April 2004: Week One, Page Two: This Far and No Further

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Sadr Uprising

April 4 - 6: A huge outbreak of organized violence erupts throughout Iraq, with coordinated attacks by Shi'ite militants taking place in the slums of Baghdad and numerous southern cities. The southern city of Kufa is currently under the control of Shi'ite militia forces. The neighboring city of Najaf is up in arms, and Italian forces in Nasiriyah find themselves under heavy fire. The Spanish Defense Ministry in Madrid says protesters in the Najaf uprising are reacting to the arrest of an aide to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric who has denounced the occupation and has an army of thousands of young followers, as well as anger over the closing of the Sadr-sponsored newspaper Al-Hawza.. Spanish and Salvadoran troops, along with US forces, have taken casualties in the uprisings. The Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad is essentially a war zone. The British-administred city of Kut is abandoned to Sadr militia forces.
The relatively minor battle to retain control of Kut is instructive. In the formerly peaceful province of Wasit, administered by British governor Mark Etherington, violence enters the central city of Kut on April 5. Early-morning attacks by Sadr sympathizers have killed two of the twelve-man US Special Forces platoon stationed there, and a vehicle containing a contingent of Ukrainian soldiers was rammed by a bus, injuring some of the Ukrainians. Etherington moves to implement the limited security procedures he has at hand, but is almost immediately thwarted by several immediate problems. The Ukrainian contingent delegated as the primary defense of the CPA building in Kut has disappeared without a word. Predictably, the entire Iraqi police force has either defected to the Sadr militias or deserted their posts. Etherington makes a dangerous visit, with no one except his deputy and a translator, to the Ukrainian commander, General Ostrovskiy, in the military encampment on the other side of the Tigris River. Ostrovskiy informs Etherington that the Sadr forces have let it be known that the safety of Ukrainians in Iraq cannot be guaranteed, and therefore all Ukrainian soldiers have been ordered withdrawn from their patrols. Similarly, the two US military units stationed in nearby Camp Delta refuse to help protect the CPA offices. Etherington, in his words, is "aghast at this secret capitulation;" he has no military defenses at his disposal except the ten US Special Forces soldiers, whose commander makes it clear that he will not send his men out to die against overwhelming odds, and a small contingent of private security personnel from Control Risks Group (CRG).
Etherington has no intention of abandoning his building and, as he puts it, "skulk[ing] in Delta" while the Sadr forces operate unchecked in Kut. Contrary to CPA belief, the tribal organizations can offer no help. After returning to the CPA offices (a daring journey made possible by the unexpected and inexplicable help of "sammy," a Sadr supporter who speaks flawless English; the local Sadr cleric Abdul Jawad al-Issawi is said to be incensed that Etherington and his two companions were allowed to pass), he tries without success to raise any sort of military resistance to the Sadr attacks. It only takes four Sadr militiamen to take over the local television station and begin broadcasting pro-Sadr material. After organizing an ad hoc guard roster, Etherington goes to bed and, in his words, "lay awake until 0400, seething with anger and humiliation."
Early on the morning of April 6, the Ukrainians, operating under fresh orders, "retake" Kut -- in essence, they drive in to the city and find it inexplicably deserted of Sadr militia. Later that morning, rocket fire and RPG rounds suddenly detonate inside the city, and a full-scale battle breaks out between Sadr forces and the Ukrainians and Americans defending the CPA offices and Camp Delta. The battle goes badly for the Coalition forces, and Etherington finds himself with few options for calling for reinforcements -- either he uses his satellite phone, which is too dangerous to use because the user must expose himself to enemy fire by going out on the roof, or he must rely on the maddeningly slow and unreliable e-mail provided by the US military's "Internet in a Box." By this time all but two of the local defense forces have thrown down their guns, stripped off their uniforms, and fled, leaving the government building virtually unprotected except for three Ukrainian armored vehicles and their occupants, and a few American and Polish units. The situation was little better for Camp Delta; though there were hundreds of heavily armed US Marines and Ukrainian soldiers on base, they refused to leave the grounds, and would not extend any help to Etherington and his small, vulnerable group of administrators stranded in a single building on the wrong side of the river. To make things worse, the CPA in Baghdad is greatly confused and misled by what Etherington calls a "lurid" set of reports e-mailed to them by KBR officials who were 50 kilometers away and had no idea what was going on; the tremendously conflicting reports cause help to be delayed for hours.
While awaiting American air strikes to drive back the Sadr besiegers, Etherington decides that they will not abandon their offices. He draws up evacuation plans for non-essential personnel to be removed, and is disheartened to note that both American and Polish soldiers are lining up to request evacuation -- Etherington's deputy asks them to leave their weapons and ammunition behind. The CPA in Baghdad is very late in responding for a number of reasons. One, they are receiving terribly conflicting reports, some insanely erroneous reports of wholesale slaughter from KBR officials, and others from Etherington and others on-site whose accuracy is doubted because of their feeling that civilians cannot ably evaluate such situations; two, the Ukrainian brigade, the most powerful defensive force in Wasit, is refusing all orders from the CPA to mobilize and resist the Sadr militias, without Baghdad CPA's knowledge. The British commanders in Baghdad refuse to countenance a partial evacuation: "It is not a civilian's job to hold ground." Etherington ignores the communique, and recalls, "One sensed the Coalition's inherent structural weakness seep through the ether. It was clear that evacuation fever had begun to grip everyone, and as it grew our ability to influence events waned." Late that night, e-mailed orders to evacuate arrive. Etherington learns that the Ukrainians are planning to withdraw completely at first light, and is appalled to see that, apparently, the entire CPA civilian and military contingent is planning to pull out, a move he calls "strategically incomprehensible."
After no rescue mission materializes, a bitter Etherington orders that the CPA staff leave with the Ukrainians, who are defying orders from General Sanchez, the supreme CPA military commander, to stay. Etherington's anger at the withdrawal comes through in his words, written months after the fact; he calls it a "humiliating surrender" and says that "few...showed any signs that they were conscious of the political gravity of this capitulation." Etherington and the rest of the Kut CPA team would return to Great Britain on April 13, and not return for a month; al-Issawi and his followers occupy the deserted camp and buildings within hours, and celebrate their unexpected victory on television. Etherington reflects, "...I felt like a fraud. The military campaigns I had studied and the history I had read were full of heroism and suffering; and we had run away after an attack that would have merited no more than a single line in a Second World War company diary. I spoke to Timm [his deputy] about it, who told me that I was ignoring the human evolution that had occurred since that twentieth-century watershed; and that what might once have seemed a virtual irrelevance was significant now." Months later, Etherington learns that the Sadr militia fighters had run out of ammunition during the night, and were issuing desperate calls for more; the flight of the CPA units from Kut had been undisturbed by sniper fire because none of the militiamen had anything to shoot. How easy it would have been to retain control of Kut.
Etherington writes, "...Kut had been the first casualty of a much wider rebellion. Moqtada al-Sadr's followers had launched a series of coordinated attacks across the region and in Baghdad with a determination and ferocity that had caught us unawares. The coverage was lurid. ...These reverses made all too evident the fragility of our command over Iraq. Our discharge of the functions of government had been possible only by the consent of ordinary Iraqis and it appeared this consent might be slipping away. The concern engendered by this supposition naturally encouraged reflection on the nature of our hold over the country. Our military power was real, but it could not be steadily applied in all areas at once -- no army can be strong everywhere. This weakness was compounded by the composition of our military force being predicated on political considerations rather than practical requirements. This reduced capability had been tacitly accepted in areas deemed to be 'quiet,' indeed had provided much of the rationale for stationing the Polish-led Multi-National Division and its Ukrainian brigade in Central South.
"But these central and east European armies suffered from a whole series of deficiencies. Among the foremost of these was demonstrable inexperience in handling civil populations in a way consistent with preserving that consent. If one allows the existence of a honeymoon period after interventions such as the Coalition's, where the promise and opportunity implicit in a proffered new order briefly match the heady expectations of the people, then we had squandered a large part of it by failing to muster the requisite number of troops to pursue our objectives. And we eroded the climate of consent still further by attempting to fill the gaps with what an American officer once described to me as a 'Rent-an-Army' schemes. We now saw that these deficiencies in Central-South were more fundamental even than this, because these armies, in general, in the main, were not fighting units either. They and particularly their governments saw their role as peace-keeping, and they had arrived equipped accordingly. Sadr's urban insurrection now promised conflict of the bloodiest kind, and underscored the fact that counter-insurgency in such circumstances presented the most difficult of all operations of war. One government after another began to wobble, as the Ukrainians had done, and we absorbed anew another of history's lessons: that if military power is often delusory, it can delude those who wield it more completely than anyone else."
