Sinking Deeper Into the Quagmire

January 14, 2005

NY TIMES EDITORIAL

Out of Iraq

kraine became the latest dropout from the "coalition of the willing" when President Leonid Kuchma formally ordered his generals on Monday to start pulling his country's roughly 1,600 troops out of Iraq. That was not a surprise because Ukraine has been heading for the door for some time. Still, given that Ukraine has been much in the news and that its contingent was the fifth-largest in Iraq (after the United States, Britain, Italy and Poland), the exit is worth noting.

It's the end of a cynical marriage of convenience. From the outset, there was an assumption that President Kuchma joined the coalition largely to buy slack from Washington over his notoriously corrupt rule. Then, in the recent brutal elections, the reformist and West-leaning Viktor Yushchenko, who defeated Mr. Kuchma's candidate, made pulling out of Iraq one of his issues. Mr. Kuchma, on the verge of leaving office, evidently saw no point in letting Mr. Yushchenko reap the plaudits from Ukrainians, who overwhelmingly oppose the war.

Ukraine's withdrawal punches a major and potentially fatal hole in the much-ballyhooed multinational division that Poland volunteered to lead in Iraq. Spain was the first to drop out, and Ukraine had the second-largest contingent after Poland itself. The coalition has also lost Hungary, the Philippines and Honduras, among others, while Poland itself, long regarded as second only to Britain in its fealty to the United States, is talking of cutting back. Several other countries intend to reduce their participation in the next few months.

Most of these countries provided token forces of a few dozen or less. But the Bush administration expended considerable political capital to beg or bully governments into joining the campaign to give it the semblance of an international operation in the absence of a credible international endorsement. Washington was especially keen to underscore the support of young democracies, which were supposed to be better capable of appreciating the blessings that Iraq was about to reap.

But in Ukraine, neither bad old dictators nor promising new democrats ever really backed the Iraq war. Like many other coalition members, the government weighed the potential benefits of making nice to Washington against the potential costs of not doing so and hoped it would all be over soon. Now that doesn't look likely, the exodus is on. When you go for facade, facade is what you get.

The Liar's Liars

Excuse me, but is that smoke in your ear?

by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas
January 11th 2005

I wouldn't go calling anyone a liar, but as we say in our quaint Texas fashion, this administration is stuffed with people who are on a first-name basis with the bottom of the deck. They've been telling us only four out of the 18 provinces in Iraq will be too unsafe to vote in. Doesn't sound that bad, does it? Unless you happen to know that about 50 percent of the population lives in those four provinces.

Will someone explain to me what earthly good they expect to do by misleading us? If, God forbid, the Iraqi election turns out to be a disaster, will we be better off for not having expected it? How long are Bush and Cheney going to sit there pretending the problem is that the media won't report the "good news" out of Iraq? Be a lot more useful if they paid attention to some of the bad news.

Resigned to the fact that Social Security will have to be dismantled because it's in such terrible, awful trouble, headed toward bankruptcy the day after tomorrow? Well, the $10 trillion in unfunded liabilities they keep talking about sure sounds like a load of trouble. Except that it's a completely phony number. Not based on what will happen in 25 years or 50 or 75, but on infinity. Forever and ever.

President Bush says "the crisis is now" and Social Security will go into the red as of 2018. Eeek, just 13 years from now -- we might actually live that long. Except ... nobody else says that. The Social Security trustees, paid to be professional gloom-mongers on this subject, say it's good until 2042, and the conservative estimate by the Congressional Budget Office is 2052 -- not before Social Security goes broke, but before Social Security has to dip into its trust fund. Get a grip.

Now, in addition to the regular misleading, fudging, distorting and phony statistics games, we're getting actual covert propaganda, and dammittohell, they're making us pay for it. A quarter of a million bucks to a right-wing commentator to talk up No Child Left Behind. Why? Distributing video "news" releases to television stations made and paid for by the government, but not identified as such. It's not enough that Bush has the bulliest pulpit on earth, he has to sneak his message across with government propaganda? What the hell is this?

According to Bush, we're also having a lawsuit crisis. He got so exercised over it last week, he used the word "crisis" four times in one speech. In Texas, we have had tort deform up to our ears. Med-mal, as medical malpractice insurance is known in legislative circles, has been tort-deformed out the wazoo here -- $250,000 award caps, the whole ball of wax. Net result? Proposed rate increases for three of the state's largest med mal carriers up 16.6 percent to 35.2 percent. In Oklahoma, up 83 percent over three years for the largest med mal provider. Ohio, 10 percent to 40 percent is the range of expected rate increases by the five major carriers, etc. Doesn't work worth a damn.

