DICK CHENEY BY THE NUMBERS... (the man is not just named Dick, he IS a dick!)
From 1979 - 1988, former Congressman Dick Cheney frequently sided with a small group of right-wingers in opposing common sense legislation. Here is a look at Dick Cheny by the numbers:
WORST EXAMPLE:
Cheney Was One of Only 4 House Members to Vote Against Banning Terrorist Guns in 1988.
SENIORS:
One of Only 12 House Members to Oppose Older Americans Act Amendments in 1984.
One of Only 39 House Members to Back Capping Social Security COLAs in 1985.
One of Only 8 House Members to Oppose Renewing the Older Americans Act Providing Nutrition and Support Services for Elderly People in 1987.
One of Only 7 House Members to Oppose Renewing the Conference Report on the Older Americans Act in 1987.
EDUCATION / CHILDREN:
One of Only 33 House Members to Vote Against Reauthorization of Head Start Plan in 1986.
One of Only 27 House Members to Oppose Funding for Head Start in 1986.
One of Only 25 House Members to Vote Against a Bill to Reauthorize College Student Aid in 1986.
One of Only 8 Members to Vote Against Reauthorizing Both the National Health Service Corps and the Federal Immunization Program in 1987.
CRIME & GUNS:
One of Only 16 House Members to Oppose 1983 Crime Bill Designed to Help States Fight Crime.
One of Only 31 House Members to Oppose Family Violence Prevention Program in 1984.
One of Only 21 House Members to Oppose Ban on Armor Piercing Bullets in 1985.
ENVIRONMENT:
One of Only 18 House Members to Oppose Reauthorizing "Federal Water Pollution Act" in 1981.
One of Only 9 House Members to Oppose EPA Research and Development in 1984.
One of Only 33 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of "Superfund" in 1985.
One of Only 27 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of Superfund in 1986.
One of Only 21 House Members to Oppose Refunding "Safe Drinking Water Act" in 1986.
One of Only 8 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of Clean Water Act in 1987.
One of Only 26 House Members to Support Reagan's Veto of Reauthorization of Clean Water Act in 1987.
One of Only 16 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of Endangered Species Act in 1987.
LABOR & WORKING FAMILIES:
One of Only 33 House Members to Oppose Guaranteeing Death Benefits for Firefighters and Cop Widows in 1983.
One of Only 9 Members to Vote Against Allowing Federal Employees to Take Time Off for Sick Family Members in 1988.
CIVIL RIGHTS:
One of Only 29 House Members to Oppose Collection of Hate Crime Data in 1988.
FAMILY ASSISTANCE:
One of Only 16 House Members to Vote Against Support for Nutrition Programs in 1983.
One of Only 39 House Members to Vote Against Hunger Relief Plan in 1984.
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Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Can you fathom the gall of the GOP that questioned Kerry's military record and service? This from men who RAN from the draft and used rich-boy connections to stay out of it while other Americans were wounded under fire or killed. People like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney and of course, our Commander In Thief.
Kerry Highly Praised in Military Records
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Records of John Kerry ( news -web sites )'s Vietnam War service released Wednesday show a highly praised naval officer who volunteered for a dangerous assignment and at one point was "unofficially credited with 20 enemy killed in action."
With conservative critics questioning his service, the Democratic presidential candidate posted more than 120 pages of military records on his campaign Web site. Several describe him as a gutsy commander and detail some of the actions that won him three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.
Kerry's most harrowing experience came during the nearly five months when he commanded a swiftboat along Vietnam's Mekong Delta. The future Massachusetts senator was commended for gallantry, heroism and valor during the tour, which was cut short when Kerry was wounded three times and sent back to the United States.
"He frequently exhibited a high sense of imagination and judgment in planning operations against the enemy in the Mekong Delta," wrote Lt. Cmdr. George Elliott, Kerry's commanding officer. "Involved in several enemy initiated fire fights, including an ambush during the Christmas truce, he effectively suppressed enemy fire and is unofficially credited with 20 enemy killed in action."
Talk radio conservatives and some veterans have questioned whether Kerry was wounded severely enough to leave combat, but Democratic National Committee ( news -web sites ) Chairman Terry McAuliffe said he is eager to compare Kerry's record to President Bush ( news -web sites )'s. McAuliffe accused Bush of using family connections to avoid service overseas and failing to show up for duty while in the National Guard.
"Simply put, Kerry has a proud record of sacrifice and service whereas Bush has a record of cashed-in connections and evasion," McAuliffe said in a statement Wednesday.
Republican National Committee ( news -web sites ) spokeswoman Christine Iverson said, "Like so many of Terry McAuliffe's comments, this one is not worthy of the dignity of a response."
Kerry's medical records from the Navy were not included in the materials released. Campaign spokesman Michael Meehan did not return telephone messages left Wednesday for comment.
Kerry's records show that throughout his four years of active duty, superiors gave him glowing evaluations, citing his maturity, intelligence and immaculate appearance. He was recommended for early promotion, and when he left the Navy in 1970 to run for Congress, his commanding officer said it was the Navy's loss.
The lowest marks Kerry earned were the equivalent of average — in military bearing, reliability and initiative. But narrative comments from his commanding officers said he was diplomatic, charismatic, decisive and well-liked by his men.
The records cited Kerry's education at Swiss boarding school, his speaking and debating awards and his role as class orator at Yale University's commencement. He lettered in varsity soccer and lacrosse, fenced, had a private pilot's license and had experience sailing and ocean racing.
Kerry traveled throughout Europe in his youth and spoke fluent French and some German. His supervising officer later commended him for taking it upon himself to learn Vietnamese.
Kerry cited his sailing experience before the Navy when he volunteered to command a swiftboat, a 50-foot-long craft that could operate at high speeds in the rough waters of Vietnam's rivers and tributaries.
Some critics have questioned whether Kerry's injuries were severe enough to warrant reassignment to the United States. His records briefly describe shrapnel wounds to his arm and thigh for the first two Purple Hearts, but they don't detail the severity of the wounds.
According to a naval instruction document provided by Kerry's campaign, anyone serving in Vietnam who was wounded three times, regardless of the nature of the wound or treatment required, "will not be ordered to service in Vietnam and contiguous waters."
On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's and two other boats came under heavy fire from the riverbanks. Kerry ordered his units to turn into the ambush and sent men ashore to charge the enemy. According to the records, an enemy soldier holding a loaded rocket launcher sprang up within 10 feet of Kerry's boat and fled. Kerry leapt ashore, chased and killed the man.
Kerry and his men chased or killed all enemy soldiers in the area, captured enemy weapons and then returned to the boat only to come under fire from the opposite bank as they began to pull away. Kerry again beached his boat and led a party ashore to pursue the enemy, and they successfully silenced the shooting. Later, with the boats again under fire, Kerry initiated a heavy response that killed 10 Viet Cong and wounded another with no casualties to his own men.
He won the Silver Star "for gallantry and intrepidity in action" that day. Two weeks later, another fire fight led to a Bronze Star for heroic achievement and the third Purple Heart that would result in his reassignment out of Vietnam.
Kerry was commanding one of five boats on patrol on March 13, 1969, when two mines detonated almost simultaneously — one beneath another boat and one near Kerry's craft. Shrapnel hit Kerry's buttocks, and his right arm was bleeding from contusions, but he rescued a boatmate who had been thrown overboard by the blast and was under sniper fire from both banks. Kerry then directed his crew to return to the other damaged craft and tow it to safety.
In April 1969, Kerry was sent stateside to the Military Sea Transportation Service, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, in Brooklyn, N.Y. On Nov. 21, 1969, Kerry requested that he be released from his commitment to serve actively until August 1970 so he could run for Congress.
He was promoted to full lieutenant on Jan. 1, 1970, and soon after was discharged from active duty and became a reservist.
__________________________________________________________________
Kerry Highly Praised in Military Records
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Records of John Kerry ( news -web sites )'s Vietnam War service released Wednesday show a highly praised naval officer who volunteered for a dangerous assignment and at one point was "unofficially credited with 20 enemy killed in action."
With conservative critics questioning his service, the Democratic presidential candidate posted more than 120 pages of military records on his campaign Web site. Several describe him as a gutsy commander and detail some of the actions that won him three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.
Kerry's most harrowing experience came during the nearly five months when he commanded a swiftboat along Vietnam's Mekong Delta. The future Massachusetts senator was commended for gallantry, heroism and valor during the tour, which was cut short when Kerry was wounded three times and sent back to the United States.
"He frequently exhibited a high sense of imagination and judgment in planning operations against the enemy in the Mekong Delta," wrote Lt. Cmdr. George Elliott, Kerry's commanding officer. "Involved in several enemy initiated fire fights, including an ambush during the Christmas truce, he effectively suppressed enemy fire and is unofficially credited with 20 enemy killed in action."
Talk radio conservatives and some veterans have questioned whether Kerry was wounded severely enough to leave combat, but Democratic National Committee ( news -web sites ) Chairman Terry McAuliffe said he is eager to compare Kerry's record to President Bush ( news -web sites )'s. McAuliffe accused Bush of using family connections to avoid service overseas and failing to show up for duty while in the National Guard.
"Simply put, Kerry has a proud record of sacrifice and service whereas Bush has a record of cashed-in connections and evasion," McAuliffe said in a statement Wednesday.
Republican National Committee ( news -web sites ) spokeswoman Christine Iverson said, "Like so many of Terry McAuliffe's comments, this one is not worthy of the dignity of a response."
Kerry's medical records from the Navy were not included in the materials released. Campaign spokesman Michael Meehan did not return telephone messages left Wednesday for comment.
Kerry's records show that throughout his four years of active duty, superiors gave him glowing evaluations, citing his maturity, intelligence and immaculate appearance. He was recommended for early promotion, and when he left the Navy in 1970 to run for Congress, his commanding officer said it was the Navy's loss.
The lowest marks Kerry earned were the equivalent of average — in military bearing, reliability and initiative. But narrative comments from his commanding officers said he was diplomatic, charismatic, decisive and well-liked by his men.
The records cited Kerry's education at Swiss boarding school, his speaking and debating awards and his role as class orator at Yale University's commencement. He lettered in varsity soccer and lacrosse, fenced, had a private pilot's license and had experience sailing and ocean racing.
Kerry traveled throughout Europe in his youth and spoke fluent French and some German. His supervising officer later commended him for taking it upon himself to learn Vietnamese.
Kerry cited his sailing experience before the Navy when he volunteered to command a swiftboat, a 50-foot-long craft that could operate at high speeds in the rough waters of Vietnam's rivers and tributaries.
Some critics have questioned whether Kerry's injuries were severe enough to warrant reassignment to the United States. His records briefly describe shrapnel wounds to his arm and thigh for the first two Purple Hearts, but they don't detail the severity of the wounds.
According to a naval instruction document provided by Kerry's campaign, anyone serving in Vietnam who was wounded three times, regardless of the nature of the wound or treatment required, "will not be ordered to service in Vietnam and contiguous waters."
On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's and two other boats came under heavy fire from the riverbanks. Kerry ordered his units to turn into the ambush and sent men ashore to charge the enemy. According to the records, an enemy soldier holding a loaded rocket launcher sprang up within 10 feet of Kerry's boat and fled. Kerry leapt ashore, chased and killed the man.
Kerry and his men chased or killed all enemy soldiers in the area, captured enemy weapons and then returned to the boat only to come under fire from the opposite bank as they began to pull away. Kerry again beached his boat and led a party ashore to pursue the enemy, and they successfully silenced the shooting. Later, with the boats again under fire, Kerry initiated a heavy response that killed 10 Viet Cong and wounded another with no casualties to his own men.
He won the Silver Star "for gallantry and intrepidity in action" that day. Two weeks later, another fire fight led to a Bronze Star for heroic achievement and the third Purple Heart that would result in his reassignment out of Vietnam.
Kerry was commanding one of five boats on patrol on March 13, 1969, when two mines detonated almost simultaneously — one beneath another boat and one near Kerry's craft. Shrapnel hit Kerry's buttocks, and his right arm was bleeding from contusions, but he rescued a boatmate who had been thrown overboard by the blast and was under sniper fire from both banks. Kerry then directed his crew to return to the other damaged craft and tow it to safety.
In April 1969, Kerry was sent stateside to the Military Sea Transportation Service, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, in Brooklyn, N.Y. On Nov. 21, 1969, Kerry requested that he be released from his commitment to serve actively until August 1970 so he could run for Congress.
He was promoted to full lieutenant on Jan. 1, 1970, and soon after was discharged from active duty and became a reservist.
__________________________________________________________________
So do you really think the Bush administration really cares for YOU over its Big Business supporters?
Vote for John Kerry in November and kick this @#%% out of the White House so we can have DECENT leadership looking out for you, your children, your family and your friends' best interests.
2004 Los Angeles Times
COMMENTARY
Entrepreneurship Gets Slaughtered
An innovative meatpacker has a beef with the Bush team's regulators.
By Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington Law School.
Creekstone Farms is a little slaughterhouse in Kansas with an idea that would have had Adam Smith's mouth watering. Faced with consumers who remain skittish over mad cow disease — especially in Japan — Creekstone decided that all its beef would be tested for mad cow, a radical departure from the random testing done by other companies. It was a case study in free-market meatpacking entrepreneurship. That is, until the Bush administration's Department of Agriculture blocked the enterprise, apparently at the behest of Creekstone's competitors.
According to the Washington Post, Creekstone invested $500,000 to build the first mad cow testing lab in a U.S. slaughterhouse and hired chemists and biologists to staff the operation. The only thing it needed was testing kits. That's where the company ran into trouble. By law, the Department of Agriculture controls the sale of the kits, and it refused to sell Creekstone enough to test all of its cows. The USDA said that allowing even a small meatpacking company like Creekstone to test every cow it slaughtered would undermine the agency's official position that random testing was scientifically adequate to assure safety.
What it didn't say was that the rest of the meatpacking industry was adamantly opposed to such testing, which is expensive, and had no desire to compete with Creekstone's fully certified beef. "If testing is allowed at Creekstone … ," the president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. told the Post, "we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too."
The Agriculture Department's Creekstone decision reveals the best thinking of Soviet central planning: The government shoots the innovator to preserve market stability. Though President Bush invokes free-market principles when it comes to industry downsizing, "outsourcing" jobs, media mergers and energy deregulation, those principles apparently have their limits when a company seeks to become an industry leader in consumer protection.
Located in the small town of Arkansas City, Creekstone is a model operation in an industry that often seems medieval. It traces the origins of its high-quality Black Angus beef to reduce the use of animals that have been given antibiotics. It pays high wages, employs humane slaughtering techniques (they make for better-tasting beef) and maintains a slow enough production line to guarantee worker safety and to ensure that animals are dead before they are butchered. Although the largest U.S. meatpacking companies have fought regulations that would force such practices, Creekstone — which has been in business since 1995 — has proved that some consumers will pay more for such corporate policies and the premium product that results.
The appearance of mad cow disease in the U.S. herd hit Creekstone's small operation hard. Much of its market was in Japan, where all cows are tested for the disease and where U.S. beef is banned because American meatpackers don't follow the same policy. So Creekstone's chief operating officer, Bill Fielding, announced that he would voluntarily test the 300,000 cows his company slaughters annually, to satisfy customers willing to pay the cost. Absent the test, Fielding says Creekstone may face bankruptcy and have to lay off its 790 workers.
The Department of Agriculture seems to have only one purpose in preventing Creekstone from testing — appeasing the big slaughterhouses. The USDA has a long history of doing the bidding of the meatpacking industry at the expense of the public. Indeed, in many academic studies, the department is presented as a textbook example of the problem of "agency capture," wherein an agency becomes so identified with the companies it regulates that it becomes an extension of those companies.
The allegations of agency capture have been magnified in the Bush administration, in which former industry executives hold key regulatory positions — Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman has a chief of staff who was the head lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. and a senior advisor who was the association's associate director for food policy.
When mad cow disease appeared in the United States, the department again took the industry line and resisted calls for added testing. Only after worldwide criticism did it reluctantly make such modest rule changes as requiring slaughterhouses to discard "downed" animals — cows so sick that they had to be dragged into slaughterhouses to be butchered. Most Americans were surprised to learn that the department had ever allowed such animals into the food supply in the first place.
The administration may be correct that testing every animal in the U.S. is unnecessary and not cost-effective. But why not let Creekstone find out what the market will bear? The position of the administration is an affront to anyone who believes in the free market. It's as if the Department of Transportation refused to allow Volvo to add air bags just to keep the pressure off other carmakers.
Congress should step in and end the department's monopoly over testing kits. It should also call for the removal of the officials involved in the decision.
As for the self-described free-marketeers in the Bush administration, Creekstone Farms may not offer them an appealing meal but at least it doesn't come with a heaping side order of hypocrisy.
____________________________________________________________
Vote for John Kerry in November and kick this @#%% out of the White House so we can have DECENT leadership looking out for you, your children, your family and your friends' best interests.
2004 Los Angeles Times
COMMENTARY
Entrepreneurship Gets Slaughtered
An innovative meatpacker has a beef with the Bush team's regulators.
By Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington Law School.