Weeks after the uprising, Etherington learns that a highly colored, strongly negative appraisal of his and his staff's performance had been forwarded to the Foreign Office, largely based on the report of a KBR employee whom Etherington says spent almost the entirety of the attack cowering in a darkened hallway. The report has little impact, and Etherington learns that he and his staff will return to Kut as soon as possible, this time with an American military escort who would remain with the staff until the June 30 dissolution of the CPA. They arrive in Kut on May 5.
Etherington is always quick to admit his flaws, and he does so here, writing, "I had not been long in Kut before I realized that my expectations of the effect on the public mind of Sadr's sudden rebellion were entirely erroneous. I had always been conscious that we had never managed politically to engage the middle class." Etherington believed, wrongly, that Sadr had far more support among the "ordinary" Iraqis than he in fact enjoyed: although the CPA had made few inroads in winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, neither had Sadr and his radical clerics. "Many felt now that Moqtada al-Sadr was now staining his revered family's reputation, and viewed the possibility of armed conflict in holy places such as Najaf, where he had taken refuge, with alarm. Wasit's innate conservatism had worked against Sadr as surely as it had impeded us. If we had proved unable to stir them, they had done no better. The Jaish al-Mahdi had danced briefly on a largely empty stage, having pursued the mirage of popular uprising that had beguiled us all." Etherington learns that, after the battle, dead Sadr fighters lay ignored and uncovered in the streets for days, a stinging insult from the civilians who refused to tend to them. The local Sadr clerical leader, al-Issawi, is on the run and his headquarters in ruins. "Posters of Moqtada al-Sadr were simply removed, and the unemployed poor whom he had wooed were now offered jobs by the Americans in city-rehabilitation schemes." Sadr steadily loses influence in Kut after the uprising, partially because of the bloody-mindedness of the militiamen. However, Etherington realizes that, even though he believes a majority of the people of Wasit prefer the CPA's direction towards democracy, the tribal infrastructure and other factors make their support tacit and tentative at best. And Sadr still retains a certain heroic quality in the eyes of many because of his open defiance of the Americans. As for al-Issawi, the Coalition forces never find him; it is said that he attends weekly meetings at Kut mosques, and if the population doesn't broadly support him, neither does anyone turn him in. (New York Times, Mark Etherington)
April 4: Senior US intelligence officials state that, far from blunting or eradicating the threat of Islamic terrorism to Western countries, the invasion of Iraq has accelerated the spread of Osama bin Laden's anti-Americanism among once local Islamic militant movements, increasing danger to the United States as the al Qaeda network is becoming less able to mount attacks. The same officials believe that Iraq's Sunni Triangle has become a training ground for foreign Islamic jihadists who are slipping into Iraq to join former Saddam Hussein loyalists to test themselves against US and coalition forces. Islamic militant organizations in places such as North Africa and Southeast Asia, which were previously focused on changing their local country leadership, "have been caught by bin Laden's vision, and poisoned by it...they will now look at the US, Israel and the Saudis as targets," says a senior intelligence analyst. "That is one manifestation of how bin Laden's views are expanding well beyond Iraq," he notes. J. Cofer Black, the State Department coordinator for counterterrorism and a former head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, gave the same message to a House International Relations subcommittee last week, saying that bin Laden's "virulent anti-American rhetoric...has been picked up by a number of Islamic extremist movements which exist around the globe." The result, says the analyst, is that the US war on terrorism after Iraq "may transition from defeating a group to fighting a movement." Black said the spread of bin Laden's ideology "greatly complicates our task in stamping out al-Qaeda and poses a threat in its own right for the foreseeable future."
The analyst describes "scores" of extremist groups such as Jemaah Islamiah that have "gravitated to al-Qaeda in recent years where before such linkages did not exist." In the past, al-Qaeda had given other groups training and finances in bin Laden's hope they would see the world in the same anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Saudi terms he saw, he says. Al-Qaeda's top-down control of terrorist operations has been lost, as has its Afghani sanctuary; as a result, these operations have been decentralized and are in the hands of less experienced, but widespread, leaders throughout the globe. Black says that the al-Qaeda leadership is under "catastrophic stress," leaving the responsibilities of leadership in the hands of less seasoned terrorists. That makes it less clear what roles al-Qaeda played in recent bombings in Bali, Istanbul, Riyadh, Tunisia, Casablanca and Madrid. Authorities said that local extremists carried out these attacks, although Black said a possible al-Qaeda leadership connection to Madrid is still under investigation. Black and the analyst say it would be a mistake to believe the United States faces a monolithic terrorist threat. "Before Iraq, al-Qaeda had some success with like-minded organizations conducting operations," the analyst says. "It would be fair to say that we are seeing greater cooperation between al-Qaeda and smaller Islamic extremist groups as well as even more localized organizations," Black told Congress. Adding to the threat are the limited numbers of foreign Islamic fighters, some with experience in Chechnya, Kosovo and Kashmir, who are slipping over the Iraqi borders intent on joining the fight against the United States and its coalition partners. Jihadists are seeking to use Iraq as a training ground for future battles, according to Black and others.
"These jihadists view Iraq as a new training ground to build their extremist credentials and hone the skills of the terrorist," Black told the House subcommittee. Aggressive US military actions against the foreign fighters have not permitted them to organize, recruit and raise money as they had in the past, the senior analyst said. "We will contain and defeat them in Iraq," he says, "but they will create a new Rolodex of fellow jihadists and people with whom they can work in the [Persian] Gulf in the future." Black said the US military recognizes the threat the extremists pose, and is aimed at ensuring "that al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups will be unable to use Iraq as a training ground or sanctuary." As the United States and its allies have systematically captured and killed almost 70 percent of the al Qaeda leadership, bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, are on the run and unable to provide operational leadership. Bin Laden's effectiveness as a plotter of terrorist acts has been "greatly reduced," Black said. Black told the House panel that bin Laden maintains some contact with the remaining leadership but command and control is handled by younger and less experienced leaders. Bin Laden, Black said, "spends most of his time trying to figure out, you know, how they're going to come for me and is this going to be the day." The CIA nonetheless still considers bin Laden "an important ideological figurehead," the intelligence analyst said. "His passing will be a signpost but not the end of the campaign. Others will be passing the torch and our next steps will be to discover the people who take over, and they won't definitely be the people around bin Laden now." (Washington Post, Washington Post)
April 4: Spanish police corner six members of the al-Qaeda cell that carried out the March 11, 2004 railway bombings in Madrid. The six blow themselves up rather than allow themselves to be captured. Police recover 22 pounds of explosive identical to that used in the Madrid bombing. (Michael Scheuer)
April 4: The Bush administration rejects a request from the IRS for $12 million to fund 80 investigators' efforts to track terrorist financing around the globe. The New York Times observes, "This was a $12 million item whose value seems beyond dispute, particularly when measured against the hundreds of millions in domestic pork spending that now preoccupies Congressional budgeteers. The administration maintains that a planned 16 percent increase in the Treasury budget should be enough to adequately fight terrorism and criminal abuses of the tax law at home. But a panel of outside experts concludes that the IRS will be underbudgeted across the board. The spurned request was disclosed almost by accident at a House subcommittee hearing. Republicans were openly annoyed when the IRS Oversight Board properly disclosed the original budget request in response to a lawmaker's question. The board, a bipartisan group created by Congress, endorsed the need for more terrorism investigators. It was curtly informed by Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, that antiterrorism was not part of its duties. Then whose duty is it? Congress's?" (New York Times/911 Citizens Watch)
April 4: One explanation for the constant drumbeat of positively spun, carefully laundered news from the US occupation in Iraq is that the press office is packed with Bush loyalists, according to the Associated Press. The AP reports, "Inside the marble-floored palace hall that serves as the press office of the US-led coalition, Republican Party operatives lead a team of Americans who promote mostly good news about Iraq. Dan Senor, a former press secretary for Spencer Abraham, the Michigan Republican who's now Energy Secretary, heads the office packed with former Bush campaign workers, political appointees and ex-Capitol Hill staffers. One-third of the US civilian workers in the press office have GOP ties, running an enterprise that critics see as an outpost of Bush's re-election effort with Iraq a top concern. Senor and others inside the coalition say they follow strict guidelines that steer clear of politics. One of the main goals of the Office of Strategic Communications -- known as stratcom -- is to ensure Americans see the positive side of the Bush administration's invasion, occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, where 600 U.S. soldiers have died and a deadly insurgency thrives." Headlines from the press office in late March included "Bautification Plan for Baghdad Ready to Begin" and "The Reality is Nothing Like What You See on Television." Earlier in his career, after Hebrew University and Harvard Business School, Senor was with the Carlyle Group, an investment firm with Bush family ties and big defense industry holdings. Senor jogged in a Thanksgiving Day race here wearing a "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirt.