Here in the National Laboratory for Bad Government, we are happy to help out by showing everyone else how not to solve problems, but it's really annoying when Bush insists on taking what didn't work here and making it nationwide.

More fun with numbers. The Bushies are crowing that their job forecast for last year was right on target. Um, which forecast? They predicted total job growth of 3.8 million, and it was actually 2.2 million. That's the difference between the total jobs in December versus the number at the beginning of the year. They also predicted the average number of jobs to increase by 2.6 million, when in fact it turned out to be 1.3 million higher than in 2003 -- that being difference between the average number of jobs in 2003 and 2004.

Too fast for you? If something goes up to eight from six, that's plus two, but the average of eight and six is seven, up one. The Bushies took the 2.2 million they predicted for last year's average job growth and pretended it was their prediction for total job growth, then said they were right when actual growth came in at 2.6 million. In other words, they were off again. (I am entirely indebted to bloggers Brad DeLong and Kevin Drum for this mathematical distinction.)

Also in the "you can't trust a word they say" category, the Natural Resources Defense Council has just released papers showing that the Defense Department and defense contractors collaborated in a backroom campaign to manipulate a federal report on the health threat of perchlorate, a toxic rocket fuel ingredient, in the water. The National Academy of Sciences is to release the report this week. What the NRDC has is evidence that pressure was put on the Academy of Sciences. Again, what good does it do to misinform people?

Not that I'm accusing anyone of lying, of course, but these people are slicker than bus station chili. Count your change when dealing with Bushies.

Bush Makes Nixon Look Like An Eagle Scout

The Truth Shall Set You Back
Lying is no sin for Bush's minions.
Margaret Carlson - L.A. TIMES

January 13, 2005

At CBS, four high-level people (five, if you count Dan Rather giving up his anchor chair) have been fired for being taken in by phony documents. You may not think that's enough, but what strikes me is how rare such firings are. When there's lying, cheating and stealing on Wall Street, a prosecutor has to have the corporate executive dead to rights — at Fannie Mae, at Marsh & McLennan, at Sanford Weill's Citigroup — before heads roll. And even then the dismissals are generally accompanied by a payday so lavish it would make Croesus blush.

It is not surprising that an administration that rose so directly from corporate America would operate the same way. Has anyone, for instance, lost his job for being wrong about weapons of mass destruction or for failing to put enough troops in place to secure Iraq before a deadly insurgency could take hold?

In the Bush administration, you lose your job not for lying but for telling the truth, as the axing of Gen. Eric Shinseki and economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey shows. No wonder most government officials wait until they're former officials before speaking out, as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke did.

Those who speak in real time are soon gone. Consider the case of the Department of Homeland Security's former inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin. When Ervin, a Republican and a Harvard Law School graduate, reported that only 6% of oceangoing cargo was being inspected, that known felons were operating airport checkpoints, that no consolidated terrorist watch list had been compiled and that the managers responsible for these failures had been feted at a lavish awards ceremony that cost half a million dollars, the White House allowed his appointment to lapse, costing him his job, according to Susan Collins (R-Maine), the Senate Government Affairs Committee chairwoman.

The opposite happened over at the inspector general's office at the Department of Health and Human Services. The IG there decided it was perfectly fine for former Medicare chief Thomas Scully to repeatedly threaten to fire a subordinate if he dared tell Congress (which had asked) that the prescription drug bill would cost nearly $200 billion more than the president was letting on. The subordinate's silence carried the day. It wasn't until after the bill passed with the vote of 13 Republican deficit hawks (who had sworn they couldn't vote for a bill costing more than $400 billion) that President Bush said, oops, the price was $534 billion after all.

Then there's poor Dr. David Graham, who wouldn't keep silent over at the Food and Drug Administration. When Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) called him to Congress to testify, the Yale-trained physician said Merck and the FDA had ignored studies that showed Vioxx doubling the risk of heart attack. Graham estimated that 55,000 people had died as a result. Dr. Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the FDA's Office of New Drugs, insisted nonetheless that "our system works very well." Protected by civil service laws, Graham still has his job, but he says he has been made to feel "that I'm an enemy, a traitor, a pariah."

Graham shouldn't be a pariah. He should get the Medal of Freedom. Unfortunately, Bush gives those medals to people who keep their mouths shut, like L. Paul Bremer III, who got one for not saying until he retired that Bush hadn't sent enough troops to Iraq. Another went to former CIA Director George Tenet, who provided on request the "slam-dunk" pretext for the war Bush was determined to wage. With that medal around his neck, will Tenet also be a less-than-forthcoming memoirist in the book for which he reportedly got a $4-million advance?