Creekstone Farms is a little slaughterhouse in Kansas with an idea that would have had Adam Smith's mouth watering. Faced with consumers who remain skittish over mad cow disease — especially in Japan — Creekstone decided that all its beef would be tested for mad cow, a radical departure from the random testing done by other companies. It was a case study in free-market meatpacking entrepreneurship. That is, until the Bush administration's Department of Agriculture blocked the enterprise, apparently at the behest of Creekstone's competitors.
According to the Washington Post, Creekstone invested $500,000 to build the first mad cow testing lab in a U.S. slaughterhouse and hired chemists and biologists to staff the operation. The only thing it needed was testing kits. That's where the company ran into trouble. By law, the Department of Agriculture controls the sale of the kits, and it refused to sell Creekstone enough to test all of its cows. The USDA said that allowing even a small meatpacking company like Creekstone to test every cow it slaughtered would undermine the agency's official position that random testing was scientifically adequate to assure safety.
What it didn't say was that the rest of the meatpacking industry was adamantly opposed to such testing, which is expensive, and had no desire to compete with Creekstone's fully certified beef. "If testing is allowed at Creekstone … ," the president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. told the Post, "we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too."
The Agriculture Department's Creekstone decision reveals the best thinking of Soviet central planning: The government shoots the innovator to preserve market stability. Though President Bush invokes free-market principles when it comes to industry downsizing, "outsourcing" jobs, media mergers and energy deregulation, those principles apparently have their limits when a company seeks to become an industry leader in consumer protection.
Located in the small town of Arkansas City, Creekstone is a model operation in an industry that often seems medieval. It traces the origins of its high-quality Black Angus beef to reduce the use of animals that have been given antibiotics. It pays high wages, employs humane slaughtering techniques (they make for better-tasting beef) and maintains a slow enough production line to guarantee worker safety and to ensure that animals are dead before they are butchered. Although the largest U.S. meatpacking companies have fought regulations that would force such practices, Creekstone — which has been in business since 1995 — has proved that some consumers will pay more for such corporate policies and the premium product that results.
The appearance of mad cow disease in the U.S. herd hit Creekstone's small operation hard. Much of its market was in Japan, where all cows are tested for the disease and where U.S. beef is banned because American meatpackers don't follow the same policy. So Creekstone's chief operating officer, Bill Fielding, announced that he would voluntarily test the 300,000 cows his company slaughters annually, to satisfy customers willing to pay the cost. Absent the test, Fielding says Creekstone may face bankruptcy and have to lay off its 790 workers.
The Department of Agriculture seems to have only one purpose in preventing Creekstone from testing — appeasing the big slaughterhouses. The USDA has a long history of doing the bidding of the meatpacking industry at the expense of the public. Indeed, in many academic studies, the department is presented as a textbook example of the problem of "agency capture," wherein an agency becomes so identified with the companies it regulates that it becomes an extension of those companies.
The allegations of agency capture have been magnified in the Bush administration, in which former industry executives hold key regulatory positions — Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman has a chief of staff who was the head lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. and a senior advisor who was the association's associate director for food policy.
When mad cow disease appeared in the United States, the department again took the industry line and resisted calls for added testing. Only after worldwide criticism did it reluctantly make such modest rule changes as requiring slaughterhouses to discard "downed" animals — cows so sick that they had to be dragged into slaughterhouses to be butchered. Most Americans were surprised to learn that the department had ever allowed such animals into the food supply in the first place.
The administration may be correct that testing every animal in the U.S. is unnecessary and not cost-effective. But why not let Creekstone find out what the market will bear? The position of the administration is an affront to anyone who believes in the free market. It's as if the Department of Transportation refused to allow Volvo to add air bags just to keep the pressure off other carmakers.
Congress should step in and end the department's monopoly over testing kits. It should also call for the removal of the officials involved in the decision.
As for the self-described free-marketeers in the Bush administration, Creekstone Farms may not offer them an appealing meal but at least it doesn't come with a heaping side order of hypocrisy.
____________________________________________________________
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
IRAQ
Called Onto the Carpet
The Senate Foreign Relations Committees, concerned with the rising death toll and mounting questions "that the United States lacks an effective plan for success in Iraq," will hold hearings beginning today "in which some hope to talk about how America got into the dangerous predicament and how it will get out." Concern about the situation crosses party lines, especially with Spain's announcement that it will be removing its troops from Iraq. But while there are many, many unanswered questions, the administration has been slow to commit its members to appear before the committee. The Senate and House armed services committees also `will hear about current Iraq operations from top administration officials. As of yesterday, however, the Pentagon had not agreed to testify at a hearing Thursday "on how it intends to transfer political power June 30 to an as-yet unnamed Iraqi government." The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had hoped to hear from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers on the issue; "Pentagon officials acknowledged Monday that Wolfowitz and Myers would not go to that hearing, but had no immediate comment on why." American Progress' Lawrence J. Korb discusses five steps the United States can take to ensure a more stable Iraq.
FACING THE MUSIC: According to AP, some of the criticisms the administration faces in the Iraq hearings include: "too few troops sent over in the first place; a lack of planning for postwar operations; unilateral action that has left the United States bearing the bulk of the financial and human toll; and overly optimistic predictions on what it would take to oust Saddam Hussein and build a new democratic government in his place."
CASUALTIES OF WAR: According to Newsweek, "Soldiers killed in Iraq are announced, incident by incident, in terse press releases that give the scantest of details." Also, "in addition to the minimalist announcements, the military avoids keeping any sort of running tallies, particularly when things are going badly. The Pentagon has also studiously refused to release estimates of enemy casualties, although these are indeed detailed in every after-action report." In this week's issue, in an attempt to keep Americans informed, Newsweek calculates the numbers. For example, "150,000: The estimated number of all coalition forces in Iraq, of which about 124,000 are Americans and 26,000 are others. A total of 35 countries contribute forces, but most number less than 1,000. Some, like Mongolia, are in the low two digits." Other numbers Newsweek calculated: "3,466: The total of American soldiers wounded in action in Iraq through April 17, 2004; 793: Total coalition soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began. 20, 70, 50: The numbers of daily resistance attacks against coalition forces in Iraq a month ago, a week ago, and on April 17 respectively."
LOSING THE COALITION: At a time when the United States is attempting to shore up international support as the clock for the transfer of power in Iraq ticks down, pieces of the international coalition are instead withdrawing support and troops. The new leader of Spain, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, announced Spanish troops would be removed from Iraq "in the shortest possible time." The withdrawal has escalated fears in the United States that other coalition members could follow suit. Already, the announcement triggered a similar one by the leader of Honduras, President Ricardo Maduro, that his country would also remove its deployment from Iraq as soon as possible instead of waiting until the previously scheduled July end date. (Honduran troops are currently under Spanish command in Iraq.) Yesterday, Thailand announced it also will withdraw its medical and engineering troops from Iraq if they are attacked.
BURDEN ON THE TROOPS: Unless the White House steps up efforts to bring in additional troops from other countries – increasingly challenging as the situation grows more tumultuous and dangerous – the lack of international support could place an added burden on U.S. troops. Recently, about 20,000 American soldiers "who had been due to return from Iraq to their home bases this month and next will have their tours extended." The decision to keep them in place "breaks a Pentagon commitment last autumn to limit troop assignments in Iraq to 12 months."
ROAD TO RUIN: The LA Times writes, "Of all the sudden changes in Iraq during the last month, control of the roads is among the most striking. The U.S.-led coalition has been unable to hold on to all of its supply and communication lines on vital routes leading from the capital. Insurgents have blown up key bridges, rocketed fuel convoys and seized hostages." Over the weekend, in an attempt to get the ongoing violence under control, the Coalition Provisional Authority announced it would close two of the main Iraqi highways; the chaos has disrupted the transport of necessary military supplies, food and medicine. According to a senior analyst at Jane's Consulting, it's indicative of a larger problem: "It's a good measure of how the coalition is doing when you can get in a car and drive to the Jordanian border and down to Najaf [two of the routes that are occasionally under insurgent control] without worrying about it." The fact that one cannot take those roads "is not a good sign."
IRAQ
Echoes of Iran-Contra
Imagine that the U.S. administration deliberately hid money from Congress to invest in a war in the Middle East, potentially crafted secret deals with an oil-rich Middle Eastern country that has ties to terrorism, and appointed ideologues to be the key diplomatic emissaries to a war-torn region. Think you are back in the 1980s living through the Iran-Contra scandal? Think again. Over the last two days, new revelations by journalist Bob Woodward and actions by President Bush have evoked memories of a previous scandal and an old foreign policy/national security strategy gone wrong. Yesterday, new details emerged about the Bush administration's deliberate circumvention of Congress to divert $700 million into a secret war plan, and about the potential manipulation of U.S. elections by the Saudi Arabian government. Meanwhile, President Bush nominated key Iran-Contra figure John Negroponte as the new Ambassador to Iraq.
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES - HIDING MONEY FROM CONGRESS: U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-WI) became the first lawmaker to "demand to know whether the Bush administration transferred $700 million to Iraq war planning efforts out of counterterrorism funds without informing Capitol Hill." According to Woodward, the $700 million came out of a supplemental Appropriations bill meant for Afghanistan operations. And a close look at the two supplemental Appropriations bills that passed between 9/11 and July 2002 when the secret transfer took place shows that both bills mandate the White House to inform Congress if money is moved. The Emergency Supplemental Act passed on 9/14/01 specifically instructs the president to "consult with the chairmen and ranking minority members of the Committees on Appropriations prior to the transfer" of any funds. The president actually told the American public that the money would be used for those purposes, saying the bill would be used "to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military" in its operations against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He said nothing about Iraq. Similarly, while the summer 2002 supplemental bill allows the administration to transfer "up to $275 million" in unused money within the Pentagon budget, it requires the president to notify Congress within 15 days of moving money. So far, the administration has not produced a shred of evidence that it followed these laws and informed Congress. As Woodward said, "Congress, which is supposed to control the purse strings, had no real knowledge or involvement, had not even been notified that the Pentagon wanted to reprogram money."
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – LYING TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT MILITARY FOCUS: According to a new AP report, "Following an important meeting on Iraq war planning in late 2001, President Bush told the public that the discussions were about Afghanistan. He made no mention afterward about Iraq even though that was the real focus of the session at his ranch." "I'm right now focused on the military operations in Afghanistan," Bush told reporters after talks on Dec. 28, 2001, with top aides and generals.
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – SECRET DEALS WITH COUNTRY TIED TO TERROR?: The Saudi Arabian government, which has ties to terrorism yet maintains close ties to the Bush administration, continued to deny Woodward's charges that its U.S. Ambassador Prince Bandar promised an increase in oil supplies to coincide with the November presidential election to help President Bush's campaign. Mounting a Saudi defense, Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir deflected the questions by claiming, "Over the past 30 years, the kingdom has sought to ensure adequate supplies of crude at moderate price levels." Of course, al-Jubeir did not explain why the Saudis had led the recent charge within OPEC to reduce oil supplies and artificially inflate the price of gasoline in the U.S. to record levels. Woodward remained steadfast in his reporting, saying the Saudi's definitely made a "pledge." He said, "over the summer or as we get closer to the election they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly." Author Craig Unger points to a possible motive for the alleged Saudi pledge. In his book "House of Bush, House of Saud," he says Bush presidencies "strengthen Bandar's position in Saudi Arabia. During the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush era, Bandar had enjoyed unique powers - partly because of his close relationship to Bush...But during the Clinton era, Bandar had lost clout. [He was] never an insider in the Clinton White House."
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – THE IMPORTANCE OF NEGROPONTE'S RECORD: Negroponte, who has no prior experience in the Middle East and does not speak Arabic, is sure to face new questions about his Iran-Contra past, given the circumstances of his Iraqi post. As the LA Times reports, human rights advocates charged that during his tenure as Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, "Negroponte underplayed human rights abuses by death squads to ensure that the country would continue to serve as a base for U.S.-backed Contras." Negroponte denies this, but according declassified documents, "U.S. officials knew what was happening in Honduras and engaged in a willful deception to avoid confronting Congress with the truth." As Molly Ivins notes, this record is important because Negroponte was a key player in a "plot that sold U.S. arms to Iran" in its war against Iraq. That means "our first ambassador will be a man who armed Iraq's enemy" – a fact that might not be lost on local Iraqis with whom he must work closely. Negroponte will also be charged with convincing U.S. allies to desist from removing troops from Iraq. The problem is some of these key allies are from Central America, where Negroponte's sordid record is well-known and where his name might not be well-received. In fact, just yesterday Honduras – the country where Negroponte made his most indelible mark – said it was planning to remove its troops from Iraq. Finally, Kenneth Roth of Human Rights watch notes the "serious unanswered questions about Negroponte's complicity with the atrocities in Honduras" are important as the issue of "U.S.-sponsored forces avoiding complicity in atrocities" could arise in Baghdad.
PATRIOT ACT
Show Us the Facts
Portions of the Patriot Act, passed in the chaotic days after 9/11, are scheduled to expire in 2005. President Bush hit the road yesterday and grossly distorted the reason some of the provisions are scheduled to "sunset." Bush said that Congress designed some provisions to expire in 2005 because of the belief that "maybe the war on terror won't go on very long." The truth: "Lawmakers of both parties...said at the time the Patriot Acts passed that the sunset provision would allow Congress to ensure that the administration did not abuse its new power." Meanwhile, even as the president asks Congress to make all provisions in the Patriot Act permanent, Attorney General John Ashcroft has failed to disclose critical information necessary to evaluate how the government uses the law.
ROVING FROM THE TRUTH: President Bush touted the use of roving wiretaps, authorized by Section 206 of the Patriot Act, as an "essential tool" for locking up terrorists. Roving wiretaps allow the government to tap not just an individual phone number but any phone that they believe the target of their surveillance might use. The provision raises serious privacy concerns. As explained in an American Progress report, "Section 206 does nothing to require that, as the wiretap 'roves,' the subject is actually present, or even likely to be present at the new location." So if "the location of the surveillance is, for example, a public computer terminal, [roving wire taps] could expose hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people to clandestine surveillance." But last year, when James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) asked the Justice Department how roving wiretaps had been used, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jamie Brown responded that the information was classified. How is Congress supposed to decide whether or not to make the roving wiretap provision permanent if it doesn't even know how it is being used?
DELAYED NOTIFICATION OF THE FACTS: President Bush also praised the effectiveness of "delayed notification search warrants," which are authorized by Section 213 of the Patriot Act. A delayed notification search warrant allows the government to search a home or office and not inform the owner as long as the government believes that doing so would have an "adverse result." The president's comments on this topic are somewhat of a red herring because Section 213 is not scheduled to sunset. Nevertheless, serious concerns about the provision persist as the government could argue that disclosing that a search has taken place could have an "adverse result" in nearly every case. The provision has been used hundreds of times – but as of May 13, 2003, it has never been used to combat terrorism.
SO ESSENTIAL IT HAS NEVER BEEN USED: Bush also urged the extension of one of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act – Section 215, which permits the government to more easily obtain "any tangible thing" – a classification so broad it includes "books, records, papers, documents, and other items." That Bush would single this provision out as essential to the war on terrorism is puzzling since, on September 18, 2003 – after insisting for two years the information was classified – John Ashcroft said that the provision had never been used. The Justice Department is now equivocating, saying that Ashcroft's denial only applies to the period before September 18, 2003. But, before Congress decides to make Section 215 a permanent part of the law, it should know if and how it has been used.
ASKING FOR AN END RUN AROUND THE CONSTITUTION: Bush not only asked for a rubber-stamp approval of all expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, he also asked for certain authorities to be further expanded. His proposal to expand "administrative subpoenas," which allow the government to obtain records and interrogate any witness without any court review. The president claims the government needs this extraordinary power to speed terrorism investigations. But the Department of Justice could not even cite a single instance where the existing rules slowed down their efforts against terrorism. Eliminating the judiciary from its fundamental role as a check on executive branch power runs squarely against the Constitution while doing nothing to further the fight against terrorism.
SECRECY – TOP SECRET T-BALL: The WP reports, "It may come as a surprise to some that the Kremlin, symbol of secrecy and repression, has become more transparent than the White House, symbol of freedom and democracy." After a recent phone conversation between President Bush and Prime Minister Putin, the Kremlin disclosed, "The presidents exchanged ideas on the situations in the crisis areas of the world: Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, etc. They expressed serious concerns about the lack of progress in the settlement of regional problems and the escalation of the situation in these areas." Meanwhile, the White House refused to comment on the conversation. But the White House's reticence on releasing information extends far beyond presidential conversations with foreign leaders. For example, in April 2002, the Orlando Sentinel reported "that the Apopka Little League team of 11- and 12-year-olds would visit the White House on May 5 to watch a T-ball game." The paper's source was the children's parents – according to the Sentinel "the White House would not confirm the invitation."
SECRECY – HUSH HUSH ARCHIVIST: The NYT reports, "President Bush's nominee to be archivist of the United States — an ordinarily low-profile job that includes overseeing the release of government documents, including presidential papers — is generating an intense controversy among historians, some of whom accuse the White House of trying to push through a candidate who is prone to secrecy." The nominee, Allen Weinstein, has a track record of refusing to share notes and information. One important issue: The papers of Mr. Bush's father, the 41st president, are scheduled for release in January. "Critics of Mr. Weinstein say they fear that he could restrict or delay access to those and other important documents." So far, "nine groups, including the Society of American Archivists, have raised concerns about the selection." According to Timothy A. Slavin, president of the Council of State Historical Records Coordinators, "It's the equivalent of the administration's thumbing its nose at the nation's history."
