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CIA and DIA blame each other for accepting false intelligence from Iraqi source

April 19: The CIA and the DIA are blaming each other for validating information from a dubious Iraqi defector who was the key source for Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein was building a fleet of mobile biological weapons labs and factories. The defector, given the code name "Curveball," produced such detailed accounts of the alleged motorized death factories that Secretary of State Colin Powell brandished drawings based on Curveball's descriptions when he presented the case against Saddam to the UN Security Council. US intelligence sources never actually spoke to "Curveball" before using the information he provided, saying that German intelligence sources warned them that the informant did not trust Americans. Officials familiar with the CIA's views say it was the DIA that handled all direct dealings with German intelligence about "Curveball" and say the Pentagon should answer questions about whether his story was properly investigated. Defense officials say that the CIA "should look in the mirror" before blaming the fiasco on the DIA. One source who helped uncover the apparent fraud said the defector's story sounded plausible until investigators started checking out details of his story on the ground in Iraq after the war, at which point it unraveled. Powell told reporters he has "had discussions with the CIA" about "Curveball's" story, but a State Department official said Powell doesn't think anybody in US intelligence was deliberately trying to con him.
Interestingly enough, the commission investigating the intelligence failures of 9/11 will refuse to acknowledge the existence of "Curveball," or his effect on the US's decision to go to war, even though a February 4, 2003 e-mail from a senior CIA official says bluntly, "Keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about." The commission will try to say that it wasn't even aware of the e-mail, or of "Curveball's" reputation as a "shameless fabricator." The commisssion, chaired by Republican lawyer Lawrence Silberman, is widely believed to have "cherry-picked" evidence that would lay the entire blame for the intelligence failure upon the CIA and other US intelligence agencies, and direct attention away from the actions of the White House. (MSNBC, MSNBC)

Saudis plan to artificially lower oil prices to help Bush gain election votes

April 19: In what the New York Daily News calls an "oil-for-votes program," the Saudis may be planning to artificially lower global oil prices just before the November presidential election, in what seems to be an attempt to garner votes for Bush by forcing gasoline prices to drop before the election. According to Bob Woodward, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the US and a close Bush family friend, told Bush that oil production will get a boost to strengthen the US economy just before the election. "[Prices] could go down very quickly," Woodward told CBS' 60 Minutes. "That's the Saudi pledge." Democratic senator Chuck Schumer blasts the Saudi government for meddling in the US presidential election. "The Saudis have proven to be untrustworthy in both the war on terror and in helping our economy," Schumer says. "It's not going to do the American economy much good if the Saudis lower prices before the election and raise them after the election." (New York Daily News)
April 19: White House spokesman Scott McClellan has some difficulty in spinning the reports of the alleged arrangements between Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar and the Bush campaign to artificially lower oil prices before the November elections. The media questioning begins with a basic query, "Can you describe conversations between the White House and Prince Bandar about his essential promise to lower oil prices before the election?" McClellan says, "...Saudi Arabia is committed to making sure prices remained in a range, I believe it's $22 to $28 price per barrel of oil, and that they don't want to do anything that would harm our consumers or harm our economy. So he made those comments at the stakeout and we've made our views very clear that prices should be determined by market forces, and that we are always in close contact with producers around the world on these issues to make sure that actions aren't taken that harm our consumers or harm our economy." McClellan dodges questions about Bandar's connection to the Bush re-election efforts, telling the questioners to ask Bandar himself. One reporter asks, "We're missing the allegation here, which is that Prince Bandar and the Saudis have made a commitment to lower oil prices to help the President politically. Is that your --" McClellan breaks in by saying, "I'm not going to speak for Prince Bandar. You can direct those comments to him. I can tell you that what our views are and what he said at the stakeout is what we know his views are, as well." He flatly refuses to answer questions regarding the White House's possible knowledge of any commitment from Saudi Arabia to lower gas prices in order to help the Bush campaign. A particularly telling exchange comes with the question, "The President is confident that the American elections are not being manipulated by the world's largest oil producer?" and McClellan's lack of response: "Our view is that the markets should determine --" The obviously frustrated reporter follows up by saying, "The market doesn't. It's a cartel." McClellan continues to dance: "But our view is that that's what -- that the markets should determine prices. And that's the view we make very clear to producers around the world, including our friends in OPEC." So the question of whether or not the Bush campaign is inviting the Saudis to interfere in the November elections remains open. Or answered, depending on your viewpoint. Bandar "happens to call" during an interview with Bob Woodward on The Larry King Show, and says that the Saudis wouldn't dream of interfering with American elections, they just want to keep oil prices low for the good of all Americans. (Talking Points Memo)
April 19: As many as 800 US Army troops are being tested for contamination from radioactive weapons used by the Army, probably from depleted uranium shells. Long Island University professor Glen Lawrence says that the Army's tests are probably unreliable, and may well fail to show levels of radioactivity that could endanger a soldier's health or even his/her life. Leonard Dietz, a retired scientist from the Knolls Atomic Laboratories who invented one of the instruments for measuring uranium isotopes, agrees: "The instruments they used are just not sophisticated enough to give accurate readings." (UPI/Washington Times)