The office counts 21 Republicans -- 11 of whom have worked inside the Bush administration before their Iraq posting -- among its 58 U.S. civilian staffers, according to figures Senor provided. More than half a dozen CPA officials in the press office worked on Bush's 2000 presidential campaign or are related to Bush campaign workers, according to payroll records filed with the Federal Elections Commission. Republican figures also permeate the wider CPA staff, including top advisers to US administrator Paul Bremer and the Iraqi ministries. Few, if any, known Democrats leaven the mix. "The US team stands in deep contrast to the British team that works alongside it," writes the AP; "almost all of whom are civil or foreign service employees, not political appointees. Many of the British in Iraq display regional knowledge or language skills that most of the Americans lack." Gordon Robison, a former CPA contractor who helped build the Pentagon-funded Al-Iraqiya television station in Baghdad, says that Republicans in the press room intensely followed the Democratic presidential primaries as John Kerry emerged as the presumed nominee. "Iraq is in danger of costing George W. Bush his presidency and the CPA's media staff are determined to see that does not happen," Robison says. "I had the impression in dealing with the civilians in the Green Room that they viewed their job as essentially political, promoting what the Coalition Provisional Authority is doing in Iraq as a political arm of the Bush administration."
One CPA staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity says the press office had sent targeted "good news" releases to American television, radio and newspaper outlets that were timed to deflect criticism of Bush during the Democratic primaries. Stratcom's schedule of news releases shows that stories were sent to media outlets in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee and Virginia and other states in the days before their Democratic primaries. Senor said any correlation to the vote was a coincidence. Rich Galen, a well-known Republican strategist, oversees the daily news releases sent directly to media outlets in the United States. Before joining the CPA press operation late last year, Galen wrote a GOP insider column and appeared on Fox News to harpoon liberal critics of Bush. Now, he's still writing an Internet column, but he's turned it into what he calls a travelogue about Iraq. And he still appears on Fox, but long-distance via satellite and as a CPA spokesman. Galen has been press secretary for both former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Vice President Dan Quayle during their careers. Galen's son, Reed, is involved in the Bush re-election effort. Though Galen denies anything he does has a political bent, political analysts say Galen's vast expertise lies in political campaigning, not shipping radio and TV spots to local audiences. Putting a sharp strategist like him in the press room is a campaign masterstroke, said Bob Boorstin of the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan political think-tank in Washington. "You know they're in trouble if they shipped Rich Galen over there," says Boorstin, who worked on four presidential campaigns, all Democratic. "They're desperate to control the story over there. It's a very smart thing on their part. He knows what he's doing." Boorstin says the shaping of the American message out of Iraq should come as no surprise. The rigors of election year politics demand the best possible portrayal of key policies, and Bush has staked his presidency on the notion that he's a war president. "There's some deep questions about whether [the U.S. invasion] was a good idea. Wherever and whenever they can, Bush's political people are manipulating whatever they can. Is that a surprise? No. Would Democrats do it? Yes. But it's particularly noxious because people's lives are on the line." (AP/I Won News)
April 4: The Republican National Committee and the Bush re-election campaign is hotly attempting to blunt the thrust of Democratic opposition by trying to eliminate the main source of its funding, the so-called "soft money" raised by "527" political committees, calling the Kerry campaign's use of 527 donations "An unprecedented criminal enterprise designed to impermissibly affect a presidential election." While they have filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission, they have asked the FEC to dismiss the complaints so that they can avoid the long and arduous process of FEC review in order to place the matter directly in the lap of a presumably friendly federal judge. But the Washington Post writes, "[T]he complaint does not provide the slam-dunk evidence of a 'massive conspiracy to corrupt the federal campaign finance system' that its proponents contend. It's far from certain that the groups, known as 527s for the section of the tax code under which they are organized, are violating the law. As the RNC itself argued to the Supreme Court, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation passed last year left interest groups, unlike political parties, 'largely unrestricted in raising and spending unlimited, unregulated and undisclosed money from any source.' The Supreme Court ruling changed the legal landscape, yet the contours of the new world remain uncertain. Indeed the FEC is writing rules to govern the operations of 527s. It's hard to see how a judge could intervene in the matter before those rules are even published. Nor does the complaint prove illegal coordination. That Jim Jordan, Mr. Kerry's former campaign manager, is now advising some of the outside groups doesn't by itself constitute such evidence. The FEC's coordination rules contemplate, as they should, that campaign workers may end up in different jobs in the course of the election cycle; there is illegal coordination only if they use 'material information' gathered while working for a candidate in helping their new employer craft advertising strategy. Likewise, the fact that the outside groups and the Kerry campaign advertised in the same media markets may reflect not coordination but the advantages of modern technology, which makes it easy to identify where swing voters are concentrated and to monitor where other candidates or groups are on the air. You don't have to cheer what the Democratic groups are doing to believe that the extraordinary remedy proposed by the Republicans -- removing the matter from the agency with expertise in the law and dumping it in the lap of a federal judge -- is neither sensible nor warranted." (Washington Post)
April 4: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes of the outright lies perpetrated by the Bush administration regarding Iraq: "All White Houses spin and lots of presidents stray into fiction. ...By holding back documents, officials, information, images and the sight of returning military coffins, by twisting and exaggerating facts to fit story lines, by demonizing anyone who disagrees with its version of reality, this administration strives to create an optical delusion. There was always something of the boy in the bubble about George W. Bush, cosseted from the vicissitudes of life, from Vietnam to business failure, by his famous name. In the front yard of the Kennebunkport estate, he blithely announced his run for president knowing virtually nothing about foreign affairs, confident that Poppy would surround him with the protective flank of his own Desert Storm war council. But now Mr. Bush is trying to pull America and Iraq into his bubble. In briefings delivered in the bubble of their own security bunkers, Paul Bremer and military officials continue to insist that democracy and stability are taking root in Iraq. The occupation administrator travels Iraq surrounded by armed guards while attacks get scarier, culminating in last week's bestial block party in Falluja. American commanders in Iraq have claimed the violence is primarily the work of outsiders, Islamic terrorists with at least loose links to al-Qaeda. They said, as The Times's John Burns wrote, that 'the worst of the "Saddamist" insurgency was over, its power blunted by a wide American offensive that followed the former dictator's capture.'
"The administration does not want to admit the extent of anti-American hatred among Iraqis. And even if some of the perpetrators are outsiders, they could never succeed without the active help of Iraqis. Just as they once conjured a mirage of a Saddam sharing lethal weapons with Osama, now the president and vice president make the disingenuous claim that al-Qaeda is on the run and that many of its capos are behind bars. Meanwhile, counterterrorism experts say terrorism has become hydra-headed, and one told Newsweek that the spawned heads have perpetrated more major terror attacks in the 30 months since 9/11 than in the 30 months before. Experts agree that the nature of the threat has shifted, with more than a dozen regional militant Islamic groups reflecting growing strength. Senator Bob Graham compared the new, decentralized Al Qaeda to a blob of mercury that 'you slam your fist into and it suddenly bursts into a hundred small pieces.' Mr. Bush also likes to brag that the Taliban is no longer in power. But the Taliban roots are deep. At least a third of Afghanistan is still so dicey that voters there cannot be registered, and the Kabul government has postponed June elections. ...As The Times's David Sanger wrote, 'In the Bush campaign, casualties are something to be alluded to obliquely, if at all.' In the Bush alternative universe of eternal sunshine, where the environment is not toxic and Medicare is not a budget buster, body bags and funerals just muddy the picture. Bush strategists say that good or bad Iraq news is still good for Mr. Bush; they think scenes of desecration will simply remind voters of his steely presidential resolve. The Bushies are busy putting a retroactive glow on their terrorism efforts, asserting that their plan was more muscular and 'comprehensive' than Mr. Clinton's. To support that Panglossian view, they held back a load of Clinton documents on terrorism from the 9/11 commission. If we can't take a cold, hard look at reality, how can we protect ourselves from terrorists? And how can we rescue Iraq from chaos? Now we're told the military is preparing an 'overwhelming' retaliation to the carnage in Falluja. You can hear the clammy blast from the past: We're going to destroy that village to save it." (New York Times/Occupation Watch)