LEGAL – TAXPAYER MONEY FOR PARTISAN PURPOSES: The IRS is using taxpayer money to promote partisan propaganda. Recently, the Department of Treasury appended the following message to IRS press releases: "America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the president's policies are doing, or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation." Earlier, the "Treasury Department was criticized after its analysis of a tax plan similar to one proposed by Senator John Kerry was used to attack Mr. Kerry."
HEALTH CARE – GRANITE STATE BATTLES OVER KIDS: In a move that could have potentially harmful ramifications for kids in the state, New Hampshire Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen is pushing to "privatize Healthy Kids, an insurance program that covers more than 7,000 poor New Hampshire children." The hugely successful program currently "provides low-cost health insurance and dental care to children whose families don't qualify for Medicaid but can't otherwise afford insurance." Privatizing could force some children out of the program. Lawmakers say Stephen has no right: Healthy Kids and the nonprofit corporation that runs it were established by state statute and cannot be put out for a bid without the Legislature's approval.
Read more at CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS.
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Called Onto the Carpet
The Senate Foreign Relations Committees, concerned with the rising death toll and mounting questions "that the United States lacks an effective plan for success in Iraq," will hold hearings beginning today "in which some hope to talk about how America got into the dangerous predicament and how it will get out." Concern about the situation crosses party lines, especially with Spain's announcement that it will be removing its troops from Iraq. But while there are many, many unanswered questions, the administration has been slow to commit its members to appear before the committee. The Senate and House armed services committees also `will hear about current Iraq operations from top administration officials. As of yesterday, however, the Pentagon had not agreed to testify at a hearing Thursday "on how it intends to transfer political power June 30 to an as-yet unnamed Iraqi government." The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had hoped to hear from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers on the issue; "Pentagon officials acknowledged Monday that Wolfowitz and Myers would not go to that hearing, but had no immediate comment on why." American Progress' Lawrence J. Korb discusses five steps the United States can take to ensure a more stable Iraq.
FACING THE MUSIC: According to AP, some of the criticisms the administration faces in the Iraq hearings include: "too few troops sent over in the first place; a lack of planning for postwar operations; unilateral action that has left the United States bearing the bulk of the financial and human toll; and overly optimistic predictions on what it would take to oust Saddam Hussein and build a new democratic government in his place."
CASUALTIES OF WAR: According to Newsweek, "Soldiers killed in Iraq are announced, incident by incident, in terse press releases that give the scantest of details." Also, "in addition to the minimalist announcements, the military avoids keeping any sort of running tallies, particularly when things are going badly. The Pentagon has also studiously refused to release estimates of enemy casualties, although these are indeed detailed in every after-action report." In this week's issue, in an attempt to keep Americans informed, Newsweek calculates the numbers. For example, "150,000: The estimated number of all coalition forces in Iraq, of which about 124,000 are Americans and 26,000 are others. A total of 35 countries contribute forces, but most number less than 1,000. Some, like Mongolia, are in the low two digits." Other numbers Newsweek calculated: "3,466: The total of American soldiers wounded in action in Iraq through April 17, 2004; 793: Total coalition soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began. 20, 70, 50: The numbers of daily resistance attacks against coalition forces in Iraq a month ago, a week ago, and on April 17 respectively."
LOSING THE COALITION: At a time when the United States is attempting to shore up international support as the clock for the transfer of power in Iraq ticks down, pieces of the international coalition are instead withdrawing support and troops. The new leader of Spain, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, announced Spanish troops would be removed from Iraq "in the shortest possible time." The withdrawal has escalated fears in the United States that other coalition members could follow suit. Already, the announcement triggered a similar one by the leader of Honduras, President Ricardo Maduro, that his country would also remove its deployment from Iraq as soon as possible instead of waiting until the previously scheduled July end date. (Honduran troops are currently under Spanish command in Iraq.) Yesterday, Thailand announced it also will withdraw its medical and engineering troops from Iraq if they are attacked.
BURDEN ON THE TROOPS: Unless the White House steps up efforts to bring in additional troops from other countries – increasingly challenging as the situation grows more tumultuous and dangerous – the lack of international support could place an added burden on U.S. troops. Recently, about 20,000 American soldiers "who had been due to return from Iraq to their home bases this month and next will have their tours extended." The decision to keep them in place "breaks a Pentagon commitment last autumn to limit troop assignments in Iraq to 12 months."
ROAD TO RUIN: The LA Times writes, "Of all the sudden changes in Iraq during the last month, control of the roads is among the most striking. The U.S.-led coalition has been unable to hold on to all of its supply and communication lines on vital routes leading from the capital. Insurgents have blown up key bridges, rocketed fuel convoys and seized hostages." Over the weekend, in an attempt to get the ongoing violence under control, the Coalition Provisional Authority announced it would close two of the main Iraqi highways; the chaos has disrupted the transport of necessary military supplies, food and medicine. According to a senior analyst at Jane's Consulting, it's indicative of a larger problem: "It's a good measure of how the coalition is doing when you can get in a car and drive to the Jordanian border and down to Najaf [two of the routes that are occasionally under insurgent control] without worrying about it." The fact that one cannot take those roads "is not a good sign."
IRAQ
Echoes of Iran-Contra
Imagine that the U.S. administration deliberately hid money from Congress to invest in a war in the Middle East, potentially crafted secret deals with an oil-rich Middle Eastern country that has ties to terrorism, and appointed ideologues to be the key diplomatic emissaries to a war-torn region. Think you are back in the 1980s living through the Iran-Contra scandal? Think again. Over the last two days, new revelations by journalist Bob Woodward and actions by President Bush have evoked memories of a previous scandal and an old foreign policy/national security strategy gone wrong. Yesterday, new details emerged about the Bush administration's deliberate circumvention of Congress to divert $700 million into a secret war plan, and about the potential manipulation of U.S. elections by the Saudi Arabian government. Meanwhile, President Bush nominated key Iran-Contra figure John Negroponte as the new Ambassador to Iraq.
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES - HIDING MONEY FROM CONGRESS: U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-WI) became the first lawmaker to "demand to know whether the Bush administration transferred $700 million to Iraq war planning efforts out of counterterrorism funds without informing Capitol Hill." According to Woodward, the $700 million came out of a supplemental Appropriations bill meant for Afghanistan operations. And a close look at the two supplemental Appropriations bills that passed between 9/11 and July 2002 when the secret transfer took place shows that both bills mandate the White House to inform Congress if money is moved. The Emergency Supplemental Act passed on 9/14/01 specifically instructs the president to "consult with the chairmen and ranking minority members of the Committees on Appropriations prior to the transfer" of any funds. The president actually told the American public that the money would be used for those purposes, saying the bill would be used "to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military" in its operations against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He said nothing about Iraq. Similarly, while the summer 2002 supplemental bill allows the administration to transfer "up to $275 million" in unused money within the Pentagon budget, it requires the president to notify Congress within 15 days of moving money. So far, the administration has not produced a shred of evidence that it followed these laws and informed Congress. As Woodward said, "Congress, which is supposed to control the purse strings, had no real knowledge or involvement, had not even been notified that the Pentagon wanted to reprogram money."
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – LYING TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT MILITARY FOCUS: According to a new AP report, "Following an important meeting on Iraq war planning in late 2001, President Bush told the public that the discussions were about Afghanistan. He made no mention afterward about Iraq even though that was the real focus of the session at his ranch." "I'm right now focused on the military operations in Afghanistan," Bush told reporters after talks on Dec. 28, 2001, with top aides and generals.
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – SECRET DEALS WITH COUNTRY TIED TO TERROR?: The Saudi Arabian government, which has ties to terrorism yet maintains close ties to the Bush administration, continued to deny Woodward's charges that its U.S. Ambassador Prince Bandar promised an increase in oil supplies to coincide with the November presidential election to help President Bush's campaign. Mounting a Saudi defense, Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir deflected the questions by claiming, "Over the past 30 years, the kingdom has sought to ensure adequate supplies of crude at moderate price levels." Of course, al-Jubeir did not explain why the Saudis had led the recent charge within OPEC to reduce oil supplies and artificially inflate the price of gasoline in the U.S. to record levels. Woodward remained steadfast in his reporting, saying the Saudi's definitely made a "pledge." He said, "over the summer or as we get closer to the election they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly." Author Craig Unger points to a possible motive for the alleged Saudi pledge. In his book "House of Bush, House of Saud," he says Bush presidencies "strengthen Bandar's position in Saudi Arabia. During the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush era, Bandar had enjoyed unique powers - partly because of his close relationship to Bush...But during the Clinton era, Bandar had lost clout. [He was] never an insider in the Clinton White House."
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – THE IMPORTANCE OF NEGROPONTE'S RECORD: Negroponte, who has no prior experience in the Middle East and does not speak Arabic, is sure to face new questions about his Iran-Contra past, given the circumstances of his Iraqi post. As the LA Times reports, human rights advocates charged that during his tenure as Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, "Negroponte underplayed human rights abuses by death squads to ensure that the country would continue to serve as a base for U.S.-backed Contras." Negroponte denies this, but according declassified documents, "U.S. officials knew what was happening in Honduras and engaged in a willful deception to avoid confronting Congress with the truth." As Molly Ivins notes, this record is important because Negroponte was a key player in a "plot that sold U.S. arms to Iran" in its war against Iraq. That means "our first ambassador will be a man who armed Iraq's enemy" – a fact that might not be lost on local Iraqis with whom he must work closely. Negroponte will also be charged with convincing U.S. allies to desist from removing troops from Iraq. The problem is some of these key allies are from Central America, where Negroponte's sordid record is well-known and where his name might not be well-received. In fact, just yesterday Honduras – the country where Negroponte made his most indelible mark – said it was planning to remove its troops from Iraq. Finally, Kenneth Roth of Human Rights watch notes the "serious unanswered questions about Negroponte's complicity with the atrocities in Honduras" are important as the issue of "U.S.-sponsored forces avoiding complicity in atrocities" could arise in Baghdad.
PATRIOT ACT
Show Us the Facts
Portions of the Patriot Act, passed in the chaotic days after 9/11, are scheduled to expire in 2005. President Bush hit the road yesterday and grossly distorted the reason some of the provisions are scheduled to "sunset." Bush said that Congress designed some provisions to expire in 2005 because of the belief that "maybe the war on terror won't go on very long." The truth: "Lawmakers of both parties...said at the time the Patriot Acts passed that the sunset provision would allow Congress to ensure that the administration did not abuse its new power." Meanwhile, even as the president asks Congress to make all provisions in the Patriot Act permanent, Attorney General John Ashcroft has failed to disclose critical information necessary to evaluate how the government uses the law.
ROVING FROM THE TRUTH: President Bush touted the use of roving wiretaps, authorized by Section 206 of the Patriot Act, as an "essential tool" for locking up terrorists. Roving wiretaps allow the government to tap not just an individual phone number but any phone that they believe the target of their surveillance might use. The provision raises serious privacy concerns. As explained in an American Progress report, "Section 206 does nothing to require that, as the wiretap 'roves,' the subject is actually present, or even likely to be present at the new location." So if "the location of the surveillance is, for example, a public computer terminal, [roving wire taps] could expose hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people to clandestine surveillance." But last year, when James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) asked the Justice Department how roving wiretaps had been used, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jamie Brown responded that the information was classified. How is Congress supposed to decide whether or not to make the roving wiretap provision permanent if it doesn't even know how it is being used?
DELAYED NOTIFICATION OF THE FACTS: President Bush also praised the effectiveness of "delayed notification search warrants," which are authorized by Section 213 of the Patriot Act. A delayed notification search warrant allows the government to search a home or office and not inform the owner as long as the government believes that doing so would have an "adverse result." The president's comments on this topic are somewhat of a red herring because Section 213 is not scheduled to sunset. Nevertheless, serious concerns about the provision persist as the government could argue that disclosing that a search has taken place could have an "adverse result" in nearly every case. The provision has been used hundreds of times – but as of May 13, 2003, it has never been used to combat terrorism.
SO ESSENTIAL IT HAS NEVER BEEN USED: Bush also urged the extension of one of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act – Section 215, which permits the government to more easily obtain "any tangible thing" – a classification so broad it includes "books, records, papers, documents, and other items." That Bush would single this provision out as essential to the war on terrorism is puzzling since, on September 18, 2003 – after insisting for two years the information was classified – John Ashcroft said that the provision had never been used. The Justice Department is now equivocating, saying that Ashcroft's denial only applies to the period before September 18, 2003. But, before Congress decides to make Section 215 a permanent part of the law, it should know if and how it has been used.
ASKING FOR AN END RUN AROUND THE CONSTITUTION: Bush not only asked for a rubber-stamp approval of all expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, he also asked for certain authorities to be further expanded. His proposal to expand "administrative subpoenas," which allow the government to obtain records and interrogate any witness without any court review. The president claims the government needs this extraordinary power to speed terrorism investigations. But the Department of Justice could not even cite a single instance where the existing rules slowed down their efforts against terrorism. Eliminating the judiciary from its fundamental role as a check on executive branch power runs squarely against the Constitution while doing nothing to further the fight against terrorism.
SECRECY – TOP SECRET T-BALL: The WP reports, "It may come as a surprise to some that the Kremlin, symbol of secrecy and repression, has become more transparent than the White House, symbol of freedom and democracy." After a recent phone conversation between President Bush and Prime Minister Putin, the Kremlin disclosed, "The presidents exchanged ideas on the situations in the crisis areas of the world: Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, etc. They expressed serious concerns about the lack of progress in the settlement of regional problems and the escalation of the situation in these areas." Meanwhile, the White House refused to comment on the conversation. But the White House's reticence on releasing information extends far beyond presidential conversations with foreign leaders. For example, in April 2002, the Orlando Sentinel reported "that the Apopka Little League team of 11- and 12-year-olds would visit the White House on May 5 to watch a T-ball game." The paper's source was the children's parents – according to the Sentinel "the White House would not confirm the invitation."
SECRECY – HUSH HUSH ARCHIVIST: The NYT reports, "President Bush's nominee to be archivist of the United States — an ordinarily low-profile job that includes overseeing the release of government documents, including presidential papers — is generating an intense controversy among historians, some of whom accuse the White House of trying to push through a candidate who is prone to secrecy." The nominee, Allen Weinstein, has a track record of refusing to share notes and information. One important issue: The papers of Mr. Bush's father, the 41st president, are scheduled for release in January. "Critics of Mr. Weinstein say they fear that he could restrict or delay access to those and other important documents." So far, "nine groups, including the Society of American Archivists, have raised concerns about the selection." According to Timothy A. Slavin, president of the Council of State Historical Records Coordinators, "It's the equivalent of the administration's thumbing its nose at the nation's history."
LEGAL – TAXPAYER MONEY FOR PARTISAN PURPOSES: The IRS is using taxpayer money to promote partisan propaganda. Recently, the Department of Treasury appended the following message to IRS press releases: "America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the president's policies are doing, or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation." Earlier, the "Treasury Department was criticized after its analysis of a tax plan similar to one proposed by Senator John Kerry was used to attack Mr. Kerry."
HEALTH CARE – GRANITE STATE BATTLES OVER KIDS: In a move that could have potentially harmful ramifications for kids in the state, New Hampshire Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen is pushing to "privatize Healthy Kids, an insurance program that covers more than 7,000 poor New Hampshire children." The hugely successful program currently "provides low-cost health insurance and dental care to children whose families don't qualify for Medicaid but can't otherwise afford insurance." Privatizing could force some children out of the program. Lawmakers say Stephen has no right: Healthy Kids and the nonprofit corporation that runs it were established by state statute and cannot be put out for a bid without the Legislature's approval.
Read more at CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS.
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4/19/2004
Scary Plan of Attack
How times have changed for the Bush administration. It didn't take President Bush long to exhaust the global supply of goodwill toward America after 9/11 - his brash, short-sighted foreign policy has left that well bone dry. It took slightly longer for the president to burn through his administration's supply of favorable press coverage in the post-9/11 era, but now that appears to have completely disappeared as well. In an interview on "60 Minutes" last night to promote his new book "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward painted a terrifying portrait of a politically-driven Bush White House that couldn't be bothered with second guessing. Doesn't that sound familiar.
Here's a brief rundown of what he learned while covering the administration's push for war.
Just 72 days after 9/11, President Bush began pressing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the issue of Iraq. In turn, Rumsfeld gave Gen. Tommy Franks a blank check to develop war plans. In July 2002, President Bush approved $700 million for these tasks without Congress' knowledge . Where did the money come from? Appropriations for the Afghan War.
Franks was working on the Iraq invasion a year before the war. But when he was publicly asked about the situation in May 2002, he responded, "That's a great question and one for which I don't have an answer, because my boss has not yet asked me to put together a plan to do that [invade Iraq]."
