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Saturday, September 11, 2004

Asleep at the Wheel
By Bill Moyers, NOW with Bill Moyers
www.alternet.org/story/19839/
It has taken three years for the details of the terrorist plot of 9/11 to emerge. The fateful turns that led to the attacks have finally entered the public discourse. Their lessons, however, have yet to be learned.
The first lesson is that the highest officials in government did not want us to know the truth.
They already had the story they wanted Americans to believe: Nearly 3,000 people had died, we were assured, because the terrorists turned our liberties against us, had brazenly exploited our open society. According to this official view, the atrocities were inevitable, the plot so diabolical and its execution so precise that only a superhero could have prevented it.
It sounded right. For the American people, the terror seemed to have fallen out of that near-perfect September sky, out of the clear blue.
We now know otherwise. The report of the 9/11 Commission lays the story bare in exhaustive, forensic detail:
That Condoleezza Rice in the White House press room told reporters May 16, 2002: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, taken another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."
That George Tenet, in testimony before Congress, countered Rice's claim: "The documents we've provided show some 12 reports spread over seven years which pertain to possible use of aircraft as terrorist weapons. We disseminated those reports to the appropriate agencies, such as the FAA, the Department of Transportation, and the FBI as they came in."
That the CIA in late 1999 had identified one of the future hijackers, Khalid al Mihdhar, tracked him and a companion to Malaysia, obtained a photocopy of his Saudi passport, learned he had a U.S. visa valid until April 2000, obtained photographs of him and his associates, recognized that "something more nefarious [was] afoot," and then promptly lost Mihdhar, and his traveling partner and fellow future hijacker, Nawaf al Hazmi, in Thailand.
That Mihdhar and Hazmi arrived in Los Angeles aboard a United Airlines flight on Jan 15, 2000.
That Mihdhar was, according to a 9/11 Commission staff report, "a known al Qaeda operative at the time."
That Mihdhar and Hazmi lived openly in San Diego, obtained California drivers' licenses in their own names, even rooming for a time with an FBI informant.
Even when the CIA learned of Mihdhar and Hazmi's arrival, their names were not added to a terror watchlist until August 24, 2001.
That even today, after three years of intensive FBI investigation, the 9/11 Staff conceded an "inability to ascertain the activities of Hazmi and Mihdhar during their first two weeks in the United States...."
That FBI director Robert Mueller said, "They gave no hint to those around what they were about. They came lawfully. They lived lawfully. They trained lawfully."
That the staff of the 9/11 Commission endeavored "to dispel the myth that [the hijackers'] entry into the United States was 'clean and legal.'"
"That all 19 of the still-existing hijacker [visa] applications were incomplete in some way..."
That the hijackers cleared U.S Customs a total of 33 times over 21 months through 9 airports.
Ziad Jarrah, one of the 4 pilots, entered the U.S. a total of seven times between May 2000 and August 2001.
That "in all, [the hijackers] had 25 contacts with consular officers and 43 contacts with immigration and customs authorities."
That Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, "KSM," the mastermind of the terror plot, used "a travel facilitator" to acquire a U.S. visa on July 23, 2001 in Saudi Arabia – even though he had been indicted in the Southern District of NY in 1996.
That Mohammed Atta was readmitted to the US on January 10, 2001 – even though he had overstayed his previous visa by a month.
That even when Atta was referred for further, "secondary inspection" at Customs, "Atta's secondary inspector misjudged him as a tourist, even though Atta presented him with a student/school form as a basis for entry."
That "in late June, 2001, when intelligence indicated that al Qaeda was planning a major attack against U.S. interests in the near future, the Visa Express Program in Saudi Arabia was expanded to include all applicants in Saudi Arabia."
That, "according to the GAO, consular officers in Riyadh refused .15 percent of Saudi citizen visa applications during the period from September 11, 2000 to April 30, 2001."
That U.S. visa policy in Saudi Arabia "derived from several sources"...including "common interests" that "resulted in what one senior consular official serving in Saudi Arabia described as 'a culture in our mission in Saudi Arabia to be as accommodating as we possibly could.'"
That when the 9/11 Commission staff "asked consular officials whether they felt pressure from their superiors or others to issue visas, they answered that pressure was applied from several sources, including the U.S. ambassador, Saudi government officials or businesspeople, and members of the U.S. Congress."
That "al Qaeda's senior leadership" stopped using a satellite phone, and the NSA lost an effective avenue of surveillance, "almost immediately after a leak to the Washington Times" in August 1998 – just after the Clinton administration's failed strike on his Afghan camp.
That on 9/11 "the Secretary of Defense did not enter the chain of command until the morning's key events were over."
That at 10:39 am on 9/11, Vice-President Cheney informed the Secretary of Defense that "...it's my understanding they've already taken a couple of aircraft out."
That "NORAD and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11th, 2001. They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never before encountered and had never trained to meet."
Then on page 265 the final report of the Commission concludes that the terrorists "exploited deep institutional failings within our government."
That is not the whole truth. What are institutions if not the lengthened influence of individuals? "The system failed" is the catchphrase now in vogue in Washington. Critics and fans alike of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush still rely on this hollow analysis. But "the system" is no mindless mechanism operating independently of the men and women individuals with names, power, and obligations – who are charged with making it work. Before "the system" can fail, they must fail.
The Commissioners avoided blaming any government officials, past or present, for the failure to prevent the attacks. They maintain that their job was not to assign individual blame, but provide the most complete and frank account of the decisive events surrounding the attack. To that end, they succeeded.
But to stop there is to stop short. Read the final report of the Commission carefully – connect the dots – and a fuller pattern emerges: Key government officials failed the system, and they failed the American people.
Judges and social workers talk of the "circle of accountability." The 9/11 Commission was indeed an historic undertaking. Yet in spreading the blame as broadly as it possibly could, the Commissioners, rather than enlarging that circle, have all but closed it. Americans deserve better than to allow accountability to be passed off as a mere abstraction; they should know where the buck stops. The nearly 3,000 men and women who died on 9/11 deserve better, too. It will not bring them back to hold accountable the particular officials in high office who could have acted and did not. But it will assure that they did not die in vain.
© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/19839/

News from across the Pond...the Guardian

Allies 'duped into waging war'
Press Association Saturday September 11, 2004 5:33 PM
One of al Qaida's aims in its September 11 attacks on the US three years ago was to draw the west into military conflict on Arab soil, according to Prime Minister Tony Blair's former envoy to Iraq.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock's comments appeared to give some credence to the argument of critics of the Iraq War that the US and UK played into al Qaida's hands by launching last year's invasion.
Opponents of the war warned that it would act as a recruiting sergeant for terror chief Osama bin Laden, by appearing to confirm his claims that the West was engaged in a war on Islam, as well as providing a new field of battle for his militants.
Sir Jeremy said the allies had "suffered the consequences" in Iraq of al Qaida's determination to exploit the opportunities presented by a war on Arab soil.
He said that the West could not defeat bin Laden's terror network by military means alone, but must adopt policies to reduce resentment in the Muslim world.
If the allies failed to help Iraq put an end to its current instability, they would be left "worse off than when we started", he warned.
Sir Jeremy, who was at the centre of events in the run-up to last year's war as UK ambassador to the United Nations, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think it was one of the objectives of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaida leadership originally to draw America into conflict on Arab soil as close to Saudi Arabia as possible."
Asked if this meant the allies had in fact played into al Qaida's hands, he responded: "To some extent, we are suffering the consequences of that."
Iraq must not be allowed to become a failed state, with chaotic conditions providing a breeding ground for terrorism, he warned.
"Iraq is not yet a failed state," said Sir Jeremy. "We are in a transition period, which has got considerable difficulties. But if Iraq ends up as a failed state and we leave it in that state, then we are worse off than when we started."


© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2004, All Rights Reserved.
Vote for Bush or Die
by JUDD LEGUM & DAVID SIROTA, The Nation
[from the September 27, 2004 issue]
On August 11, John Kerry criticized the Bush Administration for blocking a bipartisan plan to give seniors access to lower-priced prescription drugs from Canada. With almost 80 percent of Medicare recipients supporting Kerry's position, the Bush campaign was faced with the prospect of defending a politically unpopular position.
That same day, in an interview with the Associated Press, FDA Acting Commissioner Lester Crawford said terrorist "cues from chatter" led him to believe Al Qaeda may try to attack Americans by contaminating imported prescription drugs. Crawford refused to provide any details to substantiate his claims.
Asked about Crawford's comments, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security was forced to concede, "We have no specific information now about any Al Qaeda threats to our food or drug supply." The Administration had brazenly used Americans' justifiable fears of a future terrorist attack to parry a routine criticism of its policies.
How did it come to this?
Crawford's comments were the latest iteration of a political strategy--hatched in the days after 9/11--that has spiraled out of control. What started as an effort to leverage early support for the President on national security issues has expanded into the politicization of our country's safety and security infrastructure. That process has damaged the credibility of the federal government and made all Americans less secure.
Revving the Engines
In the weeks following 9/11, President Bush's popularity--which was languishing at around 50 percent in August 2001--soared to 90 percent. By mid-October 2001, support for Republicans in Congress--which was at just 37 percent in August--had shot up thirty points. After Republicans lost most major 2001 gubernatorial races to Democrats, GOP strategists realized that the key to electoral success was tapping into the post-9/11 fear of terrorism and focusing on security issues.
On January 19, 2002--just nineteen weeks after the 9/11 attacks--Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, told a high-level gathering at the Republican National Committee to "go to the country" and tell the American people they can "trust the Republican Party to do a better job of...protecting America." Soon afterward, Bush authorized the Republican Party to sell photographs of himself aboard Air Force One, looking concerned and talking on a red telephone to the Vice President on 9/11.
As the 2002 midterm elections neared, White House political director Ken Mehlman developed a secret PowerPoint presentation--which was made public after being dropped in a park--urging Republican candidates to highlight fears of future terrorist attacks. In the most outrageous example, Georgia Senate candidate Saxby Chambliss, who had avoided service in Vietnam, ran campaign commercials drawing parallels between triple amputee Vietnam War veteran Max Cleland and Osama bin Laden.
President Bush reinforced these tactics by barnstorming the country--he made seventeen appearances in the last week of the campaign alone--emphasizing the threat posed by Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and impugning the security credentials of Democrats. Campaigning in New Jersey in late September, Bush claimed Democrats in the Senate were "not interested in the security of the American people."
The strategy was successful, and on Election Day 2002, Republicans made significant gains in the House and Senate.
Getting Up to Speed
In January 2003, eager to repeat their success, the Republicans decided to hold their convention in New York City in late August and early September of 2004--the latest date a convention has ever been held. The move insured that Ground Zero would be their backdrop on the eve of the three-year anniversary of 9/11.
And it did not stop there. The Bush team's first political ads featured grisly images of firefighters carrying flag-draped coffins out of the rubble of the World Trade Center. But the spots backfired after firefighters and 9/11 victims' families accused the campaign of seeking to exploit the attacks for political gain.
Republicans were forced to adopt alternative tactics, this time through mythmaking. In the spring, Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma told a group of Republicans that "if George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election." He was echoed by the right-wing media. One nationally syndicated columnist wrote, "Which candidate does our enemy want to lose? George W. Bush." Fox News pundit Monica Crowley similarly observed, "America's adversaries want to see John Kerry elected." Later that month, Republican political operatives commissioned an "independent" poll that purported to find that "60 percent of registered voters believed that terrorists would support John Kerry in this year's presidential elections." The poll was so suspect that only the right-wing media reported it. But it helped advance the story.
By May, CNN Justice Department correspondent Kelli Arena "reported" that there was "some speculation that Al Qaeda believes it has a better chance of winning in Iraq if John Kerry is in the White House."
The Bush campaign, meanwhile, sought to bolster this speculation with a new barrage of campaign advertisements distorting Kerry's voting record on defense and intelligence issues. All this despite Bush's January 2002 promise that he had "no ambition whatsoever to use the war [on 'terrorism'] as a political issue."
But the images, partisan attacks and myths were not improving the President's poll numbers fast enough to counterbalance damage brought on by violence in Iraq and a sluggish economy. On May 16, a new Gallup poll showed the President's job-approval rating had fallen to 46 percent. Days later, as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was taking its toll on the White House, the media uncovered new information suggesting that responsibility for the scandal reached to top Administration officials.
In short, more was needed.
Overdrive
This is when mounting evidence began to indicate that the timing and substance of the government's terror warnings were being driven, in part, by political considerations.
On May 26 Attorney General John Ashcroft held a dramatic press conference announcing that Al Qaeda was "almost ready to attack the United States" and had the "specific intention to hit the United States hard." But Ashcroft did not provide any new or specific information, the Homeland Security Department did not raise the terrorism threat alert level, and a senior Administration official told the New York Times that there was "no real new intelligence" to substantiate the warning.
In July, two days after Kerry selected John Edwards as his running mate, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge held a press conference of his own to say that "Al Qaeda is moving forward with its plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States." Again, he did not elaborate on what was new about his statement and was forced to admit, "We lack precise knowledge about time, place and method of attack."
That same month, The New Republic reported that top Pakistani security officials were being pressured by the Bush Administration to announce the capture of high-value terrorist targets during the Democratic National Convention. The White House responded with a standard denial, and the rest of the media ultimately brushed it off as an uncorroborated conspiracy theory.
But on July 29, just hours before Kerry's keynote address, Pakistan announced the capture of Al Qaeda suspect Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. Curiously, he had been apprehended five days earlier. Even more suspect: The announcement was made at midnight Pakistani time, when most Pakistanis were asleep, but at the perfect time to coincide with America's prime-time television news schedule.
A few days later--during the period when attention to nominee Kerry would traditionally lead to a bounce in popularity--Ridge announced that he was raising the threat level in New York City, Northern New Jersey and the District of Columbia to "Code Orange." He claimed the threat level was being raised because of "new and unusually specific information about where Al Qaeda would like to attack." Undermining his claim that "we don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," he wove a campaign-style endorsement of the President into his warning: "We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the President's leadership in the war against terror," Ridge declared just a few breaths after invoking frightening images of "explosives," "weapons of mass destruction" and "biological pathogens."
But Ridge neglected to mention that most of the information was at least three years old, much of it surveillance data that had been collected before 9/11. Ridge also conceded that New York City--which was already at "Code Orange" before his announcement--would not raise its level of alert.
A week later the right-wing media did its best to deflect the embarrassment by once again dredging up the myth that a vote against Bush is a vote for terrorists. The conservative Washington Times ran a front-page story quoting Bush officials as saying that in the upcoming election, "the view of Al Qaeda is 'anybody but Bush.'" Again, they provided no proof to back up the claim.
Speaking to voters in Iowa on September 7, Cheney expressed what is now the very public message of the Bush campaign: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again. And we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating." In other words, vote for us or you'll die.
The double talk and political opportunism by the Administration on these issues go beyond poor taste. By sending conflicting messages to the public, Administration officials create confusion about what actually poses a threat. Beyond that, each unnecessary warning produces "threat fatigue"--the tendency to ignore warnings when they are repeated--in the American public. That means Americans will become less receptive to truly urgent terrorism warnings when they arise. And if recent polling is any indication, this erosion in public confidence is already occurring. A new survey by Columbia University found that 59 percent of those polled would not evacuate their town immediately if directed to do so by the government.
This is not to imply that the threat of terrorism isn't real. There is no reason to doubt the staff statement of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission that Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are "actively striving to attack the United States and inflict mass casualties." That means the government has a solemn obligation to do whatever is required to protect the American people from this threat.
But there are now justifiable doubts about what is actually dictating our government's actions. Today critical decisions appear to be guided by political operatives instead of terrorism experts. And in the long run, that has weakened national security--the very issue Republicans want so desperately to call their own.