White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales has put off telling the truth, perhaps forever. He went before the Senate Judiciary Committee and pretended he didn't mean the things he wrote in his memo calling the Geneva Convention "quaint" and "obsolete," and that, in any event, he just hates torture. However, when asked whether torture could be used by U.S. personnel under any circumstances, he said he didn't think so, but "I'd want to get back to you on that."

Like Tenet and other architects of the war in Iraq, Gonzales gave the president what he wanted and is now being rewarded for it. Abu Ghraib was indeed a rogue operation, but as the female private with the leash heads to trial, we shouldn't forget for a minute that the real rogues who let it happen are in the administration. For his counsel, Gonzales will be elevated to attorney general, a post where he will be the symbol of justice in this country. He's lucky he doesn't work at CBS.

BUSH CUTS TAXES, GUARD SOLDIERS' WEAPONS DON'T WORK

AWOL Soldier Cites Army Inadequacies

Wed Jan 12, 7:55 AM ET

By Scott Gold Times Staff Writer

HOUSTON — An Army National Guard soldier said Tuesday that the inadequate training and equipment he received had led him to abandon his unit rather than face deployment to Iraq.

"I guess I'm AWOL right now," Spc. Joseph Jacobo, 46, said in a telephone interview from the Los Angeles area.

Among his concerns, Jacobo said, was that he had been unable to find anyone at his Texas training base who could fix his M-4 assault rifle, the primary weapon he would carry in Iraq. The weapon jams, he said.

"They try to put old parts in new rifles," he said. "It doesn't work. We're having all kinds of problems with our automatic weapons."

Soldiers in Jacobo's Modesto-based National Guard unit — the 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment — went public late last month with concerns that they would suffer needlessly high casualty rates in Iraq because of poor training. Military officials have denied the soldiers' charges, voiced in an article in the Los Angeles Times.

Similar tensions have arisen in other units as the military, short on active-duty personnel, has given National Guard and Reserve soldiers increased combat responsibilities and lengthy overseas assignments.

The soldiers, who trained at the Army's Ft. Bliss Training Complex, said there were equipment problems, including trucks without adequate armor and a shortage of night-vision goggles. They also said they had received very little "theater specific" training to prepare them for conditions in Iraq. For example, the soldiers said they had learned nothing about convoy protection or guarding against insurgents' roadside bombs.

Airing their concerns publicly, Jacobo said, only seems to have made matters worse. He said soldiers who were suspected of having spoken to the newspaper were called "cowards" and "yellow-bellies" by their supervisors. Equipment woes were not addressed, commanders became more strict and morale reached new lows, he said.

"They didn't change anything," Jacobo said. "How are we supposed to have any pride?"

His unit is scheduled to deploy to Kuwait soon, possibly by the end of the week, and then onto Iraq. Jacobo said he has been absent without permission since Jan. 2, when the soldiers were supposed to return from a brief holiday leave.

Jacobo, who is married with two grown children, said he was staying with relatives. He has spent much of his adult life in the military, he said, including a six-year stint in the Marines that took him to Nicaragua. The message on his cellphone voicemail concludes, "Semper fi" — the Marine motto that is shorthand for semper fidelis, or "always faithful."

Jacobo said he decided to rejoin the National Guard last year because he believed in the Iraq mission.

"I just thought it was the right thing to do," he said.

Jacobo faces a range of possible punishments. If he rejoins his unit soon, he probably would face "nonjudicial" punishment that could include extra duties and a reduction in rank, said Lt. Col. Coennie Woods, a National Guard spokeswoman in Washington. Jacobo also could be declared a deserter because his unit was preparing to go into combat when he disappeared. In that case, Woods said, he could be court-martialed, imprisoned for five years and dishonorably discharged.

Woods said she could not comment further on the situation. Military officials at Ft. Bliss did not return calls seeking comment.

BUSH GOT IT WRONG AND THOUSANDS DIED WHILE CREATING A NEW ARMY OF TERRORISTS

There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The President LIED to invade a country that didn't attack us. That dangerously cuts our legitimacy for authority in dealing with real threats in the future. It also means no other countries will step in to help in Iraq because it was entirely a colossal blunder by Bush. That cuts our growing need for allies in a world made more threatening by Bush's actions. Our government is spending billions of our tax dollars to support a war that is sinking into a quagmire while CUTTING TAXES for the rich. Our poor and middle class supplies the troops that fight and die in America's name while our wealthiest aren't asked to share even the financial burden. Bush has taken a nation with historic budget surpluses (under a Democrat) to historic debt. The economy is the worst it's been in over 80 years with no new job creation under Bush (No president has ever presided over an economy that did NOT create new jobs). Now Bush wants to do to Social Security what he's done in Iraq.