"Axis of evil" characterization merely a cover for planned Iraqi invasion

April 19: Newsweek reveals that, according to Bob Woodward's new book, the entire idea of a tripartite "axis of evil," a characterization made famous in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, was merely a cover for the administration's intent to invade Iraq. Woodward also reveals that the planning for the Iraqi invasion originally called for 400,000 troops and a six-month buildup. Under pressure from Bush and senior White House officials, particularly Donald Rumsfeld, the original Pentagon "Op Plans 1003" were revamped to feature less than 150,000 troops. At a private meeting, Rumsfeld polled his top generals and advisers to ask how long the war would take. The estimates ranged from seven days (Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz) to about a month (General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs). Only Coln Powell, among senior staff members, seemed worried that not enough thought and planning was being given to the aftermath of the invasion. According to Woodward, Bush ignored Powell's warnings, and after instructing his military commanders to begin implementing the invasion preparations, jetted off to relax at his ranch. Powell felt cut out by the White House hawks. Woodward writes that Powell sensed an undercurrent of competition with the president, who, Powell said, put him in "an ice box." Missing in action through much of Woodward's book is Bush's national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Richard Armitage, Powell's deputy and close friend, is contemptuous of Rice, according to Woodward. Armitage "believed that the foreign-policy-making system that was supposed to be coordinated by Rice was essentially dysfunctional," writes Woodward. A blunt-spoken former Navy SEAL, Armitage criticized Rice to her face. When a Washington Post article later echoed the Armitage critique, Rice angrily complained to Powell. "You can blame Rich if you want," Powell replied, but "Rich had the guts to talk to you directly about this." According to Woodward, "Powell thought that Rice was more interested in finding someone to blame for the public airing of the problem than in fixing it."
Rice apparently saw her role as Bush's private adviser, not a referee between clashing cabinet officials. But here, too, she failed, according to Woodward: "Given her closeness and status with Bush, if anyone could have warned the president to moderate his own categorical statements about WMD, it was Rice." Woodward is especially unforgiving towards CIA director George Tenet. It was Tenet, as much as anyone, who convinced Bush that the president could safely tell the public that Iraq had WMD. After assuring Bush that the issue of WMDs was a "slam dunk," Tenet later told associates that the CIA should have stated upfront in the National Intelligence Estimate that the evidence was "not ironclad, that it did not include a smoking gun," writes Woodward. Woodward suggests that one driving force behind the Iraq invasion was the CIA, who engaged in a Vietnam-like push for war "in part for perverse bureaucratic reasons," says Newsweek. Asked if it can depose Hussein by covert action, the CIA says no, but avers that its operatives could support a regular military invasion. Woodward describes CIA case officers sneaking into Iraq carrying briefcases with millions of dollars to buy local spies. The agents handed out so many $100 bills that a Kurdish leader had to ask them to bring fives and 10s. "The $100 bills had caused extreme inflation," Woodward recounts. "It seemed even a cup of coffee was going for $100 because no one could make small change."
The CIA base chief —- "Tim" -- recruited 87 Iraqi agents, collectively code-named DB/ROCKSTARS (see the Fall 2002 item for more information on these agents). Each ROCKSTAR was given a satellite phone. One agent was caught and forced to confess on state TV. Waving a satellite phone, a man in an Iraqi Army uniform announced that "anyone caught with one of these was a dead person and all his brothers and his father would be killed too." The CIA never heard again from 30 of the 87 phones. As the months passed, CIA headquarters increasingly pushed the White House to go to war before other agents could be rolled up. Woodward enjoyed remarkable access to CIA sources, and uses it to recount the role played by the CIA on the first night of the war.
Newsweek observes, "The story is an object lesson in the elusiveness of good intelligence. From his hut in northern Iraq, Tim messaged Langley that one of his assets in Baghdad was reporting that Saddam and his two sons were staying at a farm in Dora, a suburb. The ROCKSTARS cased the place, even measuring the locations and size of Saddam's bunker. Bush and his war cabinet, including Rumsfeld, Cheney and Powell, hastily convened at the White House to consider an airstrike to 'decapitate' the Iraqi leadership. After some back-and-forth over the potential for civilian casualties, Bush kicked everyone out of the Oval Office but Cheney. 'This is the best intelligence we've had yet on where Saddam's located,' Cheney told the president, according to Woodward. 'I think we should go for it.' At 7:12 that evening, Bush called back his advisers and said, 'Let's go.' (In his omniscient narrator's voice, Woodward writes: 'Powell noted silently that things really didn't get decided until the president had met with Cheney alone.') Within a few hours, around midnight, Tim was reporting back that one of Saddam's sons had stumbled from the rubble shouting, 'We've been betrayed,' and shot one of the ROCKSTARS in the knee. The other son was bloodied and disoriented. 'Saddam had been injured, according to a ROCKSTAR eyewitness, and had to be dug out of the rubble. He was blue. He was gray. He was being given oxygen,' Woodward relates. 'At 4:30 AM Tenet called the Situation Room and told the duty officer, "Tell the president we got the son of a bitch."' Bush was not awakened, however, and by the time he got to the Oval Office that morning, it appeared that Saddam was still alive. Some five days later, Tim made his way down to Baghdad and clandestinely visited the Dora farm. There were craters from the American bombs, but no bunker, or any hint of one. The CIA man eventually tracked down some of his ROCKSTAR agents who had reported that night. Their wives said they had been tortured, their fingernails pulled out. Tim didn't know what to believe, writes Woodward. The spymaster still doesn't know if Saddam and his sons were at Dora that night, or whether the whole thing was a hoax." (MSNBC)
April 19 and 20: In two separate statements to the press, Bush indicates that he has at least a working understanding of the FISA law as it pertains to domestic wiretapping. Since Bush understands the law, these admissions, combined with his subsequent admissions to breaking this law, reveal that his actions cannot be attributed to ignorance of the law. On April 19, he says, "You see, what that meant is -- if you got a wire tap by court order -- and, by the way, everything you hear about requires court order, requires there to be permission from a FISA court, for example... And they're an important tool for those who are on the front line of using necessary means, with court order, to find these terrorists before they hurt us." On April 20, he says, "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so." (White House/OhMy News [links to audio and video])
April 19: Analysis of the US presidential campaign coverage shows Bush receiving three times the national television coverage than his rival John Kerry. One example is Bush's "routine" stump speech of March 26, aired for 35 minutes on CNN and Fox, and 33 on MSNBC. On March 17, Kerry delivered what was billed as a major address on national security at George Washington University; he was given three minutes of airtime by CNN and Fox, and MSNBC failed to show any of the speech at all. Later that week, all three networks carried Dick Cheney's attack on Kerry for being "weak on national security" -- 28 minutes from Fox, 23 from MSNBC, and 13 from CNN. Some of this, of course, can be explained by the value of incumbency, but not all. From March 3, the day after Kerry clinched the nomination, through April 16, the three cable news networks have devoted 12 hours and 11 minutes to live appearances by Bush -- including Tuesday's prime-time news conference, which was also carried by NBC, CBS and ABC. Kerry's live cable coverage during this period: 3 hours 47 minutes. Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt calls the coverage "a testament to who's making news.... We think being on the cable news programs is very important because people who follow politics and cover politics keep a close eye on their TVs during the day." Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter disagrees. Bush "is a candidate 100 percent of the time," she says. "Every time a White House official goes out on that lawn to talk to a reporter, we should have equal time." John Moody, a Fox senior vice president, says: "The guy's got two jobs, president and running to keep it.... There's a newsmaking bar both candidates have to pass, which is slightly lowered for an incumbent president who might be commenting on the day's events."
Many of Bush's televised remarks are standard campaign fare. But there's a "distinct difference" in covering him, says Sue Bunda, a CNN senior vice president. "We have a president, a commander in chief, with 100,000-plus troops deployed around the world in a war situation.... There's a breaking-news quality to when the president speaks. Easter Sunday, he comes out after church, and we all take it." MSNBC Vice President Mark Effron says that "we take more of President Bush when he's acting in his legitimate role as president of the United States." Yet even "if he's in a plant talking about the economy, for our world, that's news." Kerry, says Effron, "hasn't exactly been out there grandstanding and making a lot of news." Scott Reed, Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign manager, faced the same problem against President Clinton. "The commander in chief always has the opportunity to steal the stage and overshadow the challenger," he says. "In the beginning you feel frustrated by it, but eventually you accept reality.... There's nothing Kerry can do to break in."
When a president is running for reelection, lines often get blurred. The cable networks covered Bush meeting with the Dutch prime minister last month, and the president took a swipe at Kerry, claiming the support of unnamed foreign leaders: "If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you ought to back it up with facts." Other officials, such as Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and spokesman Scott McClellan, also get regular coverage. The longest stretch of airtime for Kerry came during an economic address in Detroit on March 26, which followed Bush's New Mexico speech. Kerry got 26 minutes on Fox, along with 23 on CNN and 22 on MSNBC. The cable networks often dip in and out of Kerry's appearances, such as on April 6, when he unveiled a job-creation plan in Cincinnati. CNN gave it four minutes and MSNBC 3 ½ minutes. Fox anchor David Asman said that "earlier we heard the Bush version -- fair and balanced, more on John Kerry right here on Fox." But the network, which had given Bush 81/2 minutes, picked up Kerry's speech for only two minutes. On Wednesday, after the networks covered a 23-minute news conference with Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Kerry took questions from reporters in New York. CNN dropped it after six minutes, and MSNBC after nine minutes to return to the 9/11 commission, but Fox stayed with Kerry for 17 minutes. (Washington Post)
April 19: The conservative journal Business Week calls for the Bush administration to abandon the so-called "Rumsfeld doctrine" as an abject failure. "Denial is rampant in Washington," BW columnist Bruce Nussbaum writes. "There is denial that intelligence mistakes were made in the months and years before September 11. There is denial that foreign policy mistakes were made in the runup to the war in Iraq. There is denial that the Shiite revolts mark a turning point in the postwar occupation. And most importantly, there is denial that the military strategy going into Iraq, the Rumsfeld Doctrine, is a failure. The best hope left of establishing a stable Iraqi democracy is to replace that doctrine, which emphasizes small, light, and fast military operations, with its rival, the Powell Doctrine, devised by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell. The Powell Doctrine calls for overwhelming force shaped by very clear political goals and a specific exit strategy, two things lacking today in Iraq."
Nussbaum continues, "The failure of the Rumsfeld Doctrine in Iraq is all too clear -- too few boots on the ground, too little legitimacy for America and its handpicked Governing Council, too many shifting goals, and no clear exit strategy. The result in recent weeks has been a cycle of kidnappings, ambushes, counterstrikes, death, and destruction that increasingly echoes the disaster in Vietnam. The silent majority of Iraqis who in polls just weeks ago said that life was better today than under Saddam Hussein is being radicalized. Moderate Shiite leaders who tolerated the US occupation are turning increasingly impatient and anti-American. The goodwill among the majority of Iraqis that America gained in overthrowing Saddam is being squandered. There is still an opportunity for the Bush Administration to set Iraq onto a political path leading to representative democracy. But it needs to acknowledge mistakes and move on. Here's why: The Rumsfeld Doctrine promised that a high-tech military could easily win battles anywhere around the world with relatively small numbers of soldiers on the ground. It argued that the power and accuracy of the latest weapons more than compensated for fewer troops, releasing the US from the constraints of needing allies to help supply large numbers of soldiers. It allowed the US to bypass the UN and NATO in projecting power overseas. In effect, the Rumsfeld Doctrine provided the military rationale for the Administration's foreign policy of unilateral preemption that was anti-European (Old Europe -- France and Germany) and anti-UN.
"Prior to the Persian Gulf War, George H.W. Bush spent months negotiating with dozens of countries to assemble a huge coalition of European and Middle Eastern armies to overwhelm Saddam. Bush I played by the rules of the Powell Doctrine. Bush II took the US in basically alone, with real help only from the British. The deficiencies appeared in the first days of the Iraq war. American troops were dazzling in their dash across the deserts of Iraq to take Baghdad, and the country, in mere weeks. Yet the relative paucity of troops, one-third of the total used in the Gulf War, meant that many cities were simply bypassed in the invasion, especially in the Sunni heartland, Saddam's source of power. The Sunnis, the 20% minority who have dominated Iraq for centuries, were never conquered. Months passed before US troops entered Fallujah and other towns. The failure to establish security in Iraq immediately after the downfall of Saddam also led to a loss of legitimacy that is felt today. Not only were Saddam's armed henchmen left to roam free but looters and criminals soon dominated Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The US military wasn't able -- or willing -- to stop the crime wave. Armed militias coalesced in this vacuum to offer protection to Iraqis, including one overseen by radical fundamentalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who led the recent rebellion. By disbanding the 400,000-strong Iraqi army, the US made the power vacuum worse. Efforts to build a new army and police force didn't work, either. In the recent fighting, the army mutinied and many police joined the rebels. In the end, former US Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki was right when he said that 'several hundred thousand' troops would be needed to conquer, occupy, and provide security to the people of Iraq. But that would have required support from Europe and the UN. Belatedly, the military is asking for roughly 10,000 more ground soldiers, but far more may be needed to provide security to Iraqis.
"...The bypassing of the UN contributed to Washington's failure to build a credible interim government. In Bosnia and Afghanistan, the US asked the UN to play a leading role in setting up democratic political systems. But not in Iraq. Instead, the Bush Administration installed exiles led by Ahmed Chalabi, who had virtually no support inside Iraq. Those Iraqis with real power demanded that the UN play a central role in shaping the new political process. The man with perhaps the most authority in Iraq, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Husaini Sistani, said from the start of the occupation that he would not negotiate directly with the US but would deal with the UN. Sistani is a natural ally of the US. He is a moderate, calling for Iraqi clerics to stay out of government and to avoid fighting with the Americans. His son is negotiating directly with al-Sadr to end the rebellion. He is also talking with UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on setting up a new transitional government. Yet L. Paul Bremer III, the chief US administrator in Baghdad, has consistently ignored Sistani. What is to be done now? A return to the Powell Doctrine would accomplish a number of key goals. Significantly higher troop levels would crush, finally, Baathist resistance and provide more security to Iraqis. The US may have to bring back the divisions it sent home. Accepting a key UN role in shaping the political process would bring in moderate Iraqi clerics and promote the best chance of creating a stable government. It is the only way to get support from European and Asian allies. The realpolitik of the Powell Doctrine would also force Washington to limit its goals and make its exit strategy clear. Is the goal of the US to set up a stable Iraqi government that balances Kurd, Sunni, and Shiite interests? That might take three or four years of military and financial help. But if the goal is to build a genuine Iraqi democracy that protects women's rights, that could take decades. What is truly feasible? Facts on the ground in Iraq are already pushing the Administration to change course. The military is asking for a lot more troops. Washington is giving the UN carte blanche to negotiate directly with Sistani and other Iraqi moderates on the composition of the next transitional Iraqi government, key details of the new Iraqi constitution, and the rules of the national election that will occur in 2005. In his Apr. 13 speech on Iraq, President Bush expressly welcomed the growing role of the UN in Iraq and suggested a role for NATO there as well. Washington is finally acknowledging that it can't do it alone."
Nussbaum concludes, "There is a certain Kafkaesque quality to Washington these days. Congressional hearings are held and speeches are made about September 11 and the Iraq war in which people deny obvious past realities. The bloody events of recent weeks in Iraq are forcing the US to acknowledge a new set of present realities. The Bush Administration needs the help of the UN, NATO, and its allies. It's crunch time in Iraq. Let's be honest about it." (Business Week)
April 19: Columnist David Corn writes of the Woodward revelations, "It's hard to know what is more disturbing. That George W. Bush misled the public by stating in the months before the Iraq war that he was seriously pursuing a diplomatic resolution when he was not. That he didn't bother to ask aides to present the case against going to war. That he may have violated the US Constitution by spending hundreds of millions of dollars secretly to prepare for the invasion of Iraq without notifying Congress. That he was misinformed by the CIA director about one of the most critical issues of the day and demanded no accountability. Or that he doesn't care if he got it wrong on the weapons of mass destruction." Corn says that the part of Woodward's book that most unsettles the Bush administration is Woodward's assertion that the administration decided to invade Iraq in November 2003, and from then on lied about its intentions to the United Nations, to its "friends" around the world (with the notable exception of Saudi Arabia, who was appraised of the US's intentions before Secretary of State Colin Powell was informed), and to the American people. For five months, the administration pretended that it was pursuing diplomatic options with Iraq, pretended that it was still trying to work with the UN and its weapons inspectors, pretended that war was its last option. In reality, war was, and always had been, its first option. At a November 20, 2002, speech in Prague, Bush said, "Our goal is to secure the peace through the comprehensive and verified disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." And in late January, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "Nobody, but nobody, is more reluctant to go to war than President Bush.... He does not want to lead the nation to war." But he did. Bush made the final decision on January 11, a decision that Condoleezza Rice has tried to explain away as merely "thinking aloud." She knows better. Woodward also notes that while there was plenty of planning about the invasion itself, precious little thought went into planning for the aftermath of the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Nor did anyone spend much effort planning for the capture of the WMDs that the adminstration supposedly believed were littering the Iraqi countryside. (Then again, why plan for capturing weapons that you know don't exist?)
Corn lambasts Powell for being "the only adult in the room" but failing to try to push the administration's warhawks to think seriously about post-regime Iraq. Corn writes that Powell "can be held accountable for enabling the simplism of the Bush gang by being the good soldier who promoted and defended in public a policy that he did not believe was best for the nation or the world. What good is being the grownup in the room, if you let the kiddies take control?" And no one, certainly not the Republican majority in Congress or the mainstream US media, seems interested in Bush's secret, illegal, and unConstitutional diversion of at least $700 million in monies allocated for Afghanistan towards planning for the Iraqi invasion. Section Nine of Article One of the US Constitution reads, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." This means Congress decides where the money goes. Congress did not appropriate funds for these purposes, according to Woodward. Corn writes, "That is, Bush took money appropriated for other reasons and had the Pentagon use it for his war in Iraq. There are, of course, procedures governing secret spending by a president and the Pentagon, but such spending still -- in theory -- is supposed to be overseen by members of Congress. Then, at least, spending hidden from the public is not kept secret from the public's representatives. But in this instance, if Woodward is correct, Bush assumed imperial power and violated a basic premise of the republic."
Don't expect an investigation any time soon. Instead, conservatives are blaming George Tenet, the director of the CIA, for misleading Bush when Tenet told Bush that the issue of Iraqi WMDs was "a slam-dunk." Corn dryly observes that if the subject of WMDs was in question, he could have read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq for himself. But even the White House admits that not only did Bush not read the NIE, neither did National Security Director Rice. If they had bothered to read the document (only 90 pages), they would have seen that the US intelligence community was fundamentally split on whether Iraq had any WMDs at all, and if so, what they were and where they were located. Corn writes, "Moreover, Tenet's assertion does not get Bush off the hook for his own misleading assertions. Many times Bush exaggerated the WMD threat in public. He said Hussein might possess a nuclear weapon, when the CIA had told Bush he did not. He claimed Hussein was maintaining a 'massive stockpile' of biological weapons, when the CIA had only reported Hussein had a development program. Bush accused Iraq of maintaining a 'growing fleet' of unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to strike the United States with biological and chemical weapons. The intelligence community said that Iraq, at most, was developing such UAVs (although U.S. Air Force analysts, the best experts on this subject, disagreed that these UAVs could be used for such attacks). And, as is well-documented, Bush said that Hussein was in cahoots with al-Qaeda, even though US intelligence had no evidence to support such a bold statement. Tenet might have believed -- wrongly -- that he had a 'slam-dunk case' on the WMDs, but Bush still regularly misrepresented what his government knew about the WMD threat. Woodward also notes that after the December 21, 2002, session at the White House, Tenet told associates he should have said the evidence on weapons was not ironclad. So if Woodward's telling is accurate, this is the situation: the CIA director misleads the president, who then subsequently misleads the public and the world in order to start a war that causes the deaths of thousands and many other troubles. Is Bush upset by this? Not at all. How can we tell? First, he has retained and repeatedly praised Tenet, who committed one of the biggest errors ever made by a CIA director. Second, Bush says so himself. In his 60 Minutes appearance, Woodward told Mike Wallace that when he mentioned to Bush that people were concerned about the failure to find WMDs in Iraq, Bush replied, 'You travel in elite circles.' Bush was not only saying that he was not mad about this, but that the missing WMDs were of minimal importance because the matter only bothered elite intellectuals. Discussing this, Woodward said he believed Bush had a disdain for 'the fancy-pants intellectual world.' Is this chilling? A president takes the country and the world to war for a very specific reason, and then this reason turns out to have been wrong. Yet that does not bother him in the least, and he brushes aside the matter by suggesting only elitists care about it. Talk about denial. A frightening mental mechanism is at work here. If Bush can dismiss all concerns and criticisms of his actions as merely the gripes of too-smart-for-their-own-good snobs, he then is free to live untroubled in a reality of his own (or Dick Cheney's) making, one unencumbered by competing views and ideas. The leader of the free world is in a bubble."
Bush continues to assert that the invasion of Iraq was the right, and the Christian, thing to do, because he has "the duty to free people." That's not what he said before the invasion. He told the world that he was ordering the invasion to secure the safety of the United States. Corn concludes, "Woodward depicts a president who eschews accountability and responsibility, who is embedded in a world detached from critical or challenging perspectives, who appears incapable of self-doubt, who mistakes stubbornness for leadership, and who, while looking to serve that higher father, is likely to provide Woodward more material for the next book -- if he gets the chance." (The Nation)

