initial ambitions may have complicated the U.S. mission: "In order to get out earlier, expectations are going to have to be lower, even much lower. The higher your expectation, the longer you have to stay. Getting out is going to be a more important consideration than the original goals were. They were unrealistic."
Knickmeyer reported from Baghdad.
THE BURNING BUSH CAN'T SMELL HIS OWN SMOKE
August 14, 2005
Someone Tell the President the War Is Over
By FRANK RICH - NYT
LIKE the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?
A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.'s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.
But our current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Mr. Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout "don't ask, don't tell" and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.
The president's cable cadre is in disarray as well. At Fox News Bill O'Reilly is trashing Donald Rumsfeld for his incompetence, and Ann Coulter is chiding Mr. O'Reilly for being a defeatist. In an emblematic gesture akin to waving a white flag, Robert Novak walked off a CNN set and possibly out of a job rather than answer questions about his role in smearing the man who helped expose the administration's prewar inflation of Saddam W.M.D.'s. (On this sinking ship, it's hard to know which rat to root for.)
As if the right-wing pundit crackup isn't unsettling enough, Mr. Bush's top war strategists, starting with Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, have of late tried to rebrand the war in Iraq as what the defense secretary calls "a global struggle against violent extremism." A struggle is what you have with your landlord. When the war's über-managers start using euphemisms for a conflict this lethal, it's a clear sign that the battle to keep the Iraq war afloat with the American public is lost.
That battle crashed past the tipping point this month in Ohio. There's historical symmetry in that. It was in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, that Mr. Bush gave the fateful address that sped Congressional ratification of the war just days later. The speech was a miasma of self-delusion, half-truths and hype. The president said that "we know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade," an exaggeration based on evidence that the Senate Intelligence Committee would later find far from conclusive. He said that Saddam "could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year" were he able to secure "an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball." Our own National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1 quoted State Department findings that claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa were "highly dubious."
It was on these false premises - that Iraq was both a collaborator on 9/11 and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America - that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight. Among them were the 19 marine reservists from a single suburban Cleveland battalion slaughtered in just three days at the start of this month. As they perished, another Ohio marine reservist who had served in Iraq came close to winning a Congressional election in southern Ohio. Paul Hackett, a Democrat who called the president a "chicken hawk," received 48 percent of the vote in exactly the kind of bedrock conservative Ohio district that decided the 2004 election for Mr. Bush.
These are the tea leaves that all Republicans, not just Chuck Hagel, are reading now. Newt Gingrich called the Hackett near-victory "a wake-up call." The resolutely pro-war New York Post editorial page begged Mr. Bush (to no avail) to "show some leadership" by showing up in Ohio to salute the fallen and their families. A Bush loyalist, Senator George Allen of Virginia, instructed the president to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother camping out in Crawford, as "a matter of courtesy and decency." Or, to translate his Washingtonese, as a matter of politics. Only someone as adrift from reality as Mr. Bush would need to be told that a vacationing president can't win a standoff with a grief-stricken parent commandeering TV cameras and the blogosphere 24/7.
Such political imperatives are rapidly bringing about the war's end. That's inevitable for a war of choice, not necessity, that was conceived in politics from the start. Iraq was a Bush administration idée fixe before there was a 9/11. Within hours of that horrible trauma, according to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," Mr. Rumsfeld was proposing Iraq as a battlefield, not because the enemy that attacked America was there, but because it offered "better targets" than the shadowy terrorist redoubts of Afghanistan. It was easier to take out Saddam - and burnish Mr. Bush's credentials as a slam-dunk "war president," suitable for a "Top Gun" victory jig - than to shut down Al Qaeda and smoke out its leader "dead or alive."
But just as politics are a bad motive for choosing a war, so they can be a doomed engine for running a war. In an interview with Tim Russert early last year, Mr. Bush said, "The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me, as I look back, was it was a political war," adding that the "essential" lesson he learned from Vietnam was to not have "politicians making military decisions." But by then Mr. Bush had disastrously ignored that very lesson; he had let Mr. Rumsfeld publicly rebuke the Army's chief of staff, Eric Shinseki, after the general dared tell the truth: that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq. To this day it's our failure to provide that security that has turned the country into the terrorist haven it hadn't been before 9/11 - "the central front in the war on terror," as Mr. Bush keeps reminding us, as if that might make us forget he's the one who recklessly created it.
The endgame for American involvement in Iraq will be of a piece with the rest of this sorry history. "It makes no sense for the commander in chief to put out a timetable" for withdrawal, Mr. Bush declared on the same day that 14 of those Ohio troops were killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. But even as he spoke, the war's actual commander, Gen. George Casey, had already publicly set a timetable for "some fairly substantial reductions" to start next spring. Officially this calendar is tied to the next round of Iraqi elections, but it's quite another election this administration has in mind. The priority now is less to save Jessica Lynch (or Iraqi democracy) than to save Rick Santorum and every other endangered Republican facing voters in November 2006.
Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week). A citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war's inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now. There will be neither the volunteers nor the money required to field the wholesale additional American troops that might bolster the security situation in Iraq.
WHAT lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.
Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.
Someone Tell the President the War Is Over
By FRANK RICH - NYT
LIKE the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?
A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.'s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.
But our current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Mr. Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout "don't ask, don't tell" and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.
The president's cable cadre is in disarray as well. At Fox News Bill O'Reilly is trashing Donald Rumsfeld for his incompetence, and Ann Coulter is chiding Mr. O'Reilly for being a defeatist. In an emblematic gesture akin to waving a white flag, Robert Novak walked off a CNN set and possibly out of a job rather than answer questions about his role in smearing the man who helped expose the administration's prewar inflation of Saddam W.M.D.'s. (On this sinking ship, it's hard to know which rat to root for.)
As if the right-wing pundit crackup isn't unsettling enough, Mr. Bush's top war strategists, starting with Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, have of late tried to rebrand the war in Iraq as what the defense secretary calls "a global struggle against violent extremism." A struggle is what you have with your landlord. When the war's über-managers start using euphemisms for a conflict this lethal, it's a clear sign that the battle to keep the Iraq war afloat with the American public is lost.
That battle crashed past the tipping point this month in Ohio. There's historical symmetry in that. It was in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, that Mr. Bush gave the fateful address that sped Congressional ratification of the war just days later. The speech was a miasma of self-delusion, half-truths and hype. The president said that "we know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade," an exaggeration based on evidence that the Senate Intelligence Committee would later find far from conclusive. He said that Saddam "could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year" were he able to secure "an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball." Our own National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1 quoted State Department findings that claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa were "highly dubious."
It was on these false premises - that Iraq was both a collaborator on 9/11 and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America - that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight. Among them were the 19 marine reservists from a single suburban Cleveland battalion slaughtered in just three days at the start of this month. As they perished, another Ohio marine reservist who had served in Iraq came close to winning a Congressional election in southern Ohio. Paul Hackett, a Democrat who called the president a "chicken hawk," received 48 percent of the vote in exactly the kind of bedrock conservative Ohio district that decided the 2004 election for Mr. Bush.