Friday, September 10, 2004


You decide...
Blondie
Top Ten Censored Stories of 2003-2004
By Deanna Zandt and Evan Derkacz, AlterNet

In Minot, N.D., in 2002, a train derailed at 1:30am spilling 200,000 gallons of deadly gas. All six commercial radio stations in the area were owned by Clear Channel, and all six were fully automated. As a result, the stations weren't switched over to the emergency broadcasting frequency and the news wasn't properly disseminated to the local population. One man who tried to get in his car died; others suffered burns or were partially blinded. It was an hour and a half before officials could finally get a hold of anyone at the station to broadcast the emergency alert.
This incident, reported last year as one of Project Censored's top censored stories of 2002-2003, offers a window into the larger problem of media consolidation wherein corporations, eager to cut costs, and loathe to disturb the interests of those in power, have already eaten up most of the media landscape. In the process they've neglected some of the most crucial information the American citizenry needs in order for our democracy to survive. Though an unprecedented number of concerned citizens spoke out against the recent attempt by the FCC to further deregulate the media, we've already seen the number of bold, independent-minded, Watergate-type stories diminish in frequency with each passing year.
On a more personal level, how often do you find yourself sitting at dinner, on the bus, at work across from your pro-Bush uncle, acquaintance, or boss, referring to a story that didn't get the coverage it warranted? You frantically Google it but more often than not, if you find it at all, it's far too late to make your point. And for most Americans, the simple fact that it didn't make the nightly news is evidence of its dubiousness.
Each year, in response to these concerns, Project Censored creates a list of its
top "censored" stories of the year. Though it might more accurately be called "Project Not-Mentioned-Enough," the list does provide crucial facts and perspectives that every citizen ought to know before stepping into a voting booth. It might also help with those friendly debates if you remember to pass it around to acquaintances, bosses and your Republican uncle.
1. Wealth inequality in 21st century threatens economy and democracy.
The corporate media's coverage of "the economy" is usually restricted to the rolling hills of the stock market, fluctuating rates of "consumer spending," or corporations' quarterly profit reports. Seldom is there any discussion of the distribution of these indicators of the national purse. Were the gap between the rich and poor to be a part of the discussion, the nightly news' numbers would tell the story of an America few would recognize.
Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University points out that while wealth inequality ("wealth" is defined as assets and income minus debt) fell from 1929 through 1976 or so, it has risen sharply since then. As it stood in 1998, the wealthiest 5% of this nation owned more (59%) than the other 95% put together. And that's well before Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy were even a glimmer in the neoconservative eye. In fact, when compared to the egalitarian promised land of Sweden, up until the early 1970s the U.S. had a lower wealth inequality.
Break it down along "racial" lines and the inequality bloats. Black families, while earning 60% of what white families earn, possess only 18% of the wealth.
And should you not have any ethical problems with this inequality, recent studies provide reasons for even number-crunchers to worry. Wolff explains: "There is now a lot of evidence, based on cross-national comparisons of inequality and economic growth, that more unequal societies actually have lower rates of economic growth." It boils down to this: Inequality leads to poor schooling for the majority who in turn mature into a less capable, less ambitious, and less talented pool of workers than many other nations' kids whose systems provide an adequate education to all.
This is a recent and reversible phenomenon, according to David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times reporter. He comments on the media's mistaken treatment of "think tanks" as intellectual institutions instead of as "ideological marketing organizations" that "favor the super-rich."
Johnston challenges another cherished media myth: "Most Americans believe we take from people at the top to benefit those below. And what I show in
(my) book from the data is that's not the case. Our national myth – and I use that in the classic sense of the word "myth" – is wrong. We take from people who make $30,000 to $500,000 to give relief to those, who make millions, or tens and hundreds of millions of dollars a year."
This trend is mirrored across the globe where one in six people lives in slums. UN-habitat estimates that, if governments don't work to remedy the situation, "a third of the world's population will be slum dwellers within 30 years... unplanned, unsanitary settlements threaten both political and fiscal stability within third world countries, where urban slums are growing faster than expected." Or: While we fight the "war on terror" we are neglecting a much greater threat to world stability; poverty.

MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, May 2003, Vol. 24, No. 5 Title: "The Wealth Divide" (An interview with Edward Wolff) Author: Robert Weissman
BUZZFLASH, March 26 and 29, 2004
Title: "A Buzzflash Interview, Parts I & II" (with David Cay Johnston) Author: Buzzflash Staff
LONDON GUARDIAN, October 4, 2003
Title: "Every third person will be a slum dweller within 30 years, UN agency warns" Author: John Vidal
MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, July/August, 2003

Top Ten Censored Stories of 2003-2004
By Deanna Zandt and Evan Derkacz, AlterNet

In Minot, N.D., in 2002, a train derailed at 1:30am spilling 200,000 gallons of deadly gas. All six commercial radio stations in the area were owned by Clear Channel, and all six were fully automated. As a result, the stations weren't switched over to the emergency broadcasting frequency and the news wasn't properly disseminated to the local population. One man who tried to get in his car died; others suffered burns or were partially blinded. It was an hour and a half before officials could finally get a hold of anyone at the station to broadcast the emergency alert.
This incident, reported last year as one of Project Censored's top censored stories of 2002-2003, offers a window into the larger problem of media consolidation wherein corporations, eager to cut costs, and loathe to disturb the interests of those in power, have already eaten up most of the media landscape. In the process they've neglected some of the most crucial information the American citizenry needs in order for our democracy to survive. Though an unprecedented number of concerned citizens spoke out against the recent attempt by the FCC to further deregulate the media, we've already seen the number of bold, independent-minded, Watergate-type stories diminish in frequency with each passing year.
On a more personal level, how often do you find yourself sitting at dinner, on the bus, at work across from your pro-Bush uncle, acquaintance, or boss, referring to a story that didn't get the coverage it warranted? You frantically Google it but more often than not, if you find it at all, it's far too late to make your point. And for most Americans, the simple fact that it didn't make the nightly news is evidence of its dubiousness.
Each year, in response to these concerns, Project Censored creates a list of its
top "censored" stories of the year. Though it might more accurately be called "Project Not-Mentioned-Enough," the list does provide crucial facts and perspectives that every citizen ought to know before stepping into a voting booth. It might also help with those friendly debates if you remember to pass it around to acquaintances, bosses and your Republican uncle.
1. Wealth inequality in 21st century threatens economy and democracy.
The corporate media's coverage of "the economy" is usually restricted to the rolling hills of the stock market, fluctuating rates of "consumer spending," or corporations' quarterly profit reports. Seldom is there any discussion of the distribution of these indicators of the national purse. Were the gap between the rich and poor to be a part of the discussion, the nightly news' numbers would tell the story of an America few would recognize.
Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University points out that while wealth inequality ("wealth" is defined as assets and income minus debt) fell from 1929 through 1976 or so, it has risen sharply since then. As it stood in 1998, the wealthiest 5% of this nation owned more (59%) than the other 95% put together. And that's well before Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy were even a glimmer in the neoconservative eye. In fact, when compared to the egalitarian promised land of Sweden, up until the early 1970s the U.S. had a lower wealth inequality.
Break it down along "racial" lines and the inequality bloats. Black families, while earning 60% of what white families earn, possess only 18% of the wealth.
And should you not have any ethical problems with this inequality, recent studies provide reasons for even number-crunchers to worry. Wolff explains: "There is now a lot of evidence, based on cross-national comparisons of inequality and economic growth, that more unequal societies actually have lower rates of economic growth." It boils down to this: Inequality leads to poor schooling for the majority who in turn mature into a less capable, less ambitious, and less talented pool of workers than many other nations' kids whose systems provide an adequate education to all.
This is a recent and reversible phenomenon, according to David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times reporter. He comments on the media's mistaken treatment of "think tanks" as intellectual institutions instead of as "ideological marketing organizations" that "favor the super-rich."
Johnston challenges another cherished media myth: "Most Americans believe we take from people at the top to benefit those below. And what I show in
(my) book from the data is that's not the case. Our national myth – and I use that in the classic sense of the word "myth" – is wrong. We take from people who make $30,000 to $500,000 to give relief to those, who make millions, or tens and hundreds of millions of dollars a year."
This trend is mirrored across the globe where one in six people lives in slums. UN-habitat estimates that, if governments don't work to remedy the situation, "a third of the world's population will be slum dwellers within 30 years... unplanned, unsanitary settlements threaten both political and fiscal stability within third world countries, where urban slums are growing faster than expected." Or: While we fight the "war on terror" we are neglecting a much greater threat to world stability; poverty.

MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, May 2003, Vol. 24, No. 5 Title: "The Wealth Divide" (An interview with Edward Wolff) Author: Robert Weissman
BUZZFLASH, March 26 and 29, 2004
Title: "A Buzzflash Interview, Parts I & II" (with David Cay Johnston) Author: Buzzflash Staff
LONDON GUARDIAN, October 4, 2003
Title: "Every third person will be a slum dweller within 30 years, UN agency warns" Author: John Vidal
MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, July/August, 2003

Forget Bush
Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate
09.09.04 - AUSTIN, Texas -- This is the Tommy Corcoran column. Tommy the Cork, so dubbed by FDR, was a Washington wise man. His various biographers called him the ultimate insider, the super lawyer and the master fixer. He came to Washington in 1926 to clerk for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and became a fixture, an almost institutional source of wisdom about American politics, before his death in 1981.
The Cork had a theory about how to choose a president. He always said it didn't matter who was running, that it was unnecessary to pay any attention to them. What matters, he said, is the approximately 1,500 people the president brings to Washington with him, his appointments to the positions where people actually run things. The question to consider is which 1,500 people we get.
So here are a few suggestions:
At the EPA, you do not want people who think it's a good idea to allow more arsenic in the water. When someone, anyone proposes allowing more arsenic in the water, what you want is people at the EPA who promptly say: "No. Not a good idea."
There are some lawyers, and then there are other lawyers. You do not want lawyers at the Justice Department (or the White House or the Defense Department) who, when asked to prepare a legal brief defending torture, do so. You want lawyers at Justice (and the White House and the Defense Department) who say: "No. Torture is not a good idea. Trying to wiggle out from under our laws, international treaties and civilized norms is not a good idea."
You especially don't want lawyers who defend torture promoted to the federal bench. It is not a good idea to have the CIA using the same "interrogation technique" that was so favored by the Gestapo.
This is counterproductive as well as wrong. You don't want folks in charge of the IRS who think it is more important to audit poor people than rich people. That is dumb.
You do not want people in charge of foreign policy who are fools enough to believe in Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted con man and, it turns out, probably a spy for Iran. Those people should be fired. Especially when some of them are now also being investigated for giving classified information to Israel.
Having your Department of Homeland Security turn out to be a public disgrace indicates that you have either not put the right people in charge or they are not getting enough support.
When "Hurricane Hits Florida Yet Again" becomes a standing headline right up there with "Canadian Trade Talks Continue," you may want to put people in charge of policy who recognize that global warming not only exists but threatens us all.
If the people a president puts in charge of foreign policy are all from the same small circle of rigid ideologues, what happens is that they end up listening only to themselves, and on that way lies disaster.
When the people who are running the Food and Drug Administration do so to benefit the big processors and the big drug companies, people get hurt, and some of them die.
When the people in charge of prosecuting terrorists in this country screw up case after case, those people should be replaced.
When the country endures a hideous terrorist attack, is it actually useful for the White House to oppose the commission assigned to find out how it happened? To first deny it adequate funding, then refuse to provide it with critical documents, then oppose an extension of its deadline, then refuse to allow the commission access to prisoners who played key roles in the attack, then try to stop Condoleezza Rice from testifying, then refuse to have the president testify under oath?
When the people in charge make a decision to start an unprovoked war because of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent ties to the terrorists who have attacked us, you may conclude that these people are lying, or dumb, or just not helpful.
When a new administration comes into office with a huge budget surplus and then blows it all on tax cuts that benefit the very rich, should it be retained? If an economic team leads the country to a record $422 billion deficit this year and $2.3 trillion in the next decade, do you really want a team in charge that announces it wants more tax cuts that will double the total deficit to $4.6 trillion by the end of the decade? Do these people have a sense of responsibility? If the economic team produces a net loss of 1.1 million jobs after four years, should its contract be renewed?
Forget Bush -- the people around him are a complete disaster. John Kerry will basically re-hire the Clinton team and presumably remain faithful to his wife. Of course, Clinton didn't get Osama bin Laden, either. But his people worked harder at it.
(c) 2004 Creators Syndicate

from truthout

Please Go to Link to See the Fallen

The Faces of 1,000 Soldiers
t r u t h o u t Statement
Thursday 09 September 2004
Michael Allred and Richard Torres. Kenneth Souslin and Gregory Sanders. Brandon Rowe and Alyssa Peterson and Nathan Brown. The list goes ever onward. One thousand names, one thousand faces, one thousand folded American flags.
The editors and staff of t r u t h o u t offer our deepest and most profound condolences to the families of the men and women who have fallen in Iraq. We offer to our readers the names and faces of these men and women, with deepest respect, so that all within the reach of our arm know who they were, how they smiled, and what they did in the service of our country.
We believe George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell and the members of this administration have much to answer for. Defenders of this invasion point to the casualty rate of Operation Iraqi Freedom and compare it to the casualty rates in other wars. "1,000 deaths is nothing" compared to Normandy, we hear.
To be sure, this is true. But the invasion of Normandy, for one example, was undertaken to destroy a regime that had ravaged much of Europe, slaughtered millions of innocent people, and was determined to spread its darkness across as much of the globe as they could reach. The threat was as real as the bricks that formed the gas chambers at Dachau and the steel of the tanks that had roared into Poland. The men who died putting and end to that gave their lives in a cause that guaranteed the liberty of millions.
Iraq was not a threat to the United States, or to any of their neighbors. The sanctions put into effect after the first Gulf War had turned that regime's conventional military into a large collection of paperweights. There are no weapons of mass destruction of any kind in Iraq. There were no connections whatsoever between Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and the attacks of September 11.
The men and women whose faces fill the page below were not told this. They were, in fact, told the exact opposite. They raised their hands and took the oath, they donned their uniform and picked up their weapon, they boarded a plane and flew far from home, and they died. They were doing their duty, and they believed their President.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell and the members of this administration have much to answer for.
Graham Says White House Hid Sept. 11 Info
Tue Sep 7,10:41 PM ET
By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence that might have linked Saudi Arabia to the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Graham's charges, made in a new book and at a news conference arranged by the John Kerry (news - web sites) campaign, were rejected by Republicans as "bizarre conspiracy theories." The Saudis said Graham's claims were unsubstantiated and reckless.
Kerry has called for an independent investigation into the charges made by Graham, his former rival for the Democratic nomination.
Graham's statements support Kerry's claims that Bush is too close to the Saudi royal family and unwilling to pressure it to crack down on the financing of terrorists. But they are at odds with the findings of the independent Sept. 11 commission that Kerry has strongly supported. The commission said it found no evidence that the Saudi government funded al-Qaida.
Graham said the commission "has given us its conclusions without giving us the facts upon which those conclusions were established."
The Florida senator co-chaired the joint congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks that preceded the broader commission investigation. The other co-chair was Rep. Porter Goss (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla., now Bush's nominee to head the CIA (news - web sites).
Republican National Committee (news - web sites) Communications Director Jim Dyke said that when Graham was a presidential candidate, his "bizarre conspiracy theories and calls for the president's impeachment (over the Iraq (news - web sites) war) so undermined his credibility it is difficult to understand why the Kerry campaign would now lend him a platform to launch his latest accusations — accusations already disproved by the 9/11 Commission."
The cover-up charge stems from the FBI (news - web sites)'s refusal to allow inquiry staff to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of Sept. 11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
In his book "Intelligence Matters," Graham said an FBI official wrote to Goss and Graham in November 2002 and said "the administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source. Nor did the administration agree to allow the FBI to serve subpoena or a notice of deposition on the source."
In his telephone news conference, Graham called the letter "a smoking gun" and said, "The reason for this cover-up goes right to the White House."
The joint inquiry report last year also noted its lack of access to Shaikh, placing responsibility on "the FBI, supported by the attorney general and the administration."
The inquiry's report added to suspicions about a Saudi role in the plot. The Bush administration refused to allow the release of a 28-page section dealing with foreign support for hijackers. That section was believed to center on Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers.
The inquiry also raised questions about the role of two Saudi men who lived in San Diego and were associated with al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi.
One of the men, Omar al-Bayoumi, had visited the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles shortly before meeting the two future hijackers. The wife of the other man, Osama Basnan, had received checks from the wife of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington. The Saudi government has said those checks were charitable donations to pay for medical expenses.
In its report, the independent commission said it found "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded" al-Qaida. It also found no evidence that Basnan provided money to the two hijackers and said its investigators found it unlikely al-Bayoumi would be involved with extremists.
But Graham said the commission's findings were based on an interview with al-Bayoumi in Saudi Arabia with Saudi Arabian officials present. "He had no motivation to speak truthfully as to his role," he said.
In a statement released by the Saudi embassy, Prince Bandar said: "It is irresponsible of the senator to make statements that he says are based on intelligence when there are no bases for such allegations. His claims have been completely discredited" by the FBI and the Sept. 11 commission.