In December 2002, CIA deputy John McLaughlin appeared in the Oval Office to brief President Bush about Iraq's WMD capabilities. McLaughlin's well-planned presentation flopped - the president responded by saying, "Nice try, but that isn't gonna sell Joe Public." At that point, CIA Director George Tenet reassured everyone in the room that it was a "slam-dunk" case.
President Bush decided to go to war in January 2003. While at his Texas ranch, he told National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, "We're gonna have to go. It's war."
Secretary of State Colin Powell was the last to be informed of the war plans. The president, vice president, Rice, and Rumsfeld all knew before him. Even Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar knew about the upcoming war before the secretary of state. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gen. Brett Myers all met with Bandar in order to obtain Saudi cooperation for an Iraqi invasion. During the meeting, Cheney assured Bandar that once the attack started, Saddam Hussein would be "toast." Powell wasn't notified of the war plans by President Bush until two days later.
During a meeting with President Bush, Prince Bandar engaged in a bit of political calculus over oil prices. Here's what he told the president: "They're [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly."
Woodward says that Bush never consulted with his father over the decision to invade Iraq. Even more amazing, "The president, in making the decision to go to war, did not ask his secretary of defense for an overall recommendation, did not ask his secretary of state, Colin Powell, for his recommendation," Woodward says.
The Bush administration was extremely negligent in its handling of plans for postwar Iraq. "On the real issue of security and possible violence, they did not see it coming," says Woodward.
In a familiar move, the Bush administration sent out its political henchman du jour - this time played by Condoleezza Rice - to attack the attackers on the Sunday news shows. What resulted was a surreal sight - Condoleezza Rice lecturing the American public about Bob Woodward's lack of credibility.
Rice initially attempted to parse phrases and claim that President Bush did not decide to go to war with Iraq in January 2002. Here's how she characterized the conversation on "Face the Nation":
"That was not a decision to go to war. The decision to go to war is in March. The president is saying in that conversation, 'I think the chances are that this is not going to work out any other way. We're going to have to go to war."'
Got that? The Bush administration has now officially resorted to splitting already-split hairs. It's probably time for them to start investing in microscopes if this trend continues.
Rice was also grilled about the $700 million that was taken from the Afghanistan fund and used for war preparations in Iraq. (Remember, the Bush administration's push for war in Iraq also resulted in troops that were on the hunt for bin Laden to be pulled off the trail and relocated to Iraq.) Rice attempted to duck the question by stating that we used everything in Afghanistan that we needed, but host Bob Schieffer quickly noted, "But, Dr. Rice, you cannot take money that Congress has appropriated for one purpose and spend it on something else. That's against the law."
Rice later - incredibly - attempted once more to convince the nation that Saddam did in fact have all the WMD that the Bush administration promised. This exchange on "Face the Nation" is just amazing:
RICE: Everyone believed at that time including intelligence agencies around the world, the United Nations, anybody who knew Saddam Hussein's history, how he'd hidden weapons before, how he'd used them before that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, an active program to continue to improve them.
KAREN TUMULTY: But they were wrong.
RICE: Well, no. If you look at what has been found since by David Kay and by Charlie Deulfer, what is clear is that the - the stockpiles what were unaccounted for...have not been found and no one knows precisely what came of them.
Don't you see? Weapons inspectors David Kay and Charlie Duelfer didn't find any of the unaccounted for WMD! What more proof could you possibly need that they actually exist?
It is astounding that the Bush administration would have the gall to continue to promote this particular issue as if it played right into their strengths. But the ability to latch onto a lie and continue to promote it as if it had any basis in real fact is one thing that has separated this administration from others.
Of course, something else that's separated the Bush administration from others is their willingness to inject politics into every running debate. During her interview on "Fox News Sunday," Rice commented that she worried that "the terrorists might have learned...the wrong lesson from Spain." She was referring to Spain's recent elections where Jose Maria Aznar - an ardent Bush supporter - was voted out from his post. It is pretty obvious what Rice considers "the wrong lesson" to be.
Read more here and here .
HEADLINE OF THE DAY:
"NORAD had drills of jets as weapons "-USA Today
That might make this perjury then, no?
"I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of strategic warning, that planes might be used as weapons." - Condoleezza Rice in front of the 9/11 commission
NORAD had drills of jets as weapons
By Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.
One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.
NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continent-wide exercises.
"Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."
A White House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration was not aware of the NORAD exercises. But the exercises using real aircraft show that at least one part of the government thought the possibility of such attacks, though unlikely, merited scrutiny.
On April 8, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks heard testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the White House didn't anticipate hijacked planes being used as weapons.
On April 12, a watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, released a copy of an e-mail written by a former NORAD official referring to the proposed exercise targeting the Pentagon. The e-mail said the simulation was not held because the Pentagon considered it "too unrealistic."
President Bush said at a news conference Tuesday, "Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale."
The exercises differed from the Sept. 11 attacks in one important respect: The planes in the simulation were coming from a foreign country.
Until Sept. 11, NORAD was expected to defend the United States and Canada from aircraft based elsewhere. After the attacks, that responsibility broadened to include flights that originated in the two countries.
But there were exceptions in the early drills, including one operation, planned in July 2001 and conducted later, that involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington state that were "hijacked." Those planes were escorted by U.S. and Canadian aircraft to airfields in British Columbia and Alaska.
NORAD officials have acknowledged that "scriptwriters" for the drills included the idea of hijacked aircraft being used as weapons.
"Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response," Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, a NORAD official, told the 9/11 commission. No exercise matched the specific events of Sept. 11, NORAD said.
"We have planned and executed numerous scenarios over the years to include aircraft originating from foreign airports penetrating our sovereign airspace," Gen. Ralph Eberhart, NORAD commander, told USA TODAY. "Regrettably, the tragic events of 9/11 were never anticipated or exercised."
NORAD, a U.S.-Canadian command, was created in 1958 to guard against Soviet bombers.
Until Sept. 11, 2001, NORAD conducted four major exercises a year. Most included a hijack scenario, but not all of those involved planes as weapons. Since the attacks, NORAD has conducted more than 100 exercises, all with mock hijackings.
NORAD fighters based in Florida have intercepted two hijacked smaller aircraft since the Sept. 11 attacks. Both originated in Cuba and were escorted to Key West in spring 2003, NORAD said.
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Scary Plan of Attack
How times have changed for the Bush administration. It didn't take President Bush long to exhaust the global supply of goodwill toward America after 9/11 - his brash, short-sighted foreign policy has left that well bone dry. It took slightly longer for the president to burn through his administration's supply of favorable press coverage in the post-9/11 era, but now that appears to have completely disappeared as well. In an interview on "60 Minutes" last night to promote his new book "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward painted a terrifying portrait of a politically-driven Bush White House that couldn't be bothered with second guessing. Doesn't that sound familiar.
Here's a brief rundown of what he learned while covering the administration's push for war.
Just 72 days after 9/11, President Bush began pressing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the issue of Iraq. In turn, Rumsfeld gave Gen. Tommy Franks a blank check to develop war plans. In July 2002, President Bush approved $700 million for these tasks without Congress' knowledge . Where did the money come from? Appropriations for the Afghan War.
Franks was working on the Iraq invasion a year before the war. But when he was publicly asked about the situation in May 2002, he responded, "That's a great question and one for which I don't have an answer, because my boss has not yet asked me to put together a plan to do that [invade Iraq]."
In December 2002, CIA deputy John McLaughlin appeared in the Oval Office to brief President Bush about Iraq's WMD capabilities. McLaughlin's well-planned presentation flopped - the president responded by saying, "Nice try, but that isn't gonna sell Joe Public." At that point, CIA Director George Tenet reassured everyone in the room that it was a "slam-dunk" case.
President Bush decided to go to war in January 2003. While at his Texas ranch, he told National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, "We're gonna have to go. It's war."
Secretary of State Colin Powell was the last to be informed of the war plans. The president, vice president, Rice, and Rumsfeld all knew before him. Even Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar knew about the upcoming war before the secretary of state. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gen. Brett Myers all met with Bandar in order to obtain Saudi cooperation for an Iraqi invasion. During the meeting, Cheney assured Bandar that once the attack started, Saddam Hussein would be "toast." Powell wasn't notified of the war plans by President Bush until two days later.
During a meeting with President Bush, Prince Bandar engaged in a bit of political calculus over oil prices. Here's what he told the president: "They're [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly."
Woodward says that Bush never consulted with his father over the decision to invade Iraq. Even more amazing, "The president, in making the decision to go to war, did not ask his secretary of defense for an overall recommendation, did not ask his secretary of state, Colin Powell, for his recommendation," Woodward says.
The Bush administration was extremely negligent in its handling of plans for postwar Iraq. "On the real issue of security and possible violence, they did not see it coming," says Woodward.
In a familiar move, the Bush administration sent out its political henchman du jour - this time played by Condoleezza Rice - to attack the attackers on the Sunday news shows. What resulted was a surreal sight - Condoleezza Rice lecturing the American public about Bob Woodward's lack of credibility.
Rice initially attempted to parse phrases and claim that President Bush did not decide to go to war with Iraq in January 2002. Here's how she characterized the conversation on "Face the Nation":
"That was not a decision to go to war. The decision to go to war is in March. The president is saying in that conversation, 'I think the chances are that this is not going to work out any other way. We're going to have to go to war."'
Got that? The Bush administration has now officially resorted to splitting already-split hairs. It's probably time for them to start investing in microscopes if this trend continues.
Rice was also grilled about the $700 million that was taken from the Afghanistan fund and used for war preparations in Iraq. (Remember, the Bush administration's push for war in Iraq also resulted in troops that were on the hunt for bin Laden to be pulled off the trail and relocated to Iraq.) Rice attempted to duck the question by stating that we used everything in Afghanistan that we needed, but host Bob Schieffer quickly noted, "But, Dr. Rice, you cannot take money that Congress has appropriated for one purpose and spend it on something else. That's against the law."
Rice later - incredibly - attempted once more to convince the nation that Saddam did in fact have all the WMD that the Bush administration promised. This exchange on "Face the Nation" is just amazing:
RICE: Everyone believed at that time including intelligence agencies around the world, the United Nations, anybody who knew Saddam Hussein's history, how he'd hidden weapons before, how he'd used them before that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, an active program to continue to improve them.
KAREN TUMULTY: But they were wrong.
RICE: Well, no. If you look at what has been found since by David Kay and by Charlie Deulfer, what is clear is that the - the stockpiles what were unaccounted for...have not been found and no one knows precisely what came of them.
Don't you see? Weapons inspectors David Kay and Charlie Duelfer didn't find any of the unaccounted for WMD! What more proof could you possibly need that they actually exist?
It is astounding that the Bush administration would have the gall to continue to promote this particular issue as if it played right into their strengths. But the ability to latch onto a lie and continue to promote it as if it had any basis in real fact is one thing that has separated this administration from others.
Of course, something else that's separated the Bush administration from others is their willingness to inject politics into every running debate. During her interview on "Fox News Sunday," Rice commented that she worried that "the terrorists might have learned...the wrong lesson from Spain." She was referring to Spain's recent elections where Jose Maria Aznar - an ardent Bush supporter - was voted out from his post. It is pretty obvious what Rice considers "the wrong lesson" to be.
Read more here and here .
HEADLINE OF THE DAY:
"NORAD had drills of jets as weapons "-USA Today
That might make this perjury then, no?
"I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of strategic warning, that planes might be used as weapons." - Condoleezza Rice in front of the 9/11 commission
NORAD had drills of jets as weapons
By Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.
One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.
NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continent-wide exercises.
"Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."
A White House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration was not aware of the NORAD exercises. But the exercises using real aircraft show that at least one part of the government thought the possibility of such attacks, though unlikely, merited scrutiny.
On April 8, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks heard testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the White House didn't anticipate hijacked planes being used as weapons.
On April 12, a watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, released a copy of an e-mail written by a former NORAD official referring to the proposed exercise targeting the Pentagon. The e-mail said the simulation was not held because the Pentagon considered it "too unrealistic."
President Bush said at a news conference Tuesday, "Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale."
The exercises differed from the Sept. 11 attacks in one important respect: The planes in the simulation were coming from a foreign country.
Until Sept. 11, NORAD was expected to defend the United States and Canada from aircraft based elsewhere. After the attacks, that responsibility broadened to include flights that originated in the two countries.
But there were exceptions in the early drills, including one operation, planned in July 2001 and conducted later, that involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington state that were "hijacked." Those planes were escorted by U.S. and Canadian aircraft to airfields in British Columbia and Alaska.
NORAD officials have acknowledged that "scriptwriters" for the drills included the idea of hijacked aircraft being used as weapons.
"Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response," Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, a NORAD official, told the 9/11 commission. No exercise matched the specific events of Sept. 11, NORAD said.
"We have planned and executed numerous scenarios over the years to include aircraft originating from foreign airports penetrating our sovereign airspace," Gen. Ralph Eberhart, NORAD commander, told USA TODAY. "Regrettably, the tragic events of 9/11 were never anticipated or exercised."
NORAD, a U.S.-Canadian command, was created in 1958 to guard against Soviet bombers.
Until Sept. 11, 2001, NORAD conducted four major exercises a year. Most included a hijack scenario, but not all of those involved planes as weapons. Since the attacks, NORAD has conducted more than 100 exercises, all with mock hijackings.
NORAD fighters based in Florida have intercepted two hijacked smaller aircraft since the Sept. 11 attacks. Both originated in Cuba and were escorted to Key West in spring 2003, NORAD said.
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Monday, April 19, 2004
IRAQ
Secrets Exposed, Lies Revealed
Exposing previous White House denials as lies, journalist Bob Woodward this weekend revealed parts of his new book which provide evidence the Bush Administration began plans for an Iraq invasion immediately after 9/11; overhyped intelligence; and appeared to circumvent the Constitution to pursue its goals. In Woodward's account, which includes a three-and-a-half hour interview with President Bush, it is revealed that the President personally ordered plans for the Iraq war to be drawn up in November of 2001. While the White House has called such statements "revisionist history," Woodward's account is consistent with accounts given by Richard Clarke, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Bush State Department official Richard Haass, former British Ambassador Christopher Meyer, and an earlier CBS News report. Woodward's book explores the depth of White House cover-up efforts, showing how the Administration persuaded even top military officials to lie. For instance, at the same time General Tommy Franks was secretly developing the President's Iraq war plan, he was "simultaneously publicly denying that he was ever asked to do any plan." For instance, at the same time General Tommy Franks was secretly developing the President's Iraq war plan, he was "publicly denying that he was ever been asked to do any plan." Just as troubling, Woodward points out that the decision to go to war with Iraq was shared with Saudi Prince Bandar (who has milked his ties to the Bush Administration despite being under the microscope for money laundering) and RNC consultant Karen Hughes before it was shared with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
UNANSWERED – DID THE WHITE HOUSE VIOLATE THE LAW?: Woodward reveals that in July 2002, Bush secretly approved diverting $700 million meant for operations in Afghanistan into war planning for Iraq. Bush kept Congress "totally in the dark on this," which raises serious legal questions reminiscent of Iran-Contra: Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution vests the power of the purse with Congress, and statutes bar the executive from unilaterally moving money out of areas explicitly mandated by spending bills. On CBS's Face the Nation, Rice tried to defend the move, claiming "resources were not taken from Afghanistan." Not only did this response contradict the fact that special forces were pulled out of Afghanistan in 2002 and moved to Iraq, but it did not address legal questions. As CBS anchor Bob Schieffer said, "Dr. Rice, you cannot take money that Congress has appropriated for one purpose and spend it on something else. That's against the law." One other note: In the same supplemental bill, Bush further ignored the will of Congress, blocking a bipartisan, House- and Senate-passed homeland security funding package.
UNANSWERED – MANIPULATING OIL PRICES FOR BUSH CAMPAIGN?: Woodward also reveals that the Saudi Arabian government – the same government with potential ties to terror - "promised Bush that his country would lower oil prices before the November 2 presidential election." Woodward said Bandar specifically wanted Bush to know that the Saudis hope to "fine-tune oil prices" for the 2004 election. Recently, the Saudis led the charge to cut OPEC oil production, which has raised gas prices in America. Was that move meant to artificially raise the price, so that it could be lowered closer to the election?
PROOF - BUSH/CHENEY DELIBERATELY OVERHYPED INTELLIGENCE: According to Woodward's book, the President told aides in December of 2002, "Make sure no one stretches to make our case" about WMD. But a look at the record shows it was Bush and Vice President Cheney who, well before this cautionary statement, were aggressively hyping intelligence. For instance, Bush claimed in October 2002 that Iraq had "a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons" – a claim that was rejected at the time by the Air Force intelligence unit most knowledgeable about the issue. He also claimed definitively that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons," despite warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that there was no solid proof. Similarly, Vice President Cheney was even more assertive, claiming without proof in August 2002 "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has WMD. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." Even after Bush made his cautionary statement, the overhyping continued, with Cheney saying, "Iraq has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons," Bush claiming "We found the WMD ," and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld saying "We know where the WMDs are." See other examples of how the White House ignored warnings that its WMD case for war was weak.