These are the tea leaves that all Republicans, not just Chuck Hagel, are reading now. Newt Gingrich called the Hackett near-victory "a wake-up call." The resolutely pro-war New York Post editorial page begged Mr. Bush (to no avail) to "show some leadership" by showing up in Ohio to salute the fallen and their families. A Bush loyalist, Senator George Allen of Virginia, instructed the president to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother camping out in Crawford, as "a matter of courtesy and decency." Or, to translate his Washingtonese, as a matter of politics. Only someone as adrift from reality as Mr. Bush would need to be told that a vacationing president can't win a standoff with a grief-stricken parent commandeering TV cameras and the blogosphere 24/7.
Such political imperatives are rapidly bringing about the war's end. That's inevitable for a war of choice, not necessity, that was conceived in politics from the start. Iraq was a Bush administration idée fixe before there was a 9/11. Within hours of that horrible trauma, according to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," Mr. Rumsfeld was proposing Iraq as a battlefield, not because the enemy that attacked America was there, but because it offered "better targets" than the shadowy terrorist redoubts of Afghanistan. It was easier to take out Saddam - and burnish Mr. Bush's credentials as a slam-dunk "war president," suitable for a "Top Gun" victory jig - than to shut down Al Qaeda and smoke out its leader "dead or alive."
But just as politics are a bad motive for choosing a war, so they can be a doomed engine for running a war. In an interview with Tim Russert early last year, Mr. Bush said, "The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me, as I look back, was it was a political war," adding that the "essential" lesson he learned from Vietnam was to not have "politicians making military decisions." But by then Mr. Bush had disastrously ignored that very lesson; he had let Mr. Rumsfeld publicly rebuke the Army's chief of staff, Eric Shinseki, after the general dared tell the truth: that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq. To this day it's our failure to provide that security that has turned the country into the terrorist haven it hadn't been before 9/11 - "the central front in the war on terror," as Mr. Bush keeps reminding us, as if that might make us forget he's the one who recklessly created it.
The endgame for American involvement in Iraq will be of a piece with the rest of this sorry history. "It makes no sense for the commander in chief to put out a timetable" for withdrawal, Mr. Bush declared on the same day that 14 of those Ohio troops were killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. But even as he spoke, the war's actual commander, Gen. George Casey, had already publicly set a timetable for "some fairly substantial reductions" to start next spring. Officially this calendar is tied to the next round of Iraqi elections, but it's quite another election this administration has in mind. The priority now is less to save Jessica Lynch (or Iraqi democracy) than to save Rick Santorum and every other endangered Republican facing voters in November 2006.
Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week). A citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war's inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now. There will be neither the volunteers nor the money required to field the wholesale additional American troops that might bolster the security situation in Iraq.
WHAT lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.
Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
The "Good" Governor, His Big Media Company Pals Pay Off Women
Tabloid's Deal With Woman Shielded Schwarzenegger
By Peter Nicholas and Carla Hall
Times Staff Writers
August 12, 2005
SACRAMENTO — Days after Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the race for governor and girded for questions about his past, a tabloid publisher wooing him for a business deal promised to pay a woman $20,000 to sign a confidentiality agreement about an alleged affair with the candidate.
American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, signed a friend of the woman to a similar contract about the alleged relationship for $1,000.
American Media's contract with Gigi Goyette of Malibu is dated Aug. 8, 2003, two days after Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy on a late-night talk show. Under the agreement, Goyette must disclose to no one but American Media any information about her "interactions" with Schwarzenegger.
American Media never solicited further information from Goyette or her friend, Judy Mora, also of Malibu, both women said. The Enquirer had published a cover story two years earlier describing an alleged seven-year sexual relationship between Goyette and Schwarzenegger during his marriage to Maria Shriver, California's first lady.
On Aug. 14, 2003, as candidate Schwarzenegger was negotiating a consulting deal with American Media, the company signed its contract with Mora, who said she received $1,000 cash in return. Goyette declined to say whether she received the $20,000 promised in her contract.
Rob Stutzman, the governor's communications director, said he believed Schwarzenegger did not know of American Media's deals with the women. Schwarzenegger is on vacation and not available for comment, Stutzman said.
Stutzman denied any link between AMI's deal with Schwarzenegger and the company's agreements with the two women.
"There is no connection with his business with AMI or AMI's business of purchasing the rights to stories," Stutzman said. "That's what they do. Obviously, part of their business is the tabloid business."
The women might have been in a position to embarrass Schwarzenegger in his bid for the governor's office. When Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy on "The Tonight Show," he speculated that he would face accusations of infidelity.
Host Jay Leno asked if he was prepared for a bruising campaign, and Schwarzenegger replied: "I know that they're going to throw everything at me and they're going, you know, to say that I have no experience and that I'm a womanizer and that I'm a terrible guy, and all these kinds of things are going to come my way."
But American Media was effectively protecting Schwarzenegger's political interests, said a person who worked at the company when the contracts were signed. At the same time, American Media was crafting a deal to make Schwarzenegger executive editor of Flex and Muscle & Fitness magazines, helping to lure readers and advertisers.
If American Media was buying exclusive rights to the women's stories, said the person, who has a confidentiality agreement with the company and spoke on condition of anonymity, "why didn't the stories run? That's the obvious question."
"AMI systematically bought the silence" of the women, said the person. Schwarzenegger "was a de facto employee and he was important to their bottom line."
Schwarzenegger biographer Laurence Leamer wrote in his book, "Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger," that Schwarzenegger understood the tabloids would not skewer him if he was entering a business relationship with the company — although Schwarzenegger told Leamer he did not specifically seek such assurances.
Indeed, during the recall campaign, American Media put out a 120-page magazine celebrating Schwarzenegger as an embodiment of the "American dream."
The Enquirer did run a story repeating allegations in the British media that Schwarzenegger had an extramarital affair. The story was published first on its website before the election, and then in the newspaper three weeks after his election victory. But it was not prominently displayed, running on Page 24.
American Media, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, reached its agreement with Schwarzenegger on Nov. 15, 2003, two days before he was sworn in as governor. The deal was to pay him, by the company's estimates, at least $8 million over five years and no less than $5 million.
Schwarzenegger dropped the contract last month after the arrangement was made public in the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee. He said he plans to continue writing a monthly column for the two magazines.
American Media's contracts with Goyette and Mora, both titled "Confidentiality Agreement," are two pages long and never expire; they bind the two women "in perpetuity."
Goyette's agreement states that she is not to disclose "conversations with Schwarzenegger, her interactions with Schwarzenegger or anything else relating in any way to any relationship [she] ever had with Schwarzenegger," except to American Media.
Mora's contract bars her from disclosing anything about Goyette's "conversations with Schwarzenegger … interactions with Schwarzenegger or anything else relating in any way to any relationship Gigi Goyette ever had or alleged to have had with Schwarzenegger."
In an interview with The Times last week, with her lawyer present, Goyette said of Schwarzenegger "we're very good friends — and work associates."