Pentagon criticizes Afghanistan war strategy

April 5: A retired army colonel commissioned by the Pentagon to examine the war in Afghanistan concludes the conflict created conditions that have given "warlordism, banditry and opium production a new lease on life." While the New Yorker reported on the colonel's report, the rest of the US media ignored it. Retired Army Colonel Hy Rothstein, who served in the Army Special Forces for more than 20 years, wrote in a military analysis he gave to the Pentagon in January that the US failed to adapt to new conditions created by the Taliban's collapse. "The failure to adjust US operations in line with the post-Taliban change in theater conditions cost the United States some of the fruits of victory and imposed additional, avoidable humanitarian and stability costs on Afghanistan," Rothstein wrote in the report. "Indeed, the war's inadvertent effects may be more significant than we think." The military should have used Special Forces to adapt to new conditions, Rothstein wrote. The war "effectively destroyed the Taliban but has been significantly less successful at being able to achieve the primary policy goal of ensuring that al Qaeda could no longer operate in Afghanistan," he wrote. The Pentagon returned the report to Rothstein with a request he cut it drastically and soften his conclusions, the magazine reported. "There may be a kernel of truth in there, but our experts found the study rambling and not terribly informative," Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Collins said. (AFP/Channel News Asia)
April 5: At the request of Democratic senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the US Army is testing all members of the 442nd Military Police Company of the New York Army National Guard for depleted uranium contamination. Outside tests show that 4 of 9 soldiers tested were contaminated with radiation. Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former Army doctor and nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested the nine men, concludes four of them "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded depleted uranium shells fired by US troops. Clinton, after learning of the investigation, blasts Pentagon officials for not properly screening soldiers returning from Iraq. "We can't have people coming back with undiagnosed illnesses," Clinton says. "We have to have a before-and-after testing program for our soldiers." Clinton will demand answers from Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and will soon introduce legislation to require health screenings for all returning troops. During meetings with Pentagon officials last year, Clinton said "one of the issues we raised was exposure to the depleted uranium that was in the weapons, and how they were going to handle it." She was assured then that troops would be properly screened. But the soldiers from the 442nd contacted the New York Daily News after becoming frustrated with how the Army was handling their illnesses. The News arranged for the testing. Six of them say they repeatedly sought testing for depleted uranium from Army doctors but were denied. Three who were tested in early November for DU said they had been waiting months for the results. Two of those finally got their results last week; both were negative. Testing for uranium isotopes in 24 hours' worth of urine samples can cost as much as $1,000 each. But late last week, after learning of the test results, the Army reversed course and ordered immediate testing for more than a dozen members of the 442nd who are back in the US. The rest of the company, comprising mostly New York City cops, firefighters and correction officers, is not due to return from Iraq until later this month. "They ordered all of us who are here at Fort Dix to provide 24-hour urine samples by 1 PM today," one soldier from the company says.
Pentagon spokesman Austin Camacho says he could not confirm or deny that new tests had been ordered for the soldiers of the 442nd. "It's hard to imagine, theoretically, that these men could have harmful exposures," Camacho says. Army studies of depleted uranium have concluded that only soldiers who suffer shrapnel wounds from DU shells or who were inside tanks hit by DU shells and immediately breathe radioactive dust are at risk. None of the New York Guardsmen served inside tanks. Even then, Camacho said, studies of about 70 such cases from the first Gulf War have shown no long-term health problems. But medical experts critical of the use of DU weapons, as well as some of the Army's own early studies of depleted uranium, say exposure to it can cause kidney damage. Some studies have shown that it causes cancer and chromosome damage in mice, according to the experts. The Army studies cited by the Pentagon have long been shown to be unreliable. Sgt. Agustin Matos, a member of the 442nd Military Police and a city correction officer in civilian life, recalls his stay in Samawah, Iraq. "Every time I ran I felt my throat burning and my chest tightening," he says. Now he believes his symptoms may be the result of radioactive dust he inhaled from spent American shells made from depleted uranium.
He is one of four Iraq war veterans who tested positive for DU contamination. The soldiers and other members of the 442nd say they are suffering from physical ailments that began last summer while they were stationed in Samawah. Matos, who was assigned to the 4th platoon's 2nd squad, arrived in Samawah last June, two weeks ahead of the rest of the company. His advance team had orders to ready a huge depot in a train repair yard on the outskirts of downtown Samawah as a barracks for the unit. Once the entire company arrived, each platoon was assigned its own space inside the depot, which was bigger than a football field. A locomotive that straddled a repair pit and an empty train car sat in the middle of the sleeping area, with two platoons assigned to bed down along one side of the train and two others along the other side. Just outside the depot, two Iraqi tanks, one of them shot up, had been hauled onto flatbed railroad cars. The company was so short-handed, according to the soldiers, that the commander would evacuate a GI only if he could no longer physically function. Matos was sent home last year for surgery for a shoulder injury suffered in a jeep accident. Since his return, he has had constant headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, joint pain and excessive urination. After he recently discovered blood in his urine, doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center gave him a CAT scan and discovered a small lesion on his liver. A 1990 Army study linked DU to "chemical toxicity causing kidney damage." "Before I left for Iraq, they tested my eyes and I was fine," Matos said. "Now my eyesight's gotten bad, on top of everything else."
Another member of the company who tested positive for DU is Sgt. Hector Vega, a retired postal worker from the Bronx who has been in the National Guard for 27 years. Since being evacuated to Fort Dix for treatment for foot surgery, Vega said he has endured insomnia and constant headaches. And like many of the sick soldiers, Vega says, "I have uncontrollable urine, every half hour." One day, during a trip a few hours south of Samawah, he and another soldier stopped on the side of the road to photograph and check out two shot-up Iraqi tanks. "We didn't think anything of walking right up to those tanks and touching them," he remembers. "I didn't know anything about depleted uranium." As for the railroad depot where they slept, Vega recalls it as "disgusting. Oil, dirt and bird droppings everywhere, insects crawling all around us." And dust storms would blow dust from inside the depot, dust contaminated with DU residue, all over the barracks every night. Vega says, "It was so thick, you could see it." (New York Daily News)
April 5: In October 1986, then-US congressman Dick Cheney introduced legislation to create a new import tax that would have caused the price of oil, and ultimately the price of gasoline paid by drivers, to soar by billions of dollars per year, an interesting bit of information considering how US gas prices are soaring today. In promoting his legislation, Cheney told Congress, "Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States," At that time, oil prices had plunged to $15 from nearly $40 a barrel in the early 1980's, as Saudi Arabia flooded world markets, and Cheney argued the tax was needed to stabilize oil-state economies devastated as a result. But other lawmakers, including some Republicans, criticized the Cheney plan and similar proposals as "snake oil" that would throw 400,000 Americans out of work. They also said then, as Bush and Cheney do now, that higher taxes would stall the economy. Currently the Bush-Cheney campaign is trying to deflect criticism that the Bush administration's inaction has resulted in spiking gas prices by trying to portray John Kerry as a proponent of higher gas prices. "some people have wacky ideas like taxing gasoline more so people drive less. That's John Kerry," says a recent Bush campaign commercial. The commercial singles out Kerry's support a decade ago for a 50-cent gas tax increase, part of a deficit-reduction package that Kerry never voted for." Under Cheney's 1986 plan, gas and oil prices would have skyrocketed due to a huge tax laid on gasoline and other petroleum products. Energy costs would have shot up. The late senator John Heinz, a Republican, said in February 1987 that the proposals would add $1.3 billion per year to the energy costs of Pennsylvania consumers alone. He also cited a study done for a federal reserve bank suggesting that a $5 per barrel fee would lead to the loss of 400,000 jobs nationwide and cause inflation to soar. In a statement condemning Cheney's legislation, Heinz said, "I want to bring this vampire into daylight now before it sneaks out of Congress and drains the lifeblood from our economic recovery."
Democratic senator Richard Durbin says that had Cheney's legislation been enacted, it would have cost Americans over $1.2 trillion. "It is hard to explain," says Durbin, "how they could attack John Kerry for even considering a 50-cent gas tax, which he didn't introduce or vote for, and ignore Cheney's own legislation in 1986 which would have dramatically raised the cost of gasoline. If every vote and every statement made by John Kerry is fair game, the same thing is true of President Bush and the vice president." Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, says that Kerry had consistently supported higher taxes on gasoline: "President Bush and Vice President Cheney want to keep taxes low and keep the economy moving. They have proposed an energy plan that will provide for a stable, affordable and secure energy supply." Kerry points out that, as a US senator, he helped defeat Cheney's legislation, co-sponsoring a resolution opposing the plan. Kerry was joined by 15 Republican senators in fighting the bill, which was not passed. Cheney's office refuses to comment about the bill. (New York Times/Change for America US Newswire)