Supreme Court hears arguments regarding rights of "enemy detainees"

April 20: The Supreme Court hears opening arguments in the first of several cases brought before it regarding the rights of so-called "enemy combatants" and other detainees being held without charge or legal counsel as a result of the US's war on terrorism. Lawyer John Gibbons, representing several foreign-born detainees, says that the US cannot throw out prisoners' constitutional rights to make their cases in court just because of the threat of terrorism. "It's been plain for 215 years," Gibbons argues. The government, he says, cannot create a "lawless enclave" where no court, American or otherwise, can offer due process. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, representing the United States, responds simply, "The United States is at war." Foreigners held at the Navy's prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, want the Supreme Court to give them a legal right "that is not authorized by Congress, does not arise from the Constitution, has never been exercised by this court," says Olson. The justices seem deeply divided over the fate of more than 600 men from 44 countries who have been held for more than two years at the Guantanamo camp, and about the underlying questions concerning presidential powers in wartime. "I'm still honestly most worried about the fact that there would be a large category of unchecked and uncheckable actions dealing with the detention of individuals that are being held in a place where America has the power to do everything," says Justice Stephen Breyer.
Two and a half years after Sept. 11, the high court is beginning with a simple question about whether federal judges can even hear the complaints of the Guantanamo prisoners. Next week, the court takes up two related cases that may hit closer to home for many Americans. Those cases test Bush's power to detain US citizens for long periods without charges, and with virtually no access to the outside world. The terrorism cases before the Supreme Court this year will draw some boundaries for White House and military authority in a war without defined opponents or a clear end. The Kuwaiti, British and Australian prisoners at issue in today's case were swept up by US forces during fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. The Supreme Court's answer, due by late June, will not settle whether the men are dangerous terrorists or, as their lawyers contend, innocent victims of circumstance. The administration claims exclusive power to hold the men and interrogate them as long as necessary, with no guarantee of a lawyer or a trial to determine their guilt. Judges have no business second-guessing the detention of foreigners held on foreign soil, Olson tells the court. The Bush administration calls the men "enemy combatants," similar to traditional prisoners of war but outside the guarantees of the Geneva Convention. The administration has recently assigned lawyers to represent some Guantanamo prisoners, and is making plans to hold the first military tribunals since World War II at the base.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate conservative whose vote may be pivotal, appears skeptical that the government could simply declare the courthouse door closed to the prisoners. The prisoners may not be American citizens with clear rights to petition their government, Kennedy says, but the law "doesn't talk about citizens. It says prisoners held under the authority of the United States." On the other side, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia seem convinced that federal courts cannot referee every complaint from foreigners held abroad. The Supreme Court is also no place to write some detailed new rulebook for the government to follow, Scalia says. He is speaking to Olson, but his real audience is Breyer, seated at the opposite end of the bench. "We have only lawyers before us," Scalia say. "We have no witnesses. We have no cross examination. We have no investigative staff." Central to the case is the reality of US control in Guantanamo. Leased from Cuba since 1903, the base is independent of the communist country that surrounds it. As a legal matter, however, the Supreme Court must decide whether Cuba's technical sovereignty over the land means the United States courts are off-limits to prisoners. American courts must have jurisdiction, because only American law and American authority govern what happens at Guantanamo, Gibbons argues. "Cuban law has never had any application inside that base. A stamp with Fidel Castro's picture on it wouldn't get a letter off the base." The cases are Rasul v. Bush, 03-334, and al-Odah v. United States, 03-343. (AP/Contra Costa Times)

A private CPA memo predicts certain chaos, heavy Iranian influence, and possible civil war in Iraq after the transition