Goyette has spent much of her life living in Malibu and grew up, she said, working as an extra on Hollywood film and TV productions. Today she acts occasionally in commercials. She said she last communicated with Schwarzenegger in the spring of 2001, before the National Enquirer published its story.
Goyette did not dispute an account of her relationship in Leamer's biography of Schwarzenegger, published two months ago. Like the National Enquirer, Leamer's book says Goyette and Schwarzenegger had a periodic intimate relationship.
In the book, Leamer says Goyette and Schwarzenegger got together yearly at the Arnold Fitness Weekend in Columbus, Ohio, where she helped with events.
Leamer writes that Goyette described her contact with Schwarzenegger with the term " 'outercourse' because it's like foreplay." The interaction, she told him, was "whatever we wanted it to be."
Goyette's lawyer, Charlotte Hassett, told The Times: "She maintained it was more of a massage situation — however you want to interpret that."
Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, declined to discuss the relationship. "I'm not going to characterize the relationship," Thompson said.
Two years after the Enquirer published its article about the relationship, Goyette told The Times, she heard from the tabloid again. In late July 2003 — as speculation was brewing over whether Schwarzenegger would enter the recall race for governor — Goyette said she got a call from reporter David Wright, who had written the 2001 story.
Goyette said Wright talked casually about the possibility of publishing a book on her life and that a division of American Media might be interested. Goyette was and still is eager to write a book — not a tell-all about Schwarzenegger, she said, but a chronicle of her life in the entertainment industry, from her days as a film and TV extra and a commercial actress to her life now as a 46-year-old single mother and PTA member with a teenage son.
That conversation "was a teaser," said Goyette, who gave Wright a manuscript. Goyette said she heard nothing further until Wright called her on what she believes was Aug. 6 or 7, 2003 — just as Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy — and asked if she could meet with someone from the company right away.
Wright declined The Times' requests for comment, saying, "I can't help you with that."
Goyette said that, unaccompanied by a lawyer or anyone else, she met an American Media representative at a Starbucks near her Malibu home, looked the agreement over hastily and signed it.
She said she did not believe American Media would purchase the rights to her story and then do nothing with it. She thought signing the pledge would be the prelude to a book deal.
"In my mind, it was trying to seal a deal so I wouldn't do the book with anybody else," she told The Times. "That was my feeling in my heart and in my mind."
Hassett added later: "She has reason to believe that she was manipulated by the actions of the people at National Enquirer."
The contract that bears Goyette's signature makes no mention of a book project. Goyette's recollection was that she signed a three-page contract. She said she did not get a copy until several weeks later, via fax, and it was two pages.
The contract was sealed just when interest in her story was peaking. Once Schwarzenegger's campaign was launched, the media quickly dug up the 2001 National Enquirer article. She was besieged by reporters.
They were "in front of my house. In front of my school. In front of the coffee shop," she said. "I didn't answer anyone's questions."
"A lot of people have offered me a lot of money to tell my story," she said. "I always said 'No comment' and turned everybody down."
Before she signed her contract, Goyette gave an interview to the BBC that aired after the contract was sealed. On Sept. 3, 2003 — after signing the contract but before receiving a copy of it, Hassett said — Goyette was quoted in a story by Fox News.
"She conducted herself in a way that a person who thought she had a book deal would act," Hassett said.
Mora, 50, said her first dealings with the National Enquirer took place when the tabloid was preparing the 2001 story on Goyette. The Enquirer, she said in an interview, "only wanted me to establish that she really knew him."
When the Enquirer reporter called, she said, she told him Goyette had pictures of Schwarzenegger around her house and had told her of how she worked with Schwarzenegger at his fitness exhibition.
Mora also said Goyette introduced her to Schwarzenegger once, at a Santa Monica restaurant he used to own.
Mora said she received a call from someone from the National Enquirer soon after Goyette's confidentiality contract was signed. The male caller, whose name she said she could not remember, offered her $1,000 to sign a confidentiality agreement of her own.
"They said, 'Would you be willing to agree to not say anything else?' " Mora recalled. "And I remember at the time saying something like, 'Uh, yeah. I don't know anything else.' They said, 'We paid her an additional $20,000, and if we give you $1,000 will you not say anything?' And I said, 'Sure, I don't know anything.' "
The next day in Los Angeles, Mora said, she met with a woman who gave her an envelope containing $1,000 cash. She said her recollection was imperfect, but she thinks it was then she signed the contract.
The document gives Mora's name as Judy Walker, a name she said she sometimes used. The signature says Judy Mora, as does the name printed by hand below it.
Mora said she does not have a copy of the document.
By Peter Nicholas and Carla Hall
Times Staff Writers
August 12, 2005
SACRAMENTO — Days after Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the race for governor and girded for questions about his past, a tabloid publisher wooing him for a business deal promised to pay a woman $20,000 to sign a confidentiality agreement about an alleged affair with the candidate.
American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, signed a friend of the woman to a similar contract about the alleged relationship for $1,000.
American Media's contract with Gigi Goyette of Malibu is dated Aug. 8, 2003, two days after Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy on a late-night talk show. Under the agreement, Goyette must disclose to no one but American Media any information about her "interactions" with Schwarzenegger.
American Media never solicited further information from Goyette or her friend, Judy Mora, also of Malibu, both women said. The Enquirer had published a cover story two years earlier describing an alleged seven-year sexual relationship between Goyette and Schwarzenegger during his marriage to Maria Shriver, California's first lady.
On Aug. 14, 2003, as candidate Schwarzenegger was negotiating a consulting deal with American Media, the company signed its contract with Mora, who said she received $1,000 cash in return. Goyette declined to say whether she received the $20,000 promised in her contract.
Rob Stutzman, the governor's communications director, said he believed Schwarzenegger did not know of American Media's deals with the women. Schwarzenegger is on vacation and not available for comment, Stutzman said.
Stutzman denied any link between AMI's deal with Schwarzenegger and the company's agreements with the two women.
"There is no connection with his business with AMI or AMI's business of purchasing the rights to stories," Stutzman said. "That's what they do. Obviously, part of their business is the tabloid business."
The women might have been in a position to embarrass Schwarzenegger in his bid for the governor's office. When Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy on "The Tonight Show," he speculated that he would face accusations of infidelity.
Host Jay Leno asked if he was prepared for a bruising campaign, and Schwarzenegger replied: "I know that they're going to throw everything at me and they're going, you know, to say that I have no experience and that I'm a womanizer and that I'm a terrible guy, and all these kinds of things are going to come my way."
But American Media was effectively protecting Schwarzenegger's political interests, said a person who worked at the company when the contracts were signed. At the same time, American Media was crafting a deal to make Schwarzenegger executive editor of Flex and Muscle & Fitness magazines, helping to lure readers and advertisers.
If American Media was buying exclusive rights to the women's stories, said the person, who has a confidentiality agreement with the company and spoke on condition of anonymity, "why didn't the stories run? That's the obvious question."
"AMI systematically bought the silence" of the women, said the person. Schwarzenegger "was a de facto employee and he was important to their bottom line."
