April 2004: Week Four: Page Two: This Far and No Further

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April 25: The US says it will hold all 595 detainees currently held at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, even though it admits it has no evidence that most of the detainees committed any crime or pose any threat to the US. Paul Butler, special assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, is the first government official to acknowledge that hundreds of detainees will probably be held without facing military tribunals. Officials have spoken publicly about the prospect of indefinite detentions for some, but they had not disclosed that the majority could be held until the war on terrorism is finished. Unless the US Supreme Court intervenes, the Bush administration plans to hold the prisoners who it believes are dangerous or who can provide useful information in fighting al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. "What I'm saying is that there is a large percentage right now who are either high threat or high intelligence value, that right now there's no intention to try them before a military commission," Butler says. "They're dangerous. And we have a responsibility, both to our forces...and the rest of the world, to not let those people back out." Butler expresses frustration that the United States has not gotten the word out about the investigations, that painstaking action is taken for inaction: "One of the things that doesn't seem to come across is that there is this extensive process to try to figure out who these detainees are, what kind of intelligence they have, what threat they represent, and to treat them accordingly," he says. "We're not in the business of just holding people for the sake of it.... We realize that we can't do that. We have to have justifiable reasons to hold on to people."
Two of the lawyers representing some of the detainees say they were not surprised to hear that the government plans to hold so many people without trial or access to attorneys; they have noticed that the government had not hired enough attorneys to handle hundreds of prosecutions. They say it confirms their worst fears. "It's shocking to anyone who believes in the rule of law," says Michael Ratner, an attorney for several detainees with cases before the court. "Indefinite detention without any legitimate court process is unheard of in this country." Of the approximately 8,000 to 10,000 detainees taken in Afghanistan and Pakistan, about 738 were shipped to the US naval base in Cuba. The United States has released 131 and transferred 12 others to their home countries for detention. Of the remaining 595, only two have been charged with crimes so far. More detainees will be charged, Butler says. Some have been at Guantanamo since January 2002. "In a traditional investigation, you show up at a crime scene, you grab some evidence, and you go try to find a suspect," says Colonel Brittain Mallow, commander of the investigation task force, whose 150-plus members were drawn from every military investigative agency. "What we have is a pool of suspects, and the United States has asked us, 'What have they done, and have they done something that's worthy of prosecution?' ...This has been one of the great lessons we've learned, how complex these cases are, and how time consuming it is to gather the facts on them and be able to prove them."
The first obstacle was establishing a detainee's true name and date of birth, even his home country. Some who claimed to be Yemenis turned out to be Saudis, or vice versa. They were arrested without passports, cellphones, or calling cards. Some were turned in by Afghans who were paid bounty in the search for Taliban and al-Qaeda members; many of the detainees are now believed to be victims of personal vendettas. "With a lot of these detainees," Butler says, "everything you know about them comes from what they tell you or what someone else in the camp tells you." In the interrogation booths at Guantanamo, they can see only glimpses of home, in the form of posters of a Middle Eastern oasis, with Arabic implorations such as, "Daddy, please tell them what you know and come home." The detainees speak eight major languages, and 20 or more dialects. Each detainee is rated in three areas: intelligence value, threat, and potential for prosecution. A rating above the minimum in any category can keep a detainee at Guantanamo. The facts gathered by interrogators and analysts are supplemented by reports from behavioral scientists. This task force, or CITF, is separate from Joint Task Force Guantanamo, or JTF GTMO, the more public unit that runs that Camp Delta prison and also interrogates the detainees for intelligence information to prevent future attacks. The officials refuse to say exactly what benchmarks they use to calculate a detainee's threat rating. But some of the indicators include the extent of contact with senior al-Qaeda officials; special skills or training (Butler has described one unnamed detainee as a shoe bomb designer); financing ("if someone was captured with $3,500 in cash, US bills, that would be what we would call a clue," Mallow says); deception during interrogation, which is known to be part of al-Qaeda training; and commitment to holy war against Americans, either before or after the attacks of 9/11. "someone who joined the cause after 9/11, that might mean something, particularly if they admit to us, or somebody else admits to us, the reason they came is to fight the Americans -- they came to join the jihad," Mallow says.