April 20: A private memo written by a senior CPA analyst in March 2003 shows that the authority believes virtually nothing of what its spokespeople, and the Bush administration, is telling the world about the immediate future of Iraq. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld tells us that Iraqi uprisings in half a dozen cities, accompanied by the deaths of more than 100 soldiers in the month of April alone, are something to be viewed in the context of "good days and bad days," merely "a moment in Iraq's path towards a free and democratic system." More recently, President Bush asserted, "Our coalition is standing with responsible Iraqi leaders as they establish growing authority in their country." The reality is far more grim. According to the document, any chances of Iraq seeing democracy succeed have been severely imperiled by a year's worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA, the U.S.-led multinational agency administering Iraq. Far from facilitating democracy and security, says the memo's author, US efforts have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war. A Western intelligence official provided a redacted copy to Village Voice reporter Jason Vest; the memo was redacted to protect the writer's identify and to "avoid inflaming an already volatile situation" by revealing the names of certain Iraqi figures. The memo, written by a US government official detailed to the CPA who wrote this summation of observations he'd made in the field for a senior CPA director, is a wide-ranging and often acerbic critique of the CPA, covering topics ranging from policy, personalities, and press operations to on-the-ground realities such as electricity. Vest notes that "[T]he document is not only notable for its candidly troubled assessment of Iraq's future, [but i]t is also significant, according to the intelligence official, because its author has been a steadfast advocate of 'transforming' the Middle East, beginning with 'regime change' in Iraq."
The writer still generally supports the Iraqi operation, praises putative Iraqi leader Ahmad Chalabi, and makes some unfathomably sunny predictions (such as most of the violence in Iraq will fizzle out within a day or two after the US arrests Moqtada al-Sadr), but in general the memo is bleak and filled with detailed criticism of US policies, policy makers, and CPA officials who have tried to implement those policies. It portrays a country mired in dysfunction and corruption, overseen by a CPA that "handle[s] an issue like six-year-olds play soccer: Someone kicks the ball and one hundred people chase after it hoping to be noticed, without a care as to what happens on the field." But it is particularly harsh in its observations about cronyism and corruption within the Governing Council, the provisional Iraqi government subordinate to the CPA whose responsibilities include re-staffing Iraq's government departments. "In retrospect," the memo asserts, "both for political and organizational reasons, the decision to allow the Governing Council to pick 25 ministers did the greatest damage. Not only did we endorse nepotism, with men choosing their sons and brothers-in-law; but we also failed to use our prerogative to shape a system that would work...our failure to promote accountability has hurt us."
In the broadest sense, the author writes, the CPA's bunker-in-Baghdad mentality has contributed to the potential for civil war all over the country. "[CPA Administrator L. Paul] Bremer has encouraged re-centralization in Iraq because it is easier to control a Governing Council less than a kilometer away from the Palace, rather than 18 different provincial councils who would otherwise have budgetary authority," he writes. The net effect, he continues, has been a "desperation to dominate Baghdad, and an absolutism born of regional isolation." The memo also describes the CPA as "handicapped by [its] security bubble," and derides the US government for spending "millions importing sport utility vehicles which are used exclusively to drive the kilometer and a half" between CPA and Governing Council headquarters when "we would have been much better off with a small fleet of used cars and a bicycle for every Green Zone resident." While the memo upbraids CPA officials, the majority of whom stay within the Green Zone in the name of personal safety, it also maintains that the Green Zone itself is "less than secure," both for Westerners and Iraqis. According to the author, "screening for Iranian agents and followers of Muqtada al Sadr is inconsistent at best," and anti-CPA elements can easily gather basic intelligence, since no one is there to "prevent people from entering the parking lot outside the checkpoint to note license plate numbers of 'collaborators.'" Ordinary Iraqis also "fear that some of the custodial staff note who comes and goes," according to the memo, causing a "segment of Iraqi society to avoid meeting Americans because they fear the Green Zone." It also derides the use of heavily armed personal-security details (PSDs) for CPA personnel, saying the practice inspires reticence among ordinary Iraqis. "It is ingrained in the Iraqi psyche to keep a close hold on their own thoughts when surrounded by people with guns," the memo notes. "Even those willing to talk to Americans think twice, since American officials create a spectacle of themselves, with convoys, flak jackets, fancy SUVs."
While the memo offers an encouraging and appealing picture of thriving businesses and patrons on the streets of a free Baghdad, it notes that "the progress evident happens despite us rather than because of us," and reports that "frequent explosions, many of which are not reported in the mainstream media, are a constant reminder of uncertainty." Indeed, while boosters of the Iraqi invasion delight in the phrase "25 million free Iraqis," if the CPA memo is any indication, this newfound liberty does not include freedom from fear. "Baghdadis have an uneasy sense that they are heading towards civil war," it says. "sunnis, Shias, and Kurd professionals say that they themselves, friends, and associates are buying weapons fearing for the future." The memo also notes that while Iraqi police "remain too fearful to enforce regulations," they are earning plenty of money as small arms dealers, with the CPA as an unwitting partner. "CPA is ironically driving the weapons market," it reveals. "Iraqi police sell their US-supplied weapons on the black market; they are promptly re-supplied. Interior ministry weapons buy-backs keep the price of arms high."
The memo goes on to argue that "the trigger for a civil war" is not likely to be an isolated incident of violence, but the result of "deeper conflicts that revolve around patronage and absolutism" reaching a flashpoint. Asserting that the US must "use our prerogative as an occupying power to signal that corruption will not be tolerated," the CPA memo recommends taking action against at least four Iraqi ministers whose names have been redacted from the document. (Though there may be no connection, two weeks ago, Interior Minister Nuri Badran abruptly resigned, as did Governing Council member Iyad Allawi.) Also redacted is the name of a minister whose acceptance of "alleged kickbacks...should be especially serious for us, since he was one of two ministers who met the President and had his picture taken with him." (Though the identity of the minister in question cannot be precisely determined, the only Iraqi ministers who have been photographed with President Bush are Iraqi public-works minister Nesreen Berwari and electricity minister Ayhem al-Sammarai, on September 23, 2003.) "If such information gets buried on the desks of middle-level officials who do not want to make waves," the memo warns, "the short-term gain will be replaced by long-term ill."
Developing this theme, the memo asserts that the US "share[s] culpability in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis" for engendering Iraq's currently cronyistic state; since "we appointed the Governing Council members...their corruption is our corruption." The author then notes that two individuals -— names again redacted —- have successfully worked to exclude certain strains of Shia from obtaining ministerial-level positions, and that for this "Iraqis blame Bremer, especially because the [CPA] Governance Group had assured Iraqis that exclusion from the Governing Council did not mean an exclusion from the process. As it turns out, we lied. People from Kut [a city south of Baghdad recently besieged by Shiite forces loyal to Muqtada al Sadr], for example, see that they have no representation on the Governing Council, and many predict civil war since they doubt that the Governing Council will really allow elections." Increasing distrust is the US's failure to acknowledge that the constituencies of key Governing Council members "are not based on ideology, but rather on the muscle of their respective personal militias and the patronage which we allow them to bestow," the memo reads. Using the Kurds as an example, he reveals that "we have bestowed approximately $600 million upon the Kurdish leadership, in addition to the salaries we pay, in addition to the USAID projects, in addition to the taxes which we have allowed them to collect illegally." To underscore the point, the author adds that he recently spent an evening with a Kurdish contact watching The Godfather trilogy, and notes that "the entire evening was spent discussing which Iraqi Kurdish politicians represented which [Godfather] character."
The memo also characterizes the CPA's border-security policy as "completely irrelevant," going so far as to state that "it is undeniable that a crumbling Baathist regime did better than we have" in that regard. Noting that senior Defense Department officials do not fully understand the nature of the problem, the memo recommends that the US "deploy far greater numbers [of soldiers] than we have now" to the borders. The memo also criticizes the Defense Department -- in particular the Office of the Secretary of Defense -- for keeping potentially useful personnel in Washington. "There is an unfortunate trend inside the Pentagon where those who can write a good memo are punished by being held back from the field," it says, adding that "OSD harms itself, and its constituent members' individual credibility, when it defers all real world experience to others." The CPA's press operation, headed by Dan Senor, Bremer's senior communications adviser, who is seen by many as little more than a White House hack, also comes under fire. The press office, he says, has made a bad political situation worse by "promoting American individuals above Iraqis." In one case, the memo says, "Iraqis present at the 4 am conclusion of the Governing Council deliberations on the interim constitution were mocking Dan Senor's request that no one say anything to the press until the following afternoon.... It was obvious to all that an American wanted to make the announcement and so take credit. Our lack of honesty in saying as much annoyed the Iraqis...[they] resent the condescension of our press operation."
By and large, the March memo validates many points raised by career military, diplomatic, and intelligence officers before the war. For them, lack of planning for post-war stabilization was a primary matter of deep concern, which cannot be said for the Bush administration's hawkish advocates of "regime change." Among the more informed and prescient in this camp is Retired USAF Colonel Sam Gardiner, a long-time National War College instructor and war-games specialist who asserted in February of 2003 that "the military is not prepared to deal with [Bush's] promises" of a rapid and rosy post-war transition in Iraq. Based on Gardiner's experience as a participant in a Swedish National War College study of protracted difficulties in rebuilding Kosovo's electrical grid after NATO bombed it in 1999, Gardiner made a similar study, in 2002, of the likely effect US bombardment would have on Iraq's power system. Gardiner's assessment was not optimistic. It was also hardly unknown: not only did he present his finding to a mass audience at a RAND Corporation forum, he also briefed ranking administration officials ranging from then-NSC Iraq point man Zalmay Khalizad to senior Pentagon and US Agency for International Development officials. Despite repeated assurances over the past year from CPA chief Bremer that Iraq's electricity situation has vastly improved, the memo says otherwise, reporting that there is "no consistency" in power flows. "street lights function irregularly and traffic lights not at all.... Electricity in Baghdad fluctuating between three hours, on and off, in rotation, and four hours on and off."
"I continue to get very upset about the electricity issue," Gardiner said last week after reviewing the memo. "I said in my briefing that the electrical system was going to be damaged, and damaged for a long time, and that we had to find a way to keep key people at their posts and give them what they need so there wouldn't be unnatural surges that cause systems to burn out. Frankly, if we had just given the Iraqis some baling wire and a little bit of space to keep things running, it would have been better. But instead we've let big US companies go in with plans for major overhauls." For example, the steam turbines at Iraq's Najibiya power plant have been dormant since last fall. As Yaruub Jasim, the plant's manager, explained, "Normally we have power 23 hours a day. We should have done maintenance on these turbines in October, but we had no spare parts and money." And why not? According to Jasim, the necessary replacement parts were supposed to come from Bechtel, but they hadn't arrived yet -- in part because Bechtel's priority was a months-long independent examination of power plants with an eye towards total reconstruction. And while parts could have been cheaply and quickly obtained from Russian, German, or French contractors, the contractors who built most of Iraq's power stations, "unfortunately," Jasim said, "Mr. Bush prevented the French, Russian, and German companies from [getting contracts in] Iraq." (In an interview last year with the San Francisco Chronicle, Bechtel's Iraq operations chief held that "to just walk in and start fixing Iraq" was "an unrealistic expectation.")
The CPA memo also validates key points of the exceptionally perceptive February 2003 US Army War College report, "Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario." Critical of the U.S. government's insufficient post-war planning, the War College report asserted that "the possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace is real and serious." It also cautioned that insufficient attention had been given to the political complexities likely to crop up in post-Saddam Iraq, a scene in which religious and ethnic blocs supported by militias would further complicate a transition to functional democracy in a nation bereft of any pluralistic history. According to a Washington-based senior military official whose responsibilities include Iraq, CPA now estimates there are at least 30 separate militias active in Iraq, and "essentially, [CPA] doesn't know what to do with regard to them -- which is frightening, because CPA's authority essentially ends on June 30, and any Iraqi incentive to get rid of the militias is likely to go away after that date, as sending US troops around Iraq against Iraqis isn't likely to endear the new Iraqi government to its citizens." Another huge area of concern is Iran. According to the memo, "Iranian money is pouring in" to occupied Iraq -- particularly the area under British control -- and it asserts it is "a mistake" to stick to a policy of "not rock[ing] the boat" with the Iranians, as "the Iranian actors with which the State Department likes to do business...lack the power to deliver on promises" to exercise restraint in Iraq. According to senior US intelligence and military officials queried on this point, the Iranian influence in Iraq is both real and formidable, and the US is, as one put it, at best "catching up" in the battle for influence. (CPA/AAN [the actual memo], Village Voice)
April 20: British troops might have to stay in Iraq for up to 10 years to help local forces maintain security after the proposed hand-over of power to the Iraqi government on 30 June, warns the commanding officer of UK forces in Basra. Brigadier Nick Carter says it could take British troops between two and 10 years to restore long-term stability, under the authority of an Iraqi police force acceptable to all rival factions within the country. "We are in cloud-cuckoo land if we think we are going to create overnight a police force that is accountable to the population," he says. "We have to build solid foundations now for the longer term." Carter warns that increased violence in south Iraq from militia loyal to the rebel cleric could mushroom into a major revolt in Iraq's Shia community if the Allies tried to seize the leader by force. He says of Shi'ite rebel leader Moqtada al-Sadr, whose forces attacked British troops in the town of Amarrah yesterday, ""While they [the wider Shia community] regard Sadr as an upstart, they have some sympathy with his grievances. The Basra Shia will see an attack on Sadr as an attack on the Shia overall. He is becoming a bit of a talisman figure." (Independent/Rense)
April 20: In a rare public split with Bush foreign policy, Britain's Tony Blair condemns Israel for its assassination of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi. Bush, on the other hand, refuses to condemn the assassination, asserting Israel's right of self-defense. Blair tells Parliament: "We condemn the targeted assassination of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi just as we condemn all terrorism, including that perpetrated by Hamas." It isn't often that Blair criticizes Israeli actions against Palestinians. Many observers are surprised at Blair's pointed condemnation, especially of the assassination of a known terrorist leader whose group is responsible for hundreds of suicide bombings against Israel over the last four years. Blair's condemnation comes as the Bush administration denounced Hamas, saying it should be put out of business. The Palestinian government should shut down Hamas and provide Palestinians with the social services that Hamas offers them, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher says. Blair says Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral decision to withdraw troops from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank could be the first step on a full settlement outlined in the Middle East road map. Putting an optimistic gloss on events, he tells Parliament that the international community has a responsibility to prevent a vacuum and should help the Palestinian authority in those areas from which the Israeli government withdrew. "The fact that there is a withdrawal by Israel from Gaza and the West Bank at least gives us a chance, not just the Palestinian authority, but the international community, to play a role in building the necessary economic, political and security capability within that part of the territory controlled by the Palestinian authority," he says.
Blair does not regard the Sharon plan as a final settlement, and continues to advocate a withdrawal from the West Bank. Most Middle East experts believe that the highly touted road map to peace is dead, given its final blow last week when Bush endorsed the Sharon plan to withdraw from Gaza in return for US recognition of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israel will spend tens of millions of dollars consolidating those settlements. Binyamin Netanyahu, the finance minister and former prime minister who is the frontrunner to take over from Sharon as prime minister in the next elections, says that Israel would increase its financial support for the settlements. "I am going to approve hundreds of millions of shekels to invest in the settlements beyond the main fence," he says. Currently about 150,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank. Until Bush's pronouncement in Washington last week the international community had expected most of the settlements would eventually be closed down as part of a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians. Sharon, however, intends to close all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip but only four in the West Bank. Conscious of the international outcry his comments would provoke, Netanyahu's office later revised his announcement, saying the money would not be used for the construction of new houses but for security. Under Sharon's plan, a barrier is being built to separate Israel from the West Bank. The settlements will form six blocs, fortified islands in the middle of what was intended to be a Palestinian state. (Guardian)