Schwarzenegger biographer Laurence Leamer wrote in his book, "Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger," that Schwarzenegger understood the tabloids would not skewer him if he was entering a business relationship with the company — although Schwarzenegger told Leamer he did not specifically seek such assurances.
Indeed, during the recall campaign, American Media put out a 120-page magazine celebrating Schwarzenegger as an embodiment of the "American dream."
The Enquirer did run a story repeating allegations in the British media that Schwarzenegger had an extramarital affair. The story was published first on its website before the election, and then in the newspaper three weeks after his election victory. But it was not prominently displayed, running on Page 24.
American Media, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, reached its agreement with Schwarzenegger on Nov. 15, 2003, two days before he was sworn in as governor. The deal was to pay him, by the company's estimates, at least $8 million over five years and no less than $5 million.
Schwarzenegger dropped the contract last month after the arrangement was made public in the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee. He said he plans to continue writing a monthly column for the two magazines.
American Media's contracts with Goyette and Mora, both titled "Confidentiality Agreement," are two pages long and never expire; they bind the two women "in perpetuity."
Goyette's agreement states that she is not to disclose "conversations with Schwarzenegger, her interactions with Schwarzenegger or anything else relating in any way to any relationship [she] ever had with Schwarzenegger," except to American Media.
Mora's contract bars her from disclosing anything about Goyette's "conversations with Schwarzenegger … interactions with Schwarzenegger or anything else relating in any way to any relationship Gigi Goyette ever had or alleged to have had with Schwarzenegger."
In an interview with The Times last week, with her lawyer present, Goyette said of Schwarzenegger "we're very good friends — and work associates."
Goyette has spent much of her life living in Malibu and grew up, she said, working as an extra on Hollywood film and TV productions. Today she acts occasionally in commercials. She said she last communicated with Schwarzenegger in the spring of 2001, before the National Enquirer published its story.
Goyette did not dispute an account of her relationship in Leamer's biography of Schwarzenegger, published two months ago. Like the National Enquirer, Leamer's book says Goyette and Schwarzenegger had a periodic intimate relationship.
In the book, Leamer says Goyette and Schwarzenegger got together yearly at the Arnold Fitness Weekend in Columbus, Ohio, where she helped with events.
Leamer writes that Goyette described her contact with Schwarzenegger with the term " 'outercourse' because it's like foreplay." The interaction, she told him, was "whatever we wanted it to be."
Goyette's lawyer, Charlotte Hassett, told The Times: "She maintained it was more of a massage situation — however you want to interpret that."
Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, declined to discuss the relationship. "I'm not going to characterize the relationship," Thompson said.
Two years after the Enquirer published its article about the relationship, Goyette told The Times, she heard from the tabloid again. In late July 2003 — as speculation was brewing over whether Schwarzenegger would enter the recall race for governor — Goyette said she got a call from reporter David Wright, who had written the 2001 story.
Goyette said Wright talked casually about the possibility of publishing a book on her life and that a division of American Media might be interested. Goyette was and still is eager to write a book — not a tell-all about Schwarzenegger, she said, but a chronicle of her life in the entertainment industry, from her days as a film and TV extra and a commercial actress to her life now as a 46-year-old single mother and PTA member with a teenage son.
That conversation "was a teaser," said Goyette, who gave Wright a manuscript. Goyette said she heard nothing further until Wright called her on what she believes was Aug. 6 or 7, 2003 — just as Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy — and asked if she could meet with someone from the company right away.
Wright declined The Times' requests for comment, saying, "I can't help you with that."
Goyette said that, unaccompanied by a lawyer or anyone else, she met an American Media representative at a Starbucks near her Malibu home, looked the agreement over hastily and signed it.
She said she did not believe American Media would purchase the rights to her story and then do nothing with it. She thought signing the pledge would be the prelude to a book deal.
"In my mind, it was trying to seal a deal so I wouldn't do the book with anybody else," she told The Times. "That was my feeling in my heart and in my mind."
Hassett added later: "She has reason to believe that she was manipulated by the actions of the people at National Enquirer."
The contract that bears Goyette's signature makes no mention of a book project. Goyette's recollection was that she signed a three-page contract. She said she did not get a copy until several weeks later, via fax, and it was two pages.
The contract was sealed just when interest in her story was peaking. Once Schwarzenegger's campaign was launched, the media quickly dug up the 2001 National Enquirer article. She was besieged by reporters.
They were "in front of my house. In front of my school. In front of the coffee shop," she said. "I didn't answer anyone's questions."
"A lot of people have offered me a lot of money to tell my story," she said. "I always said 'No comment' and turned everybody down."
Before she signed her contract, Goyette gave an interview to the BBC that aired after the contract was sealed. On Sept. 3, 2003 — after signing the contract but before receiving a copy of it, Hassett said — Goyette was quoted in a story by Fox News.
"She conducted herself in a way that a person who thought she had a book deal would act," Hassett said.
Mora, 50, said her first dealings with the National Enquirer took place when the tabloid was preparing the 2001 story on Goyette. The Enquirer, she said in an interview, "only wanted me to establish that she really knew him."
When the Enquirer reporter called, she said, she told him Goyette had pictures of Schwarzenegger around her house and had told her of how she worked with Schwarzenegger at his fitness exhibition.
Mora also said Goyette introduced her to Schwarzenegger once, at a Santa Monica restaurant he used to own.
Mora said she received a call from someone from the National Enquirer soon after Goyette's confidentiality contract was signed. The male caller, whose name she said she could not remember, offered her $1,000 to sign a confidentiality agreement of her own.
"They said, 'Would you be willing to agree to not say anything else?' " Mora recalled. "And I remember at the time saying something like, 'Uh, yeah. I don't know anything else.' They said, 'We paid her an additional $20,000, and if we give you $1,000 will you not say anything?' And I said, 'Sure, I don't know anything.' "
The next day in Los Angeles, Mora said, she met with a woman who gave her an envelope containing $1,000 cash. She said her recollection was imperfect, but she thinks it was then she signed the contract.
The document gives Mora's name as Judy Walker, a name she said she sometimes used. The signature says Judy Mora, as does the name printed by hand below it.
Mora said she does not have a copy of the document.
No Woman's Land
Women's rights are being destroyed while falling back into a thug's world. Thanks to Bush for starting a war for oil to make his military industrial/oil industry pals even richer. Meanwhile his daughters aren't serving in the wars he's creating. When is someone going to ask him point blank why they aren't and why hasn't he encouraged them to join the Army since he's been spouting it as a patriotic duty?
August 13, 2005
Reformer Without Results
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
President Bush has done so much for women. Not at home, of course.
Women in jeans in America may have their rights eroded by an administration where faith trumps science, but women in burkas? The president can't talk enough about how important their rights are.
And in the administration's diplomacy-free foreign policy, five of its top spokesmen on the Muslim world are women: Condi Rice; Laura Bush; Liz Cheney, No. 2 in the Near East bureau of the State Department and head of the Middle East democracy project; Karen Hughes, the new under secretary of state for public diplomacy; and her deputy, Dina Powell.