HEALTH CARE
Time To Talk About The Uninsured
According to the Institute of Medicine, the U.S. has a whopping health care problem which affects the entire nation. The swelling numbers of the uninsured in America is a problem which can no longer be ignored or brushed under the carpet as someone else's problem. The United States spends $35 billion every year to treat people with no insurance, while the economy loses between $65 billion and $130 billion in productivity. Over 18,000 25- to 64-year-olds die every year as a result lacking health insurance. Currently, 43.6 million Americans lack health insurance, and the trend is only getting worse. As costs spiral, more and more Americans, many of them children, are left to struggle for basic health care. The IOM has challenged Congress and the President to find a way to insure every American over the next decade.
CONSERVATIVE FOOT DRAGGING: Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson both said the IOM challenge to cover the uninsured was impossible; unbelievably, Thompson even claimed we already have universal coverage. Meanwhile, President Bush's tax credit proposal would potentially "cause more than 1 million people who have employer-based coverage to become uninsured."
LOWER CARE, HIGHER COSTS: Urban Institute researchers found the uninsured receive about half the care of those in private insurance. Since escalated cost causes many uninsured Americans to delay or defer treatment, the care they do get is the most expensive and least efficient, like emergency or hospital care. And according to a study by the California Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, uninsured Americans pay on average 68% more than the federal government for commonly prescribed drugs, such as those used to treat arthritis, high cholesterol and ulcers. And since many of the drugs in the survey treat chronic conditions, the price of refills can really add up quickly. For example, "an uninsured person regularly taking Zocor for high cholesterol...would pay at least $1,672 for a year's supply of Zocor. The government, on the other hand, must pay only $814 for the same quantity...a savings of $858." Which uninsured Americans are paying top dollar? The most expensive cities are Baltimore (at a whopping 84% higher average cost for medications), San Diego, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia.
SOME SUGGESTIONS TO FIX HEALTH CARE: Sen. Hillary Clinton proposed some basic structural changes to the health care system in this week's NY Times Magazine. First, change the way health care is delivered. One way to do this? Give Americans responsibility for keeping custody of their medical records, to create a "personal health record"; doing so would allow Americans to "assume more responsibility for improving their own health and lifestyles." Also, it's time for the medical field to harness technology. It's time to put health files – "test results, lab records, X-rays" – into a computer system accessible in seconds by doctors' offices and emergency rooms and to disseminate research. Finally, it's important to "recognize the larger factors that affect our health – from the environment to public health." A preemptive strike against factors which sicken Americans, like lead in the drinking water, obesity and smog, is more efficient than waiting for the effects to show in illness and injury.
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Justice for All?
As President Bush travels to Pennsylvania to tout his efforts to "expand the government's surveillance and detention powers," twice in the next ten days the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of those efforts. Since 2001, hundred of detainees have been held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, not as prisoners of war entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, but as so-called "enemy combatants" who, according to the Bush Administration, "may be held and interrogated for as long as the executive branch considers it necessary." Four detainees, two Australian and two British citizens, challenged in court the circumstances of their detention, in a case that will be heard by the Supreme Court tomorrow. But the detainees are not asking to be set free. Rather, they are merely "asking the Supreme Court to declare that their cases are not, in fact, outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts so that they may [at a later time] ask a federal judge to grant them some form of an opportunity to argue for their freedom." The decision, expected to be handed down mid-summer, will "extend well beyond U.S. borders, to allied governments and international public opinion, which often look to the United States as a symbol of freedom and the rule of law."
IGNORING THE LAW PUTS AMERICAN SOLDIERS AT RISK: The Administration claims that granting detainees the ability to contest their detention, "perhaps by producing evidence that they never actually fought against the United States," would compromise U.S. security interests. But, as a new column by American Progress Senior Vice President Mark Agrast notes, "thousands of such status hearings were held in Vietnam and during the first Iraq War." Refusing to provide detainees a forum to argue their innocence "could not only undermine the rule of law but could endanger American service members who are captured behind enemy lines."
ADMINISTRATION CREATED A PARALLEL LEGAL SYSTEM: Next week, the Supreme Court will hear the cases of Yasir Hamdi and Jose Padilla – two U.S. citizens who have been held in a military brig, under interrogation and without access to counsel, for nearly two years. When it became clear the Supreme Court would consider the circumstances of their detention, the Administration provided them limited access to counsel. The Supreme Court will decide if it was legal for the Bush Administration to create "a parallel legal system, separate from ordinary criminal justice and controlled almost exclusively by the executive" branch. Newsweek reports that Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued for more American citizens to be detained indefinitely without access to counsel or the court, including six men in Lackawanna, NY, even though "there was no evidence that they had actually carried out any terrorist act."
BELATEDLY DISCOVERING THE SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – in an announcement that you wouldn't expect the United States government to need to make – declared Tuesday that "immigrants detained in terrorism investigations can no longer be held indefinitely without evidence." The decision came as a result of an investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General which found that hundreds of immigrants of Middle Eastern descent, detained for months on alleged minor immigration violations, were denied "basic standards of due process" and were subject to "physical abuse and mistreatment." Asa Hutchinson, DHS undersecretary, said that the new procedures are intended to "create a system of 'checks and balances'" – apparently forgetting that the system of checks and balances was created by the Constitution more than 200 years ago. Meanwhile, the 9/11 commission "has concluded that immigration policies promoted as essential to keeping the country safe from future attacks have been largely ineffective, producing little, if any, information leading to the identification or apprehension of terrorists."
IRAQ – IMAGE WORSENING: According to a news analysis by the LA Times, the growing perception across much of Iraq is that "the ground is giving way beneath the Americans." Instead of winning the war for the hearts of the Iraqi people, a series of missteps on the part of the occupation forces leave a different picture. "More and more Iraqis who once resented — but tolerated — Americans now refuse to even talk to them." According to one Iraqi, the recent escalation in violence is indicative of a larger problem: "America won the war on April 9 last year; they lost the war on April 9 this year." As a result, "an increasingly anxious Congress has summoned Bush administration officials to testify this week on their plans for quelling violence in Iraq and for handing power over to Iraqis by June 30."
ECONOMY – THE WAL-MART EFFECT: The NYT writes, Wal-Mart isn't just a discount store, it's practically its own country. The mega-corporation is the largest employer in the world; "If it were an independent nation, it would be China's eighth-largest trading partner." However, the company doesn't use its massive influence for good. Unlike General Motors, the most influential company of the mid-20th century, Wal-Mart exerts a negative force on American workers. "G.M. helped build the world's most affluent middle class by paying wages far above the average and by providing generous health and pension plans...G.M.'s wage pattern spurred other companies to raise compensation levels, while Wal-Mart's relatively low wages and benefits — its workers average less than $18,000 a year — were doing just the opposite."
CORRUPTION – TAX BILL IS 'A NEW LEVEL OF SLEAZE': A bill that was supposed to settle a relatively minor trade dispute with Europe has been "packed with $170 billion in tax cuts aimed at cruise-ship operators, foreign dog-race gamblers, NASCAR track owners, bow-and-arrow makers and Oldsmobile dealers." It has gotten so bad that even a tax lobbyists said the bill "has risen to a new level of sleaze." Nevertheless, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) "supports all of the provisions that have been slipped in."
MILITARY – NEW PROBLEMS FOR PENTAGON CONTRACTOR: Northrop Grumman is in more hot water. According to the WSJ, new documents show the weapons company "covered up major accounting irregularities during the late 1980s to stay in the Pentagon's good graces." The documents, "which haven't been made public, form the heart of a U.S. government lawsuit against Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman that could result in penalties of hundreds of millions of dollars." At a time when Pentagon spending is on the rise, the company is under investigation by the Justice Department for, among other things, "falsely inflated, recorded and presented costs that were not actually incurred, including scrapping more parts than it had ordered. The company, according to the suit, also 'engaged in a secret effort to alter' inventory records 'to mislead and defraud' the government."
MEDIA – WASHINGTON TIMES NEEDS HELP, CITY PAPER DELIVERS: The Washington City Paper has decided to lend the Washington Times a helping hand. The City paper discovered that "over the past nine days, the Times hasn't published a single correction." Over the same period the "New York Times churned out at least 50 corrections. And the Washington Post clocked in with more than 25." So, the City Paper has decided "to run the [the Washington Times] corrections box."
Find these and other stories at the CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS.
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Secrets Exposed, Lies Revealed
Exposing previous White House denials as lies, journalist Bob Woodward this weekend revealed parts of his new book which provide evidence the Bush Administration began plans for an Iraq invasion immediately after 9/11; overhyped intelligence; and appeared to circumvent the Constitution to pursue its goals. In Woodward's account, which includes a three-and-a-half hour interview with President Bush, it is revealed that the President personally ordered plans for the Iraq war to be drawn up in November of 2001. While the White House has called such statements "revisionist history," Woodward's account is consistent with accounts given by Richard Clarke, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Bush State Department official Richard Haass, former British Ambassador Christopher Meyer, and an earlier CBS News report. Woodward's book explores the depth of White House cover-up efforts, showing how the Administration persuaded even top military officials to lie. For instance, at the same time General Tommy Franks was secretly developing the President's Iraq war plan, he was "simultaneously publicly denying that he was ever asked to do any plan." For instance, at the same time General Tommy Franks was secretly developing the President's Iraq war plan, he was "publicly denying that he was ever been asked to do any plan." Just as troubling, Woodward points out that the decision to go to war with Iraq was shared with Saudi Prince Bandar (who has milked his ties to the Bush Administration despite being under the microscope for money laundering) and RNC consultant Karen Hughes before it was shared with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
UNANSWERED – DID THE WHITE HOUSE VIOLATE THE LAW?: Woodward reveals that in July 2002, Bush secretly approved diverting $700 million meant for operations in Afghanistan into war planning for Iraq. Bush kept Congress "totally in the dark on this," which raises serious legal questions reminiscent of Iran-Contra: Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution vests the power of the purse with Congress, and statutes bar the executive from unilaterally moving money out of areas explicitly mandated by spending bills. On CBS's Face the Nation, Rice tried to defend the move, claiming "resources were not taken from Afghanistan." Not only did this response contradict the fact that special forces were pulled out of Afghanistan in 2002 and moved to Iraq, but it did not address legal questions. As CBS anchor Bob Schieffer said, "Dr. Rice, you cannot take money that Congress has appropriated for one purpose and spend it on something else. That's against the law." One other note: In the same supplemental bill, Bush further ignored the will of Congress, blocking a bipartisan, House- and Senate-passed homeland security funding package.
UNANSWERED – MANIPULATING OIL PRICES FOR BUSH CAMPAIGN?: Woodward also reveals that the Saudi Arabian government – the same government with potential ties to terror - "promised Bush that his country would lower oil prices before the November 2 presidential election." Woodward said Bandar specifically wanted Bush to know that the Saudis hope to "fine-tune oil prices" for the 2004 election. Recently, the Saudis led the charge to cut OPEC oil production, which has raised gas prices in America. Was that move meant to artificially raise the price, so that it could be lowered closer to the election?
PROOF - BUSH/CHENEY DELIBERATELY OVERHYPED INTELLIGENCE: According to Woodward's book, the President told aides in December of 2002, "Make sure no one stretches to make our case" about WMD. But a look at the record shows it was Bush and Vice President Cheney who, well before this cautionary statement, were aggressively hyping intelligence. For instance, Bush claimed in October 2002 that Iraq had "a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons" – a claim that was rejected at the time by the Air Force intelligence unit most knowledgeable about the issue. He also claimed definitively that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons," despite warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that there was no solid proof. Similarly, Vice President Cheney was even more assertive, claiming without proof in August 2002 "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has WMD. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." Even after Bush made his cautionary statement, the overhyping continued, with Cheney saying, "Iraq has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons," Bush claiming "We found the WMD ," and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld saying "We know where the WMDs are." See other examples of how the White House ignored warnings that its WMD case for war was weak.
HEALTH CARE
Time To Talk About The Uninsured
According to the Institute of Medicine, the U.S. has a whopping health care problem which affects the entire nation. The swelling numbers of the uninsured in America is a problem which can no longer be ignored or brushed under the carpet as someone else's problem. The United States spends $35 billion every year to treat people with no insurance, while the economy loses between $65 billion and $130 billion in productivity. Over 18,000 25- to 64-year-olds die every year as a result lacking health insurance. Currently, 43.6 million Americans lack health insurance, and the trend is only getting worse. As costs spiral, more and more Americans, many of them children, are left to struggle for basic health care. The IOM has challenged Congress and the President to find a way to insure every American over the next decade.
CONSERVATIVE FOOT DRAGGING: Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson both said the IOM challenge to cover the uninsured was impossible; unbelievably, Thompson even claimed we already have universal coverage. Meanwhile, President Bush's tax credit proposal would potentially "cause more than 1 million people who have employer-based coverage to become uninsured."
LOWER CARE, HIGHER COSTS: Urban Institute researchers found the uninsured receive about half the care of those in private insurance. Since escalated cost causes many uninsured Americans to delay or defer treatment, the care they do get is the most expensive and least efficient, like emergency or hospital care. And according to a study by the California Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, uninsured Americans pay on average 68% more than the federal government for commonly prescribed drugs, such as those used to treat arthritis, high cholesterol and ulcers. And since many of the drugs in the survey treat chronic conditions, the price of refills can really add up quickly. For example, "an uninsured person regularly taking Zocor for high cholesterol...would pay at least $1,672 for a year's supply of Zocor. The government, on the other hand, must pay only $814 for the same quantity...a savings of $858." Which uninsured Americans are paying top dollar? The most expensive cities are Baltimore (at a whopping 84% higher average cost for medications), San Diego, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia.
SOME SUGGESTIONS TO FIX HEALTH CARE: Sen. Hillary Clinton proposed some basic structural changes to the health care system in this week's NY Times Magazine. First, change the way health care is delivered. One way to do this? Give Americans responsibility for keeping custody of their medical records, to create a "personal health record"; doing so would allow Americans to "assume more responsibility for improving their own health and lifestyles." Also, it's time for the medical field to harness technology. It's time to put health files – "test results, lab records, X-rays" – into a computer system accessible in seconds by doctors' offices and emergency rooms and to disseminate research. Finally, it's important to "recognize the larger factors that affect our health – from the environment to public health." A preemptive strike against factors which sicken Americans, like lead in the drinking water, obesity and smog, is more efficient than waiting for the effects to show in illness and injury.
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Justice for All?
As President Bush travels to Pennsylvania to tout his efforts to "expand the government's surveillance and detention powers," twice in the next ten days the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of those efforts. Since 2001, hundred of detainees have been held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, not as prisoners of war entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, but as so-called "enemy combatants" who, according to the Bush Administration, "may be held and interrogated for as long as the executive branch considers it necessary." Four detainees, two Australian and two British citizens, challenged in court the circumstances of their detention, in a case that will be heard by the Supreme Court tomorrow. But the detainees are not asking to be set free. Rather, they are merely "asking the Supreme Court to declare that their cases are not, in fact, outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts so that they may [at a later time] ask a federal judge to grant them some form of an opportunity to argue for their freedom." The decision, expected to be handed down mid-summer, will "extend well beyond U.S. borders, to allied governments and international public opinion, which often look to the United States as a symbol of freedom and the rule of law."
IGNORING THE LAW PUTS AMERICAN SOLDIERS AT RISK: The Administration claims that granting detainees the ability to contest their detention, "perhaps by producing evidence that they never actually fought against the United States," would compromise U.S. security interests. But, as a new column by American Progress Senior Vice President Mark Agrast notes, "thousands of such status hearings were held in Vietnam and during the first Iraq War." Refusing to provide detainees a forum to argue their innocence "could not only undermine the rule of law but could endanger American service members who are captured behind enemy lines."
ADMINISTRATION CREATED A PARALLEL LEGAL SYSTEM: Next week, the Supreme Court will hear the cases of Yasir Hamdi and Jose Padilla – two U.S. citizens who have been held in a military brig, under interrogation and without access to counsel, for nearly two years. When it became clear the Supreme Court would consider the circumstances of their detention, the Administration provided them limited access to counsel. The Supreme Court will decide if it was legal for the Bush Administration to create "a parallel legal system, separate from ordinary criminal justice and controlled almost exclusively by the executive" branch. Newsweek reports that Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued for more American citizens to be detained indefinitely without access to counsel or the court, including six men in Lackawanna, NY, even though "there was no evidence that they had actually carried out any terrorist act."
BELATEDLY DISCOVERING THE SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – in an announcement that you wouldn't expect the United States government to need to make – declared Tuesday that "immigrants detained in terrorism investigations can no longer be held indefinitely without evidence." The decision came as a result of an investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General which found that hundreds of immigrants of Middle Eastern descent, detained for months on alleged minor immigration violations, were denied "basic standards of due process" and were subject to "physical abuse and mistreatment." Asa Hutchinson, DHS undersecretary, said that the new procedures are intended to "create a system of 'checks and balances'" – apparently forgetting that the system of checks and balances was created by the Constitution more than 200 years ago. Meanwhile, the 9/11 commission "has concluded that immigration policies promoted as essential to keeping the country safe from future attacks have been largely ineffective, producing little, if any, information leading to the identification or apprehension of terrorists."