...over 1,000 times

Blondie

Capital Games by David Corn

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that several document experts it consulted have raised questions about the authenticity of the Killian memos obtained by 60 Minutes. These documents, written about below, appear to provide further evidence that Bush skipped out on the Texas Air National Guard. CBS News so far is standing by its assertion that the documents are real. A senior CBS official says that retired Maj. General Bobby Hodges--Lt. Colonel Jerry Killian's superior--told CBS News that the contents of the memos were consistent with what Killian said to him at the time. No doubt, the debate over the memos will continue. But as it continues, the point should not be lost that even without the new information, Bush's account of his Guard service does not withstand scrutiny--that he still has not fully explained his missing year in the Air National Guard, that he has not presented any evidence that he engaged in training activity in Alabama (while commanders at the Guard unit there say they do not recall he ever reported for duty), that he has offered various misleading and false explanations for his failure to take a flight exam, that he has not addressed why he left his unit in Houston before his transfer to another unit in Alabama was approved, that he has misrepresented his Guard service in his autobiography, and that he has not explained why his annual performance review from May 1973 said he had not been seen at his unit for a year (when he claimed he was only in Alabama for a few months). All of these questions about his Guard service are backed up by official records that are unquestionably authentic.]
"Dirty politics."
That is how Dan Bartlett, communications director for the Bush White House, responded to the latest revelations about George W. Bush's questionable military service. He was speaking to 60 Minutes for a report that featured Ben Barnes, a Democrat and former Texas Speaker of the House, who says he pulled strings to win George W. Bush a spot in the Air National Guard. But Bartlett did not explain why it is "dirty politics" to publicize new documents that show Bush cut out on his Guard duty but it is not "dirty politics" for Republican-financed veterans to claim (without producing any documentation) that John Kerry lied about wartime deeds that are indeed substantiated by official records.
Barnes's appearance on the CBS News show did have the stench of politics to it. Thanks to the oppo-researchers at the Republican Party--who dispatched a mass email hours before 60 Minutes came on--every reporter on the GOP spam list (myself included) ended up possessing a pile of clips that showed that Barnes, now a corporate lobbyist, is a close friend of and a major fundraiser for John Kerry. And Barnes's story was not new. Back in 1999, Barnes told The New York Times that in 1968, when Bush was facing the prospect of being drafted for Vietnam, a Houston oilman named Sidney Adger, a friend of George H.W. Bush, had asked Barnes to get Bush into the Texas Air National Guard. Barnes maintained that he then dutifully contacted the head of the Air National Guard, who was a pal of his, on behalf of the young Bush. During the 60 Minutes spot, anchor Dan Rather said, "This is the first time Ben Barnes has told his story publicly." But Barnes revealed nothing that he has not claimed previously.
One big question is whether Adger was acting in response to a request from George H.W. Bush. Both Bushes have claimed that the elder Bush did not ask Adger to obtain special treatment for the younger Bush and that they know nothing about any special treatment afforded W. And Barnes--in 1999 and now--has not said anything that contradicts the Bushes on this point. It seems logical to assume that Adger's efforts to win Bush a much-coveted Guard spot were known to at least the elder Bush. But Adger is dead, and only common sense (rather than evidence) undermines the Bush story that Adger was a lone favor-seeker who kept his efforts secret from his friend and the fellow who benefited from his intervention.
But the story does not stop here. Bartlett can grouse about Barnes's late reemergence in the presidential campaign and dismiss it as "politics." But what can he say about the new documents CBS News also featured in the spot? This was the important stuff, and it might have served CBS News well to have dumped Barnes and focused on these records--which are only the latest of new material that has come out recently regarding Bush's Guard service.
The records show that in May 1972, Bush disobeyed a direct order. On May 4, 1972, Lt. Colonel Jerry Killian, the commander of Bush's squadron, sent First Lt. Bush a memo stating, "You are ordered to report" to Ellington Air Force Base in Houston--where Bush's Air National Guard unit was stationed--"to conduct an annual physical examination."
Bush did not appear for this physical. And on May 19, Killian wrote a memo detailing a conversation he had with Bush. He noted the two had "discussed options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November....Says he wants to transfer to Alabama to any unit he can get in to. Says that he is working on another campaign for his dad." Regarding the physical exam, Killian wrote, "We talked about him getting his flight physical situation fixed before his date. Says he will do that in Alabama if he stays in flight status. He has this campaign to do and other things that will follow and may not have the time. I advised him of our investment in him and his commitment. He's been working with staff to come up with options and identified a unit that may accept him. I told him I had to have written acceptance before he would be transferred, but think he's also talking to someone upstairs."
Bush never reported for his physical. Moreover, another Killian memo shows that Bush was suspended from flight status not just because he did not take his physical (as has previously been reported) but also because he had not performed adequately. Furthermore, this memo indicates that Bush headed off to Alabama--that is, he skipped out on the Air National Guard--before a transfer was arranged and approved. On August 1, 1972, Killian kicked Bush off flight status and wrote a memo noting that the suspension was "due to failure to perform to" Air National Guard and U.S. Air Force "standards and failure to meet annual physical examination (flight) as ordered."
Previously, Bush's aides have given two reasons for his failure to take that flight exam. First they said he was unable to be examined because he was in Alabama at the time and his personal physician was back in Houston. But that explanation did not wash. Flight physicals are given not by personal physicians but by flight surgeons, and there were flight surgeons available in Alabama. But the Bush camp has also claimed that Bush did not take the physical because the F-102A fighter jet he flew was about to be mothballed and that there were no planes for him to fly in Alabama. Yet an additional set of records from Bush's military file released by the White House days ago shows that Bush's unit flew F-102As until 1974. And the Killian memos make clear that the physical exam was not optional. Bush was ordered to submit to an exam, and he refused that order. Under Texas law, a member of the Guard who "willfully" disobeys a superior officer "shall be punished as a court-martial directs."
Killian's August 1 memo went on: "I recommended transfer of this officer to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron [based in Alabama] in May....The transfer was not allowed. Officer [Bush] has made no attempt to meet his training certification or flight physical. Officer expresses desire to transfer out of state including assignment to non-flying billets."
*********
When you're done reading this article,visit David Corn's
WEBLOG at www.davidcorn.com. Read recent entries on Alan Keyes claiming Jesus might vote for him, Dick Cheney's over-the-top attack, and GOP spinning on stem cells.
********
By this point, Bush had already left Texas for Alabama to work on the campaign of a Republican senatorial candidate and family friend. Bush has claimed he fulfilled his Guard commitment in Alabama. But the commanders at Dannelly Air National Guard Base, where he was eventually assigned, say he never reported for duty. And there are no service records that show he engaged in any training with the unit there. This week, an anti-Bush group called Texans for Truth began airing ads featuring Bob Mintz, an Air National Guard pilot at Dannelly at that time, who says he never saw Bush at Dannelly.
The Killian memos are rather damning proof that Bush abandoned the Guard. Which of course contradicts Bush's assertion that he fulfilled his commitment to the Guard. But apparently for over 30 years, there has been an effort to burnish his Guard credentials. In another memo--written on August 18, 1973--Killian noted that when it came time for him to draft an evaluation of Bush, there was pressure from above for a good write-up. Killian noted that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt, his superior,
"has obviously pressured [Lt. Colonel Bobby] Hodges more about Bush. I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job--[Lt. Colonel William] Harris gave me a message today from [Group] regarding Bush's [officer efficiency training report] and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it. Bush wasn't here during rating period and I don't have any comments from 187th in Alabama [a unit to which Bush was assigned when he was in Alabama]. I will not rate.''
Several months earlier--on May 2, 1973--Killian had signed an annual performance report on Bush that said, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit" for the past year. One reading of Killian's August 18, 1973, memo is that several officers at the base were trying to cover for Bush and his missing year.
The Killian memos obtained by CBS News and the documents released by the White House are not the only truly new information on Bush's Guard service to come out this week. On September 8, The Boston Globe reported:
In February, when the White House made public hundreds of pages of President Bush's military records, White House officials repeatedly insisted that the records prove that Bush fulfilled his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
But Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation, a Globe reexamination of the records shows: Twice during his Guard service--first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School--Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty.
He didn't meet the commitments, or face the punishment, the records show. The 1973 document has been overlooked in news media accounts. The 1968 document has received scant notice.
The
Globe noted that in July 1973, shortly before moving from Houston to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend Harvard Business School (when he had about nine months left on his six-year commitment to the Texas Air National Guard), Bush signed a document that stated, "It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months." Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit. But, the paper reported, Bush never signed up with a Guard unit in the Boston. In 1999, Bartlett, then a spokesman for the Bush campaign, told The Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston-area Air Force Reserve unit. "I must have misspoke," Bartlett told the Globe.
The Globe also reported,
And early in his Guard service, on May 27, 1968, Bush signed a "statement of understanding" pledging to achieve "satisfactory participation" that included attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty--usually involving two weekend days each month--and 15 days of annual active duty." I understand that I may be ordered to active duty for a period not to exceed 24 months for unsatisfactory participation," the statement reads.
Yet Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, performed no service for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973, the records show.
The oh-too slowly emerging account of Bush's Guard service just gets uglier and uglier. To recap: he repeatedly did not meet his obligations, he failed to obey an order to take a physical, he fell short of the Guard's performance standards, he improperly left his unit before arranging a transfer, he ended his Guard service before he finished his commitment, and senior officers pressured his commander to cover for him. And that's all in the written record. (An analysis of Bush's Guard records written by Gerald Lechliter, a retired Army colonel, argues that Bush received fraudulent payments from the Air National Guard. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has posted Lechliter's analysis
here.)
Now compare all this to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth episode. In challenging Kerry's wartime record, these vets have produced no documents that substantiate their charge that Kerry lied about his wartime exploits and earned medals he did not deserve. In fact, the official records back up Kerry's account. Yet Kerry found himself pinned down by the unproved charges from a group financed by Republican donors.
It is true that Bush has not made his Vietnam-era military service an issue as Kerry has. But Bush has repeatedly claimed he received no preferential treatment in the Guard and that he served honorably and fulfilled his obligations. But the various explanations he and his aides have offered for the mysteries of his Guard service--the missing time in Alabama and Houston, the failure to take the flight physical--have not held up. The available evidence indicates he has not been honest about that period in his life. Is it "dirty politics" to point to documents that contradict Bush's account and ask, why?
The past week has produced almost too much material on Bush's curious tenure in the Air National Guard. In a way, that is a blessing for the White House. By dismissing all of it as merely recycled partisan charges, the Bushies are attempting to sweep aside the new with the old. For over three decades, Bush has been able to keep the full tale of his Guard service--particularly that missing year--a secret. But the truth has been dripping out--like water seeping through bullet holes in the hull of a Swift boat. His story is sinking. But he need only keep it afloat--or out of the full media spotlight--for seven more weeks. And his aides are paddling mighty fast.
********
DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK,
The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! An UPDATED and EXPANDED EDITION is NOW AVAILABLE in PAPERBACK. The Washington Post says, "This is a fierce polemic, but it is based on an immense amount of research....[I]t does present a serious case for the president's partisans to answer....Readers can hardly avoid drawing...troubling conclusions from Corn's painstaking indictment." The Los Angeles Times says, "David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush is as hard-hitting an attack as has been leveled against the current president. He compares what Bush said with the known facts of a given situation and ends up making a persuasive case." The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." And GEORGE W. BUSH SAYS, "I'd like to tell you I've read [ The Lies of George W. Bush], but that'd be a lie."