W. thinks so highly of Ms. Hughes, his longtime Texas political nanny, spinner, speechwriter and ghostwriter, that he put his Lima Green Bean, as he called her when she prodded him about the environment, in charge of the critical effort to salvage America's horrendous image in the Islamic world - even though what she knows about Islam could fit in a lima green bean. Why get any Muslims involved in reaching out to Muslims? That would be so matchy.
The real role for the newly minted ambassador hasn't been defined yet, but so far it looks as if Ms. Hughes's first priority will be to take her spinning skills, honed for W. in 2000 and 2004, to improve his image, and his policies' image, on a global scale.
Just as she retooled Bush as "a reformer with results" and a "compassionate conservative," Ms. Hughes plans to inundate Muslims with the four E's: "engagement, exchanges, education and empowerment."
On Thursday, when Mr. Bush came out of his Crawford ranch with Ms. Rice - it was odd, if refreshing, to see a secretary of state wearing lilac - he once again justified the war in Iraq by talking about the treatment of women.
The way to defeat our enemies' "hateful ideology," he said, is to offer an ideology "that says to young girls, you can succeed in your society, and you should have a chance to do so." He also said, "Hopefully, the drafters of the constitution understand our strong belief that women ought to be treated equally in the Iraqi society."
Hopefully? Is that the best we can do for a country that we broke, own and are sacrificing young men and women every day to keep?
Americans like it when the president talks up women's rights in Iraq and Afghanistan, so he does it often. It helped him sell the invasions of those two countries. But W. should stop listening to "My Sharona" on his iPod and start listening to their Sharia.
The fundamentalist Taliban is recrudescing in Afghanistan, young girls in Iraq are afraid to leave their homes because there are so many kidnappings and rapes, and women's groups in Iraq are terrified that the new constitution will cut women's rights to a Saudiesque level.
Some Shiite politicians are pushing to supplant the civil courts that have long governed marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance with religious courts that are based on Sharia, or Islamic law. The New York Times reported that one of the crucial articles in various drafts of the constitution is: "The followers of any sect or religion have the right to abide by their religion or sect in their personal affairs, and a law should organize this."
That little provision could jeopardize any chance for women's equality. Clerics running religious courts based on the Koran could legitimize polygamy, honor killings, stonings and public beheadings of women charged with adultery, and divorce by "talaq" - where all a husband has to do is declare, "I divorce thee," three times.
Saddam repressed Islamic politics, so under him, Iraq was one of the most secular countries in the Middle East. It has become far more fundamentalist since the U.S. took over.
The back-to-burka trend has been widely reported throughout Shiite-dominated southern Iraq, and young women activists told The Los Angeles Times that their mothers had more freedom in the 60's.
Najla Ubeidi, a lawyer in the Iraqi Women's League, agreed: "During the 1960's, there was a real belief in improving women's conditions. We could wear what we liked, go out when we liked, return home when we liked, and people would judge us by the way we behaved."
If W. liked exercising his mind as much as his body, he could see that his mission to modernize Muslim countries is backfiring on women. The most painless way for Muslim men to prove that they have not abandoned Arab culture and adopted Western ways is to tighten the burka.
To us, the "liberated" but repressive Iraq is a paradox. To the women, it's a prison.
August 13, 2005
Reformer Without Results
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
President Bush has done so much for women. Not at home, of course.
Women in jeans in America may have their rights eroded by an administration where faith trumps science, but women in burkas? The president can't talk enough about how important their rights are.
And in the administration's diplomacy-free foreign policy, five of its top spokesmen on the Muslim world are women: Condi Rice; Laura Bush; Liz Cheney, No. 2 in the Near East bureau of the State Department and head of the Middle East democracy project; Karen Hughes, the new under secretary of state for public diplomacy; and her deputy, Dina Powell.
W. thinks so highly of Ms. Hughes, his longtime Texas political nanny, spinner, speechwriter and ghostwriter, that he put his Lima Green Bean, as he called her when she prodded him about the environment, in charge of the critical effort to salvage America's horrendous image in the Islamic world - even though what she knows about Islam could fit in a lima green bean. Why get any Muslims involved in reaching out to Muslims? That would be so matchy.
The real role for the newly minted ambassador hasn't been defined yet, but so far it looks as if Ms. Hughes's first priority will be to take her spinning skills, honed for W. in 2000 and 2004, to improve his image, and his policies' image, on a global scale.
Just as she retooled Bush as "a reformer with results" and a "compassionate conservative," Ms. Hughes plans to inundate Muslims with the four E's: "engagement, exchanges, education and empowerment."
On Thursday, when Mr. Bush came out of his Crawford ranch with Ms. Rice - it was odd, if refreshing, to see a secretary of state wearing lilac - he once again justified the war in Iraq by talking about the treatment of women.
The way to defeat our enemies' "hateful ideology," he said, is to offer an ideology "that says to young girls, you can succeed in your society, and you should have a chance to do so." He also said, "Hopefully, the drafters of the constitution understand our strong belief that women ought to be treated equally in the Iraqi society."
Hopefully? Is that the best we can do for a country that we broke, own and are sacrificing young men and women every day to keep?
Americans like it when the president talks up women's rights in Iraq and Afghanistan, so he does it often. It helped him sell the invasions of those two countries. But W. should stop listening to "My Sharona" on his iPod and start listening to their Sharia.
The fundamentalist Taliban is recrudescing in Afghanistan, young girls in Iraq are afraid to leave their homes because there are so many kidnappings and rapes, and women's groups in Iraq are terrified that the new constitution will cut women's rights to a Saudiesque level.
Some Shiite politicians are pushing to supplant the civil courts that have long governed marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance with religious courts that are based on Sharia, or Islamic law. The New York Times reported that one of the crucial articles in various drafts of the constitution is: "The followers of any sect or religion have the right to abide by their religion or sect in their personal affairs, and a law should organize this."
That little provision could jeopardize any chance for women's equality. Clerics running religious courts based on the Koran could legitimize polygamy, honor killings, stonings and public beheadings of women charged with adultery, and divorce by "talaq" - where all a husband has to do is declare, "I divorce thee," three times.
Saddam repressed Islamic politics, so under him, Iraq was one of the most secular countries in the Middle East. It has become far more fundamentalist since the U.S. took over.
The back-to-burka trend has been widely reported throughout Shiite-dominated southern Iraq, and young women activists told The Los Angeles Times that their mothers had more freedom in the 60's.
Najla Ubeidi, a lawyer in the Iraqi Women's League, agreed: "During the 1960's, there was a real belief in improving women's conditions. We could wear what we liked, go out when we liked, return home when we liked, and people would judge us by the way we behaved."
If W. liked exercising his mind as much as his body, he could see that his mission to modernize Muslim countries is backfiring on women. The most painless way for Muslim men to prove that they have not abandoned Arab culture and adopted Western ways is to tighten the burka.