April 20: Iraqi leaders are in the process of creating a tribunal to try Saddam Hussein for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Other members of Hussein's Ba'athist regime will also be tried. Salem Chalabi, a U.S.-educated lawyer and nephew of the head of the Iraqi National Congress, is the general director of the tribunal, and has appointed a panel of seven judges and four prosecutors. A specific date and specific charges have yet to be announced. The committee selected Chalabi as head of the court under a law passed earlier by the council and approved by top US administrator Paul Bremer. The INC, headed by council member Ahmad Chalabi, has a seat on the committee. (AP/Global Policy)
April 20: Eminent economist John Kenneth Galbraith says that the cost of the Iraqi war will result in inflation, as all wars cause inflation, and that cost is already being passed along to Americans. US oil prices are spiraling upwards; Galbraith says that even if the Saudis lower oil prices before the election, it will be a temporary measure, and we can expect prices to continue to rise. Inflation is rampant in China, which increases the cost of Chinese imports. "so there goes the major brake on inflation in the prices of our manufactured goods," Galbraith writes, "something American consumers have benefited from for many years." The dollar is declining, causing a rise in the prices of goods from Europe and Japan. Profiteering, which is running wild among US and other corporations in Iraq, is costing the US taxpayer billions. The Federal Reserve is waiting to jack up interest rates, which it is unlikely to do in real terms until after the elections, but once the elections are behind up, expect interest rates to soar. "Think through what will actually happen when interest rates rise," Galbraith writes. "For firms that administer prices, interest rates are just another cost. Like the rise in oil, the rise in rates will be passed through. Prices will rise. High interest rates may, indeed, choke off inflation eventually. But they do it in only one way: by forcing households and businesses to cut back, by squeezing people with debts, and therefore by slowing down the civilian economy. Expect this cure to come later, cheered on by the business press. It will be worse than the disease. Higher interest rates, in other words, are not a way to fight inflation in the short run. They are, instead, part and parcel of the strategy of inflationary war finance. Their function is to help ensure that debtors pay, and creditors do not."
Galbraith says there is a better way to control inflation, but it isn't an easy one, and not a method the Bush administration will employ. "In wars past -- notably in World War II and Korea -- the job was done by steeply progressive taxes including taxes on excess profits, by 'forced saving' (which was an essentially compulsory private holding of public debt), and by price control. Interest rates were frozen at 2 percent on government bonds -- and essentially at 0 on bank deposits. The principle was: No one profits from the war. This combination kept inflation down -- prices were stable from 1942 through 1945. Not many grew rich off that war. Instead, my generation grew up with series EE bonds to our names. They were the promise that those working to win the war would see some of the material fruits of their labor later, when peacetime production returned. Together with progressive taxes and stable prices, they formed a bond between those leading the war effort, and those working to support it. It's clear that we shouldn't expect anything of the kind from Team Bush." (Salon)
April 20: Voters in Florida's Miami-Dade County districts are being told that the new electronic voting machines installed since the disputed 2000 election will not print receipts of cast votes. The available technology is not state certified, election officials say. Miami-Dade has chosen to use iVotronic machines. iVotronic vendors must wait for specifications from federal and state election officials before they can proceed with a prototype. "They have to set standards and tell us what they want," says Meghan McCormick, spokeswoman for Election Systems & Software, the makers of the iVotronic. "They have to decide things like the size and weight of the paper used for the receipt, in what languages it will be printed, what would be on it," she says. Any such printer would first need to be certified by Florida, as required by law. "Even if things would happen quickly, I doubt the printers could be available before early next year," she says. Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, the state's top election official, wants the National Institute for Standards and Technology, charged with developing elections criteria, to make a recommendation on the topic of paper receipts. That is still pending. "The feasibility of implementing such a system in Miami-Dade in 2004 is highly questionable," Kaplan told the election subcommittee. "At this point, we feel providing a voter paper trail is an ongoing topic we will continue to monitor, and not something we can do right now."
Democratic representative Robert Wexler recently filed suit in federal court demanding that Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and other touch-screen voting counties use paper printers to offer assurances to voters that their ballot has been recorded. Those counties also looked into offering a paper trail, then abandoned it. The paper record, which gives voters proof of how they voted via a touch-screen voting machine, is meant to soothe unease among voters that their vote is going uncounted. In 2000, thousands of votes across Florida went uncounted, according to investigators; a large majority of those votes were cast for Al Gore. The printed ballot would allow voters to verify which candidate or issue they selected, either by looking at the printed ballot from behind a glass, which then drops into a security box, or by issuing a ballot that is then dropped into a box. Voters would not be allowed to walk away with a copy of their ballot for fear those paper ballots could be sold. The paper trail also means election workers can audit actual paper. The Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, which agrees the paper receipts are not a viable idea because of their vulnerability, has challenged the accuracy of the voting machines, saying there is a glitch when audits are performed following any election. "We have a system that has symptomatic problems in the very way it tallies votes," Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the group's chairwoman, says. (Miami Herald)
April 20: In anticipation of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's scheduled testimony in front of the Senate and House Armed Services Committee this week, the liberal think tank Center for American Progress has prepared some questions the committee might want to ask Wolfowitz.
- Do you still believe Army Gen. Eric Shinseki's professional estimate of troop levels for Iraq was "wildly off the mark?" Wolfowitz publicly condemned Army Chief of Staff Shinseki's estimate that "several hundred thousand troops" would be necessary to provide security in post-war Iraq, calling his estimate "wildly off the mark" and saying "the notion that it would take several hundred thousand American troops just seems outlandish." Currently, 135,000 US troops occupy Iraq; recently, 20,000 troops due to leave Iraq had their tours involuntarily extended. CAP notes, "The Bush administration has effectively out-sourced the security mission to a veritable private army, which is increasing draining resources from civilian reconstruction." Former CENTCOM commander General Anthony Zinni, asked how the escalating war in Iraq could have caught Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz's boss, off guard, said, "I'm surprised that he is surprised because there was a lot of us who were telling him that it was going to be thus. Anyone could know the problems they were going to see. How could they not?"
- Last year, you testified that the reconstruction could be largely financed with Iraqi oil revenues. The American taxpayer has now spent over $18 billion on reconstruction. In light of this, can you give us your best estimate of how much Iraqi oil revenues will provide? Wolfowitz told Congress a year ago, "There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be US taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." Wolfowitz also told Congress "oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years.... We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." Unfortunately for Wolfowitz and the US taxpayer, according to CPA administrator Paul Bremer, current and future oil revenues will be insufficient for rebuilding Iraq, despite the administration's prewar promises. Plagued by poor infrastructure, outdated equipment, sabotage, and continuing attacks on pipelines, the Iraq oil industry has yet to produce at the CPA target goal of 3 billion barrels a day. According to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office, "Iraqi oil revenues are likely to cover only recurring Iraqi government costs, with little remaining for the capital investment required in the UN, World Bank and CPA assessments."
- Knowing what you know now, what is your estimate for immediate future costs? How much money will be needed in the FY05 supplemental request? The World Bank and the Coalition Provisional Authority estimate that the reconstruction will cost over $55 billion over the next four years. The United States has already provided close to $19 billion in assistance. Despite touting over $13 billion in pledges from international donors at the October Madrid conference, the United States continues to bear the brunt of the costs of reconstruction. The latest White House report to Congress confirms that "very few new pledges" have come in since Madrid. According to the World Bank, less than $1 billion in grants for 2004 have been disbursed. The administration failed to include any funding for Iraq in its fiscal year 2005 budget request. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, the military chiefs warned that delaying the supplemental until after the November elections could create a shortfall in funding for military operations at the end of the fiscal year.
- Why would Colin Powell refer to the Office of Special Plans as Douglas Feith's "Gestapo office?" Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack, says that Powell felt that Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith had established what amounted to a "separate government." Woodward says that Powell called the Office of Special Plans "Feith's Gestapo office." Its mission was to collect and cook "the most alarmist pre-war intelligence against Saddam Hussein and then stovepipe it to the White House via Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, unvetted by the intelligence agencies." Ken Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, says that the administration "created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership... They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information."
- Did you place too much confidence in the Iraqi exiles? Given Ahmed Chalabi's record and 40-year absence, why did you find him a credible source? Why is the department still paying Chalabi's group $340,000 a month? The government's own reviews show that much of the intelligence information provided by Chalabi and his exile Iraqi National Congress was misleading and even falsified. In early March 2004, Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of defense intelligence, admitted the Iraqi National Congress provided information that "was either fabricated or embellished." The National Intelligence Council believed the group's intelligence was questionable. Chalabi himself brags about falsifying intelligence for the US, and calls himself and his group "heroes in error." "What was said before is not important," he maintains. Chalabi even blames the administration for believing his false information: "intelligence people who are supposed to do a better for their country and their government did not do such a good job."
- The first Bush administration concluded that invading Baghdad in 1991 would have led to "mission creep" and "incalculable human and political cost." What made you think it would be easier this time around? In A World Transformed, Bush Sr. and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said that "trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in 'mission creep,' and would have incurred incalculable human and political cost." In a 1991 speech, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney argued, "I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force.... And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place... it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq." As Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under Cheney, Wolfowitz was in a crucial position to influence the decision when and how to cease offensive operations as Saddam's forces fled Kuwait. It was the view of virtually all senior members of the first Bush national security team that overthrowing Saddam by force and occupying all of Iraq would be difficult, costly and require extensive international support.
(Center for American Progress)
April 20: US reporters who wanted to know information about the recent discussion between Bush and Russian premier Vladimir Putin went to the first source they knew would be open with them -- the Kremlin. "The presidents exchanged ideas on the situations in the crisis areas of the world: Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, etc.," the Russian government said in a statement carried by the Interfax news agency. "They expressed serious concerns about the lack of progress in the settlement of regional problems and the escalation of the situation in these areas." The White House was a bit less forthcoming: "White House officials would reveal no details of the conversation," the Associated Press reported. Outsiders may be surprised to find that the Kremlin, long a symbol of repression and secrecy, is more transparent and publicly accountable than the United States White House, but journalists have long since learned that just about any source is more forthcoming than the Bush administration. Agence France-Press White House correspondant Olivier Knox has proposed a slogan for the Bush team: "When we have something to announce, another country will announce it." The world learned from British, not American, sources that Tony Blair would be visiting Washington; Guatamala, not the US, informed the world that President Oscar Berger would be doing the same. The Japanese, not the White House, reported that Bush was nominating former senator Howard Baker as ambassador to Japan; press secretary Ari Fleischer refused to "confirm or deny" for three weeks what the Japanese had already announced. The Japanese were over a month ahead of the White House in announcing Bush's October 2003 visit to Japan. Similarly, Ireland announced a month ahead of the Bush team that Bush would visit Ireland for the European Union summit. Even the Palestinian Authority is more open than the White House: "Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas announced on Wednesday that he will travel to Washington for his first official visit to the White House," the Jerusalem Post reported on July 17, 2003, adding that Abbas said the meeting with Bush would be July 25. "The White House would not confirm the report." The two men met at the White House on July 25. In the US, Bush's whereabouts are as likely to be announced by local officials as by the White House; this has happened in Ohio, Wisconsin, Connecticut, California, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri and elsewhere -- all without White House confirmation. Sometimes, of course, there are legitimate reasons, such as security, for the White House's secrecy. Other times, such a reason is less clear. In April 2002, for example, the Orlando Sentinel reported that the Apopka Little League team of 11- and 12-year-olds would visit the White House on May 5 to watch a T-ball game. The source: the team manager and parents. "The White House would not confirm the invitation," the paper reported. (Washington Post)
April 20: Political observers wonder why, if Colin Powell was so opposed to the war in Iraq, he didn't fight it more forcefully. The New York Times notes that for years Powell has been considered the voice of moderation in an administration packed with ideologues, some of whom he despises so deeply that he calls them the "Gestapo." If that is indeed the case, the Times asks, why didn't Powell exert some moderation over the Bush invasion plans? The Times writes, "Mr. Woodward describes Mr. Powell as deeply concerned about the prospect of an Iraq invasion, yet doing virtually nothing to try to turn Mr. Bush back from what he considered a dangerously wrong policy. Later, Mr. Powell cashed in more of his credibility by going to the United Nations and presenting intelligence about Iraq's weapons that many thought was exaggerated and that turned out to be flat wrong." Noting that Powell has said that once the war was officially declared, he supported it completely, the Times observes, "What we seem to have once again with Mr. Powell is a desire to have it both ways, to be seen as a loyal member of the Bush team, but also as a wise man who knew all along that the Iraq war would be a mistake. If the Woodward version is correct, Mr. Powell should have spoken up more than a year ago. He had, in a way, prepared all his life to oppose the Iraq policy. Like most soldiers, he'd always been reluctant to go to war, and the doctrine that bears his name is one that aims to restrict the country from any foreign adventure taken without overwhelming commitment -- say, by an administration that was planning to launch an invasion and cut taxes at the same time. ...If the Woodward book is the version of inside-the-White-House history that Mr. Powell wanted people to believe, it has done nothing to burnish his reputation. Knowing that Mr. Powell thought the invasion was a bad idea doesn't make him look better -- it makes his inaction puzzling and disappointing. It's an article of faith in Washington that Mr. Powell would not serve in a second Bush administration. The lasting impression may be this sense of disappointment in the secretary he could have been."
The St. Petersburg Times is more forceful in its characterization of Powell: "Colin Powell allowed his credibility to be shredded when he agreed to make the public case for a war he apparently opposed in private." It also asks if Powell was so opposed to the war, why didn't he resign in protest? The Times notes Powell's reputation as a loyal soldier, but makes the compelling argument that Powell's duties as Secretary of State are not to merely "shut up and soldier," but to give credible advice and, when needed, oppose actions that he feels are detrimental to the country. Instead, as the Times writes, "Whatever his misgivings about going to war in Iraq, Powell agreed to put his hard-won credibility on the line by agreeing to make the administration's case before the United Nations in February 2003. Much of the evidence presented by Powell has since been discredited, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Powell's reputation has been shredded as a result. That would be reason enough for some diplomats to tender their resignations." The Times concludes, "[H]aving chosen to mask those concerns to support the administration's plans in public, Powell shares responsibility for this war with the true believers who pushed us into Iraq." (New York Times, St. Petersburg Times)
April 20: Democratic senator Hillary Clinton asks newspaper editors to be "more vigilant" and act with "more tenacity" to combat the failures of the Bush administration to provide "vital information" to the public. Clinton is interviewed by Marvin Kalb on the opening day of the annual American Society of Newspaper Editors convention, and tells Kalb, "It's difficult for editors and publishers here to get to the bottom of stories. This administration, to an extent I haven't seen before, tells the press to go away -- and they do, like most people do when told that more than once. ...Many in this administration are quite expert at saying nothing despite your best efforts to get them to say something." She reminds the editors that "so much is at stake now and the public needs more information." She also warned that "the echo chamber of talk radio can drown out a three-part series any of you write." Other sections of the interview cover various policy issues, including health care and Iraq, and the 2004 presidential race; Clinton again rules out running for vice president and refuses to discuss any plans she may have for 2008. Discussing the revelations from Bob Woodward's new book, she says she doesn't believe "the Republican leadership will launch an investigation" into any of the allegations in the book. Asked if she regretted voting in the Senate for the president's war resolution, Clinton says, "I don't regret the vote. I regret how the president used that authority." She says Bush has made "stunning mistakes," and calls it "insulting that Osama bin Laden is still around to taunt us." Concerning the plan to go ahead with the June 30th transfer of power in Iraq, she says Bush is "playing it by ear, an ad hoc effort to make the best of a bad situation." (Editor & Publisher)