For more information and a sample, go to www.davidcorn.com. And see his WEBLOG there.
Vice President of the Apocalypse
09/08/2004 @ 8:49pm
By John Nichols

For those who feared that the speakers at last week's Republican National Convention had failed to adequately impress upon the American electorate the view that death and grief and sorrow would be the predictable byproducts of John Kerry's election to the presidency, Vice President Dick Cheney has spelled out the threat in excruciating detail.
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney grumbled to a gathering of the ceaselessly-nodding Republican party faithful in Des Moines.
Cheney's claim that the replacement of the administration he runs -- with an assist from George W. Bush -- by a Kerry administration would call down the wrath of global terrorism on the homeland is easily the most irresponsible statement of a campaign that has not exactly been characterized by moderation.
The Democratic response was to condemn Cheney in the bizarrely tepid fashion that has come to characterize the opposition party's dysfunction attempt to retake the White House. "Protecting America from vicious terrorists is not a Democratic or Republican issues, it's an American issue and Dick Cheney and George Bush should know that," whined Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards.
Let it be recorded that, despite the firm slap on the wrist that was administered by Mr. Edwards, Mr. Cheney did not choose to retract his remarks. And he won't.
Edwards and other Democrats make a mistake when they assume, as Edwards did, that the vice president is merely playing politics. When Edwards suggested that Cheney was employing "scare tactics," and that the Republicans "will do anything and say anything to save their jobs," he gave Cheney far too much credit.
It is true, of course, that the vice president would say anything and do anything in order to maintain his grip on power. But it does not necessarily follow that Cheney is simply carrying out a political hit. Indeed, if the past is prologue, there is every reason to assume that the vice president believes what he is saying about the damage that will befall the land if he and his minions are not working the levers of authority.
Few figures in American politics maintain a world view that is so consistently apocalyptic as does Cheney. Fewer still have allowed petty fears and profound ignorance to so dramatically warp their actions and public pronouncements.
Cheney's Cold War obsessions have frequently placed him on the wrong side of history, causing him to misread the geopolitical realities of regions around the world -- and of the key players within them. This is the man who was so certain that the African National Congress was a dangerous group that he regularly voted, as a member of Congress in the 1980s, against House resolutions calling for the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners in South Africa. While leading conservative Republicans such as Jack Kemp were hailing Mandela as an iconic fighter for freedom and racial justice, Cheney continued to decry the ANC as "a terrorist organization" and to dismiss its leaders as threatening radicals.
During the same period that Cheney was championing the imprisonment of Mandela, the Republican representative from Wyoming was one of the most prominent Congressional advocates for the Reagan administration's illegal war making in Central America. When the administration's crimes were exposed as the Iran-Contra scandal, former White House counsel John Dean notes, "Cheney became President Reagan's principle defender in Congress." Cheney argued that those who sought to hold the Reagan administration accountable for illegal acts in Latin America were "prepared to undermine the presidency" and the ability of future presidents to defend the United States.
When he left the House to become George Herbert Walker Bush's Secretary of Defense, Cheney struggled to maintain the Pentagon's Cold War footing even as the Berlin Wall was crumbling. Obsessed with the notion that the United States should retain the capacity to launch preemptive wars against nation's that were perceived even as possible threats, Cheney was a hyperactive advocate for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Unfortunately for Secretary of Defense, whose passion for deposing Saddam Hussein reached surreal levels, the "Operation Scorpion" scheme he and his aides developed for imposing "regime change" upon Iraq was so ineptly plotted that it was scrapped after a cursory review by General Norman Schwarzkopf. "I wondered whether Cheney had succumbed to the phenomenon I'd observed among some secretaries of the army," observed Schwarzkopf, the commander on the ground in the region. "Put a civilian in charge of professional military men and before long he's no longer satisfied with setting policy but wants to outgeneral the generals."
When Cheney and a self-selected Praetorian Guard set up the new Republican administration that took charge of the White House after the 2000 election, the vice president could not be bothered to address real threats to the country because he remained obsessed with what turned out to be a ridiculously hyped Iraqi threat. As former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill noted, Cheney and his aides were in the first days of 2001 "already planning the next war in Iraq and the shape of a post-Saddam country."
On the issue of Iraq, Cheney has allowed his tendency toward apocalyptic fantasies to go unchecked. When the vice president was peddling the "case" for invasion, he made far more remarkable claims than did Bush. Charging that Saddam had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," Cheney warned a 2002 Veterans of Foreign Wars convention that, "Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten American friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."