To us, the "liberated" but repressive Iraq is a paradox. To the women, it's a prison.
Friday, August 12, 2005
A DIRTY THUG GETS HIS AFTER A CAREER OF CORRUPTING OUR GOVERNMENT "LEADERS"
The GOP is in bed with thousands of lobbyists like Abramoff. In fact they have a program for putting former GOP congressmen and activists IN as lobbyists at every business that has one in Washington. Here's how it works. When a lobbyist retires or leaves a business the GOP meets with and strongly suggests (hell, they DEMAND it) that the business hire their true-blue GOP operative. This is a concentrated effort working under the radar to make sure business plays ball with (funds) the GOP's campaign activities and GOPACS. By assuring that lobbyist money brought into political parties goes to the GOP, they severely cut the campaigning efforts of the Democrats and any other group seeking office. So, read on and look at what kind of morality and ethics the GOP seeks to align itself with in its bid to grab and hold on to power at any cost. Caution. It could make you ill and ready to strangle Tom DeLay.
A High-Powered Lobbyist's Swift Fall From Grace
A High-Powered Lobbyist's Swift Fall From Grace
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005; A06
What a difference the passage of a few years has made for high-powered Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
In the first nine months of 2002, Abramoff collected $12.2 million in fees from Indian tribes and additional sums from the General Council for Islamic Banks and other clients. He spent $232,000 on his personal travel, mostly by chartered jets, and $69,000 for a Passover family vacation.
As a Bush "Pioneer," Abramoff also raised more than $100,000 for the president's reelection in 2004. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was "a very close friend," according to Abramoff's description, as well as a participant in costly trips to Moscow and Scotland arranged and partly subsidized by Abramoff or his clients.
Abramoff played host to other lawmakers and congressional staff members at four luxury sports-stadium skyboxes he leased for $1 million a year, and he provided free fundraisers for lawmakers at Signatures, a Washington restaurant in which he had a financial stake.
Now the restaurant is sold, the clients are gone, the lawmakers are working to distance themselves, and Abramoff's wealth is being diverted to pay his legal tab. His indictment yesterday by a Florida grand jury, which covers only a sliver of the activities targeted in a continuing federal tax and corruption investigation, officially caps his remarkably swift fall from grace but is probably not the end of his travails. He was to spend last night in jail.
The saga of Abramoff's career is the tale of an ideologically committed lawyer whose financial ambitions repeatedly pushed him toward the boundaries of legal and ethical propriety. A short man with a strong chin who wore dark suits and flaunted his religious faith, Abramoff has repeatedly said that what he did was no different from what other lobbyists did for their Washington clients. He said they all got good value for their money, and also that he broke no laws.
He was not bashful about seeking personal enrichment. "Can you smell money?" Abramoff wrote his partner in 2001, referring to a Michigan Indian tribe flush with profits from casino gambling.
Abramoff got his start in politics as an organizer for Ronald Reagan while attending Brandeis University in 1980. Shortly afterward, he made his first connections to others who would command influence in Washington when he became the head of the College Republican National Committee in 1981. One of his predecessors was Karl Rove, and three of his colleagues in the group at the time -- Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed and Amy Ridenour -- would later play helpful roles in Abramoff's Washington work.
He signed on as a lobbyist in Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP, the Washington office of a Seattle-based firm. One of his first tasks was to help textile manufacturers in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands -- a U.S. protectorate -- preserve the islands' exemption from minimum-wage laws.
Abramoff sold the exemption to DeLay and many other lawmakers, whom he took on junkets to the islands, as the key to preserving a model of conservative, regulation-free capitalism. Critics, including international human rights groups and Democrats, said his lobbying helped insulate and preserve the abusive workplace and labor conditions there.
Abramoff later signed on as a lobbyist to Indian tribes, flush with millions of dollars from gambling operations, that wanted to preserve their exemption from taxation. With partner Michael Scanlon, a former press secretary of DeLay, Abramoff collected at least $66 million from six tribes between 2001 and 2003, according to a year-long and continuing investigation by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. He also steered Indian riches into the coffers of numerous politicians, including a few Democrats, as well as influential Republicans.
Abramoff's personal lifestyle matched his lavish fees. A detailed tally by his accountant, released in June by the committee, included expenditures in the first nine months of 1992 of $134,000 for a new BMW, $69,000 for his driver's salary, $103,000 in credit card charges, and $36,000 in fees to accountants and other personal advisers. He also wrote checks to lawmakers' campaigns totaling $28,000 in that period.
But as Abramoff strategized and moved his clients' funds around -- in what his former colleagues and associates have described as a lengthy effort to obscure who was paying for what and where the money wound up -- he also left a trail of thousands of e-mails and other documents recounting the maneuvers in exceptionally brash terms.
Those documents, in the hands of federal and congressional investigators since early last year, are providing the grist for the legal challenges Abramoff and his former associates still face.
Researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
WELCOME TO MY TRAGIC QUAGMIRE - BUSH
The reason the Bush administration "slipped" in their message on Iraq (as mentioned below) is that the citizens of this country are beginning to wake up that the Bush message was never clear in the first place. It's a sad fact that only now a majority of Americans are seeing through the White House Spin and its lies. But it's not going to stop with just the war. We're going to keep slamming Bush and his corrupt administration and congress over their lies and deceit until they are out of office.
In Iraq, No Clear Finish Line
Timing Is Muddy For U.S. Pullout
In Iraq, No Clear Finish Line
Timing Is Muddy For U.S. Pullout
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005; A01
The Bush administration has sent seemingly conflicting signals in recent days over the duration of the U.S. deployment to Iraq, openly discussing contingency plans to withdraw as many as 30,000 of 138,000 troops by spring, then cautioning against expectations of any early pullout. Finally yesterday, President Bush dismissed talk of a drawdown as just "speculation and rumors" and warned against "withdrawing before the mission is complete."
If the public was left confused, it may be no more unsure than the administration itself, as some government officials involved in Iraq policy privately acknowledge.
The shifting scenarios reflect the uncertain nature of the mission and the ambiguity of what would constitute its successful completion. For all the clarity of Bush's vow to stay not one day longer than needed, the muddled reality is that no one can say exactly when that will be.
The events of the past week have brought home once again the difficulties confronting the president as he prosecutes what polls suggest is an increasingly unpopular war. With surging violence claiming more U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq and the angry mother of a dead soldier camping out near his ranch in Texas, Bush plainly cannot count on indefinite public patience.
Administration officials have all but given up any hope of militarily defeating the insurgents with U.S. forces, instead aiming only to train and equip enough Iraqi security forces to take over the fight themselves. At the same time, they believe that the mission depends on building a new political infrastructure, a project facing its most decisive test in the next three days as deeply divided Iraqis struggle to draft a constitution by a Monday deadline.
In the face of all that, Bush is trying to buy time. After meeting with his national security team at his ranch near Crawford, Tex., yesterday, Bush again beseeched the public to stick with his strategy despite continuing mayhem on the ground, exemplified most recently by the deaths of 16 Marines from the same Ohio-based unit in the past two weeks. Overall, nearly 1,850 U.S. troops have died.