April 5: Democratic senator Edward Kennedy continues his broadsides against the Bush administration, accusing it of a "widening credibility gap" between it and the truth. He calls Bush himself "deceitful" and says Bush has "created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon" on education, health and jobs, as well as the war in Iraq. "He has broken the basic bond of trust with the American people," Kennedy says during a speech at the Brookings Institution. Bush "is the problem, not the solution. Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam, and this country needs a new president," Kennedy says. He says that the military campaign also diverts attention from "the administration's deceptions here at home." An administration pattern of deception and efforts to dismiss any critics, he said, have polarized and paralyzed Congress and are undermining the public's trust in government. "saying whatever it takes to prevail has become standard operating procedure in the Bush White House," says Kennedy. "In this administration, truth is the first casualty of policy." In response, Senate Republican leaders defend Bush's credibility, and the Bush-Cheney campaign accuses Kennedy of serving as the "hatchet man" the Kerry campaign. "Issuing personal attacks against the president is just another way of saying they have no agenda to lead America," says Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt. Kennedy, one of Bush's most vocal critics on Capitol Hill and a prominent Kerry backer, has made a series of speeches criticizing Bush's foreign policy He calls Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam." In his speech, which was among his most sharply worded critiques of Bush, Kennedy also links Iraq to domestic concerns, saying the war "diverted attention from the administration's deceptions here at home -- especially on the economy, health care and education."
On domestic as well as foreign policy, "saying whatever it takes to prevail has become standard operating procedure in the Bush White House," he continues. "In this administration, truth is the first casualty of policy." Kennedy accuses the administration of trying to "backdate" the recent recession to blame President Bill Clinton. He condemns the administration for focusing on tax cuts for the wealthy as budget deficits deepened and for letting supplemental unemployment benefits expire. On health care, he said the administration hid its own updated price tag for the Medicare prescription drug benefit that Congress passed last year, which indicated the program would cost far more than Congress believed. The bill itself was "a triumph of right-wing ideology masking as moderate reform," Kennedy says, adding that the administration "misused" millions of dollars in Medicare money to promote it in commercials and mailings. As for education, Kennedy said Bush reneged on promises of adequate funding to carry out accountability provisions in the No Child Left Behind law passed with Kennedy's help in 2001. The current Bush budget "leaves over 4.6 million children behind" by excluding funding to cover their needs, he says. Responding to Kennedy's speech, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says Bush's "credibility is strong" and challenges Kennedy's contention that Bush has shortchanged health care and education. Majority Whip Mitch McConnell calls Kennedy's charges "completely outrageous"and said, "Americans would be much better served if the senator from Massachusetts would remember who the enemy is." (Washington Post, AP/My Way News)
April 5: Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen deplores the refusal of anyone in the Bush administration to be accountable for their failures. "If, say, a Japanese government had performed as badly as the Bush administration has, there would be no one left to turn out the lights," he writes. He continues, "But from the president on down, no one in this administration ever admits a mistake or concedes having been wrong. Dick Cheney, whose slogan should be 'Wrong Where It Matters,' nonetheless takes to the stump to lambaste John Kerry. After all, the vice president is the very man who warned us, assured us, promised us that we must go to war with Iraq because, among other things, that nation had an ongoing nuclear weapons program. None has yet been found -- and no apology from Cheney has yet been issued. He was mistaken or dishonest. We await his choice. ...For all the talk about the buck stopping in this place called 'here,' it usually never stops at all. But demanding resignations begs the question. It is not heads the American people want, it is humility. That is what's so lacking in the Bush administration. The real reason -- the terribly secret reason -- the administration was oh-so-slow to recognize the terrorist threat was precisely the quality so abundant in Rumsfeld: smugness. The Bushies knew it all. ...What is so perturbing about this administration is not that no one of note has resigned or been fired -- and some of them certainty deserve the ax -- but that there is not the slightest hint that anyone (except Colin Powell) appreciates that mistakes were made not out of sheer bad luck but because the assumptions, driven by ideology, were so bad. Terrorism, not missile defense, should have been the top priority; al-Qaeda was and remains the threat, not Iraq. (That explains why Saddam Hussein is in jail while bin Laden is still on the loose, having slipped the noose in Afghanistan because the Pentagon left the job to locals.) Iraq was going to be a cakewalk -- the Middle Eastern version of the liberation of Paris -- and somehow that has not happened. In another country, some officials would quit in shame. In this one they can't even quit being smug." (Washington Post)
April 5: John Weaver writes of the Bush administration's ugly attacks on Richard Clarke: "If smear and slander can be an art form, they've perfected it. This is not their first smear rodeo." (New York Observer/Buzzflash)
April 5: Former US president Jimmy Carter, a devout Christian, explains why the current crop of so-called fundamentalist Christians exerting control over the Republican party are not true Christians at all. He says, "When I was younger, almost all Baptists were strongly committed on a theological basis to the separation of church and state. It was only 25 years ago when there began to be a melding of the Republican Party with fundamentalist Christianity, particularly with the Southern Baptist Convention. This is a fairly new development, and I think it was brought about by the abandonment of some of the basic principles of Christianity. First of all, we worship the prince of peace, not war. And those of us who have advocated for the resolution of international conflict in a peaceful fashion are looked upon as being unpatriotic, branded that way by right-wing religious groups, the Bush administration, and other Republicans. Secondly, Christ was committed to compassion for the most destitute, poor, needy, and forgotten people in our society. Today there is a stark difference [between conservative ideology and Christian teaching] because most of the people most strongly committed to the Republican philosophy have adopted the proposition that help for the rich is the best way to help even poor people (by letting some of the financial benefits drip down to those most deeply in need). I would say there has been a schism drawn -- on theology and practical politics and economics between the two groups."
He explains how the intolerance of some fundamentalist beliefs dovetails with the intolerance of the conservatives in the Republican party: "There is an element of fundamentalism involved, which involves the belief on the part of a human being that [his or her] own concept of God is the proper one. And since [he or she has] the proper concept of God, [he or she is] particularly blessed and singled out for special consideration above and beyond those who disagree with [him or her]. Secondly, anyone who does disagree with [him or her], since [he or she is] harnessed to God in a unique way, then, by definition, must be wrong. And the second step is if you are in disagreement with [his or her] concept of the way to worship, even among the Christian community, is that you are inferior to [him or her]. And then the ultimate progression of that is that you're not only different and wrong and inferior but in some ways you are subhuman. So there's a loss of concern even for the death of those who disagree. And this takes fundamentalism to the extreme. This is an element of the fundamentalist cause in this country. If you are a wealthy white man, then you are naturally inclined to think that the poor are inferior and don't deserve your first consideration. If you are a wealthy white man, then you also take on the proposition that women are inherently inferior. This builds up a sense of prejudice and alienation that permeates the Christian right during these days."
Carter believes that moderate Christians are rapidly turning away from the warlike extremists currently in power, and that millions of less "fundamentalist" Christians will go to the polls to help vote George W. Bush out of office. He says the fundamentalist Christian right has misrepresented Christianity, as well as the democratic process: "Well, what do Christians stand for, based exclusively on the words and actions of Jesus Christ? We worship him as a prince of peace. And I think almost all Christians would conclude that whenever there is an inevitable altercation -- say, between a husband and a wife, or a father and a child, or within a given community, or between two nations (including our own) -- we should make every effort to resolve those differences which arise in life through peaceful means. Therein, we should not resort to war as a way to exalt the president as the commander in chief. A commitment to peace is certainly a Christian principle that even ultraconservatives would endorse, at least by worshipping the prince of peace. And Christ reached out almost exclusively to the poor, suffering, abandoned, deprived -- the scorned, the condemned people -- including Samaritans and those who were diseased. The alleviation of suffering was a philosophy that was enhanced and emphasized by the life of Christ. Today the ultra-right wing, in both religion and politics, has abandoned that principle of Jesus Christ's ministry. Those are the two principal things in the practical sense that starkly separate the ultra-right Christian community from the rest of the Christian world: Do we endorse and support peace and support the alleviation of suffering among the poor and the outcast?"
Carter particularly decries traditionalist evangelicals' strong support for Israel being based on the New Testament prophecy that the reconstruction of the ancient kingdom of David will usher in the "end times" and the Second Coming of Christ: "That's a completely foolish and erroneous interpretation of the Scriptures. And it has resulted in these last few years with a terrible, very costly, and bloody deterioration in the relationship between Israel and its neighbors. Every president except for George W. Bush has taken a relatively balanced position between the Israelis and their enemies, always strongly supporting Israel but recognizing that you have to negotiate and work between Israel and her neighbors in order to bring about a peaceful resolution. It's nearly the 25th anniversary of my consummation of a treaty between Israel and Egypt -- not a word of which has ever been violated. But this administration, maybe strongly influenced by ill-advised theologians of the extreme religious right, has pretty well abandoned any real effort that could lead to a resolution of the problems between Israel and the Palestinians. And no one can challenge me on my commitment to Israel and its right to live in peace with all its neighbors. But at the same time, there has to be a negotiated settlement; you can't just ordain the destruction of the Palestinian people, and their community and their political entity, in favor of the Israelis. And that's what some of the extreme fundamentalist Christians have done, both to the detriment of the Israelis and the Palestinians." (The American Prospect)