April 20: John Kerry intends to make the environment a key campaign issue for 2004. His predecessor, Al Gore, chose to downplay the environmental issue in 2000, even though much of Gore's expertise was in environmental legislation. Democrats say it was hard back then to portray George W. Bush as bad for the environment, because it was not a major issue in Texas, where he was governor. Moreover, they say, Gore did not want to highlight the issue because Bush was depicting him as an environmental extremist for his book, Earth in the Balance, and for saying that he hoped new technologies could replace the internal combustion engine. This year, Kerry advisers say, Bush's record on the environment will be a powerful motivator in getting voters to the polls. "The environment is much more likely to be an issue in this election because Bush has a record and you can see how bad it's been," says Carol Browner, who was the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration and is advising the Kerry campaign. To that end, Kerry is undertaking a concerted effort to attack Bush on environmental issues, saying that his administration has reversed three decades of progress and that its policies are threatening the public's health and safety. One Kerry ad declares, "George Bush let corporate polluters rewrite our environmental laws, and he wants to roll back the Clean Air and Water Acts and drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge," Kerry himself ends the commercial by saying, "We've got to leave this earth in better shape than we were given it by our parents." Kerry will discuss the increasing levels of mercury in water in an address in Tampa, Florida; the next day, in New Orleans, he will discuss coastal erosion, and on April 22, Earth Day, he will speak on air pollution in Houston, Texas, one of the most smog-plagued cities in America.
The Kerry campaign has also prepared a state-by-state evaluation of the environment during the Bush years, and plans to release it to local news organizations as Mr. Kerry travels. The report says, for example, that Bush's Clear Skies Initiative will result in 21 million more tons of pollution by 2020 than if he abandoned that market-based, cap-and-trade approach in favor of aggressively enforcing the Clean Air Act's existing provisions. The report also says that Florida, for instance, has 51 toxic Superfund sites and that the administration has been too slow in trying to clean them up. Kerry has been steeped in several environmental issues over the years and has earned top ratings from most environmental groups. Polls during the last three years have consistently shown Bush to be most vulnerable on the environment. The political question for Kerry is whether he can use those issues to his advantage while avoiding the Bush campaign's portrayal of him as an environmental extremist. Bush's campaign is bracing for an attack on his environmental policies. He is planning his own Earth Day event, on the coast of Maine, where he is to speak at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve and highlight his support for public-private partnership programs. Terry Holt, the Bush re-election spokesman, says the campaign will highlight what he describes as Kerry's hypocrisy on environmental matters. Holt notes that, for example, Kerry would be staging an event in Louisiana about soil and coastal erosion but had voted against the president's energy bill, which would have provided money to prevent erosion. (Holt fails to note that Bush's energy bill is considered by most observers to be little more than a blatant giveaway of billions of tax dollars to the US energy consortium.) "This is just one more political issue to check off his list of must-do items," says Holt, "when it comes to appealing to the base of his party." (New York Times/John Kerry)
April 20: Democrats.com's Bob Fertik says that the Boston Globe has abandoned its efforts to hold Bush accountable for his military records, and has instead hopped on the Bush bandwagon to attack John Kerry over his military record. The Globe article criticizes Kerry for not releasing some medical records and commanding officer evaluations, and accepts Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett's statement that "The president made a pledge before the American people, and he made his complete file available to the media and the public. They were able to review all of his medical records." Fertik notes, "Bartlett is lying. The public was not able to review all of his medical records, nor was most of the media." Fertik supports his contention with a quote from a February 13, 2004 article from the Washington Post, which reads: "The White House did not release 44 pages of medical records that Bush's aides received this week, but it allowed a small pool of reporters to peruse them for 20 minutes. Bartlett said that was to maintain a zone of privacy." Fertik writes, "since your attack on Kerry dwells on the controlled access of parts of his records, I'm sure you'll note the broader access offered by the Kerry campaign (all legitimate reporters, not just a pool) and the absence of any time restrictions." Bartlett also says, without challenge, that "...we fully released the remainder of his military files, including evaluations and performance sheets as well as days served."
However, Bartlett is lying again. Bush did not release the remainder of his military files. According to James Moore, author of Bush's War for Re-Election, "Bush has not provided his signature to authorize a complete release and printout of the entire microfiche record from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. The microfiche was sent to Danny James' office in Virginia., printed out, and then vetted before being given to the White House, where it was vetted again. Then it was given to reporters. If Bush would sign a release form, the entire file could be printed out for review by anyone who wanted. McCain did so in South Carolina during the primaries in 2000 when Karl Rove started his attacks on McCain being mentally unstable." In particular, Bush did not release his disciplinary files, so we still have no answers to the two crucial questions from the Globe's Walter Robinson on Feb. 14, 2004: "An initial review of the more than 300 pages found no additional documentation about why Bush went months without attending required drills while he was living in Montgomery, Ala., and at his home base in Houston between May 1972 and May 1973. The documents also do not clear up another mystery about Bush's military service: why then First Lieutenant Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, did not take his required annual flight physical examination in mid-1972. On Aug. 1, 1972, he was suspended from flight status for not taking the physical, and never flew again...."
Earlier this week, Fertik notes, two retired National Guard generals told the Globe that it was almost unheard of for a military aviator to miss an annual flight physical. And the Globe reported that Guard regulations would have required an investigation of Bush's failure to take the physical. But the new records contain no hint of any such inquiry. On March 14, the Spokesman-Review of Spokane revealed new information that might illuminate the question of Bush's grounding: "Military rules used in 1974 to ground two Washington Air National Guard airmen with access to nuclear weapons also applied to a Texas Air National Guard unit where Lt. George W. Bush was a fighter pilot. Some military researchers and a former Texas Guard lieutenant colonel believe the stringent regulations -- known as the Human Reliability Program -- may have been invoked to stop Bush from flying Texas Air National Guard jets in 1972." When reporters Bill Morlin and Karen Dorn Steele asked the White House about their discovery, they were referred to the Pentagon, which now refuses to answer any questions about Bush's military records. At the National Guard Bureau, now headed by a Bush appointee from Texas, officials last week said they were under orders not to answer questions. The bureau's chief historian said he couldn't discuss questions about Bush's military service on orders from the Pentagon. "If it has to do with George W. Bush, the Texas Air National Guard or the Vietnam War, I can't talk with you," said Charles Gross, chief historian for the National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C. Rose Bird, Freedom of Information Act officer for the bureau, said her office stopped taking records requests on Bush's military service in mid-February and is directing all inquiries to the Pentagon. She would not provide a reason. Air Force and Texas Air National Guard officials did not respond to written questions about the issue. James Hogan, a records coordinator at the Pentagon, said senior Defense Department officials had directed the National Guard Bureau not to respond to questions about Bush's military records.
Fertik has tried himself to find answers to both of these questions by requesting additional information from the military through FOIA requests; as of yet, he has not received any documents, nor can he get any replies from the the public affairs officer, Colonel August Schalkham. Fertik writes, "I assume I am the victim of the same information blackout that the Spokesman-Review exposed." Bartlett concludes, "The president lived up to his commitment he made to the public, and we should expect the same from his opponent." But by refusing to provide his disciplinary records, and by refusing to answer further questions, Bush has failed to live up to his commitment. Fertik writes, "You and other reporters should continue to demand complete and truthful answers to the two key questions posed by Walter Robinson." (Boston Globe, Democrats.com)
April 20: Democrats are still being too timid and restrained about holding Bush accountable, according to Bernard Weiner's "highly placed GOP mole in the Bush administration," whom he has wryly nicknamed "shallow Throat." "I can't believe you guys!" he yells at Weiner during their latest meeting. "Bush is screwing up big time in so many areas -- the 9/11 coverup, the Iraq War, Israel and the Palestinians, the Plame case, the environment, health care, education, the economy, tax rates, and on an on -- and your Dem friends simply watch in horror, with their mouths wide open, and don't react with any real passion. "Bush&Co. are dazed, confused and floored, not knowing what the hell to do, and you let him get up! At times, you even seem to be helping him to his feet! Damn it, this isn't tiddlywinks. Bush&Co. are playing full-contact, crush-your-opponent politics, and too often you seem to be playing to win the good-sportsmanship prize. You want to get rid of Bush and his kind from the White House? Remember where the political jugular is located and go for it!"
The mole continues, "Dick Clarke and Bob Woodward spill the whole can of beans all over the Bush Administration, Condi Rice lies and bobs and weaves her way through her testimony, nobody even tries to lay a glove on Ashcroft, the FBI and CIA are fingered to take the fall, Iraq is falling apart, Bush pitiably embarrasses himself and our country at his press conference -- and your candidate and the rest of the Democrats issue polite criticism. Even parts of the conglomerate-owned media machine are starting to mention and question Bush's scandals and disastrous policies. Why are you Democrats so timid? You should be wiping the floor with these guys, not pretending that all this is politics as usual. Bush&Co. don't play politics as usual -- you've had nearly four years to notice that! They play for keeps, and if you think you've witnessed unprecedented corruption, mendacity, greed and arrogance up until now, you ain't seen nothin' yet. If they get four more years, it's a forced march to a police-state at home, more looting of the treasury for the fat cats, and more 'benevolent hegemony' wars abroad. And the economy will be in the toilet, flushed away so that social-service programs for the middle-class and poor can be decimated even more, while the wealthy and the corporations make out like bandits."
The mole gives his recommendations for action: "Your Dem friends may choose to ignore what I say -- because if there were a decent, traditional Republican running, I probably would be voting for him -- but I hope they will be more open-minded, remembering that I've been risking my job, and maybe my life, revealing the inside workings of this nest of vipers. Your friends have to realize that I'm voting and secretly working for Kerry because the forces behind Cheney's sock-puppet have hijacked my party and ripped it to the far extreme rightwing, wrecking everything we traditional Republicans, who are suspicious of unbridled federal authority, hold dear: support for small government, budgetary restraint, no wars (and certainly no 'preventive' wars) unless our vital national interests are imminently at stake, a firm wall between church and state, and so on. So, as an outraged, desperate, angry Republican, here's my answer to your question, a prescription for action. Take what you find useful. First, get your heaviest liberal hitters to bring John Kerry into a closed room and read him the riot act. If he wants to win, if he wants to get Dems and Independents and Libertarians and moderate Republicans like me to vote and work for him and supply him with campaign dollars, he's got to sharpen his attack, got to go for that jugular. Don't fudge around, use the appropriate godd*mn words: 'lies,' 'deceit,' 'manipulation,' 'quagmire,' 'permanent war,' 'imperial foreign policy,' 'sticking it to the middle class,' 'ruining the economy.' Don't pull punches, just tell the truth. To be able to fight like that requires him to shed the albatross that was hung around his neck by Kerry himself, and which is being used by the GOP to brand him. Kerry voted for the blank-check that allowed Bush to go to war in Iraq, he voted for the Patriot Act, he supports Sharon's bestial policies in Palestine. Kerry has got to admit he made some mistakes -- something Bush is incapable of doing, but Kerry can -- about those positions. He has to go to the American people and say he is wiser now than he was then; his votes were based on faulty information; he, we all, got snookered by a lying Bush Administration to convince and manipulate us into a war of choice, not one of necessity. And he was caught up, as were we all, by the immediate fear and desire to get the terrorists after 9/11, and voted in haste for the Patriot Act.
"Kerry can at least sketch a way out of Iraq, before we sink up to our eyeballs in that quagmire; if it involves handing over control to the U.N., or kicking Chalabi and Halliburton out of the way, or swallowing hard when Islamic nationalists take control in a democratic election -- well, that's part of the road out of this morass. Kerry can promise that he will take a good look at the Patriot Act and remove the worst aspects. Just speaking up like that on those two issues alone would make the distinction between himself and Bush all the more clear, and would indicate a humility and willingness to grow as a candidate. Bush has placed all his chips on Sharon's extremist policies in Palestine (and even is imitating them in Iraq); Kerry can vow to be more even-handed in the Middle East, realizing that only more slaughter will take place -- maybe even against the U.S. -- unless a candidate is elected that can be the honest broker between the Israelis and Palestinians. Bush no longer can be that broker, but a President Kerry, if he's capable of altering his position, can. And Kerry can sell all this to the Americans and Israelis because it's in America's, and Israel's, long-term national interests that the Middle East move toward a just and lasting peace.
"Second, he should ask Bill Clinton for some tutoring on campaigning and public-speaking. Loosen up. Get better writers. Spend lots of time in televised, small town-hall meetings, interacting in an intimate setting (rather than in large rallies) one-on-one with ordinary citizens; I think Kerry could excel in that arena. And, since Bush won't really debate, take some of that money that's coming in and buy 15 minutes or a half-hour on network TV to take on Bush directly on a number of key issues. Kerry can be a give-'em-hell-Harry kind of candidate, a straight shooter who tells it like it is. Even though currently he gets off a good shot now and then, he doesn't seem relaxed, doesn't smile as much as he should, seems somewhat awkward and dull in delivery too often, as if he's trying to remember what he's supposed to be saying rather than letting it flow from his heart and gut.
"Third, he should hold a major press conference, make some major announcements and then, for an hour, demonstrate how at ease he is with answering pointed questions from the reporters, how much knowledge he has at his fingertips, how 'presidential' he looks when measured against Dubya Doofus, how relaxed and self-deprecatingly funny he can be.
Fourth, he needs to address the computer-voting issue head-on. It won't matter if more citizens choose him on November 2nd unless their votes are accurately recorded and tabulated. His victory could be stolen unless the scandal of touch-screen voting problems is dealt with. As Stalin said, what matters is not who votes, but who counts the votes. Right now, the software inside those computer-voting machines -- which are owned and controlled by Republican companies -- can be manipulated easily, leaving no trace that they've been tampered with. Most of the computer-voting machines have no back-up system that allows for verified recounts. There are alternative machines on the market that print out a paper copy of the votes, require the voter to look at it and okay it, then save it inside a locked box for any recounting that may be necessary. Kerry needs to acknowledge the vital importance of this issue, start talking it up, become the national advocate for honest tabulation. Especially after the disputed 2000 vote, we don't need another stolen-election controversy. That way lies political civil war."
When asked if the election can be handled fairly considering Karl Rove is in charge of Bush's campaign, the mole replies, "You've put your finger on the right man. The Rovemeister has a file full of dirty tricks he's starting to activate, and Kerry and the Dems better be prepared for those -- and for various other surprises as we get closer to the election, when undecided voters are more apt to be paying attention to the campaign." As for the possibility of a terrorist attack on the US before the elections, he says, "Look, Bin Laden's intentions couldn't be clearer. He's willing to ease off Europe in order to focus on America. A big one is coming, for sure. And he's almost more eager to demonstrate that he can still pull one off here because a Bush Administration official recently almost dared him to do so, saying al-Qaeda is so badly decimated and in our preventive sights that the terrorists can't do much major damage inside the U.S. The question is not whether but when, how big it will be, and how the American citizenry will react when it happens. Will they blame Bush for not protecting them, and will they remember how he did nothing prior to 9/11 even when he knew the 'spectacular' Big One was about to happen? Or will Americans, in their fright, rally around the Administration in a time of great travail and anxiety? And, most importantly, if the al-Qaeda attack is horrific -- say, a suitcase dirty bomb going off at a major port city, killing and radiating tens of thousands -- will they stand up and resist the calls for martial law and the 'postponement' of the election?
"If the Democrats have any sense, they will start talking now about the terrorism that is likely to happen this summer or fall, reminding voters of how incompetent the Bush Administration was before and has been since 9/11, and how their reckless policies in Iraq and the Middle East have made us more vulnerable to terrorism, not less. But I'm not sure your Democrats are smart enough to think along those lines, or have the guts to take on Bush directly on these issues. In short, I'm not sure they really know how to win, or maybe even want to win enough to go out and really claw and fight their way to victory. But they simply have to if we're going to have any opportunity to avoid the militarist, neo-fascist society Bush&Co. have in mind for America after November 2, and the permanent war the neo-cons want to continue abroad. This is our moment. There is no other chance to take these guys down. If we don't do it in November, it may be a generation or more before we get another reasonable shot. Kerry and the Dems may understand that on an intellectual level, but they need to translate that into unrelenting, tough, street-smart, go-for-the-jugular campaign-activism from now until Election Day. ...There is no going back and no-second chance. It's now or never." [Note: I have no idea whether Weiner's mole is legitimate or merely a fictional construct for Weiner's own thoughts.] (Crisis Papers)