"The mission in Iraq is tough because the enemy understands the stakes," Bush said, alongside Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "A free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will deliver a serious blow to their hateful ideology. . . . The recent violence in Iraq is a grim reminder of the brutal enemies we face in the war on terror."
Much of the public appears unconvinced. Just 38 percent of Americans in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll last week approved of Bush's handling of the war, the lowest point yet in that survey. More than half of those interviewed in a USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll said they now believe that it was a mistake to send U.S. troops into Iraq and that the war has made the United States less safe from terrorism; 56 percent supported withdrawing some or all troops now.
That disenchantment is one reason, some officials privately acknowledge, that the military has begun talking about a potential timetable for partial withdrawal -- to provide a sense of progress and reassure Americans that the deployment is not endless.
"They want to start withdrawing because they can feel the heat here in the United States," said Larry Diamond, a onetime U.S. adviser in Iraq who has since written "Squandered Victory," a scathing appraisal of the postwar occupation. "They know the tolerance for American casualties and this ongoing bloodshed is not going to go on forever."
Pentagon plans call for increasing the 17-brigade U.S. troop presence this fall by a brigade or two, or about 10,000 troops, before bringing it down to about 15 brigades next spring and possibly to about 12 brigades by the end of 2006, according to officers familiar with the planning. The near-term increase would cover the constitutional referendum scheduled for Oct. 15 and national elections set for Dec. 15, a period in which U.S. military authorities expect violence to intensify, much as it did during the run-up to January's interim elections.
Top Pentagon officials have made no secret in recent weeks of their eagerness to begin withdrawing some troops to ease the strain of lengthy deployments. At the same time, military commanders have cautioned against expecting that Iraq's new army and police forces will develop quickly enough to operate on their own within another year or two.
"It's a race against time because by the end of this coming summer we can no longer sustain the presence we have now," said retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who visited Iraq most recently in June and briefed Cheney, Rice and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "This thing, the wheels are coming off it."
McCaffrey said Bush's strategy of building Iraqi political and security institutions makes sense, and he estimated an 80 percent chance of success. Even so, he said the fading public support represents a genuine hazard for the president: "We want to get out of this. . . . The American people are walking away from this war."
At his meeting with his war cabinet yesterday, Bush reviewed the latest developments but reported no new direction. The administration has set up seven interagency groups focused on its main priorities in Iraq.
These are providing security and training Iraqi forces, building national political institutions, restoring energy and other services, tackling economic problems, establishing rule of law, enlisting international help, and improving strategic communications.
In not-for-attribution comments, some administration officials acknowledge the uphill task. One option that will have to be considered eventually, they say, is amnesty that would forgive even insurgents who have participated in violence. Historically, they note, insurgencies end with some form of amnesty.
But they also see hope in recent developments, mainly the decision by leaders of Iraq's minority Sunnis to participate in the political process instead of continuing to resist the new ruling order. If Iraqis succeed in drafting a constitution by Monday's deadline, the White House hopes it will defuse sectarian grievances that have powered the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
"We're entering a critical phase in the political process in Iraq," Bush counselor Dan Bartlett said. "While there's rightly a lot of focus on the violence and the security, the commanders and Ambassador [Zalmay] Khalilzad are very focused on the political process because the political process will be key to defeating the insurgency."
That remains a daunting prospect given deep-seated differences along ethnic and religious lines, and the administration has signaled that it is willing to take a deal on a constitution without resolving some tough issues involving regional autonomy and resource allocation in hopes of sustaining a sense of momentum.
"The administration understands how delicate this is," said Peter Khalil, who was an adviser to the original U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq. "They're obviously pushing the process forward and want the deadline met. But it's a dangerous game here. You don't want them to delay, but you want the process to work."
Failure to meet the deadline, analysts say, would be a devastating setback to Bush and could accelerate the sense at home that the process is not going well. Alarmed by falling domestic support for the war, Bush aides resolved in June to rally the public by having the president take a more visible role explaining his strategy and predicting victory. Bush flew to Fort Bragg, N.C., to deliver a prime-time address pleading for patience, part of what aides said would be a sustained campaign.
But Bush then largely dropped the subject until yesterday's meeting at the ranch, addressing the war mainly in reaction to the latest grisly events on the ground. In the ensuing vacuum, Rumsfeld and the U.S. effort in Iraq have come under increasing fire even from Bush supporters, such as Fox News talk show host Bill O'Reilly, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and the American Spectator magazine.
"The Bush administration has lost control of its public affairs management of this issue," said Christopher F. Gelpi, a Duke University scholar whose analyses of wartime public opinion have been studied in the White House. "They were so focused on this through 2004. . . . I don't know why they've slipped."
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
GOP LOBBYIST INDICTED, PAL & CORRUPTOR TO TOP GOP LEADERS
Delay and the GOP elite traveled the world and lived like kings with this rat! He's only one of thousands now usurping the people's trust in the backroom and halls of YOUR government. You can't trust the Republicans since taking over every branch of the government. It's corrupted them to the point that they have turned their backs on their own ideals and values. It is threatening the foundations of our democracy. Corporations using unethical thugs like Abramoff make the rules while the people suffer under them. You, the person reading this right now, have the most important office in the country. A citizen. Stand up like Cindy Sheehan to the ugly arrogance of power and make your voice heard. It's time during the next election to have a house cleaning in Congress.
Abramoff Indicted in Casino Boat Purchase
Lobbyist, Associate Charged With Fraud
Abramoff Indicted in Casino Boat Purchase
Lobbyist, Associate Charged With Fraud
By James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005; A01
MIAMI, Aug. 11 -- Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a business partner were indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, charged with five counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy in their purchase of a fleet of Florida gambling boats from a businessman who was later killed in a gangland-style hit.
Abramoff, 46, was arrested in Los Angeles in the late afternoon and was expected to be taken before a U.S. magistrate there on Friday. He was indicted along with Adam Kidan, the former owner of the Dial-a-Mattress franchise in Washington. Kidan, 41, of New York City, will surrender to the FBI here by Friday morning, his attorney, Martin I. Jaffe, said in a written statement.
Five years ago, while he was still one of the capital's most prominent Republican lobbyists, Abramoff, with Kidan and former Reagan administration official Ben Waldman of Springfield, Va., took over SunCruz Casinos. The company operated a fleet of gambling boats from as many as 11 ports in Florida. Although the indictment does not detail the effort, Abramoff leveraged his connections with members of Congress to advance the SunCruz deal, according to interviews and thousands of documents, court records and e-mails filed in related bankruptcy cases.
Abramoff's spokesman in New York, Andrew Blum, declined to comment, referring calls to Abramoff's Miami attorney, Neal Sonnett, who did not return calls. Kidan said in a statement that he had cooperated with investigators, adding: "I did nothing wrong and these allegations are totally unfounded."
Each of the six counts in the indictment could bring a punishment of as much as five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Federal authorities are also seeking $60 million from Abramoff and Kidan, the money lost by a lender they had sought out to help finance the casino ships' purchase.