Imminent collapse of American control of central Iraq, with three major cities withdrawing from the government and several more overrun by fighting

April 6: While Iraqi legate Paul Bremer insists that "[t]here is no question we have control over the country," the reality is far different. So far, three major Iraqi cities have opted out of the US occupation: Fallujah, where Sunni rebels are expecting an all-out American assault; Kufa, which is now totally under the control of Shi'ite fascist forces organized by Iranian ally and hardline Islamic radical Muqtada al-Sadr; and Najaf, where Sadr's forces took control today. Fighting has erupted in Kut, Samawah, and Nasiriyah, as well. Observers characterize it as a catastrophic collapse of American power, one bound to get worse unless the Bush administration admits defeat, hands over the control of Iraq to the UN, and leaves. "Iraq," says Ted Kennedy, "is George Bush's Vietnam, and this country needs a new president." Unfortunately, Bush is unlikely to take the proper action. Security expert Richard Dreyfuss writes, "[T]he urgent issue is to prevent Iraq from turning into a bloodbath. Bush will be president until next January, and he has time to preside over the destruction of Iraq. His simple-minded, Manichean instincts -- egged on by the desperate neocons, who want an Armageddon-style clash in Iraq -- are behind this latest show of force, which the US general in charge describes as 'the decision to go hard.' Bremer says, 'We will reassert the law and order that people expect.' (He then ordered U.S. personnel to stay in their bunkers until further notice.)" (TomPaine.com)
April 6: Both US soldiers and Iraqi civilians express their amazement and anger at how badly the situation has deteriorated in Sadr City, Baghdad. A year ago, say both soldiers and citizens, many of the Iraqis in the crowded neighborhoods welcomed the US troops. "When the Americans came, we applauded. We were giving the thumbs-up. We were jumping and shouting. I took a picture of Saddam Hussein and stomped on it," says one Iraqi. Now, grieving for the deaths of two neighbors who were caught in American crossfire, she asks, "Why do they do like this to us?" One American soldier, Lieutenant Dave Swanson, says the neighborhood now reminds him of Mogadishu, Somalia. People who greeted him warmly a few weeks ago now throw rocks at him and his men. The recent battle for control of Sadr City, the longest and bloodiest firefight since the fall of Baghdad a year ago, left eight US soldiers dead and at least 43 Iraqis, many innocent residents, dead. The local hospital, which is poorly equipped to deal with the most minor problems, is overwhelmed by the number of wounded Iraqis being hustled through its doors for care. About 1,000 US troops battled between 500 and 1,000 Iraqi insurgents belonging to Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. The battle was chaotic at best. One Iraqi driving an ambulance with his sirens on and his lights flashing was shot in the stomach when US forces opened fire on his vehicle; a pregnant woman and her 6-year old son, both riding to the hospital, were killed. "I don't know why they shot at me," the driver says. "When I left the hospital they saw me. I was shuttling patients back and forth all night." An Iraqi pediatric nurse dissolves in tears as she remembers how many children who died from bullet wounds to the head were under her care. "Even when Baghdad fell, we didn't see anything like this," she says. The firefight lasted about seven hours, culminating in the rout of the Mahdi Army. "Mahdi Army! They're not an army!" says one US soldier of the unemployed young men who took over one station by brandishing grenades. "They're a bunch of looters." "It was really a mob," says a US spokesman. "A mob with a lot of weapons." But the battle here is not only military. At Sadr City's main patrol station, Mahdi militiamen were welcomed by Iraqi police, who said the fighters gathered to help protect the property from looting. "We are all brothers, me and the Mahdi Army," says one Iraqi police officer. "These are our people." (Washington Post)
April 6: US commanders in Iraq are considering the need to add a significant number of new troops to the occupation to contain the violence erupting throughout that country. Of particular concern is the growing violent unrest from the Shi'ite population, once considered staunch allies of the US occupation force. President Bush says that, regardless of the violence in Iraq, his administration will go forward in moving towards Iraqi self-rule, beginning with the June 30 transfer of some political power to a hand-picked group of Iraqis. "If they think that we're not sincere about staying the course," he says, "many people will not continue to take a risk toward -— take the risk toward freedom and democracy." While violence continues to escalate in Iraq, Bush himself has paid scant attention, preferring to concentrate on fundraising appearances, including a highly visible appearance in St. Louis, where he threw out the first pitch in the new major league baseball season. Senior military officials downplay the fighting in Iraq, saying it does not portend any sort of full-fledged revolution or mass uprising. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry says, "We can't allow this to continue. ...There has to be a political, diplomatic solution which, regrettably, this administration seems stubbornly determined to avoid." He calls the absence of Arab neighbors as part of the stabilization force "staggering," saying, "All have a major stake in not having a failed Iraqi state, no matter how they feel about our getting there. ...I think the president owes it to the American people to explain who we're turning over sovereignty to and how on June 30th and what is the security plan for after June 30th." (New York Times/Global Policy Forum)
April 6: Australian prime minister John Howard says he will not send any more Australian troops to Iraq no matter how much violence breaks out. "We have about 850 troops there and personnel there at the present time and they're playing a very important role," Howard says. "They'll stay there until the job is done." Asked if he was leaving the door open to send more troops if asked, Howard replies, "We don't have any plans and I'm not even looking at doors. I'm sort of quite content with the room I'm in." Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who had talks with US Secretary of State Colin Powell last week, says it is unlikely Australia would be asked to contribute. "We haven't had any requests from the Americans," Downer says. Opposition leader Mark Latham, who is challenging Howard for the prime minister slot, says if elected, he will bring all 850 troops home by Christmas. (The Age)
April 6: The White House cites executive privilege and refuses to send two key figures in the Medicare controversy to testify before the House Ways and Means committee, defying Democrats who had sought their testimony. The White House refuses to send Doug Badger, the special assistant to the president for health policy; Thomas Scully, who no longer works for the government, wrote the committee a letter saying he had been busy traveling and would be unable to appear. Democrats then tried to persuade the committee to subpoena them, but those motions failed along party lines, by votes of 23-16. When Democrat Lloyd Doggett suggested that the panel invite Scully to appear on a more convenient date, the committee's chairman, Republican Bill Thomas of California, dismissed the idea. "The chair's reading of Mr. Scully's letter is, he ain't coming," Thomas declares. The development infuriates Democrats, who are trying to investigate accusations by the chief Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, that Scully, as administrator, threatened to fire him if he shared his prescription-cost estimates with Congress last year, before the legislation was enacted. Foster has suggested that Scully was acting on orders from the White House, possibly from Badger. Doggett calls Badger "the Condoleezza Rice for health care." (New York Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer/MakeThemAccountable)

Former president Bush privately opposes war

April 6: A new book alleges that George H.W. Bush opposed invading Iraq. In The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer cite as evidence a summer 2002 interview in which the older Bush's sister said her brother had expressed his "anguish" about the administration's preparations for war. "But do they have an exit strategy?" the former president is quoted as worrying. "Although he never went public with them," the authors assert, "the President's own father shared many of [the] concerns" of Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser and a leading war opponent. Top Bush aide Jean Becker denies the allegations. "From the very first day, President Bush 41 unequivocally supported the President on the war in Iraq," she says. "He had absolutely no reservations of any kind." However, close friends and associates of the former president disagree. "He agrees with the policy goals but not with all of the execution," says one close friend. The older Bush has maintained strict public silence about possible differences, and only last week hammered "elites and intellectuals on the campaign trail" for criticizing the war. Yet close friends and associates said the older Bush, while fiercely proud and protective of his son, nevertheless harbors concerns about the war and its aftermath. Reportedly the elder Bush not only worries about the lack of an exit strategy, but he is troubled that the war fractured the international coalition he assembled to expel deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991. One close associate said the older Bush feels Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may have pushed President Bush too hard for a preemptive strike. In his 1998 diplomatic memoir, the former President offered this defense of his controversial decision not to attack Baghdad and topple Saddam in 1991: "Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. ...Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." One well-placed Bush colleague says the older Bush recently acknowledged, "I'm having trouble with my boy," referring to Iraq. (New York Daily News)
April 6: Citing accounts that 75% of experts believe that this election's "October Surprise" will be another massive terror attack on a US target, Buzzflash's Maureen Farrell wonders if the expected attack will prompt the Bush administration to call off the November elections and put the country under what will essentially be martial law. Some right-wing pundits, such as Sean Hannity, actually seems to welcome the prospect: "If we are attacked before our election like Spain was, I am not so sure that we should go ahead with the election," he recently told his audience. "We had better make plans now because it's going to happen." Fellow talk show maven Rush Limbaugh says that Islamic terrorists will attack in order to help defeat George Bush's re-election, saying, "Who do you think the terrorists would rather have in office in this country -- socialists like those in Spain as personified by John Kerry and his friends in the Democratic Party, or George W. Bush?" He concludes that if Kerry wins the election, the terrorists will consider that a major victory. Farrell notes, "Given the bizarre mind-melding between the government and media and the Soviet-style propagandizing that's been taking place, one has to wonder: Is there is any significance in the fact that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and David Brooks are all beating the same tom-tom? As former White House insider Richard Clarke recently told Jon Stewart, '[There are] dozens of people, in the White House...writing talking points, calling up conservative columnists, calling up talk radio hosts, telling them what to say. It's interesting. All the talk radio people, the right wing talk radio people across the country, saying the exact same thing, exactly the same words.' Stewart noted that a 24-hour news network was also making observations that were 'remarkably similar to what the White House was saying.'"
Bible Code author Michael Drosnin, a fundamentalist Christian, echoes the sentiment of many "end-times" Christians when he predicts another attack in 2004. It is well documented that Bush and many of his senior staff pay close attention to these extremists, and even bring them in to help make policy decisions. Journalists Wayne Madsen and John Stanton wrote in May 2002, "One incident, one aircraft hijacked, a 'dirty nuke' set off in a small town, may well prompt the Bush regime, let's say during the election campaign of 2003-2004, to suspend national elections for a year while his government ensures stability. Many closed door meetings have been held on these subjects and the notices for these meetings have been closely monitored...." Farrell also notes, from sources at the Los Angeles Times, "To make matters worse, if martial law is imposed, Air Force General Ralph E. Eberhart will be able to blast through Posse Comitatus and deploy troops to America's streets. Gen. Eberhart, you might recall, is the former Commander of NORAD, which was in charge of protecting America's skies on Sept. 11. But instead of being scrutinized for NORAD's massive failures, he was promoted and now heads the Pentagon's Northern Command. And, as military analyst William M. Arkin explained, 'It is only in the case of "extraordinary"' domestic operations that would enable Gen. Eberhart to bring in 'intelligence collectors, special operators and even full combat troops' to bear. What kind of situation would have to occur to grant Eberhart 'the far-reaching authority that goes with "extraordinary operations?"' Nothing. He already has that authority." Farrell concludes, "so I'll go out on a limb and make a prediction of my own: If the truth continues to seep out about the way the Bush administration has failed us, suspending the election may be the only way Bush can win. My darkest fear is that G.W.'s handlers believe this, too." (Buzzflash)
April 6: John Dean, in his new book Worse Than Watergate, portrays George W. Bush as a puppet president operated by Vice President Dick Cheney. Dean sees Cheney as a de facto "co-president" who skillfully handles the less-experienced and pitifully incurious Bush. In an interview in Salon, Dean describes how it works. "Cheney is quietly guiding this administration. Cheney knows how to play Bush so that Cheney is absolutely no threat to him, makes him feel he is president, but Bush can't function without a script, or without Cheney ...Bush is head of state; Cheney is head of government." Bill Gallagher writes, "The decision for Cheney and Bush to appear together before the 9/11 Commission underscores that truth. Imagine, the President of the United States needs a minder to hold his hand while he testifies about what he knew and did about the terrorist attacks -- the event, he says, that defines his presidency. Certainly, they want to try to keep their conflicting stories straight, but we should all shudder at the thought that the president's handlers can't trust him, even in private, to speak for himself and say what he knows without sitting on the vice president's lap. It's a chilling reminder of what little confidence there is in his solo performances and that, the last time Bush was left alone, he choked on a pretzel. Cheney has achieved what he wanted with the 9/11 Commission -- creating the perception that it's just a contrived political forum in an election year, another partisan Washington tussle with little substance. The corporate media, led by the cable news networks, is dutifully following that line." (Niagara Falls Reporter)
April 6: Kenneth Starr, the former prosecutor of the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations, accepts the post as Pepperdine University's dean of the law school. Starr was offered the post seven years ago but declined after he was criticized for abandoning the Whitewater investigation into the Clintons' real estate dealings. Pepperdine President Andrew Benton says of Starr, "He will serve as a role model not only for our students, but for the entire Pepperdine community." The Pepperdine law school receives heavy funding from right-wing media mogul Richard Mellon Scaife. (AP/San Jose Mercury News)
April 6: Vietnam vet John Greeley says, "Iraq is like Vietnam, if for no other reason than it is the senseless exercise of enormous, unequalled military power against another fourth-rate power for ideological reasons which remain unfounded in reality. If it is necessary that our youth must die for our country, at least let it be for reasons that are real if not noble. If we demand no other quality from a president, let it be that he use America 's power in the world for realistic goals and not squander it in needless, destructive ideological flights of fancy." (Intervention/Buzzflash)