U.S. Ends Fruitless Iraq Weapons Hunt

WASHINGTON - The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (news - web sites) has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush (news - web sites) cited as justification for going to war, the White House said Wednesday.

AP Photo Latest headlines: · U.S. Wraps Up Search for Banned Weapons in Iraq Reuters - 5 minutes ago · Top Democrat slams Bush after inspectors find no WMD in Iraq AFP - 23 minutes ago · Car bombs rock Mosul, White House says Iraqi elections far from perfect AFP - 32 minutes ago Special Coverage

Democrats said Bush owes the country an explanation of why he was so wrong.

The Iraq Survey Group, made up of some 1,200 military and intelligence specialists and support staff, spent nearly two years searching military installations, factories and laboratories whose equipment and products might be converted quickly to making weapons.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said there no longer is an active search for weapons and the administration does not hold out hopes that any weapons will be found. "There may be a couple, a few people, that are focused on that" but that it has largely concluded, he said.

"If they have any reports of (weapons of mass destruction) obviously they'll continue to follow up on those reports," McClellan said. "A lot of their mission is focused elsewhere now."

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said Bush should explain what happened.

"Now that the search is finished, President Bush needs to explain to the American people why he was so wrong, for so long, about the reasons for war," she said.

"After a war that has consumed nearly two years and millions of dollars, and a war that has cost thousands of lives, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, nor has any evidence been uncovered that such weapons were moved to another country," Pelosi said in a written statement. "Not only was there not an imminent threat to the United States, the threat described in such alarmist tones by President Bush and the most senior members of his administration did not exist at all."

Chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer is to deliver his final report on the search next month. "It's not going to fundamentally alter the findings of his earlier report," McClellan said, referring to preliminary findings from last September. Duelfer reported then that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any either. Bush unapologetically defended his decision to invade Iraq.

"Nothing's changed in terms of his views when it comes to Iraq, what he has previously stated and what you have previously heard," McClellan said. "The president knows that by advancing freedom in a dangerous region we are making the world a safer place."

Bush has appointed a panel to investigate why the intelligence about Iraq's weapons was wrong.

McClellan said the Iraq experience would not make Bush hesitant to raise alarms when he deems it necessary.

"But we're also going to continue taking steps to make sure that that intelligence is the best possible," he said.

"Our friends and allies had the same intelligence that we had when it came to Saddam Hussein," McClellan said. "And now we need to continue to move forward to find out what went wrong and to correct those flaws."

At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday about 120 Iraqi scientists who had been working in weapons programs were being paid by the U.S. government to work in other fields.

Iraq Slips Into Hell Under The Texas Bull$#@* Artist

I'm willing to bet on Bush's bullheaded and dull thinking to do the wrong thing and allow for civil war to erupt in Iraq.

The New York Times
January 12, 2005
EDITORIAL

Facing Facts About Iraq's Election

When the United States was debating whether to invade Iraq, there was one outcome that everyone agreed had to be avoided at all costs: a civil war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that would create instability throughout the Middle East and give terrorists a new, ungoverned region that they could use as a base of operations. The coming elections - long touted as the beginning of a new, democratic Iraq - are looking more and more like the beginning of that worst-case scenario.

It's time to talk about postponing the elections.

•

If Iraq is going to survive as a nation, it has to create a government in which the majority rules - in this case, that means the Shiites - but the minorities are guaranteed protection of their basic rights and enough of a voice to influence important decisions. The Kurds, non-Arab Sunnis who live in the northeastern part of the country, seem to believe that the elections will bring them what they most want: relative autonomy to conduct their own affairs as part of an Iraqi federation. But the Sunni Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of the population, have grown increasingly estranged. The largest mainstream Sunni party has withdrawn from the current interim government, and just about all of the country's leading Sunni Arab politicians now call either for postponing the elections or boycotting them. Given the violence in Sunni areas, even voters who wish to take part may hesitate to turn out. In some places, the polls may not open at all.

A postponement - which would have to be for a fixed period of only two or three months - would not solve all the safety problems. But it would be a sign to the Sunni Arabs that their concerns were being taken into consideration. That in itself could go a long way toward reassuring them that the Shiite majority was not planning to trample on their rights. The interim government should convene an emergency meeting of top leaders from all major Iraqi communities to come up with a revised election timetable and procedures that would optimize the ability of minority groups to get proper representation. The Sunni leaders, in return, would have to promise to take part in the elections that followed.

Worrying about whether the Sunnis will be included in the government does not mean sympathizing with their baser resentments. Under Saddam Hussein, the Sunni minority reaped almost all of the good things Iraq had to offer while trampling on the rights of the Shiites and Kurds. Those days are over, and the Sunnis simply have to accept the fact that they will never again enjoy their old enormous share of the pie. But if Iraq is to start moving beyond its long history of communal hostility, the Shiites need to demonstrate that they will not treat the Sunnis the way the Sunnis treated them.