April 21: 10% of Iraqi security forces "actually worked against" US forces during the recent militia violence in Iraq, and another 40% walked off the job rather than work alongside US troops, according to the commander of the First Armored Division, Major General Martin Dempsey. "We have to get this latest increase in violence under control," Dempsey says. "We have to take a look at the Iraqi security forces and learn why they walked." The newly trained and assigned Iraqi military and security forces are torn about taking up arms against their own countryment, and some have been targets of harassment and intimidation by insurgents and ordinary civilians. "It's very difficult at times to convince them that Iraqis are killing fellow Iraqis and fellow Muslims, because it's something they shouldn't have to accept," Dempsey says. "Over time I think they will probably have to accept it." The failure of Iraqi security forces to perform is significant because it could hurt the United States' overall exit strategy from Iraq, which is dependent on moving US troops out of the cities and handing authority to Iraqis. Officials have said the US military would delay its withdrawal from parts of Iraq until Iraqi forces were ready to take control. Dempsey maintains that popular support for the US-led coalition in Iraq is still "very solid," but he admits to what he obliquely terms "a form of descending consent" for the US military presence occurring among Iraqis as time passes. "There is a point where it doesn't matter how well we're doing, it won't be accepted that we have a large military presence here," he says. "We're all working very diligently trying to figure out where that point is." Dempsey recalls receiving a warning from Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah that the coalition forces would find it tough to bring order to Iraq after dissolving the country's only two powerful institutions, the army and the Ba'ath party. "so part of me says our jobs may have been easier had we just found a way to keep some of the Ba'ath party in place," he says, echoing comments by other US military leaders. Dempsey adds, "On the other hand, the entire part of the population that was disenfranchised during these 35 years, largely the Shi'ite population, absolutely has no trust in any former member of the Baath party. So we found ourselves exactly in the middle of this." Dempsey said efforts are underway to ensure Iraqi security forces that there will be Iraqi authorities in place to back them up after US troops leave. During the recent militia attacks, "about 50 per cent of the security forces that we've built over the past year stood tall and stood firm," he says. "About 40 per cent walked off the job because they were intimidated. And about 10 per cent actually worked against us," he says, calling that group infiltrators. Dempsey commands the army division in charge of Baghdad. He has been in Iraq for more than a year, focusing on intelligence gathering and combating terrorism as he works to help Iraqi security forces take over those tasks. (AP/CNews)
April 21: In the days preceding the invasion of Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz pushed to have Ramzi Yousef, the terrorist convicted of planning the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, reclassified as an "enemy combatant." Wolfowitz's idea would have given the administration the authority to move Yousef from his cell at the "supermax" prison in Florence, South Carolina, to a US military installation, where he was to be grilled about his knowledge of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Wolfowitz contended that military interrogators, unencumbered by the presence of Yousef's defense lawyer, might be able to get him to confess what he and the lawyer have steadfastly denied: that he was actually an Iraqi intelligence agent dispatched by Saddam to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 as revenge for the first Persian Gulf War. After lengthy consideration, the Justice Department turned down the idea. The proposal sheds new light on the Bush administration's willingness to use the "enemy combatant" designation for its own purposes, and its desperation to find any evidence of ties between Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Wolfowitz, like many other administration neocons, still insists that Hussein was cooperating closely with al-Qaeda, though all evidence shows that al-Qaeda despised Hussein and wanted him deposed. Even though Bush himself has admitted that no evidence of a Hussein-al-Qaeda link exists, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials continue to insist on such a link. The FBI resisted the proposal, saying that it had exhaustively investigated the idea of such a connection and found nothing. Wolfowitz has long maintained, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Yousef was an Iraqi agent working for Hussein. Wolfowitz has long insisted that in 1990, Yousef, at the behest of Iraqi intelligence, switched his identity with Pakistani citizen Abdul Basit and using that identity, came to the United States to carry out his plans to bomb the WTC. Wolfowitz, using the theories postulated by academic Laurie Mylroie, said that fingerprints on file in Britain of Basit wouldn't match the fingerprints of Yousef, thus proving his contentions. But even after Basit's fingerprints matched Yousef's, disproving Wolfowitz's contention and bearing out the FBI's conclusion that Basit was merely a pseudonym of Yousef, Wolfowitz refused to drop his idea. Wolfowitz even continues to insist that Yousef is an Iraqi and a nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, though the FBI and US intelligence has long confirmed that Yousef is Pakistani and never had any serious ties to Mohammed. The information about Wolfowitz's proposal comes from Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack. Currently three people -- American citizen Jose Padilla, Yaser Hamdi, a former Taliban fighter captured in Afghanistan, and Ali Al-Marri, a former Bradley University student from Qatar who was living in Peoria, Illinois -- have been publicly designated as enemy combatants. The administration, and Cheney in particular, are pushing to have others designated as well. (MSNBC)