April 7: US officials vow to hunt down and destroy the militia of a radical Shi'ite Muslim cleric, as coalition troops struggled to stop Iraq sliding into chaos with more than 150 people killed on both sides in three days of clashes. Battles have flared in towns across southern Iraq, particularly in Amarah, Nasiriyah, Karbala and Kut, with the fiercely anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army attracting growing support from discontented Shiites, angered that change has not come more quickly almost a year since their oppressor Saddam Hussein was ousted. 12 Marines were killed in a single day's fighting in the Sunni town of Ramadi; Ukranian forces were forced to retreat from the Shi'ite city of Kut, leaving Sadr's forces in control of the city. The key city of Fallujah is in an uproar, with insurgents and US forces fighting for control and US troops killing 40 Iraqis inside a mosque; Shi'ites in Sadr City, a poor section of Baghdad, are in revolt. Though many observers have predicted an eventual uprising of angry Shi'ites, the US claims it is surprised at the fierce clashes with Iraq's Shi'ite majority in the south. US troops have had ongoing problems containing uprisings from Sunni Muslims farther north. Bush continues to talk tough, saying, "We will not be shaken by the thugs and terrorists. These killers don't have values.... We face tough action in Iraq but we will stay the course." Later he says, "We've got tough work [in Iraq] because, you see, there are terrorists there who would rather kill innocent people than allow for the advance of freedom. ...That's what you're seeing going on: These people hate freedom, and we love freedom, and that's where the clash occurs." He notes, "it's going to take a while for them to understand what freedom is all about." US forces have depended largely on allied forces from countries such as Italy and El Salvador to deal with the increasingly violent Shi'ites, and those forces do not always stand their ground. Citizens of those countries are increasing their calls for their soldiers to return home. (AFP/Channel News Asia, Washington Post, BBC, UPI/Washington Times)

Pakistan's Musharraf says that the Iraq war is undermining his country's efforts to combat al-Qaeda and the Taliban