•

To understand what's happening in Iraq, imagine the mind-set of the Sunnis - not the loathsome terrorists who shoot election workers and kill civilians with car bombs and mines, but the average people, including middle-class men and women whose lives have been ruined since the invasion.

The United States and its allies made a great many mistakes in dealing with the Sunnis. On the top of the list would be the early decision to disband the Iraqi military and a decree, later reversed, that banned tens of thousands of teachers, doctors and other professionals who had belonged to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from government employment - including many people who had joined the party perfunctorily to keep out of trouble.

Since then, the Sunnis have discovered that the American Army - which many regarded as all-powerful - has not protected them from either the criminals or the terrorists who have been operating throughout their region since the overthrow of the Hussein regime. Forced to huddle in their homes to avoid kidnappers or suicide bombers, they have had plenty of time to contemplate the fact that the Americans have also not delivered on their vow to improve infrastructure and provide reliable power and water service. More recently, Sunni civilians have borne the brunt of American counterinsurgency drives like the one in Falluja, which have left residential areas devastated and thousands homeless.

Much of this could have been avoided if the American invasion had been conducted more wisely, but it is the reality now, and the American occupiers can't fix it. A democratically elected government might be able to build up an effective Iraqi security force and win the war against the guerrillas, whose attacks are making everyday life impossible in the Sunni provinces. But it would have to be a government that included all factions.

A broad range of Sunni leaders, including some of the most moderate and pro-Western, are pleading for a postponement of the elections. They have good reason to fear that as matters now stand, many of their people will be unwilling or unable to take part. Last week the top American ground commander in Iraq said that large areas of four largely Sunni provinces, including Baghdad, are currently too insecure for people to vote. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi admitted yesterday there would be at least "pockets" of the country where voting would be too dangerous.

If the elections wind up taking place under current conditions, the new government could wind up with little or no Sunni representation when the new constitution was prepared. The winners of the elections, who will inevitably be Shiites, could, of course, appoint Sunni representatives. But the next Iraqi constitution is bound to include provisions that will make the Sunnis unhappy, and the people agreeing to those deals need to have the legitimacy that comes with being elected.

It seems clear in retrospect that the elections should have been set up along district or provincial lines, an approach that would have ensured minority representation. It would also have allowed the interim government to carry on with voting in the Shiite and Kurdish areas this month while postponing it in the four violence-racked provinces, giving Sunnis the prospect of electing their share of legislators later. The United Nations organizers are mainly at fault here. They made their decisions under heavy pressure from the Bush administration to come up with a simple system that could be in place by Jan. 30. But it now appears that it would have been better to accept the flaws inherent in a regional approach in order to get solid protection for the Sunnis.

•

For all the talk about letting the Iraqi interim authorities govern Iraq, President Bush will have the final say in large matters, like when to hold elections, as long as American troops are the only effective military in the country. He has always insisted on holding to the Jan. 30 date. Mr. Bush keeps saying that things will go well once the voting actually starts. We certainly hope he's right, but we doubt that he is as optimistic about the outcome as he appears to be in public.

Many Americans - and many Iraqis - worry that if the elections were postponed, the terrorists would feel empowered by having won. That might indeed be the case for the next few months. But that outcome would be far outweighed by the danger that would come from a civil war, with the Sunni territory becoming a no man's land where terrorists could operate at will. Others argue that civil war is probably inevitable one way or another, and that we may as well get the voting over with. That kind of pessimism may be warranted. But given the horrific possibilities, we should make every effort to avoid that end. A delay in the voting seems to offer at least a ray of hope, and it pushes Iraq in the direction it desperately needs to go: toward a democracy in which all religious and ethnic groups have a stake.

Mr. Bush does not need to call for a postponement of elections himself. He simply needs to take the pressure off the Iraqi authorities, and let them know they have the power to make whatever decision is best for their country. Some members of the interim government, including people close to Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, have shown some interest in putting off the voting if there is a chance of winning more Sunni participation, and others are said to be leaning that way in private.

The run-up to the election is taking place at a time when there's speculation about whether President Bush intends to use the arrival of a new, elected government as an occasion to declare victory and begin pulling out American troops. If such an idea is lurking in even the most remote corner of Mr. Bush's mind, he should at least do everything within his power - including welcoming a postponement - to prevent those elections from being something more than just the starting gun for a civil war.

BUSH TO D.C.: #@#$ YOU & HOMELAND SECURITY FOR MY PARTY!