Vice President of the Apocalypse
09/08/2004 @ 8:49pm
By John Nichols

For those who feared that the speakers at last week's Republican National Convention had failed to adequately impress upon the American electorate the view that death and grief and sorrow would be the predictable byproducts of John Kerry's election to the presidency, Vice President Dick Cheney has spelled out the threat in excruciating detail.
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney grumbled to a gathering of the ceaselessly-nodding Republican party faithful in Des Moines.
Cheney's claim that the replacement of the administration he runs -- with an assist from George W. Bush -- by a Kerry administration would call down the wrath of global terrorism on the homeland is easily the most irresponsible statement of a campaign that has not exactly been characterized by moderation.
The Democratic response was to condemn Cheney in the bizarrely tepid fashion that has come to characterize the opposition party's dysfunction attempt to retake the White House. "Protecting America from vicious terrorists is not a Democratic or Republican issues, it's an American issue and Dick Cheney and George Bush should know that," whined Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards.
Let it be recorded that, despite the firm slap on the wrist that was administered by Mr. Edwards, Mr. Cheney did not choose to retract his remarks. And he won't.
Edwards and other Democrats make a mistake when they assume, as Edwards did, that the vice president is merely playing politics. When Edwards suggested that Cheney was employing "scare tactics," and that the Republicans "will do anything and say anything to save their jobs," he gave Cheney far too much credit.
It is true, of course, that the vice president would say anything and do anything in order to maintain his grip on power. But it does not necessarily follow that Cheney is simply carrying out a political hit. Indeed, if the past is prologue, there is every reason to assume that the vice president believes what he is saying about the damage that will befall the land if he and his minions are not working the levers of authority.
Few figures in American politics maintain a world view that is so consistently apocalyptic as does Cheney. Fewer still have allowed petty fears and profound ignorance to so dramatically warp their actions and public pronouncements.
Cheney's Cold War obsessions have frequently placed him on the wrong side of history, causing him to misread the geopolitical realities of regions around the world -- and of the key players within them. This is the man who was so certain that the African National Congress was a dangerous group that he regularly voted, as a member of Congress in the 1980s, against House resolutions calling for the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners in South Africa. While leading conservative Republicans such as Jack Kemp were hailing Mandela as an iconic fighter for freedom and racial justice, Cheney continued to decry the ANC as "a terrorist organization" and to dismiss its leaders as threatening radicals.
During the same period that Cheney was championing the imprisonment of Mandela, the Republican representative from Wyoming was one of the most prominent Congressional advocates for the Reagan administration's illegal war making in Central America. When the administration's crimes were exposed as the Iran-Contra scandal, former White House counsel John Dean notes, "Cheney became President Reagan's principle defender in Congress." Cheney argued that those who sought to hold the Reagan administration accountable for illegal acts in Latin America were "prepared to undermine the presidency" and the ability of future presidents to defend the United States.
When he left the House to become George Herbert Walker Bush's Secretary of Defense, Cheney struggled to maintain the Pentagon's Cold War footing even as the Berlin Wall was crumbling. Obsessed with the notion that the United States should retain the capacity to launch preemptive wars against nation's that were perceived even as possible threats, Cheney was a hyperactive advocate for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Unfortunately for Secretary of Defense, whose passion for deposing Saddam Hussein reached surreal levels, the "Operation Scorpion" scheme he and his aides developed for imposing "regime change" upon Iraq was so ineptly plotted that it was scrapped after a cursory review by General Norman Schwarzkopf. "I wondered whether Cheney had succumbed to the phenomenon I'd observed among some secretaries of the army," observed Schwarzkopf, the commander on the ground in the region. "Put a civilian in charge of professional military men and before long he's no longer satisfied with setting policy but wants to outgeneral the generals."
When Cheney and a self-selected Praetorian Guard set up the new Republican administration that took charge of the White House after the 2000 election, the vice president could not be bothered to address real threats to the country because he remained obsessed with what turned out to be a ridiculously hyped Iraqi threat. As former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill noted, Cheney and his aides were in the first days of 2001 "already planning the next war in Iraq and the shape of a post-Saddam country."
On the issue of Iraq, Cheney has allowed his tendency toward apocalyptic fantasies to go unchecked. When the vice president was peddling the "case" for invasion, he made far more remarkable claims than did Bush. Charging that Saddam had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," Cheney warned a 2002 Veterans of Foreign Wars convention that, "Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten American friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."

The Likud Doctrine
First Bush, and now Putin, have picked up lessons for their wars on terror from Israel's campaign against the Palestinians
Naomi Klein, The Guardian
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is so fed-up with being grilled over his handling of the Beslan catastrophe that he lashed out at foreign journalists on Monday. "Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or the White House and engage in talks?" he demanded, adding that: "No one has a moral right to tell us to talk to child-killers."
Fortunately for Putin, there is still one place where he is shielded from the critics: Israel. On Monday, Ariel Sharon welcomed the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, for a meeting about strengthening ties in the fight against terror. "Terror has no justification, and it is time for the free, decent, humanistic world to unite and fight this terrible epidemic," Sharon said.
There is little to argue with there. The essence of terrorism is the deliberate targeting of innocents to further political goals. Any claims its perpetrators make to fighting for justice are morally bankrupt, and lead directly to the barbarity of Beslan: a carefully laid plan to slaughter hundreds of children.
Yet sympathy alone does not explain the outpourings of solidarity for Russia coming from Israeli politicians this week. An unnamed Israeli official was quoted as saying that Russians "understand now that what they have is not a local terror problem but part of the global Islamic terror threat". The underlying message is unequivocal: Russia and Israel are engaged in the very same war, one not against Palestinians demanding their right to statehood, or against Chechens demanding their independence, but against "the global Islamic terror threat". Israel, as the elder statesman, is claiming the right to set the rules of war.
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Unsurprisingly, the rules are the same ones Sharon uses against the Intifada in the occupied territories. His starting point is that Palestinians, though they may make political demands, are actually only interested in the annihilation of Israel. This goes beyond the state's standard refusal to negotiate with terrorists - it is a conviction rooted in an insistent pathologising, not just of extremists but of the entire "Arab mind".
From this basic belief several others follow. First, all Israeli violence against Palestinians is an act of self-defence, necessary to the country's survival. Second, anyone who questions Israel's absolute right to erase the enemy is themselves an enemy. This applies to the UN, other world leaders, journalists and peaceniks.
Putin has clearly been taking notes, but it's not the first time Israel has played this mentoring role. Three years ago, on September 12 2001, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli finance minister, was asked how the previous day's terror attacks would affect relations between Israel and the US. "It's very good," he said. "Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy." The attack, Netanyahu explained, would "strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades".
Common wisdom has it that after 9/11, a new era of geo-politics was ushered in, defined by what is usually called the Bush doctrine: pre-emptive wars, attacks on terrorist infrastructure (read: entire countries), an insistence that all the enemy understands is force. In fact, it would be more accurate to call this rigid worldview the Likud doctrine. What happened on September 11 2001 is that the Likud doctrine, previously targeted against Palestinians, was picked up by the most powerful nation on earth and applied on a global scale. Call it the Likudisation of the world: the real legacy of 9/11.
Let me be absolutely clear: by Likudisation I do not mean that key members of the Bush administration are working for the interests of Israel at the expense of US interests. What I mean is that on September 11, George Bush went looking for a political philosophy to guide him in his role as "war president". He found that philosophy in the Likud doctrine, handed to him ready-made by the ardent Likudniks ensconced in the White House. In the three years since, the Bush White House has applied this logic with chilling consistency to its global war on terror - complete with the pathologising of the "Muslim mind". It was the guiding philosophy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and may well extend to Iran and Syria. It's not simply that Bush sees America's role as protecting Israel from a hostile Arab world. It's that he has cast the US in the same role in which Israel casts itself, facing the same threat. In this narrative, the US is fighting a never-ending battle for its survival against irrational forces that seek its total extermination.
And now the Likudisation narrative has spread to Russia. In that same meeting with journalists, Putin made it clear he sees the drive for Chechen independence as the spearhead of a strategy by Chechen Islamists, helped by foreign fundamentalists, to undermine Russia by stirring up its Muslim population. "There are Muslims along the Volga, in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan ... This is all about Russia's territorial integrity," he said. It used to be just Israel that was worried about being pushed into the sea.
There has indeed been a dramatic rise in religious fundamentalism in the Muslim world. The problem is that under the Likud doctrine there is no space to ask why this is happening. We are not allowed to point out that fundamentalism breeds in failed states, where warfare has systematically targeted civilian infrastructure, allowing the mosques to start taking responsibility for everything from education to garbage collection. It has happened in Gaza, Grozny and Sadr City.
Sharon says terrorism is an epidemic that "has no borders, no fences", but this is not the case. Terrorism thrives within the illegitimate borders of occupation and dictatorship; it festers behind security walls put up by imperial powers; it crosses those borders and climbs those fences to explode inside the countries responsible for, or complicit in, occupation and domination.
Sharon is not the commander-in-chief of the war on terror; that dubious honour stays with George Bush. But on the anniversary of 9/11, he deserves to be recognised as this disastrous campaign's guru, a trigger-happy Yoda for all wannabe Luke Skywalkers out there, training for their epic battles of good vs evil.
If we want to see where the Likud doctrine leads, we need only follow the guru home, to Israel, a country paralysed by fear, embracing policies of extrajudicial assassination and illegal settlement, and in denial about the brutality it commits daily. It is a nation surrounded by enemies and desperate for friends - a category it narrowly defines as those who ask no questions, while offering the same moral amnesty in return. That glimpse of our collective future is the only lesson the world needs to learn from Sharon