April 7: Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf says that the war in Iraq is undermining international efforts to combat al-Qaeda and the resurgent Taliban. Musharraf says his government is receiving "very minimal" assistance as it tries to pacify tribal areas along the Afghan border where leaders of al-Qaeda and the former Afghan Taliban regime are believed hiding. Asked if the US-led Iraq war has been a distraction from the battle against al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants by diverting resources from Afghanistan and Pakistan, Musharraf replies: "Yes indeed. ...Money needs to be spent in our tribal areas, where these al-Qaeda...or Taliban government agents are, [where] we are operating against them. ...We need to carry out reconstruction in the area, [the] army is doing it and the civilians are also doing it. Now all this needs money and we are getting some assistance, which is very minimal." He adds, that more funds were needed to bring the tribal areas into "mainstream" life. Musharraf also complains that the international security force in Afghanistan (ISAF) is not doing enough to help the central government maintain control over the sprawling country. "The US forces are acting very well, but the ISAF, let me tell you, that very recently they didn't really want to get out of Kabul," he says. Outside Kabul, he says, there are "12 or 13 power centers" held by warlords who will continue to act independently "unless there is a force to control that." (Agence France-Presse/CommonDreams)
April 7: Journalist Husain Haqqani calls the new terror groups springing up all over the world "baby al-Qaedas" and says not only has the war in Iraq given impetus to new terror groups, but that the war in Afghanistan has been poorly implemented. He writes, "The decision to commit fewer troops to the Afghan war and 'outsourcing' the hunt on the ground for al-Qaeda to the Northern Alliance and Pakistan probably enabled al-Qaeda operatives to disperse instead of waiting to be destroyed by US bombardment from the air. The only reason the US feels it has destroyed 70 percent of known al-Qaeda leaders is that its knowledge of al-Qaeda operatives was limited to begin with. Less-known veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad started slipping out of Afghanistan soon after the US started bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001. Pakistan did not deploy significant numbers of troops along its border with Afghanistan until Dec. 7, giving al-Qaeda trainers almost two months to spread out. These individuals have most likely served as midwives of the baby al-Qaidas the U.S. now confronts from Morocco to Indonesia. The core assumption of the US strategy in Afghanistan was that terrorists cannot operate without state sponsorship. Once the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had been dislodged and al-Qaeda's safe haven had been destroyed, Osama bin Laden's organization was expected to wither away or at least decline in significance as a source of threat. There was little contingency planning for al-Qaeda's ability to evolve in new ways, operating without state sponsorship in remote parts of insufficiently governed countries.
"It is true that al-Qaeda no longer has the elaborate training camps it had while the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. But these camps were partly needed to train soldiers for conventional war in defense of Taliban control of Afghan cities. With no cities to protect, al-Qaida no longer needs conventional military training. Suicide bombers can be easily trained in the caves of south and eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, the jungles of Mindanao in southern Philippines and in basements of homes in the Sunni triangle in Iraq. Ideological motivation for young men to join its ranks is now more important to al-Qaeda than a state sponsor. That motivation has been provided by the haste to war in Iraq. Officials in several Muslim countries have noted a rise in recruitment to extremist groups, and even US officials (including [J.Cofer] Black) acknowledge that 'there are literally thousands of jihadists around the world.' These extremists have added anti-Americanism to their causes, which in the past involved only local separatist wars in remote parts of the world such as Chechnya and Kashmir. ...If terrorist recruitment is up, al-Qaeda has morphed into something different but equally deadly, and terrorist financing continues to increase, victory in the war against terrorism is far from imminent." (Salon)
April 7: The Bush administration is asking an appeals court to overturn a federal judge's decision to award nearly $1 billion in Iraqi money to 17 Americans taken prisoner by Saddam Hussein's government during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Attorneys for the POWs, who were tortured and starved, countered that the award, to be paid from Iraqi government assets frozen in this country, in no way threatens the rebuilding of Iraq, taking issue with the central argument of the administration. The administration contends that the monies are needed for use in Iraqi reconstruction, and that the matter of compensation should be handled diplomatically instead of through the courts. Stewart Baker, attorney for the POWs, told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that his clients simply want the judgment in their favor upheld to affirm their suffering and allow them to collect at a later time. "French oil companies are going to walk in and say 'I have a contract signed by Saddam Hussein and I want to be paid,' and they're going to have a claim that is recognized under international law," Baker said. "We think this is a debt incurred by Saddam Hussein that deserves much more priority than some French oil contract." Retired Colonel David Eberly, who was held by the Iraqis for more than 40 days, said the government's effort to void the ruling is disappointing. "Today, the argument boils down to the fact that the government simply wants to say 'thank you very much for your service and now go home and live forever the horrors and the memories of your captivity and the torture that went on.'" he says. "I think that's unjust." Eberly was shot down over northwest Iraq on Jan. 19, 1991, and captured by Iraqi soldiers who beat him daily and fed him just bread and broth. The POWs filed suit against Iraq in April 2002 under a 1996 law that allows victims to pursue blocked assets if they've won damage awards against foreign governments that sponsor terrorism. U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts sided with the POWs last summer and ordered payment of $653 million in compensatory damages and $306 million in punitive damages. But the Justice Department stepped in and said the POWs could not have access to any of the $1.7 billion of Iraqi assets frozen in 1990. It argued that President Bush formally seized those assets after the invasion of Iraq last year and that the money would be used for rebuilding the country. Roberts reluctantly agreed that the government had the right to block those funds from being used. (AP/San Jose Mercury News)
April 7: Former Special Advisor to the British Foreign Office David Clark derides the Bush and Blair administrations' apocalyptic view of the war on terror. He writes, "Islamist terrorism poses a threat to the physical existence of those who stand to be killed as a result of its actions, as yesterday's news of a plot to explode a chemical bomb in Britain reminded us. But it is not comparable to the threat posed to western democracy and European Jewry by Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s, let alone the prospect of nuclear annihilation during the cold war. Policy choices that proceed from that assumption are almost certain to be wrong. For similar reasons it is nonsense to argue that America and her allies are 'losing the war on terror.' Al-Qaeda's capacity to carry out horrific acts of violence may continue to grow, but its real mission -- to establish a pan-Islamic theocracy -- is doomed to end in failure. Even a Talibanised Pakistan or Saudi Arabia would be too enfeebled to present much more than a temporary and localised threat. The ideology of Islamism will remain contained by the backwardness it shares with other forms of religious fundamentalism."
However, Clark writes, "Bush seems determined to test this theory to destruction by playing so eagerly the role scripted for him by Osama bin Laden. If the invasion of Iraq was intended to bring democracy and enlightenment to the darkest recesses of the Arab street, it must be obvious that it has been a spectacular miscalculation. Instead we have a spiral of violence that now involves attacks on coalition forces by armed elements of the Shia majority. ...Far from striking a blow against terrorism, the invasion of Iraq has unleashed the very forces of extremism it was supposed to destroy. This shouldn't surprise us. Successful counter-insurgency strategy always relies on two interrelated elements: a military campaign aimed at the perpetrators of violence, and a political campaign designed to isolate them from the wider population. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration violated both principles simultaneously. ...Instead of focusing on stabilizing Afghanistan and pursuing the large numbers of committed terrorists that escaped the fall of the Taliban, the Bush administration decided to widen the war on terror to carry out an act of geopolitical adventurism that had been part of the neoconservative game plan before most senior officials had even heard of al-Qaeda. By taking its eye off the target in this way, the US government not only allowed bin Laden and his followers to escape and regroup, it acted to broaden their base of support by demonstrating utter indifference to the opinion of Muslims. The invasion of Iraq may have been wrapped up in high-minded rhetoric about the need to liberate suffering Iraqis from a brutal regime, but most Muslims understand that the US removed Saddam from power for the same reason it installed him in the first place: to engineer a balance of power favourable to its own interests. This perception of double standards has been compounded by the fact that no serious attempt has been made to address legitimate Muslim or Arab grievances. The roadmap for an Israel-Palestine peace settlement remains locked in the glove compartment, as Sharon continues the illegal annexation of Palestinian land under the pretext of building a security wall and pursues his own militaristic and unsuccessful war on terror.
"Meanwhile, Bush pretends not to notice. The result of this hypocrisy is that in the places where al-Qaeda needs legitimacy in order to generate money and recruits, Britain and America are losing the propaganda battle hands-down. The neocons are loud in their denunciations of anyone who argues that an attempt to reduce the popular resentments that inflame Muslim opinion must be an integral part of any successful counter-terrorism campaign. To even suggest it is a 'reward for terror' and an act of 'appeasement.' But the obligatory references to the 1930s and the neocons' obsession with Churchill illustrate how profoundly they have misconceived the nature of the threat. Those who devised the classic counter-insurgency method during the wars of decolonization understood the difference between fighting a state and fighting a guerrilla movement. Through experience, these military men realised that an insurgency must be defeated in the political sphere. The neocons dismiss this as liberal bunk but, like their chicken-hawk president, most of them have not so much as grazed a knee in defense of their country. Blair, to be fair, always wanted to pursue the war on terror primarily as a campaign to win hearts and minds. His speech to the Labour conference in the shadow of 9/11 was visionary in its desire to deal with the grievances on which terrorism feeds. It was only later this instinct was repressed by an even stronger desire to stand with Bush. It is this false hierarchy of priorities for which he must be blamed. Blair has paid a heavy price for his determination to avoid turbulence in the special relationship by setting out tougher conditionality for Britain's support. As things stand, his legacy may be to go down in history as co-author of a war on terror that left us more vulnerable than ever. A Kerry victory in the presidential election may be his last opportunity to escape that fate. Any embarrassment he might feel at the electoral defeat of another Iraq ally would be replaced by a sense of relief at America's return to the multilateral fold and the possibility it would create for a war on terror that might succeed in reducing terrorism." (Guardian)
April 7: Columnist Margie Burns warns against believing the Bush campaign's attempt to use Osama bin Laden as an election year totem. She writes, "To try to comprehend the administration, one must apply a little rhetorical analysis. For example, authoritative sources tend to name only 'Al Qaeda' among terrorist groups, although Al Qaeda is not the only Islamist partisan group, nor the only one engaged in violence against Westerners. Hypothesis? Either the speakers don't know much about their topic, or the administration is simplifying for the American people, or they're engaging in rhetoric rather than genuinely briefing about national security. Probably the correct answer is all of the above, but the administration's negligent security in US aviation, nuclear sector, and ports highlights the last. It is in this light that the upcoming 'push against Bin Laden' should be evaluated." She believes that bin Laden has been dead since late 2001, and the news of his demise is being hidden until the Bush campaign decides to release it for an election-season push.
"Most probably, Bin Laden was killed in late 2001, by the concerted, massive attacks in the vicinity of Bora Bora, Afhanistan. Global news reports at the time quoted the FBI, the Pentagon, and the military head of Pakistan, General Musharraf, separately as saying that Bin Laden had been killed, either directly in the bombing attacks, or indirectly by being kept from essential life-support for kidney disease. The last known video of Bin Laden showed a pale, gaunt, feeble man with an immobile left arm. He has not been seen or heard since, in any videotape or audiotape whose date and content could be attested by independent experts. Unfortunately, those saying, 'we got him' were frowned down by the White House. Perhaps Team Bush didn't want the Afghanistan 'war' over quickly, or preferred to avoid questions about why they didn't compel the Taliban to hand him over, or wanted OBL as a shadow opponent in what another writer has aptly termed 'Cold War II.' If this seems far-fetched, it should not. The sad, deceitful buildup to invading Iraq revealed that many in media outlets would take a 'Bin Laden tape' at face value, even if they turned it over and it had 'From the desk of Paul Wolfowitz' stamped on the back. So how will today's intensified hunt for Bin Laden end? All too probably, the upshot of this hunt will be, not capture, but intensive bombing of one spot, said by unnamed sources to be Bin Laden's last hiding place. Then, of course, there will be the inevitable military briefing of the press, with reporters allowed to hear or to quote only material selected by authorities, and held at a place where they will not be able to corroborate or check it. ...Sadly, we also face more loss of life. This is a plea: if anyone out there can stop this, please try." (Montgomery County Sentinel)
April 7: The progressive organization United for a Fair Economy releases a study, titled "shifty Tax Cuts: How They Move the Tax Burden off the Rich and onto Everyone Else," that proves, once again, Bush's tax cuts drastically shift the US tax burden off of the wealthy and onto the middle and working classes as well as away from the federal government and onto the individual states. Between 2002 and 2004, the tax cuts to the top 1% of US income earners redirected billions of dollars in revenue that could have eliminated virtually all of the budget shortfalls in the states. "Congress had the option to send aid to the states to prevent $200 billion worth of service cuts and regressive tax increases," says Chris Hartman, UFE's research director. "Instead, they gave tax breaks totaling roughly the same amount to multi-millionaires and the rest of the top 1%." UFE co-founder Chuck Collins adds, "Unless you are super-rich, it's a tax shift, not a cut. Non-wealthy taxpayers will pay for these tax cuts with increased state and local taxes or cuts in public services." Hartman says, "Between 2002 and 2004, a full $197 billion in new tax breaks went to the top 1% of American taxpayers. This is money that has disappeared into the pockets of the very wealthy, making it unavailable to solve ongoing budget crises at the state and local levels." Collins gives an example: "I got a rebate check last summer for $400. Then my eight-year-old's public school asked me to contribute money to replace worn-out chairs for the students. At the same time, I found out they laid off the librarian because of budget cuts. What good is a $400 tax cut when parents have to cough up additional money for chairs and books or else see their children go without?" The report concludes that the total federal, state and local tax burden has become increasingly the responsibility of middle-and low-income families in recent decades, and that revenues being generated by taxes are not sufficient to pay for existing public services. Work in particular is being taxed at a higher rate than investment. "I do a lot of work in predominantly Latino areas of Boston," says UFE Education Specialist Gloribell Mota. "Residents there are the working poor -- they have jobs and pay taxes -- yet are getting pennies in tax cuts and seeing health care services they depend on slashed." Another UFE official, tax expert Karen Kraut, says, "The Bush administration has followed a strategy of starving public services by pulling tax money away from education and housing and giving it away to multi-millionaires. States are suffering as a result, and people are going without essential services in order to fund the lifestyles of the rich." (United for a Fair Economy)

Back to April 2004 | On to April 2004: Week Two

THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy

Written and Compiled by Black Max

April 2004, Week One

Page Two

Sadr Uprising

Pentagon criticizes Afghanistan war strategy

Imminent collapse of American control of central Iraq, with three major cities withdrawing from the government and several more overrun by fighting

Former president Bush privately opposes war

Pakistan's Musharraf says that the Iraq war is undermining his country's efforts to combat al-Qaeda and the Taliban

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