Get this! Instead of cutting back on the parties and activities during Bush's inauguration (which ALL administrations have done during war time, and don't you forget that Bush sold his re-election ON being a "war" president) Bush is rewarding all his fat cat donors (who get all the tax breaks while running up the national debt to pay for invading/occupying Iraq) with the most parties around Washington in history. And who is Bush making take money from their homeland defense budget to pay for all the parties? It ain't his donors! Read on and add yet another tale to the long list of greed and @#$%-the-people-and-who-cares moment care of George W. Bush, the most vile president that ever trampled through the White House.


washingtonpost.com
U.S. Tells D.C. to Pay Inaugural Expenses

Other Security Projects Would Lose $11.9 Million!

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 11, 2005; Page A01

D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.

Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack.

But that grant money is earmarked for other security needs, Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said in a Dec. 27 letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Williams's office released the letter yesterday.

Williams estimated that the city's costs for the inauguration will total $17.3 million, most of it related to security. City officials said they can use an unspent $5.4 million from an annual federal fund that reimburses the District for costs incurred because of its status as the capital. But that leaves $11.9 million not covered, they said.

"We want to make this the best possible event, but not at the expense of D.C. taxpayers and other homeland security priorities," said Gregory M. McCarthy, the mayor's deputy chief of staff. "This is the first time there hasn't been a direct appropriation for the inauguration."

A spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees the District, agreed with the mayor's stance. He called the Bush administration's position "simply not acceptable."

"It's an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind. How can the District be asked to take funds from important homeland security projects to pay for this instead?" said Davis spokesman David Marin.

The region has earmarked federal homeland security funds for such priorities as increasing hospital capacity, equipping firefighters with protective gear and building transit system command centers.

OMB spokesman Chad Kolton said no additional appropriation is needed for the inauguration.

"We think that an appropriate balance of money from [the annual reimbursement] fund and from homeland security grants is the most effective way to cover the additional cost the city incurs," Kolton said. "We recognize the city has a special burden to bear for many of these events. . . . That's expressly why in the post-9/11 era we are providing additional resources."

The $17.3 million the city expects to spend on this inauguration marks a sharp increase from the $8 million it incurred for Bush's first.

According to Williams's letter, the District anticipates spending $8.8 million in overtime pay for about 2,000 D.C. police officers; $2.7 million to pay 1,000-plus officers being sent by other jurisdictions across the country; $3 million to construct reviewing stands; and $2.5 million to place public works, health, transportation, fire, emergency management and business services on emergency footing.

Congressional aides said the District sought unsuccessfully last year to boost the annual security reimbursement fund from $15 million to $25 million to pay for inauguration expenses. In contrast, New York City and Boston-area lawmakers were able to obtain $50 million from Congress for each of those two jurisdictions to cover local security costs for the national political conventions.

Inauguration officials said they plan to spend $40 million on the four-day celebration, which will include fireworks, the swearing-in, a parade and nine balls. Those expenses -- which do not include security and other public services -- are being funded by private donors.

OMB and DHS spokesmen said they could not provide an estimate of what the inauguration will cost the federal government.

Federal employees who work in the District, Montgomery, Prince George's, Fairfax and Arlington counties, Alexandria and Falls Church are entitled to a holiday on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, the Office of Personnel Management has announced. As of June, the cost of giving federal workers in the capital area a day off was about $66 million.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) asked OPM chief Kay Coles James yesterday to dismiss federal employees at noon or 1 p.m. Jan. 19 to avoid gridlock. The Secret Service plans to close an area bordered by Constitution Avenue and E, 15th and 17th streets NW at 3:45 p.m. that day to accommodate a ceremony at the White House Ellipse, Norton's office said.

We Have More To Fear From Bush's Small Mind

George Bush's lack of interest in international affairs (he'd never left the county except to go to Mexico and Guatamela before becoming President) along with having no experience in such is why his Neo-Con cabal are leading him by the nose on dealing with Al Qaeda. Hell, the anthrax killer was never found and it looks to be a fanatic from within our own CIA than something "a vast network" of Al Qaeda could pull off. But hey, selling fear to the American public so he can cut taxes, run the country into the ground over the national debt while keeping his wealthy elitists backers happy is what George does best.

Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
ROBERT SCHEER

January 11, 2005

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?

To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media's supine acceptance of administration claims relating to national security. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this and many other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror.

"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear," a three-hour historical film by Adam Curtis recently aired by the British Broadcasting Corp., argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media."

Stern stuff, indeed. But consider just a few of the many questions the program poses along the way:

• If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than 40 countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of prisoners, has this administration failed to produce hard evidence of it?

• How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion of terrorism but only 17 have been found guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?

• Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people?

• Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing?