More Lies Exposed by the Kos

WHITE HOUSE LIED (again) TO AP, NATION.
by Kos
published by Daily Kos
Bush AWOL
For the past several months, the White House has claimed it had released all relevant documents pertaining to Bush's military records in response to the Associated Press' Freedom of Information Act request for the materials. Well, at one point they claimed a fire had destroyed a good many of the records, but dogged persistance by the AP's lawyers turned up most of the disputed docs. But not all. Amongst the documents the White House swore up and down didn't exist -- two documents released hours after tonight's 60 Minutes report. The White House released memos Wednesday night saying that George W. Bush was suspended from flying fighter jets for failing to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard. Oops. Busted. So what goods did 60 Minutes have on Bush? * A memo ordering Bush to take a physical * A memo discussing "options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November." And that due to other commitments "he may not have time." * A document suspending Bush for "failure to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards and for failure to take his annual physical as ordered." * A memo from Bush's squadron commander where "he is being pressured by higher-ups to give the young pilot a favorable yearly evaluation; to, in effect, sugarcoat his review. He refuses, saying, 'I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job.'" And while Republicans are working to discredit Ben Barnes, who admitted to pulling strings to get rich-boy Bush into the guard (at the expense of some poor shlub who was instead sent to Vietnam in his place), the records are much tougher to fight off. For example, the Bush campaign has argued that Bush didn't need to report for the physical, since he was no longer on flight status. The document ordering him to report for the physical directly contradicts their excuses. Meanwhile, the flight suspension was ordered for more than just missing the physical, but for 'failure to perform to (USAF/TexANG) standards." Larry Korb, an assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan has reviewed the Mr. Bush's record and believes he did not fulfill his contract. "Essentially, Bush gamed the system to avoid serving his country the way that most of his contemporaries had to," Korb said. It's time for Bush's backers to admit reality -- their Golden Boy shirked his duty to his nation. These slime dare question Kerry's Vietnam heroism, while their own boy was playing pool volleyball with "ambitious secretaries". And let's not forget that Bush was supposed to finish out his Guard duty when he took off for Harvard business school. He claimed he "worked things out with the military". But the Boston Globe exposed that lie Wednesday morning: "On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Bush signed a document that declared, ''It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months... " Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit." But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit. In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. ''I must have misspoke," Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said in a recent interview [...] The Ben Barnes thing is subject to debate, and partisans will line up on the obvious sides (like they have with the Swift Boat Liars). But the official documents uncovered by 60 Minutes (despite the White House's attempt to cover them up)? There's no way to spin those away. The facts are there in black and white.

More from Progressive Trail...

DUAL LOYALTIES
by Juan Cole
published by Informed Comment
Many readers have written me to express concern about my safety and/or reputation since I have spoken out frankly on the horrible Likud policies of stealing Palestinian lands and brutalizing them with occupation. I'm not a babe in the woods, and I know very well that saying these things is taboo in American political culture. In fact, whenever anyone comes on a cable television news show and is anything but hostile to the Palestinians, he or she is made by the interviewer to denounce terrorism. It is an outrageous implication, and not the job of a news interviewer. But pro-Israeli speakers are never made to denounce land theft or state terror. I received a very weird phone call from a prominent Jewish-American investigative journalist the other night. He kept muttering about bias against Sharon and how the Israeli security wall is no different from the wall near the Rio Grande (which isn't true: did the US annex Mexican land to build that?) He kept hinting around that he thought I must have some link to some hate group, or to the Ford Foundation, which he coded as linked to "hate groups," which in turn seemed to signify for him Palestinians. It was all very conspiracy theorist oriented. I tried to have a straightforward conversation with him, but it was probably a mistake, since it seems fairly obvious he intends to do some sort of hatchet job. I finally had to end it when his paraphrases of what I said became more and more outrageous and inaccurate. Another journalist named Eli Lake has now begun coming after me, as many readers predicted, using innuendo to suggest that I am to the right of Pat Buchanan and that it is irresponsible of American media outlets to have me on television and radio. One of his charges is that I am accusing the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon of "dual loyalties." That is true, but not in the way Lake imagines. I believe that Doug Feith, for instance, has dual loyalties to the Israeli Likud Party and to the U.S. Republican Party. He thinks that their interests are completely congruent. And I also think that if he has to choose, he will put the interests of the Likud above the interests of the Republican Party. I don't think there is anything a priori wrong with Feith being so devoted to the Likud Party. That is his prerogative. But as an American, I don't want a person with those sentiments to serve as the number 3 man in the Pentagon. I frankly don't trust him to put America first. Political dual loyalties have nothing to do with any particular ethnicity. It is natural for Armenian Americans to have a special tie to Armenia, for Greek Americans to have a special tie to Greece, for Iraqi Americans to feel strongly about Iraq. For them to take pride in the achievements of their homeland is right an natural, and unexceptionable. There is no reason on the face of it to even bring up their ethnicity with regard to public service. But if a Syrian American is a strong devotee of the Baath Party, would you appoint him Undersecretary of Defense? The Likud Coalition in Israel does contest elections. But it isn't morally superior in most respects to the Syrian Baath. The Likud brutally occupies 3 million Palestinians (who don't get to vote for their occupier) and is aggressively taking over their land. That is, it treats at least 3 million people no better than and possibly worse than the Syrian Baath treats its 17 million. The Likud invaded Lebanon in 1982 and killed 18,000 or so people, 9,000 of them innocent civilians. This is, contrary to what Bernard Lewis keeps implying, just about equivalent morally to the Syrian Baath's crushing of the Islamists in Hama the same year, which killed an estimated 10,000. Many in the Likud coalition are commited to "transfer," or the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. At the least they want to keep Palestinians stateless and without basic human rights and dignity. The vast majority of Palestinians has never commited an act of violence, but Likud propaganda justifies their expropriation on the innuendo that they are all terrorists. Likud aggression is invisible in American media, and the way in which it provokes violence is off limits for discussion. So I don't see a big difference between having a fanatical Syrian American Baathist as the number three man in the Pentagon and having a fanatical Jewish American Likudnik. Lake wants to suggest that I am a racist, and that the implication of my argument is that there should be an ethnic litmus test for public office. There is no point in replying to such slurs. Anyone who tries to defend himself from charges of being a racist just looks silly. I simply think that we deserve to have American public servants who are centrally commited to the interests of the United States, rather than to the interests of a foreign political party. So my position implies a political litmus test for high public office. And, of course there is such a litmus test. Why bother to have Congress confirm or reject appointees otherwise? Of course, Lake's salvo is only the first of what will be a campaign to vilify me and misrepresent my views, and to ensure as far as possible that I am silenced. So, why do I do it? It is September 11. It is obvious to me that what September 11 really represented was a dragooning of the United States into internal Middle East political conflicts. Israel's aggressive policies in the West Bank and Gaza have poisoned the political atmosphere in the Middle East (and increasingly in the Muslim world) for the United States. It is ridiculous to suggest that radical Islamists don't care about the Palestine issue. Now, if it were a matter of Israel's simple existence causing trouble for the U.S., then I would say, "Too bad! We stand with our friends, and won't allow you to harm Israel." But if it is Israeli expansionism and aggression that is causing trouble for the United States, then my response would be to put pressure on Israel to get used to its 1949 borders, which are its only legal ones. Unless the Israeli Palestinian issue is resolved, there will be more September 11s on US soil. So they should resolve it already. And, it is resolvable. If there were a Palestinian state with leaders who would certify that they are happy with Israel, then 99% of Muslims would accept that. It can't be resolved as long as the Likud Party has an aggressive colonialist agenda. It cannot be resolved as long as the United States government is afraid to say "boo" to Ariel Sharon. The taboo erected against saying what I have been saying is a way of ensuring that the Likud gets its way without American interference, even if it means America suffers from the fall-out of Likud aggression. In addition, what the Likud government is doing is ethically wrong. It has put hundreds of thousands of colonists into the West Bank, stealing land, water and resources from the Palestinians there. It has made the Palestinians' lives miserable with a dense network of checkpoints, highways, and other barriers to ordinary commerce and movement. And what possible claim could the Likud have on the West Bank of the Jordan? The original Zionist colonizers put almost no settlers there. It was not the part of Palestine that the United Nations awarded Israel in the partition plan. The United Nations Charter, to which Israel is a signatory, forbids the acquisition of territory by warfare, so the mere fact that the West Bank was conquered in 1967 gives Israel no rights in it. Sharon and other Likudniks keep demanding that the Arabs "recognize" Israel's "birthright" to the Holy Land. This language is bizarre. First of all, "peoples" don't have "birthrights" to "land." There are no peoples in the 19th century racist sense, and there is no link between Land und Volk the way the Likud imagines. Israel should be recognized because its people deserve to live like everyone else, not because of any superstitious and frankly racist "birthright." (Population geneticists have shown that the entire human population becomes related over 50 generations, so Isaac and the other Patriarchs are by now the common ancestors of us all. If the birthright is genetic, then it is in everyone by now. If it is based on halakhah or Jewish law, well that didn't exist in Isaac's time. Abraham probably wasn't even really a monotheist in the contemporary sense of the term.) You can't break down taboos unless you challenge them. Of course, there is the danger that if you challenge them, you will be attacked, and destroyed politically or marginalized. Perhaps it is even likely. But our country is in dire danger from the conflicts in the Middle East. If I had been a younger man (I am 51) I would have gone to fight al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The very least I can do is to speak out about the dangers, and urge solutions of the problems generating the terrorism. What good is freedom of speech if we don't use it?