IRAQ – IMAGE WORSENING: According to a news analysis by the LA Times, the growing perception across much of Iraq is that "the ground is giving way beneath the Americans." Instead of winning the war for the hearts of the Iraqi people, a series of missteps on the part of the occupation forces leave a different picture. "More and more Iraqis who once resented — but tolerated — Americans now refuse to even talk to them." According to one Iraqi, the recent escalation in violence is indicative of a larger problem: "America won the war on April 9 last year; they lost the war on April 9 this year." As a result, "an increasingly anxious Congress has summoned Bush administration officials to testify this week on their plans for quelling violence in Iraq and for handing power over to Iraqis by June 30."
ECONOMY – THE WAL-MART EFFECT: The NYT writes, Wal-Mart isn't just a discount store, it's practically its own country. The mega-corporation is the largest employer in the world; "If it were an independent nation, it would be China's eighth-largest trading partner." However, the company doesn't use its massive influence for good. Unlike General Motors, the most influential company of the mid-20th century, Wal-Mart exerts a negative force on American workers. "G.M. helped build the world's most affluent middle class by paying wages far above the average and by providing generous health and pension plans...G.M.'s wage pattern spurred other companies to raise compensation levels, while Wal-Mart's relatively low wages and benefits — its workers average less than $18,000 a year — were doing just the opposite."
CORRUPTION – TAX BILL IS 'A NEW LEVEL OF SLEAZE': A bill that was supposed to settle a relatively minor trade dispute with Europe has been "packed with $170 billion in tax cuts aimed at cruise-ship operators, foreign dog-race gamblers, NASCAR track owners, bow-and-arrow makers and Oldsmobile dealers." It has gotten so bad that even a tax lobbyists said the bill "has risen to a new level of sleaze." Nevertheless, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) "supports all of the provisions that have been slipped in."
MILITARY – NEW PROBLEMS FOR PENTAGON CONTRACTOR: Northrop Grumman is in more hot water. According to the WSJ, new documents show the weapons company "covered up major accounting irregularities during the late 1980s to stay in the Pentagon's good graces." The documents, "which haven't been made public, form the heart of a U.S. government lawsuit against Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman that could result in penalties of hundreds of millions of dollars." At a time when Pentagon spending is on the rise, the company is under investigation by the Justice Department for, among other things, "falsely inflated, recorded and presented costs that were not actually incurred, including scrapping more parts than it had ordered. The company, according to the suit, also 'engaged in a secret effort to alter' inventory records 'to mislead and defraud' the government."
MEDIA – WASHINGTON TIMES NEEDS HELP, CITY PAPER DELIVERS: The Washington City Paper has decided to lend the Washington Times a helping hand. The City paper discovered that "over the past nine days, the Times hasn't published a single correction." Over the same period the "New York Times churned out at least 50 corrections. And the Washington Post clocked in with more than 25." So, the City Paper has decided "to run the [the Washington Times] corrections box."
Find these and other stories at the CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS.
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Well, if Spain isn't "with us" then as Bush said before, it's "against us". So what is he going to do now? Bomb them? That's the way he talked when he lied to invade Iraq. See, this is the way an idiot digs himself into a hole when he has no idea of what he's doing. American and the world can not afford to have a spoiled rich, inarticulate, religiously pious, dry-drunk, bumbling son of an ex-president causing more danger than security in the White House.
We need the strong, experienced and intelligent guidance of John Kerry. Vote Bush out in November and bring a qualified leader into the White House again.
Bush Bemoans Spanish Troops' Iraq Pullout
WASHINGTON - President Bush scolded Spain's new prime minister Monday for his swift withdrawal of troops from Iraq and told him to avoid actions that give "false comfort to terrorists or enemies of freedom in Iraq."
Bush expressed his views in a five-minute telephone call with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who on Sunday ordered the 1,300 troops to return home as soon as possible...
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We need the strong, experienced and intelligent guidance of John Kerry. Vote Bush out in November and bring a qualified leader into the White House again.
Bush Bemoans Spanish Troops' Iraq Pullout
WASHINGTON - President Bush scolded Spain's new prime minister Monday for his swift withdrawal of troops from Iraq and told him to avoid actions that give "false comfort to terrorists or enemies of freedom in Iraq."
Bush expressed his views in a five-minute telephone call with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who on Sunday ordered the 1,300 troops to return home as soon as possible...
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April 19, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST NY TIMES
The Wrong War
By BOB HERBERT
Follow me, said the president. And, tragically, we did.
With his misbegotten war in Iraq, his failure to throw everything we had at Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and his fantasy of using military might as a magic wand to "change the world," President Bush has ushered the American people into a bloody and mind-bending theater of the absurd.
Each act is more heartbreaking than the last. Pfc. Keith Maupin, who was kidnapped near Baghdad on April 9, showed up on a videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera last Friday. He was in the custody of masked gunmen and, understandably, frightened.
"My name is Keith Matthew Maupin," he said, looking nervously into the camera. "I am a soldier from the First Division. I am married with a 10-month-old son."
Private Maupin is 20 years old and should never have been sent into the flaming horror of Iraq. Now we don't know how to get him out.
On the same day that Private Maupin was kidnapped, 20-year-old Specialist Michelle Witmer was killed when her Humvee was attacked in Baghdad. Ms. Witmer's two sisters, Charity and Rachel, were also serving in Iraq. All three women were members of the National Guard.
American troops are enduring the deadliest period since the start of the war. And while they continue to fight courageously and sometimes die, they are fighting and dying in the wrong war.
This is the height of absurdity.
One of the things I remember from my time in the service many years ago was the ubiquitous presence of large posters with the phrase, in big block letters: Know Your Enemy.
This is a bit of military wisdom that seems to have escaped President Bush.
The United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, by Al Qaeda, not Iraq.
All Americans and most of the world would have united behind President Bush for an all-out war against Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The relatives and friends of any troops who lost their lives in that effort would have known clearly and unmistakably what their loved ones had died for.
But Mr. Bush had other things on his mind. With Osama and the top leadership of Al Qaeda still at large, and with the U.S. still gripped by the trauma of Sept. 11, the president turned his attention to Iraq.
Less than two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to Bob Woodward's account in his new book, "Plan of Attack," President Bush ordered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to have plans drawn up for a war against Iraq. Mr. Bush insisted that this be done with the greatest of secrecy. The president did not even fully inform his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, or his secretary of state, Colin Powell, about his directive to Mr. Rumsfeld.
Thus began the peeling away of resources crucial to the nation's fight against its most fervent enemy, Al Qaeda.
Gen. Tommy Franks, who at the time was head of the United States Central Command and in charge of the Afghan war, was reported by Mr. Woodward to have uttered a string of obscenities when he was ordered to develop a plan for invading Iraq.
President Bush may truly believe, as he suggested at his press conference last week, that he is carrying out a mission that has been sanctioned by the divine. But he has in fact made the world less safe with his catastrophic decision to wage war in Iraq. At least 700 G.I.'s and thousands of innocent Iraqis, including many women and children, are dead. Untold numbers have been maimed and there is no end to the carnage in sight.
Meanwhile, instead of destroying the terrorists, our real enemies, we've energized them. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has become a rallying cry for Islamic militants. Qaeda-type terror is spreading, not receding. And Osama bin Laden is still at large.
Even as I write this, reporters from The Times and other news outlets are filing stories about marines dying in ambush and other acts of mayhem and anarchy across Iraq. This was not part of the plan. The administration and its apologists spread fantasies of a fresh dawn of freedom emerging in Iraq and spreading across the Arab world. Instead we are spilling the blood of innocents in a nightmare from which many thousands will never awaken.
__________________________________________________________________________
OP-ED COLUMNIST NY TIMES
The Wrong War
By BOB HERBERT
Follow me, said the president. And, tragically, we did.
With his misbegotten war in Iraq, his failure to throw everything we had at Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and his fantasy of using military might as a magic wand to "change the world," President Bush has ushered the American people into a bloody and mind-bending theater of the absurd.
Each act is more heartbreaking than the last. Pfc. Keith Maupin, who was kidnapped near Baghdad on April 9, showed up on a videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera last Friday. He was in the custody of masked gunmen and, understandably, frightened.
"My name is Keith Matthew Maupin," he said, looking nervously into the camera. "I am a soldier from the First Division. I am married with a 10-month-old son."
Private Maupin is 20 years old and should never have been sent into the flaming horror of Iraq. Now we don't know how to get him out.
On the same day that Private Maupin was kidnapped, 20-year-old Specialist Michelle Witmer was killed when her Humvee was attacked in Baghdad. Ms. Witmer's two sisters, Charity and Rachel, were also serving in Iraq. All three women were members of the National Guard.
American troops are enduring the deadliest period since the start of the war. And while they continue to fight courageously and sometimes die, they are fighting and dying in the wrong war.
This is the height of absurdity.
One of the things I remember from my time in the service many years ago was the ubiquitous presence of large posters with the phrase, in big block letters: Know Your Enemy.
This is a bit of military wisdom that seems to have escaped President Bush.
The United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, by Al Qaeda, not Iraq.
All Americans and most of the world would have united behind President Bush for an all-out war against Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The relatives and friends of any troops who lost their lives in that effort would have known clearly and unmistakably what their loved ones had died for.
But Mr. Bush had other things on his mind. With Osama and the top leadership of Al Qaeda still at large, and with the U.S. still gripped by the trauma of Sept. 11, the president turned his attention to Iraq.
Less than two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to Bob Woodward's account in his new book, "Plan of Attack," President Bush ordered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to have plans drawn up for a war against Iraq. Mr. Bush insisted that this be done with the greatest of secrecy. The president did not even fully inform his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, or his secretary of state, Colin Powell, about his directive to Mr. Rumsfeld.
Thus began the peeling away of resources crucial to the nation's fight against its most fervent enemy, Al Qaeda.
Gen. Tommy Franks, who at the time was head of the United States Central Command and in charge of the Afghan war, was reported by Mr. Woodward to have uttered a string of obscenities when he was ordered to develop a plan for invading Iraq.
President Bush may truly believe, as he suggested at his press conference last week, that he is carrying out a mission that has been sanctioned by the divine. But he has in fact made the world less safe with his catastrophic decision to wage war in Iraq. At least 700 G.I.'s and thousands of innocent Iraqis, including many women and children, are dead. Untold numbers have been maimed and there is no end to the carnage in sight.
Meanwhile, instead of destroying the terrorists, our real enemies, we've energized them. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has become a rallying cry for Islamic militants. Qaeda-type terror is spreading, not receding. And Osama bin Laden is still at large.
Even as I write this, reporters from The Times and other news outlets are filing stories about marines dying in ambush and other acts of mayhem and anarchy across Iraq. This was not part of the plan. The administration and its apologists spread fantasies of a fresh dawn of freedom emerging in Iraq and spreading across the Arab world. Instead we are spilling the blood of innocents in a nightmare from which many thousands will never awaken.
__________________________________________________________________________
George Bush can not go to the bathroom without Dick Cheney telling him it's okay. He can't make decisions for himself nor stand up like a man and give testimony (even in private) with the 9/11 Commission. The only reason he keeps Powell around is it looks good but Bush, excuse me, Cheney circumvents him at every chance. And now Powell is pointing out how Bush, I mean, Cheney was wrong about the Iraq War and Powell was right. Cheney didn't have the troops to occupy Iraq adequitely AFTER the war and he never had a plan for dealing with the "peace" AFTER it either.
Vote Kerry. The only way to get out of this mess is with a new broom and a clean sweep of all the inept fumbling of this "Bush" administration.
April 19, 2004 NY TIMES
Airing of Powell's Misgivings Tests Ties in the Cabinet
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
WASHINGTON, April 18 — For more than a year, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his aides have tacitly acknowledged that he was concerned before the war about what could go wrong once American forces captured Iraq.
But Mr. Powell's apparent decision to lay out his misgivings even more explicitly to the journalist Bob Woodward for a book has jolted the White House and aggravated long-festering tensions in the Bush cabinet. Moreover, some officials said, the book has created problems for the secretary inside the administration just as the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and President Bush is plunging into his re-election drive.
Mr. Powell has not acknowledged that he cooperated with Mr. Woodward, but the book presents the secretary's reservations in such detail that it leaves little doubt. A spokesman for Mr. Powell said again Sunday that he would not comment on the book, "Plan of Attack."
Critics of Mr. Powell in the hawkish wing of the administration said they were startled by what they saw as his self-serving decision to help fill out a portrait that enhances his reputation as a farsighted analyst, perhaps at the expense of Mr. Bush. Several said the book guaranteed what they expected anyway, that Mr. Powell will not stay as secretary if Mr. Bush is re-elected.
The view expressed Sunday by people in the administration that Mr. Bush comes across as sober-minded and resolute in the book, asking for contingency plans for a war early on but not deciding to wage one until the last minute, saves Mr. Powell from any immediate difficulties that might grow from seeming to betray his confidential relationship to a president who prizes loyalty, several officials said.
"Look, a lot of people have been struck by the degree to which Secretary Powell is using this book as an opportunity — to be fair — to clarify his position on the issues," said an official. "But what this book does is muddy the water internally, which is very unfortunate and unhelpful."
Another official, who like others declined to be identified because of the political sensitivity of their criticism, accused Mr. Powell of having a habit of distancing himself from policies when they go wrong. "It's such a soap opera with him," this official said.
Democrats seized on Mr. Powell's portrayal, saying it would give them ammunition to criticize the administration for going to war without broad international backing or adequate planning for an occupation.
Throughout the day Sunday, Senator John Kerry brought up the Woodward book, mentioning it twice in his interview on "Meet the Press" on NBC and once at an outdoor rally at the University of Miami.
"Here we have a book by a reputable writer," Mr. Kerry told several thousand students at the afternoon campus rally. "We learn that the president even misled members of his own administration."
Asked if material in Mr. Woodward's book would be grist for his party, Jano Cabrera, the spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview: "Absolutely. It's one thing for us to assert it. It's another thing for it to be stated as fact by his secretary of state."
And Steve Murphy, who managed the presidential campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt, said: "The strongest criticism of Bush is that he did not have a plan for the aftermath of the war. And that was exactly what Powell was pointing out to him. He is a credible source. This intensifies the backdrop between Bush and Kerry."
People close to Mr. Powell said Sunday that they had no doubt he would weather any criticism from within over his apparent cooperation with Mr. Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post. Polls show that he is one of the most popular and best-known figures in government. The people close to him note that most people following the situation closely knew that he had misgivings about the war.
"Is the secretary going to be undercut for having been right?" asked an official close to Mr. Powell. "I don't think so. Undercut compared to who? Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? These are people who have some real problems right now. They're not reading Bob Woodward's book. They're reading the dispatches from the field."
Other officials close to Mr. Powell say his strained relations with Mr. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, and Vice President Cheney are common currency among Washington insiders, though they say the suggestion that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Powell are barely on speaking terms is highly exaggerated.
"I don't think there will be much change in his dealings with Cheney and Rumsfeld," said one person close to Mr. Powell. "People already thought it was this bad. It doesn't change things for them to find out that it really was. They know how to deal with each other, and they've been through quite a bit together."
When asked on "Fox News Sunday" about Mr. Woodward's contention that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Powell are so distant on policy matters that they do not talk, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, described the men's relationship as "friendly."
"I can tell you," she said, "I've had lunch on a number of occasions with Vice President Cheney and with Colin Powell, and they are more than on speaking terms. They're friendly."
But another official said Mr. Powell's dealings internally with Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld especially had made life difficult for people inside the administration.
"The day-to-day nattering of the Defense Department trying to take over the business of diplomacy at every level, it's just difficult to be on the inside," said an administration official who defends Mr. Powell's actions. "Every day is difficult. The byplay at the meetings is difficult."
Mr. Powell's standing around the world was less easy to measure this weekend. But a European diplomat said he thought the secretary's standing in Europe especially would only be enhanced because he would be seen as sharing the view of many there that the administration had been overly optimistic about subduing dissidents in Iraq.
For the people long familiar with Mr. Powell's thinking, his misgivings about an American occupation of Iraq, and his insistence on getting full international backing for American actions, goes back many years. So, they note, does his fighting with Mr. Cheney.
For example, Mr. Powell's memoir, "My American Journey," published in 1995 after he retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he had opposed a final push to oust Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf war on the ground that an occupation would provoke a counterinsurgency and criticism among Americans.
In addition, many accounts of the planning for the first gulf war say that Mr. Cheney, then secretary of defense, opposed going to the United Nations or Congress for backing to remove Iraq from Kuwait, fearing that failure would weaken the first President Bush's administration's ability to go to war.
In 2002, Mr. Cheney was openly disdainful of Mr. Powell's insistence on getting approval of the United Nations Security Council before going to war, spreading consternation at the State Department. Mr. Powell won that argument, and President Bush authorized a bid to get a Security Council resolution supporting war.
Mr. Powell's memoir also recalls an exchange in the early 1990's, in which Mr. Powell accused Mr. Cheney — jokingly, he insisted — of being surrounded by "right-wing nuts like you." In the last year, the Woodward book says, Mr. Powell referred privately to the civilian conservatives in the Pentagon loyal to Mr. Cheney as the Gestapo.
The Woodward book also attributes to Mr. Powell the belief that although he had misgivings about going to war, it was his obligation to support the president once Mr. Bush decided to do so.