Of course, the documentary does not doubt that an embittered, well-connected and wealthy Saudi man named Osama bin Laden helped finance various affinity groups of Islamist fanatics that have engaged in terror, including the 9/11 attacks. Nor does it challenge the notion that a terrifying version of fundamentalist Islam has led to gruesome spates of violence throughout the world. But the film, both more sober and more deeply provocative than Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," directly challenges the conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire in order to push a political agenda.

Terrorism is deeply threatening, but it appears to be a much more fragmented and complex phenomenon than the octopus-network image of Al Qaeda, with Bin Laden as its head, would suggest.

While the BBC documentary acknowledges that the threat of terrorism is both real and growing, it disagrees that the threat is centralized:

"There are dangerous and fanatical individuals and groups around the world who have been inspired by extreme Islamist ideas and who will use the techniques of mass terror — the attacks on America and Madrid make this only too clear. But the nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organization waiting to strike our societies is an illusion. Wherever one looks for this Al Qaeda organization, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the 'sleeper cells' in America, the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy."

The fact is, despite the efforts of several government commissions and a vast army of investigators, we still do not have a credible narrative of a "war on terror" that is being fought in the shadows.

Consider, for example, that neither the 9/11 commission nor any court of law has been able to directly take evidence from the key post-9/11 terror detainees held by the United States. Everything we know comes from two sides that both have a great stake in exaggerating the threat posed by Al Qaeda: the terrorists themselves and the military and intelligence agencies that have a vested interest in maintaining the facade of an overwhelmingly dangerous enemy.

Such a state of national ignorance about an endless war is, as "The Power of Nightmares" makes clear, simply unacceptable in a functioning democracy.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Bush and his GOP pals don't have any family concerns in this war. They aren't losing any sons and daughters over there, it's poor and middle class folks. But somebody that YOU know will lose a husband, wife, son or daughter. A brother or sister. Cousins. Friends.

It's looking more and more like the end of Viet Nam to me only the consequences have encouraged a millitant terrorist group to grow that is sworn to destory the U.S. And it's all thanks to George W. Bush, the idiot elitist son of a former president who had no idea how to say no to the fanatics in his own cabinet.

January 9, 2005

NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST

Defining Victory Down

By MAUREEN DOWD

ASHINGTON

The president prides himself on being a pig-headed guy. He is determined to win in Iraq even if he is not winning in Iraq.

So get ready for a Mohammedan mountain of spin defining victory down. Come what may - civil war over oil, Iranian-style fatwas du jour or men on prayer rugs reciting the Koran all day on the Iraqi TV network our own geniuses created - this administration will call it a triumph.

Even for a White House steeped in hooey, it's a challenge. President Bush will have to emulate the parsing and prevaricating he disdained in his predecessor: It depends on what the meaning of the word "win" is.

The president's still got a paper bag over his head, claiming that the daily horrors out of Iraq reflect just a few soreheads standing in the way of a glorious democracy, even though his commander of ground forces there concedes that the areas where more than half of Iraqis live are not secure enough for them to vote - an acknowledgment that the insurgency is resilient and growing. It's like saying Montana and North Dakota are safe to vote, but New York, Philadelphia and L.A. are not. What's a little disenfranchisement among friends?

"I know it's hard, but it's hard for a reason," Mr. Bush said on Friday, a day after seven G.I.'s and two marines died. "And the reason it's hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom." If it's just a handful, how come it's so hard?

Then the president added: "And I look at the elections as a - as a - you know, as a - as - as a historical marker for our Iraq policy."

Well, that's clear. Mr. Bush is huddled in his bubble, but he's in a pickle. The administration that had no plan for what to do with Iraq when it got it, now has no plan for getting out.

The mood in Washington about our misadventure seemed to grow darker last week, maybe because lawmakers were back after visiting with their increasingly worried constituents and - even more alarming - visiting Iraq, where you still can't drive from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone without fearing for your life.

"It's going to be ugly," Joe Biden told Charlie Rose about the election.

The arrogant Bush war council never admits a mistake. Paul Wolfowitz, a walking mistake, said on Friday he's been asked to remain in the administration. But the "idealists," as the myopic dunderheads think of themselves, are obviously worried enough, now that Mr. Bush is safely re-elected, to let a little reality seep in. Rummy tapped a respected retired four-star general to go to Iraq this week for an open-ended review of the entire military meshugas.

Mr. Wolfowitz, who devised the debacle in Iraq, is kept on, while Brent Scowcroft, Poppy Bush's lieutenant who warned Junior not to go into Iraq, is pushed out as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. That's the backward nature of this beast: Deceive, you're golden; tell the truth, you're gone.