The indictment marks the first formal charges against Abramoff, who has been at the center of a Washington controversy this year involving the large sums of money he collected from Indian casino interests and the influence he exerted on their behalf.
Abramoff and Kidan are accused of faking a wire transfer of $23 million, the equity they had agreed to put into the $147.5 million purchase of SunCruz from Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, the multimillionaire founder of the popular Miami Subs chain of sandwich shops. The wire transfer, said R. Alexander Acosta, the U.S. attorney here, "was counterfeit."
"The defendants never transferred the funds and never made a cash equity contribution toward the purchase of SunCruz," Acosta said.
As part of the fraud, Abramoff and Kidan lied on their personal financial disclosure statements, the indictment alleges. The two also used money borrowed from individuals, which they called "flash funds," to lead "potential lenders to believe [they] had the necessary funding to complete the sale of SunCruz," the indictment alleges. In reality, they did not have those funds, according to the indictment.
"Abramoff and Kidan did not put any of their own money into this deal," said Timothy J. Delaney, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami office.
After the sale, Boulis retained a piece of the business, but relations among the partners quickly soured, according to lawsuits and bankruptcy records. Boulis accused Kidan of maintaining connections to organized crime, and he and Kidan came to blows during a business meeting.
On Feb. 6, 2001, Boulis was killed as he drove home from a business meeting by someone in a Mustang who fired three hollow-point bullets into his chest. No one has been arrested in the slaying.
Today, the SunCruz casino boats are sailing under new ownership after a bankruptcy auction. Foothill Capital sued the partners in the deal over the $60 million in loans, eventually settling with Waldman for $450,000 and with Abramoff for an undisclosed amount. Litigation continues with Kidan.
Federal authorities sidestepped specific mention of Abramoff's high-powered political connections. At an afternoon news conference here, Acosta did not mention Abramoff's use of congressional contacts to seal the SunCruz deal. The closest officials came to doing so was when Delaney said that, "regardless of position, status, wealth or associations, fraudulent activity will not be tolerated."
But Abramoff's dealings with SunCruz were intertwined with his relationships with powerful members of Congress and their staffs. As the negotiations warmed up, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's office -- he was the House minority whip then -- gave Boulis a flag that had flown over the Capitol. And as the SunCruz deal was closing, Abramoff brought his lead financier to a DeLay fundraiser in the lobbyist's box at FedEx Field during a Monday Night Football game between the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys.
To help land the deal, an Abramoff associate, Michael Scanlon, persuaded Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) to officially criticize Boulis in the Congressional Record; later, Ney praised Kidan in the official publication of Congress.
Abramoff listed Tony Rudy, a top DeLay aide at the time, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) as personal references on his loan papers. And he flew key members of DeLay's staff -- including his current chief of staff -- on a SunCruz jet and took them for a night of gambling on a SunCruz boat at the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa. The Super Bowl trip came just days before Boulis's slaying.
Ney has said he was duped by Abramoff and Scanlon. DeLay's spokesmen have said he does not remember meeting the banker or sending the flag. His spokesman declined to comment. Rudy has declined to comment. Rohrabacher has said he gladly served as a reference for Abramoff.
An FBI official said Thursday that the case is still under investigation, but he indicated that no other arrests are imminent.
In a separate Washington investigation, a task force of the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies is exploring how Abramoff and Scanlon collected $82 million in fees for lobbying and public affairs work from Indian tribes around the country.
The task force is also investigating whether Abramoff and his associates exerted improper influence over members of Congress and federal agencies on behalf of their clients.
Sources familiar with the probe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Scanlon and his attorneys have been in discussions with the Justice Department for several months. He and the lawyers have not returned phone calls seeking comment on the investigation.
Scanlon has knowledge of both SunCruz, for whom he did public relations work, and dealings between Abramoff and members of Congress and their staffs. Of particular interest to prosecutors would be Scanlon's knowledge of whether trips, campaign contributions or favors were given in exchange for legislation.
The heart of the alleged fraud was the $23 million wire transfer, faxed by Kidan and Waldman to the partners' key lender -- Foothill Capital, now part of Wells Fargo Bank. It was intended to persuade lenders to provide $60 million in financing to Abramoff's group to be used for the $147.5 million purchase.
The fax from Kidan and Waldman appeared to confirm a transfer of the money from Kidan's account at Chevy Chase Bank to the seller's bank. But Chevy Chase Bank later said that Kidan's account had already been closed at the time of the purported wire transfer. Foothill now contends that the faxed document was a forgery, and that later it was told that Boulis had accepted a $20 million note instead of cash.
Waldman was not indicted on Thursday. Asked whether Waldman was a suspect or a witness, Acosta said: "I'm not going to discuss whether someone may or may not be a witness."
Abramoff said in court papers that he was unaware of the fraud and was shocked to learn of it months after it occurred. But the indictment cites a Sept. 22, 2000, closing document signed by Abramoff. The court file in the SunCruz bankruptcy case includes a similar document with Abramoff's signature certifying that he and Kidan put up the $23 million.
Three months after the sale closed, trouble between Boulis and the other partners began to boil over. Abramoff said in a court filing later that in November 2000 he went to Miami to mediate and was "flabbergasted" that Kidan had never paid Boulis the $23 million for the company.
Yet other records show that Abramoff continued to back Kidan in the growing discord with Boulis.
In December, the rift deteriorated into a fistfight at a business meeting. Boulis attacked and threatened to kill Kidan, according to Kidan, who went to court to get a restraining order against Boulis.
Immediately after the fight, Abramoff agreed with Kidan in e-mails that Boulis should be removed from SunCruz. In an e-mail to a SunCruz attorney, Abramoff said, "It is my belief that Gus [Boulis] and Adam [Kidan] need to resolve the issue of what Gus is owed and Gus needs to move on out of the company."
Boulis was killed two months later. He was a Greek immigrant whose rags-to-riches story became part of South Florida lore. He had launched SunCruz after making a fortune from Miami Subs. Known as a "cruise to nowhere" casino business, SunCruz sailed midsize cruise ships from ports around Florida, taking gamblers into international waters, beyond the reach of state laws.
Based near Fort Lauderdale in Dania Beach, the business was the bane of state officials, who thought Boulis flouted the law. In 1999, federal prosecutors charged Boulis with violating shipping laws by buying his vessels without being a U.S. citizen. Boulis agreed to pay a $1 million fine and sell his cruise line. Abramoff became an interested buyer and teamed with Kidan, a friend from the College Republicans.
In October 2000, a month after Abramoff and Kidan took charge of SunCruz and as relations with Boulis soured, Ney praised Kidan in Congress, saying "he will easily transform SunCruz from a questionable enterprise to an upstanding establishment."
Two months later, Kidan hired Anthony Moscatiello, whom he had described as a business mentor. Authorities have identified Moscatiello as an associate of the Gambino crime family who turned up in wiretaps of mob boss John Gotti in the 1980s.
Staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.
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