Mr. Bush told Mr. Woodward that he did not ask the secretary's opinion on whether to go to war because he thought he knew what that opinion would be: "no."
But a senior aide to Mr. Powell asserted this weekend that the secretary was not as opposed to war as some people presume, no matter what the implications in the book.
"The portrait of Powell in the Woodward book is pretty consistent with what everybody knows," the official said. "We were with the president if we had to do this. We set up an exit ramp for Saddam, and he didn't take it. Powell in the end was very comfortable knowing that."
Adam Nagourney contributed reporting from Washington for this article and Jodi Wilgoren from Miami.
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Vote Kerry. The only way to get out of this mess is with a new broom and a clean sweep of all the inept fumbling of this "Bush" administration.
April 19, 2004 NY TIMES
Airing of Powell's Misgivings Tests Ties in the Cabinet
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
WASHINGTON, April 18 — For more than a year, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his aides have tacitly acknowledged that he was concerned before the war about what could go wrong once American forces captured Iraq.
But Mr. Powell's apparent decision to lay out his misgivings even more explicitly to the journalist Bob Woodward for a book has jolted the White House and aggravated long-festering tensions in the Bush cabinet. Moreover, some officials said, the book has created problems for the secretary inside the administration just as the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and President Bush is plunging into his re-election drive.
Mr. Powell has not acknowledged that he cooperated with Mr. Woodward, but the book presents the secretary's reservations in such detail that it leaves little doubt. A spokesman for Mr. Powell said again Sunday that he would not comment on the book, "Plan of Attack."
Critics of Mr. Powell in the hawkish wing of the administration said they were startled by what they saw as his self-serving decision to help fill out a portrait that enhances his reputation as a farsighted analyst, perhaps at the expense of Mr. Bush. Several said the book guaranteed what they expected anyway, that Mr. Powell will not stay as secretary if Mr. Bush is re-elected.
The view expressed Sunday by people in the administration that Mr. Bush comes across as sober-minded and resolute in the book, asking for contingency plans for a war early on but not deciding to wage one until the last minute, saves Mr. Powell from any immediate difficulties that might grow from seeming to betray his confidential relationship to a president who prizes loyalty, several officials said.
"Look, a lot of people have been struck by the degree to which Secretary Powell is using this book as an opportunity — to be fair — to clarify his position on the issues," said an official. "But what this book does is muddy the water internally, which is very unfortunate and unhelpful."
Another official, who like others declined to be identified because of the political sensitivity of their criticism, accused Mr. Powell of having a habit of distancing himself from policies when they go wrong. "It's such a soap opera with him," this official said.
Democrats seized on Mr. Powell's portrayal, saying it would give them ammunition to criticize the administration for going to war without broad international backing or adequate planning for an occupation.
Throughout the day Sunday, Senator John Kerry brought up the Woodward book, mentioning it twice in his interview on "Meet the Press" on NBC and once at an outdoor rally at the University of Miami.
"Here we have a book by a reputable writer," Mr. Kerry told several thousand students at the afternoon campus rally. "We learn that the president even misled members of his own administration."
Asked if material in Mr. Woodward's book would be grist for his party, Jano Cabrera, the spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview: "Absolutely. It's one thing for us to assert it. It's another thing for it to be stated as fact by his secretary of state."
And Steve Murphy, who managed the presidential campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt, said: "The strongest criticism of Bush is that he did not have a plan for the aftermath of the war. And that was exactly what Powell was pointing out to him. He is a credible source. This intensifies the backdrop between Bush and Kerry."
People close to Mr. Powell said Sunday that they had no doubt he would weather any criticism from within over his apparent cooperation with Mr. Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post. Polls show that he is one of the most popular and best-known figures in government. The people close to him note that most people following the situation closely knew that he had misgivings about the war.
"Is the secretary going to be undercut for having been right?" asked an official close to Mr. Powell. "I don't think so. Undercut compared to who? Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? These are people who have some real problems right now. They're not reading Bob Woodward's book. They're reading the dispatches from the field."
Other officials close to Mr. Powell say his strained relations with Mr. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, and Vice President Cheney are common currency among Washington insiders, though they say the suggestion that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Powell are barely on speaking terms is highly exaggerated.
"I don't think there will be much change in his dealings with Cheney and Rumsfeld," said one person close to Mr. Powell. "People already thought it was this bad. It doesn't change things for them to find out that it really was. They know how to deal with each other, and they've been through quite a bit together."
When asked on "Fox News Sunday" about Mr. Woodward's contention that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Powell are so distant on policy matters that they do not talk, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, described the men's relationship as "friendly."
"I can tell you," she said, "I've had lunch on a number of occasions with Vice President Cheney and with Colin Powell, and they are more than on speaking terms. They're friendly."
But another official said Mr. Powell's dealings internally with Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld especially had made life difficult for people inside the administration.
"The day-to-day nattering of the Defense Department trying to take over the business of diplomacy at every level, it's just difficult to be on the inside," said an administration official who defends Mr. Powell's actions. "Every day is difficult. The byplay at the meetings is difficult."
Mr. Powell's standing around the world was less easy to measure this weekend. But a European diplomat said he thought the secretary's standing in Europe especially would only be enhanced because he would be seen as sharing the view of many there that the administration had been overly optimistic about subduing dissidents in Iraq.
For the people long familiar with Mr. Powell's thinking, his misgivings about an American occupation of Iraq, and his insistence on getting full international backing for American actions, goes back many years. So, they note, does his fighting with Mr. Cheney.
For example, Mr. Powell's memoir, "My American Journey," published in 1995 after he retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he had opposed a final push to oust Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf war on the ground that an occupation would provoke a counterinsurgency and criticism among Americans.
In addition, many accounts of the planning for the first gulf war say that Mr. Cheney, then secretary of defense, opposed going to the United Nations or Congress for backing to remove Iraq from Kuwait, fearing that failure would weaken the first President Bush's administration's ability to go to war.
In 2002, Mr. Cheney was openly disdainful of Mr. Powell's insistence on getting approval of the United Nations Security Council before going to war, spreading consternation at the State Department. Mr. Powell won that argument, and President Bush authorized a bid to get a Security Council resolution supporting war.
Mr. Powell's memoir also recalls an exchange in the early 1990's, in which Mr. Powell accused Mr. Cheney — jokingly, he insisted — of being surrounded by "right-wing nuts like you." In the last year, the Woodward book says, Mr. Powell referred privately to the civilian conservatives in the Pentagon loyal to Mr. Cheney as the Gestapo.
The Woodward book also attributes to Mr. Powell the belief that although he had misgivings about going to war, it was his obligation to support the president once Mr. Bush decided to do so.
Mr. Bush told Mr. Woodward that he did not ask the secretary's opinion on whether to go to war because he thought he knew what that opinion would be: "no."
But a senior aide to Mr. Powell asserted this weekend that the secretary was not as opposed to war as some people presume, no matter what the implications in the book.
"The portrait of Powell in the Woodward book is pretty consistent with what everybody knows," the official said. "We were with the president if we had to do this. We set up an exit ramp for Saddam, and he didn't take it. Powell in the end was very comfortable knowing that."
Adam Nagourney contributed reporting from Washington for this article and Jodi Wilgoren from Miami.
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Sunday, April 18, 2004
A TIMELINE OF MISSED OPPORTUNITES TO PREVENT 9/11 ATTACKS
(click to see NY TIMES graphic)
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(click to see NY TIMES graphic)
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Bush dumped the Hart - Rudman's bipartisan commission on national security three year study and report that warned of a 9/11-terrorist attack in March of 2001. The GOP congress dumped the bill to provide more airport security during the Clinton administration. After the 9/11 attacks almost everything in both the commission's report and the airport security bill (pushed by Al Gore) was rushed into passing. When Clinton lobbed a Tomahawk missile at Bin Laden, the GOP congress said he was playing "wag the dog". Richard Clarke outlined how Bush and his administration was only interested in starting a war in Iraq and exploited the attacks to do so.
George Bush and his cabal of neo-cons are the most disgusting bunch of liars and inept leaders to ever steal the White House in the name of the corporate elite they serve and the pious religious fanatics they stroke.
---Sam
April 18, 2004 NY TIMES
Pre-9/11 Files Show Warnings Were More Dire and Persistent
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JIM DWYER
WASHINGTON, April 17 — Early this year, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks played four minutes of a call from Betty Ong, a crew member on American Airlines Flight 11. The power of her call could not have been plainer: in a calm voice, Ms. Ong told her supervisors about the hijacking, the weapons the attackers had used, the locations of their seats.
At first, however, Ms. Ong's reports were greeted skeptically by some officials on the ground. "They did not believe her," said Bob Kerrey, a commission member. "They said, `Are you sure?' They asked her to confirm that it wasn't air-rage. Our people on the ground were not prepared for a hijacking."
For most Americans, the disbelief was the same. The attacks of Sept. 11 seemed to come in a stunning burst from nowhere. But now, after three weeks of extraordinary public hearings and a dozen detailed reports, the lengthy documentary record makes clear that predictions of an attack by Al Qaeda had been communicated directly to the highest levels of the government.
The threat reports were more clear, urgent and persistent than was previously known. Some focused on Al Qaeda's plans to use commercial aircraft as weapons. Others stated that Osama bin Laden was intent on striking on United States soil. Many were passed to the Federal Aviation Administration.
While some of the intelligence went back years, other warnings — including one that Al Qaeda seemed interested in hijacking a plane inside this country — had been delivered to the president on Aug. 6, 2001, just a month before the attacks.
The new information produced by the commission so far has led 6 of its 10 members to say or suggest that the attacks could have been prevented, though there is no consensus on when, how or by whom. The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, has described failures at every level of government, any of which, if avoided, could have altered the outcome. Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat, said, "My conclusion is that it could have been prevented. That was not my conclusion when I went on the commission."
While the commission was created to diagnose mistakes and to recommend reforms, its examination has powerful political resonance. The panel has reviewed the records of two presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush, who is in the midst of a campaign for re-election, said last Sunday that none of the warnings gave any hint of the time, place or date of an assault. "Had I known there was going to be an attack on America I would have moved mountains to stop the attack," he said.
In an intense stretch this month, the commission pried open some of the most closely guarded compartments of government, revealing the flow and details of previously classified information given to two presidents and their senior advisers, and the performance of intelligence and law enforcement officials.
The inquiry has gone beyond the report of a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committee in 2002, which chronicled missteps at the mid-level of bureaucracies. Urged on by a number of families of people killed in the attacks, the Kean commission has used a mix of moral and political leverage to extract presidential communications and testimony. Among the new themes that have fundamentally reshaped the story of the Sept. 11 attacks are:
¶Al Qaeda and its leader, Mr. bin Laden, did not blindside the United States, but were a threat recognized and discussed regularly at the highest levels of government for nearly five years before the attacks, in thousands of reports, often accompanied by urgent warnings from lower-level experts.
¶Presidents Clinton and Bush received regular information about the threat of Al Qaeda and the intention of the bin Laden network to strike inside the United States. Each president made terrorism a stated priority, failed to find a diplomatic solution and viewed military force as a last resort. At the same time, neither grappled with the structural flaws and paralyzing dysfunction that undermined the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., the two agencies on which the nation depended for protection from terrorists. By the end of his second term, Mr. Clinton and the director of the F.B.I., Louis J. Freeh, were barely speaking.
¶Even when the two agencies cooperated, the results were unimpressive. Mr. Kean said that he viewed the reports on the two agencies as indictments. In late August 2001, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, learned that the F.B.I. had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui after he had enrolled in a flight school. Mr. Tenet was given a memorandum titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." But he testified that he took no action and did not tell President Bush about the case.
During the Clinton years, particularly at the National Security Council, the commission has found, there was uncertainty about whether the threat posed by Al Qaeda and Mr. bin Laden justified military action. Much of the debate was provoked by Richard A. Clarke, who led antiterrorism efforts under both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush and argued for aggressive action.
"Former officials, including an N.S.C. staffer working for Mr. Clarke, told us the threat was seen as one that could cause hundreds of casualties, not thousands," according to one interim commission report. "Such differences affect calculations about whether or how to go to war. Even officials who acknowledge a vital threat intellectually may not be ready to act upon such beliefs at great cost or at high risk."
In the first eight months of the Bush administration, the commission found, the president and his advisers received far more information, much of it dire in tone and detailed in content, than had been generally understood.
The most striking came in the Aug. 6 memorandum presented in an intelligence briefing the White House says Mr. Bush requested. Titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," the memorandum was declassified this month under pressure from the commission. After referring to a British tip in 1998 that Islamic fundamentalists wanted to hijack a plane, it went on to warn: "Nevertheless, F.B.I. information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." Mr. Bush has said the briefing did not provide specific details of when and where an attack might take place.
Mr. Kerrey said that Mr. Bush showed "good instincts" by asking for the material, but said the call from Ms. Ong, the flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11 — which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in the day's first attack — showed that the threats and alarms did not get passed down the line.
"I don't see any evidence that our airports were on heightened alert," he said. "A hijacking was not a bolt out of the blue."
The Clinton Response: A Growing Priority, Hamstrung by Process
Throughout President Clinton's eight years in office, law enforcement and intelligence agencies tracked Al Qaeda through a succession of plots in the United States and overseas. The commission found new evidence that counterterrorism became a priority for the Clinton national security team. But the panel said the effort was stymied by bureaucratic miscommunications, diplomatic failures, intelligence lapses and policy miscalculations.
On the intelligence side, the commission discovered confusion about crucial issues. White House aides believed, for example, that President Clinton had authorized actions to kill Mr. bin Laden, but C.I.A. officers thought they were legally permitted to kill him only during an attempt to capture him.
Throughout the 1990's, the panel found, law enforcement and intelligence experts, often in lower-level jobs, repeatedly warned that Mr. bin Laden wanted to strike inside the United States. The threat was plainly stated in documents disclosed by the commission. One, in 1998, was titled "Bin Laden Threatening to Attack U.S. Aircraft," and cited the possibility of a strike using antiaircraft missiles. Another 1998 report, referring to Mr. bin Laden as "UBL," said, "UBL Plans for Reprisals Against U.S. Targets, Possibly in U.S." A 1996 review of a plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific uncovered evidence of the Qaeda interest in crashing a hijacked plane into C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va.
But the C.I.A.'s efforts to thwart Mr. bin Laden's network through covert action were ineffectual, the commission found. The agency's "Issue Station," which was set up in 1996 to hunt down Mr. bin Laden, had a half-dozen chances to attack the Qaeda chief, but each time agency higher-ups balked. A plan to kill him in February 1999 was called off at the last minute because of concerns that he might be with a prince from the United Arab Emirates, regarded as a useful ally in counterterrorism, the commission reported.
President Clinton tried diplomacy, but that too failed. In 1998, Mr. bin Laden issued a public call for any Muslim to kill any American anywhere in the world. That April, Bill Richardson, the United States representative to the United Nations, went to Afghanistan and asked the Taliban government to surrender Mr. bin Laden to the United States.
Simultaneous Qaeda bombings in August 1998 at American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania galvanized talk of aggressive efforts, but brought no tangible results. President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in the Sudan. The missiles hit their intended targets, but neither Mr. bin Laden nor any other terrorist leader was killed.
In December 1998, Mr. Tenet announced in a memorandm to his senior staff at the C.I.A. that they would henceforth be at war with Al Qaeda. "I want no resources or people spared," he wrote.
In practice, the commission concluded, Mr. Tenet's declaration of war, which the C.I.A. director has frequently cited in his public testimony since the attacks, had "little overall effect."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the country's other principal counterterrorism agency, struggled to repackage the tools of an interstate crime-fighting organization against a highly unconventional foreign-based threat to the United States.
One interim panel report described the F.B.I. as a bureaucracy suffocated by outmoded rules and legal barriers that barred criminal investigators from obtaining intelligence data. Agents worked on an aging computer system that kept them from knowing what other agents in their own offices, much less those around the country, were working on. Some F.B.I. analysts hired to assess terror threats were assigned to jobs entering data and answering telephones.
Throughout the 1990's, the bureau focused on investigations of specific terror attacks to bring criminal cases to court. The most successful were handled by its New York office, whose agents were among the most knowledgeable in the world about Al Qaeda.
By late in the decade, the F.B.I. recognized the need to improve its intelligence collection and analysis, but the report said that Mr. Freeh had difficulty reconciling that with its continuing agenda, including the war on drugs. As a result, the bureau's counterterrorism staff was thin. On Sept. 11, 2001, only about 6 percent of the F.B.I.'s agent work force was assigned to terrorism.
In October 2000, two Qaeda suicide bombers in a small boat packed with explosives attacked the Navy destroyer Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 American sailors. President Clinton did not retaliate, but Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, warned his successor, Condoleezza Rice, that "she would be spending more time on terrorism and Al Qaeda than any other issue."
The Bush Review: Alerts, but Breaks in Chain of Command
Warned of the Qaeda threat during the transition, President Bush's national security team started work in March 2001 on a comprehensive strategy to eradicate the terror network. But the effort seemed to plod ahead almost in isolation from the urgent notices by the C.I.A. Most of the threat warnings, but not all, pointed overseas.