Kerry releases military records in the face of the Bush campaign's efforts to smear his Vietnam service

April 21: In the face of Republican efforts to smear his Vietnam record, John Kerry releases his military records to the public. Kerry served five months as the commander of a "swiftboat" in the Mekong Delta, and was decorated with the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts; he was reassigned out of Vietnam due to his wounds. Conservative talk radio show hosts and editorialists are spreading the rumor that Kerry's injuries weren't serious enough to deserve reassignment. Kerry's former commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibbard, said last week that Kerry's first Purple Heart came from minor wound, resembling a fingernail scrape. Kerry's campaign is in the process of posting Kerry's military records on the Internet; so far, his citations and certificates are available, along with declassified reports that briefly explain the injuries that led to Kerry's final two Purple Heart awards. According to reports, Kerry suffered shrapnel wounds in his left thigh on February 20, 1969 after his boat came under "intense fire," and he suffered shrapnel wounds in his left buttock as well as contusions to his right forearm when his boat was damaged by a mine three weeks later. These wounds led to his second and third Purple Hearts; the campaign is still searching for documentation of Kerry's first Purple Heart. While similar reports are not yet available, Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan has shown the media a "sick Call Treatment Record" from Kerry's personal files that included a brief written note dated December 3, 1968, and stamped from the naval support facility at Cam Ranh Bay. "shrapnel in left arm above elbow," reads the note. "shrapnel removed and appl bacitracin dressing. Ret to Duty." Documentation for the other two injuries shows that Kerry was deemed fit for duty after medical treatment, and that he indeed returned to duty after his wounds were treated. After the third Purple Heart, the Navy was required to reassign Kerry out of Vietnam, and a document dated March 17, 1969, said Kerry requested duty as a personal aide in Boston, New York or the Washington area. Kerry could have volunteered to stay in Vietnam, but left the country in early April 1969. Along with his final Purple Heart, Kerry received the Bronze Star after being wounded by the mine. One of his boatmates was thrown overboard in the blast, but Kerry pulled him to safety. Kerry did this with "his arm bleeding and in pain and with disregard for his personal safety," according to the citation. "We are happy to compare Senator Kerry's record of service to anybody in the Bush campaign who has or has not served," says Meehan. (CBS News, Boston Globe, AP [facsimiles of Kerry's injury reports])
April 21: The Pentagon deletes from its official transcript a statement Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President Bush had decided to invade Iraq. At issue is a passage in Woodward's Plan of Attack, an account published this week of Bush's decision making about the war, quoting Rumsfeld as telling Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, in January 2003 that he could "take that to the bank" that the invasion would happen. The comment came in a key moment in the run-up to the war, when Rumsfeld and other officials were briefing Bandar on a military plan to attack and invade Iraq, and pointing to a top-secret map that showed how the war plan would unfold. The book reports that the meeting with Bandar was held on Jan. 11, 2003, in Vice President Cheney's West Wing office. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended. Pentagon officials omitted the discussion of the meeting from a transcript of the Woodward interview that they posted on the Defense Department's Web site Monday. Rumsfeld told reporters at a briefing yesterday that he may have used the phrase "take that to the bank" but that no final decision had been made to go to war. "To my knowledge, a decision had not been taken by the president to go to war at that meeting," Rumsfeld said. "There was certainly nothing I said that should have suggested that, and any suggestion to the contrary would not be accurate." Woodward supplied his own transcript showing that Rumsfeld told him on Oct. 23, 2003: "I remember meeting with the vice president and I think Dick Myers and I met with a foreign dignitary at one point and looked him in the eye and said you can count on this. In other words, at some point we had had enough of a signal from the president that we were able to look a foreign dignitary in the eye and say you can take that to the bank this is going to happen." The transcript makes it clear that the foreign dignitary Woodward was discussing was Bandar, although Rumsfeld would not say that. "We're going to have to clean some of this up in the transcript," Rumsfeld said in the omitted passage. "We'll give you a -- I mean you just said Bandar and I didn't agree with that so we're going to have to -- I don't want to say who it is but you are going to have to go through that and find a way to clean up my language too." All told, the Pentagon transcript omits a series of eight questions and answers, some of them just a few words each.
Yesterday Rumsfeld misleadingly described the deleted passages as "some banter." Larry DiRita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, says the deletion was an honest disagreement and defense officials were reviewing the passage to determine whether to restore it to the published version. "I had discussions with the author about passages that would be excluded from the transcript by mutual agreement, and this passage was one of those sections," he said. "It was excluded specifically because the secretary was not in a position to validate or confirm the details that the author was raising." Woodward retorts, "As the transcript shows, it was not off the record. I was surprised that it was deleted because it obviously dealt with a critical issue and was important corroborating information for the book. I asked DiRita to restore it on the Pentagon Web site." In an unusual move, Bush officials are refraining from the usual personal attacks on the author of a book filled with information disagreeable to the administration, and instead say they urge people to read the book. "We're urging people to buy the book," says White House communications director Dan Bartlett. "What this book does is show a president who was asking the right questions and showing prudence as well as resolve during very difficult times. This book undermines a lot of the critics' charges." An official involved in the negotiations said the administration cooperated so completely that Bush asked Cheney to grant Woodward an interview, which Cheney did, although he is not named as a source. Woodward writes in the book that information came from "more than 75 key people directly involved in the events," most of whom spoke on the condition that they not be identified.
The Pentagon posted transcripts of both Woodward interviews with Rumsfeld, and they show that Rumsfeld was more recalcitrant than other administration figures. He complained about Woodward's questions in a past meeting, saying that "almost everything you asked me was premised with an assertion that was either incomplete or wrong." Woodward is quoted as gently reminding Rumsfeld that the president "wants me to do this." At Rumsfeld's briefing yesterday, he said that he remembered the session in Cheney's office with Bandar but that it was not unlike others "we had with any number of neighboring countries as the buildup towards the -- to support the diplomacy, the flow of forces was taking place. We had the obligation to try to do it in the most cost-effective and responsible way, and the way that would best fit General [Tommy] Franks's plans, in the event that he did in fact ultimately have to go to war,"Rumsfeld said, referring to the former head of the US Central Command. "That meant we had to talk to the countries in the region and work out things at ports or airfields and that type of thing." After being handed a note later in the briefing, Rumsfeld returned to the transcript and said that it might omit "some discussion about a totally unrelated topic, and some items that were agreed between us...that were off the record. ...But I can say of certain knowledge that nothing was taken out that would naysay what I just indicated in my response to the question," Rumsfeld said. (Washington Post)
April 21: House minority leader Nancy Pelosi says that in a world where reality television is popular, "presidential policy has little basis in reality." Pelosi, a Democrat, tells an audience at a conference of newspaper editors and journalists, "President Bush and Republicans have been living in a dream world, and it can be a nightmare for Americans." She criticizes the Bush administration for starting the war in Iraq and creating a huge deficit, and applauds the work of the nation's newspapers. "Your headlines have been dominated by the war in Iraq," she says. "Thank you for your patriotism" in promoting America's freedoms. She lambasts Bush for not dealing with reality: "His action may be firm, but his judgment is not sound," she says. Because of the war in Iraq, she says, the nation is left with a staggering trillion-dollar deficit. "That's an astounding burden. We should be giving our children opportunity." Among other domestic spending, funding for the No Child Left Behind federal education program has suffered from the war expenditures, she notes. (American Society of Newspaper Editors)
April 21: In an interesting turn, the Bush campaign is attacking John Kerry for his wife's ties with the Heinz Corporation, even though Heinz has long been a major Republican donor and has not contributed a cent to Kerry's campaign. The Bush campaign continues to accept the Heinz donations even as it attacks Kerry for Heinz's outsourcing of jobs overseas. While Teresa Heinz Kerry gained much of her $500 million portfolio through her Heinz inheritance, she does not serve on the board and is not involved with the management of the company. Even her late husband, Senator John Heinz, a Pennsylvania Republican, did not serve on the board. No Heinz family member has been employed by the company or served on its board since H.J. Heinz II, its chairman, died in 1987. Kerry's wife, who heads the separate Heinz Family Foundation and the Howard Heinz Endowment, owns less than 4% of the company's stock. One of Heinz's major stockholders is longtime Republican donor Peter Coors, heir to the Coors beer fortune. Over time, Heinz has given over three times the amount of donations to Republican concerns than Democrat; it contributed $5000 to the Massachusetts Democratic Party and $5000 to the Bush campaign. Heinz chairman William Johnson has given more than $20,000 to Republican congressional committees and candidates since 1999. Other board members have also contributed to Republicans, giving money to Bush's campaign and Pennsylvania's two Republican senators, Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum. (USA Today)
April 21: Bill Press, author of Bush Must Go! -- Top Ten Reasons Why George W. Bush Doesn't Deserve A Second Term and one of the few liberals to get any real national airtime, is interviewed by Buzzflash. Press says that the biggest problem George W. Bush faces as the election draws closer is a demonstrated lack of credibility: "I think credibility is the central issue, or should be the central issue in this campaign," he says. "I hope Kerry makes it the central issue in this campaign, because I think it is where George Bush is most vulnerable. I compare Bush to Baghdad Bob. If we remember when the bombs were falling on Iraq, Baghdad Bob was out there saying, 'We have crushed them! We have destroyed the Americans!' And he said that the missiles were all just Hollywood special effects. You know, I think Baghdad George has as much credibility as Baghdad Bob. Let's start on Iraq. The list is so long. Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Where are the unmanned drones? Where are the mobile weapons labs? Where are the terrorist training camps? Where are the people who were going to run out and greet us as liberators? All of it proved to be just lies. Look at the domestic front. Where are the 5.5 million new jobs that George Bush promised? Where is the balanced budget that he promised? Where is the fiscal responsibility he promised to bring to Washington? And speaking of bringing things to Washington, where is the new tone of civility that he was going to introduce into American politics? I think the biggest evidence of Bush's credibility gap of all may be his failed campaign promise, 'I'm a uniter, not a divider.' Bush has proven to be the most divisive President in modern history. If it comes down to credibility, 'bring it on' is what I would say. I think George Bush has a credibility gap big enough to drive a Humvee through. ...Credibility should be the theme. It should be the theme of this campaign because it is the theme of the Bush administration, which is just one lie after another, thinking that they can hoodwink the American people."
Aside from the obvious subjects of Iraq and the putative "war on terror," Press cites the Medicare scandal as one enormous area of Bush lies to the American public: "First of all, they lied about the fact that this was going to increase the benefits to senior citizens when it actually increases the benefits to the pharmaceutical companies, and it results in seniors getting less protection and paying more for it. The Bush administration deliberately lied to Congress about the price tag. And they threatened to fire the auditor of the Department of Health and Human Services who was well aware of what the full cost was and wanted to tell Congress. And the Bush administration said: 'If you tell Congress, we'll fire you.' I think that's almost criminal." Press also delves briefly into Bush's fight to keep his military records away from the public: "You can't believe him when he talks about his military record. The only thing the White House can prove is that he showed up in Montgomery, Ala., one day for a dental appointment. My take on that is the only drill George Bush saw in Alabama was a dentist's."
Press is optimistic that Democratic challenger John Kerry can hold Bush's serial lying up to public scrutiny. "...John Kerry is already off to a great start," Press says. "Kerry is a fighter. Kerry responds to every attack, or anticipates every attack. And I think you have to expose these people for the frauds that they are. Let's talk about the latest attacks. Dick Cheney has the audacity to question John Kerry's credentials to be commander in chief, right? First, I remind everybody that Bush and Cheney have no war record. None. Zero war record. John Kerry on the other hand took three bullets in Vietnam, won three Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and a Presidential Unit Citation for Extraordinary Heroism. Now contrast Kerry and Bush. You tell me which one has the experience necessary to be commander in chief. Then Cheney says Kerry is soft on defense because he voted against the Apache helicopter. The fact is, when he was Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney killed the Apache helicopter. These guys are complete hypocrites. The record shows that Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, boasted to Congress that he had killed 81 different weapons programs. And then Cheney attacks Kerry for voting against the Apache helicopter. We can't let them get away with these lies. We have to expose every one of them. And I think the American people will see the truth and appreciate the truth. ...Here's what I believe Kerry has to do. He has to make this election a referendum on George Bush's record. To me, that is most important. And by the way, this is not like rocket science. It's important to remember that in every reelection campaign for every President, it's not about the challenger. It's about the incumbent and the record. Basically you ask the question: This guy's been there for four years, so what has he done? Does he deserve another four years? And when you look at George Bush's record the answer is no, no, no, and no. So I'd say Kerry has got to make Bush defend his record on jobs, on the economy, on health care, on education, on Iraq, and on the war on terror. I think what we're seeing is that the Bush campaign knows they can't defend their record, so they're attacking Kerry and trying to make Kerry the issue. Kerry has to make Bush the issue." (Buzzflash)

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

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 Three

Page Three

CIA and DIA blame each other for accepting false intelligence from Iraqi source

Saudis plan to artificially lower oil prices to help Bush gain election votes

"Axis of evil" characterization merely a cover for planned Iraqi invasion

Supreme Court hears arguments regarding rights of "enemy detainees"

A private CPA memo predicts certain chaos, heavy Iranian influence, and possible civil war in Iraq after the transition

Kerry releases military records in the face of the Bush campaign's efforts to smear his Vietnam service

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