Mr. Scowcroft was not deterred. Like Banquo's ghost, he clanked around last week, disputing the president's absurdly sunny forecasts for Iraq, and noting dryly that this administration had turned the word "realist" into a "pejorative." He predicted that the elections "have the great potential for deepening the conflict" by exacerbating the divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. He worried that there would be "an incipient civil war," and said the best chance for the U.S. to avoid anarchy was to turn over the operation to the less inflammatory U.N. or NATO.

Mr. Scowcroft appeared at the New America Foundation with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, who declared the Iraq war a moral, political and military failure. If we can't send 500,000 troops, spend $500 billion and agree to resume the draft, then the conflict should be "terminated," he said, adding that far from the Jeffersonian democracy Mr. Bush extols, the most we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled theocracy.

The Iraqi election that was meant to be the solution to the problem - like the installation of a new Iraqi government and the transfer of sovereignty and all the other steps that were supposed to make things better - may actually be making things worse. The election is going to expand the control of the Shiite theocrats, even beyond what their numbers would entitle them to have, because of the way the Bush team has set it up and the danger that if you're a Sunni, the vote you cast may be your last.

It is a lesson never learned: Matters of state and the heart that start with a lie rarely end well.

Nothing Has Gone As Planned by Bush In Iraq

January 10, 2005

NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Scent of Fear

By BOB HERBERT

he assembly line of carnage in George W. Bush's war in Iraq continues unabated. Nightmares don't last this long, so the death and destruction must be real. You know you're in serious trouble when the politicians and the military brass don't even bother suggesting that there's light at the end of the tunnel. The only thing ahead is a deep and murderous darkness.

With the insurgency becoming both stronger and bolder, and the chances of conducting a legitimate election growing grimmer by the day, a genuine sense of alarm can actually be detected in the reality-resistant hierarchy of the Bush administration.

The unthinkable is getting a tentative purchase in the minds of the staunchest supporters of the war: that under the current circumstances, and given existing troop strengths, the U.S. and its Iraqi allies may not be able to prevail. Military officials are routinely talking about a major U.S. presence in Iraq that will last, at a minimum, into the next decade. That is not what most Americans believed when the Bush crowd so enthusiastically sold this war as a noble adventure that would be short and sweet, and would end with Iraqis tossing garlands of flowers at American troops.

The reality, of course, is that this war is like all wars - fearsomely brutal and tragic. The administration was jolted into the realization of just how badly the war was going by the brazen suicide bombing just a few days before Christmas inside a mess tent of a large and supposedly heavily fortified military base in Mosul. Fourteen American soldiers and four American contractors were among the dead.

Seven American soldiers were killed last Thursday when their Bradley armored personnel carrier hit a roadside bomb in northwestern Baghdad. Two U.S. marines were killed the same day in Anbar.

Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday of an ominous new development in Iraq. "We've noticed in the recent couple of weeks," he said, "that the I.E.D.'s [improvised explosive devices] are all being built more powerfully, with more explosive effort in a smaller number of I.E.D.'s."

Mr. Bush's so-called pre-emptive war, which has already cost so many lives, is being enveloped by the foul and unmistakable odor of failure. That's why the Pentagon is dispatching a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq to assess the entire wretched operation. The hope in Washington is that he will pull a rabbit out of a hat. His mission is to review the military's entire Iraq policy, and do it quickly.

I hope, as he is touring the regions in which the U.S. is still using conventional tactics against a guerrilla foe, that he keeps in mind how difficult it is to defeat local insurgencies, and other indigenous forces, as exemplified by such widely varying historical examples as the French experiences in Indochina and Algeria, the American experience in Vietnam, the Israeli experience in Lebanon, and so on.

But even the fortuitously named General Luck will be helpless to straighten anything out in time for the Iraqi elections. The commander of American ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, made it clear last week that significant areas of four major provinces, which together contain nearly half the population of the entire country, are not safe enough for people to vote.

"Today I would not be in much shape to hold elections in those provinces," said General Metz.

With the war draining the military of the troops needed for commitments worldwide, the Pentagon is being forced to take extraordinary steps to maintain adequate troop strength. A temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers for the Army, already approved by Congress, will most likely be made permanent. The Pentagon is also considering plans to further change the rules about mobilizing members of the National Guard and Reserve. Right now they cannot be called up for more than 24 months of active service. That limit would be scrapped, which would permit the Army to call them up as frequently as required.

That's not a back-door draft. It's a brutal, in-your-face draft that's unfairly limited to a small segment of the population. It would make a mockery of the idea of an all-volunteer Army.

Something's got to give. The nation's locked in a war that's going badly. The military is strained to the breaking point. And it's looking more and more like the amateur hour in the places that are supposed to provide leadership in perilous times - the Pentagon and the White House.