At the end of May, Cofer Black, chief of the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism center, told Ms. Rice that the threat level stood at "7 on a scale of 10, as compared to an 8 during the millennium," the period around January 2000. In response, American embassies were warned to take precautions. The State Department warned Americans traveling overseas. The C.I.A. intensified operations to disrupt terror cells around the world.
Mr. Tenet took his terror warnings directly to Mr. Bush. Ms. Rice said that at least 40 meetings between the C.I.A. director and the president dealt "in one way or other with Al Qaeda or the Al Qaeda threat." Mr. Tenet later said "the system was blinking red," adding that no warning indicated that terrorists would fly hijacked commercial aircraft into buildings in the United States.
On July 5, Ms. Rice and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, asked Mr. Clarke to alert top officials of the country's domestic agencies. "Let's make sure they're buttoning down," Ms. Rice said. The F.A.A. issued threat advisories, but neither the agency's top administrator nor Norman Y. Mineta, the secretary of transportation, was aware of the increased threat level, said Jamie S. Gorelick, a commission member, at a hearing last week.
On July 27, Mr. Clarke informed Ms. Rice that the threat reporting had dropped. But White House officials said that Mr. Bush continued to ask about any evidence of a domestic attack. In August, C.I.A. officials prepared a briefing about the possibility of Qaeda operations inside the United States, including the use of aircraft in terror attacks.
The briefing paper was presented to Mr. Bush on Aug. 6 at his Texas ranch. The memorandum, declassified on April 10 by the White House at the commission's request, included some ominous information. It said that Qaeda operatives had been in the United States for years, might be planning an attack in the United States and could be focusing on a building in Lower Manhattan as a target.
Mr. Bush said the Aug. 6 report was not specific enough to order new actions. "I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America at a time and place, an attack. Of course I knew that America was hated by Osama bin Laden. That was obvious. The question was, who was going to attack us, when and where and with what?"
The president noted that the memo said the F.B.I. had 70 investigations under way related to Al Qaeda. In addition, the F.B.I. had sent messages to its field offices urging agents to be vigilant. Thomas J. Pickard, the F.B.I.'s acting director from June to August, said he telephoned top agents to advise them of the threat. But the commission found that most F.B.I. personnel "did not recall a heightened sense of threat from Al Qaeda."
The commission found several previously undisclosed intelligence reports to Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and national security aides dating back to April and May, when the volume of warnings began to increase. Mr. Bush was given briefing papers headlined, "Bin Laden Planning Multiple Operations," "Bin Laden Threats Are Real" and "Bin Laden's Plans Advancing."
In August 2001, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. came as close as the government ever did to detecting anyone connected to the Sept. 11 plot. That month investigators finally made progress in the fractured effort to track down two men, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, who on Sept. 11 were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
The C.I.A. had investigated the pair off and on since they had been seen at a Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000. But they were not placed on a State Department watch list until Aug. 23, after they already were in the United States. Moreover, the C.I.A. failed to tell the F.B.I.'s primary investigators on the Cole case of a key connection between the two men and a Cole suspect until after Sept. 11. "No one apparently felt they needed to inform higher level of management in either the F.B.I. or C.I.A. about the case," one commission report said.
In mid-August, after the arrest of Mr. Moussaoui in Minneapolis, the commission disclosed, Mr. Tenet and his top deputies were sent a briefing paper labeled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." But they took no action on the report.
The commission found several missed opportunities in the Moussaoui investigation that might have detected his connection to a Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, that planned the Sept. 11 attacks. "A maximum U.S. effort to investigate Moussaoui could conceivably have unearthed his connections to the Hamburg cell," one commission report said. The report added that publicity about Mr. Moussaoui's arrest "might have disrupted the plot. But such an effort would have been a race against time."
It was not until Sept. 10 that Mr. Bush's national security aides approved a three-phase strategy to eliminate Al Qaeda. The plan, which was to unfold over three to five years, envisioned a mission to the Taliban in Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was based; increased diplomatic pressure; and covert action. Military strikes might be used, but only if all other means failed.
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George Bush and his cabal of neo-cons are the most disgusting bunch of liars and inept leaders to ever steal the White House in the name of the corporate elite they serve and the pious religious fanatics they stroke.
---Sam
April 18, 2004 NY TIMES
Pre-9/11 Files Show Warnings Were More Dire and Persistent
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JIM DWYER
WASHINGTON, April 17 — Early this year, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks played four minutes of a call from Betty Ong, a crew member on American Airlines Flight 11. The power of her call could not have been plainer: in a calm voice, Ms. Ong told her supervisors about the hijacking, the weapons the attackers had used, the locations of their seats.
At first, however, Ms. Ong's reports were greeted skeptically by some officials on the ground. "They did not believe her," said Bob Kerrey, a commission member. "They said, `Are you sure?' They asked her to confirm that it wasn't air-rage. Our people on the ground were not prepared for a hijacking."
For most Americans, the disbelief was the same. The attacks of Sept. 11 seemed to come in a stunning burst from nowhere. But now, after three weeks of extraordinary public hearings and a dozen detailed reports, the lengthy documentary record makes clear that predictions of an attack by Al Qaeda had been communicated directly to the highest levels of the government.
The threat reports were more clear, urgent and persistent than was previously known. Some focused on Al Qaeda's plans to use commercial aircraft as weapons. Others stated that Osama bin Laden was intent on striking on United States soil. Many were passed to the Federal Aviation Administration.
While some of the intelligence went back years, other warnings — including one that Al Qaeda seemed interested in hijacking a plane inside this country — had been delivered to the president on Aug. 6, 2001, just a month before the attacks.
The new information produced by the commission so far has led 6 of its 10 members to say or suggest that the attacks could have been prevented, though there is no consensus on when, how or by whom. The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, has described failures at every level of government, any of which, if avoided, could have altered the outcome. Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat, said, "My conclusion is that it could have been prevented. That was not my conclusion when I went on the commission."
While the commission was created to diagnose mistakes and to recommend reforms, its examination has powerful political resonance. The panel has reviewed the records of two presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush, who is in the midst of a campaign for re-election, said last Sunday that none of the warnings gave any hint of the time, place or date of an assault. "Had I known there was going to be an attack on America I would have moved mountains to stop the attack," he said.
In an intense stretch this month, the commission pried open some of the most closely guarded compartments of government, revealing the flow and details of previously classified information given to two presidents and their senior advisers, and the performance of intelligence and law enforcement officials.
The inquiry has gone beyond the report of a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committee in 2002, which chronicled missteps at the mid-level of bureaucracies. Urged on by a number of families of people killed in the attacks, the Kean commission has used a mix of moral and political leverage to extract presidential communications and testimony. Among the new themes that have fundamentally reshaped the story of the Sept. 11 attacks are:
¶Al Qaeda and its leader, Mr. bin Laden, did not blindside the United States, but were a threat recognized and discussed regularly at the highest levels of government for nearly five years before the attacks, in thousands of reports, often accompanied by urgent warnings from lower-level experts.
¶Presidents Clinton and Bush received regular information about the threat of Al Qaeda and the intention of the bin Laden network to strike inside the United States. Each president made terrorism a stated priority, failed to find a diplomatic solution and viewed military force as a last resort. At the same time, neither grappled with the structural flaws and paralyzing dysfunction that undermined the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., the two agencies on which the nation depended for protection from terrorists. By the end of his second term, Mr. Clinton and the director of the F.B.I., Louis J. Freeh, were barely speaking.
¶Even when the two agencies cooperated, the results were unimpressive. Mr. Kean said that he viewed the reports on the two agencies as indictments. In late August 2001, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, learned that the F.B.I. had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui after he had enrolled in a flight school. Mr. Tenet was given a memorandum titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." But he testified that he took no action and did not tell President Bush about the case.
During the Clinton years, particularly at the National Security Council, the commission has found, there was uncertainty about whether the threat posed by Al Qaeda and Mr. bin Laden justified military action. Much of the debate was provoked by Richard A. Clarke, who led antiterrorism efforts under both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush and argued for aggressive action.
"Former officials, including an N.S.C. staffer working for Mr. Clarke, told us the threat was seen as one that could cause hundreds of casualties, not thousands," according to one interim commission report. "Such differences affect calculations about whether or how to go to war. Even officials who acknowledge a vital threat intellectually may not be ready to act upon such beliefs at great cost or at high risk."
In the first eight months of the Bush administration, the commission found, the president and his advisers received far more information, much of it dire in tone and detailed in content, than had been generally understood.
The most striking came in the Aug. 6 memorandum presented in an intelligence briefing the White House says Mr. Bush requested. Titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," the memorandum was declassified this month under pressure from the commission. After referring to a British tip in 1998 that Islamic fundamentalists wanted to hijack a plane, it went on to warn: "Nevertheless, F.B.I. information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." Mr. Bush has said the briefing did not provide specific details of when and where an attack might take place.
Mr. Kerrey said that Mr. Bush showed "good instincts" by asking for the material, but said the call from Ms. Ong, the flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11 — which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in the day's first attack — showed that the threats and alarms did not get passed down the line.
"I don't see any evidence that our airports were on heightened alert," he said. "A hijacking was not a bolt out of the blue."
The Clinton Response: A Growing Priority, Hamstrung by Process
Throughout President Clinton's eight years in office, law enforcement and intelligence agencies tracked Al Qaeda through a succession of plots in the United States and overseas. The commission found new evidence that counterterrorism became a priority for the Clinton national security team. But the panel said the effort was stymied by bureaucratic miscommunications, diplomatic failures, intelligence lapses and policy miscalculations.
On the intelligence side, the commission discovered confusion about crucial issues. White House aides believed, for example, that President Clinton had authorized actions to kill Mr. bin Laden, but C.I.A. officers thought they were legally permitted to kill him only during an attempt to capture him.
Throughout the 1990's, the panel found, law enforcement and intelligence experts, often in lower-level jobs, repeatedly warned that Mr. bin Laden wanted to strike inside the United States. The threat was plainly stated in documents disclosed by the commission. One, in 1998, was titled "Bin Laden Threatening to Attack U.S. Aircraft," and cited the possibility of a strike using antiaircraft missiles. Another 1998 report, referring to Mr. bin Laden as "UBL," said, "UBL Plans for Reprisals Against U.S. Targets, Possibly in U.S." A 1996 review of a plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific uncovered evidence of the Qaeda interest in crashing a hijacked plane into C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va.
But the C.I.A.'s efforts to thwart Mr. bin Laden's network through covert action were ineffectual, the commission found. The agency's "Issue Station," which was set up in 1996 to hunt down Mr. bin Laden, had a half-dozen chances to attack the Qaeda chief, but each time agency higher-ups balked. A plan to kill him in February 1999 was called off at the last minute because of concerns that he might be with a prince from the United Arab Emirates, regarded as a useful ally in counterterrorism, the commission reported.
President Clinton tried diplomacy, but that too failed. In 1998, Mr. bin Laden issued a public call for any Muslim to kill any American anywhere in the world. That April, Bill Richardson, the United States representative to the United Nations, went to Afghanistan and asked the Taliban government to surrender Mr. bin Laden to the United States.
Simultaneous Qaeda bombings in August 1998 at American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania galvanized talk of aggressive efforts, but brought no tangible results. President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in the Sudan. The missiles hit their intended targets, but neither Mr. bin Laden nor any other terrorist leader was killed.
In December 1998, Mr. Tenet announced in a memorandm to his senior staff at the C.I.A. that they would henceforth be at war with Al Qaeda. "I want no resources or people spared," he wrote.
In practice, the commission concluded, Mr. Tenet's declaration of war, which the C.I.A. director has frequently cited in his public testimony since the attacks, had "little overall effect."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the country's other principal counterterrorism agency, struggled to repackage the tools of an interstate crime-fighting organization against a highly unconventional foreign-based threat to the United States.
One interim panel report described the F.B.I. as a bureaucracy suffocated by outmoded rules and legal barriers that barred criminal investigators from obtaining intelligence data. Agents worked on an aging computer system that kept them from knowing what other agents in their own offices, much less those around the country, were working on. Some F.B.I. analysts hired to assess terror threats were assigned to jobs entering data and answering telephones.
Throughout the 1990's, the bureau focused on investigations of specific terror attacks to bring criminal cases to court. The most successful were handled by its New York office, whose agents were among the most knowledgeable in the world about Al Qaeda.
By late in the decade, the F.B.I. recognized the need to improve its intelligence collection and analysis, but the report said that Mr. Freeh had difficulty reconciling that with its continuing agenda, including the war on drugs. As a result, the bureau's counterterrorism staff was thin. On Sept. 11, 2001, only about 6 percent of the F.B.I.'s agent work force was assigned to terrorism.
In October 2000, two Qaeda suicide bombers in a small boat packed with explosives attacked the Navy destroyer Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 American sailors. President Clinton did not retaliate, but Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, warned his successor, Condoleezza Rice, that "she would be spending more time on terrorism and Al Qaeda than any other issue."
The Bush Review: Alerts, but Breaks in Chain of Command
Warned of the Qaeda threat during the transition, President Bush's national security team started work in March 2001 on a comprehensive strategy to eradicate the terror network. But the effort seemed to plod ahead almost in isolation from the urgent notices by the C.I.A. Most of the threat warnings, but not all, pointed overseas.
At the end of May, Cofer Black, chief of the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism center, told Ms. Rice that the threat level stood at "7 on a scale of 10, as compared to an 8 during the millennium," the period around January 2000. In response, American embassies were warned to take precautions. The State Department warned Americans traveling overseas. The C.I.A. intensified operations to disrupt terror cells around the world.
Mr. Tenet took his terror warnings directly to Mr. Bush. Ms. Rice said that at least 40 meetings between the C.I.A. director and the president dealt "in one way or other with Al Qaeda or the Al Qaeda threat." Mr. Tenet later said "the system was blinking red," adding that no warning indicated that terrorists would fly hijacked commercial aircraft into buildings in the United States.
On July 5, Ms. Rice and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, asked Mr. Clarke to alert top officials of the country's domestic agencies. "Let's make sure they're buttoning down," Ms. Rice said. The F.A.A. issued threat advisories, but neither the agency's top administrator nor Norman Y. Mineta, the secretary of transportation, was aware of the increased threat level, said Jamie S. Gorelick, a commission member, at a hearing last week.
On July 27, Mr. Clarke informed Ms. Rice that the threat reporting had dropped. But White House officials said that Mr. Bush continued to ask about any evidence of a domestic attack. In August, C.I.A. officials prepared a briefing about the possibility of Qaeda operations inside the United States, including the use of aircraft in terror attacks.
The briefing paper was presented to Mr. Bush on Aug. 6 at his Texas ranch. The memorandum, declassified on April 10 by the White House at the commission's request, included some ominous information. It said that Qaeda operatives had been in the United States for years, might be planning an attack in the United States and could be focusing on a building in Lower Manhattan as a target.
Mr. Bush said the Aug. 6 report was not specific enough to order new actions. "I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America at a time and place, an attack. Of course I knew that America was hated by Osama bin Laden. That was obvious. The question was, who was going to attack us, when and where and with what?"
The president noted that the memo said the F.B.I. had 70 investigations under way related to Al Qaeda. In addition, the F.B.I. had sent messages to its field offices urging agents to be vigilant. Thomas J. Pickard, the F.B.I.'s acting director from June to August, said he telephoned top agents to advise them of the threat. But the commission found that most F.B.I. personnel "did not recall a heightened sense of threat from Al Qaeda."
The commission found several previously undisclosed intelligence reports to Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and national security aides dating back to April and May, when the volume of warnings began to increase. Mr. Bush was given briefing papers headlined, "Bin Laden Planning Multiple Operations," "Bin Laden Threats Are Real" and "Bin Laden's Plans Advancing."
In August 2001, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. came as close as the government ever did to detecting anyone connected to the Sept. 11 plot. That month investigators finally made progress in the fractured effort to track down two men, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, who on Sept. 11 were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
The C.I.A. had investigated the pair off and on since they had been seen at a Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000. But they were not placed on a State Department watch list until Aug. 23, after they already were in the United States. Moreover, the C.I.A. failed to tell the F.B.I.'s primary investigators on the Cole case of a key connection between the two men and a Cole suspect until after Sept. 11. "No one apparently felt they needed to inform higher level of management in either the F.B.I. or C.I.A. about the case," one commission report said.
In mid-August, after the arrest of Mr. Moussaoui in Minneapolis, the commission disclosed, Mr. Tenet and his top deputies were sent a briefing paper labeled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." But they took no action on the report.
The commission found several missed opportunities in the Moussaoui investigation that might have detected his connection to a Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, that planned the Sept. 11 attacks. "A maximum U.S. effort to investigate Moussaoui could conceivably have unearthed his connections to the Hamburg cell," one commission report said. The report added that publicity about Mr. Moussaoui's arrest "might have disrupted the plot. But such an effort would have been a race against time."
It was not until Sept. 10 that Mr. Bush's national security aides approved a three-phase strategy to eliminate Al Qaeda. The plan, which was to unfold over three to five years, envisioned a mission to the Taliban in Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was based; increased diplomatic pressure; and covert action. Military strikes might be used, but only if all other means failed.
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