Even after two years, the detainees continue to help investigators learn a great deal about al-Qaeda and a web of affiliated terrorist groups, the officials say. How was the detainee recruited, at a mosque or university? How did he get in touch with the person who knew where the safehouse was? How does one become a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden? How are nonprofit groups used in financing terrorism? How do leaders communicate orders? "Actual operational, tactical information does wane as time goes by," Butler admits, "but we're looking at a broader goal here, trying to understand how these terrorist networks operate, how they morph." For the detainees judged to be less dangerous, or those whose intelligence value has been exploited, some of the delay in releasing them is caused by the complicated negotiations with more than 40 countries to take back their citizens, Butler says. In some cases, the United States insists that the person be detained in the home country, but that may not be possible under that country's laws. Or the detainee could face a trial back home, except that evidence gathered at Guantanamo may not be usable in that country's courts. The closer another country's legal system is modeled on the US Constitution, the less likely it is to be able to use evidence gathered at Guantanamo. "Most of the statements that we've gotten from someone -- if you're dealing with countries that have a Miranda-type law -- are inadmissible, and so what do you have?" said Butler, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the embassy bombings case against bin Laden before becoming responsible for detainee operations and other special operations at the Pentagon. "We don't want to be in the business of just turning people back to a country to have them let go."
There's also the reverse situation, countries where the United States might fear for the safety of the detainees if they're shipped home. One case involves China and the Uighurs, an ethnic group of Muslims living mostly in northwestern China. The United States picked up more than two dozen Uighurs at the Afghan camps, where apparently they hoped to learn how to fight for independence from China. The United States no longer considers them a threat, and has negotiated with China about returning them. But Uighur exiles in the United States say that China can be expected to torture and execute the detainees, as it has executed other suspected separatists. This has put Human Rights Watch in the odd situation of campaigning for the release of most detainees, but against the release of these detainees. Butler said that any country receiving a detainee must agree to treat him humanely. Each detainee has been photographed, fingerprinted, and swabbed for a DNA sample. Each released detainee is added to the watch lists of people not to be allowed into the United States. The Bush administration has contended that it has sufficient authority to hold the detainees as enemy combatants, not prisoners of war, because they did not fight according to the Geneva Conventions and therefore cannot benefit from its protections. The government says that the prisoners have been treated more humanely than international law requires. And Rumsfeld has said that detainees not put on trial will be able to meet annually with a military review board, although its rules have not been finished. Tom Wilner, a lawyer who argued last week at the Supreme Court on behalf of 12 Kuwaitis who want judicial review of their detention, says he was glad to see the government confirming that most detainees won't go on trial. He has been trying to focus more attention on those detainees, he says, but the press and public have mostly thought of the process as one in which most detainees will either be convicted or acquitted. "The ones who get a trial are the lucky ones," Wilner says. "My 12 guys will never go before a tribunal, because they have no evidence against them."
Some detainees are cooperative, and some have hardly said a word in two years. Some seem to have been radicalized by their long detention, the officials said, and others seem to have been mollified by contact with Americans, even Americans who are their jailers, and by medical care and literacy programs at Guantanamo. "I've heard everything," Mallow says, "from 'I just want to go back and be with my family' to 'I'd kill you today if I could get out of this chair.'" (Boston Globe/CommonDreams)
April 25: Richard Clarke, the former chief of counterterrorism under Bush and Clinton, writes an op-ed for the New York Times saying that US discussion of Islamic terrorism is focusing on the wrong issues. Clarke warns that the US, even though it is the world's only superpower, is critically threatened by an ideological war within Islam itself. He writes, "It is a civil war in which a radical Islamist faction is striking out at the West and at moderate Muslims. Once we recognize that the struggle within Islam -- not a 'clash of civilizations' between East and West -- is the phenomenon with which we must grapple, we can begin to develop a strategy and tactics for doing so. It is a battle not only of bombs and bullets, but chiefly of ideas. It is a war that we are losing, as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement. I do not pretend to know the formula for winning that ideological war. But I do know that we cannot win it without significant help from our Muslim friends, and that many of our recent actions (chiefly the invasion of Iraq) have made it far more difficult to obtain that cooperation and to achieve credibility. What we have tried in the war of ideas has also fallen short. It is clear that United States government versions of MTV or CNN in Arabic will not put a dent in the popularity of the anti-American jihad. Nor will calls from Washington for democratization in the Arab world help if such calls originate from a leader who is trying to impose democracy on an Arab country at the point of an American bayonet. The Bush administration's much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative, therefore, was dead on arrival. We must also be careful, while advocating democracy in the region, that we do not undermine the existing regimes without having a game plan for what should follow them and how to get there. The lesson of President Jimmy Carter's abandonment of the shah of Iran in 1979 should be a warning. So, too, should we be chastened by the costs of eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein, almost 25 years after the shah, also without a detailed plan for what would follow. Other parts of the war of ideas include making real progress on the Israel-Palestinian issue, while safeguarding Israeli security, and finding ideological and religious counter-weights to Osama bin Laden and the radical imams. Fashioning a comprehensive strategy to win the battle of ideas should be given as much attention as any other aspect of the war on terrorists, or else we will fight this war for the foreseeable future. For even when Osama bin Laden is dead, his ideas will carry on. Even as al-Qaeda has had its leadership attacked, it has morphed into a hydra, carrying out more major attacks in the 30 months since 9/11 than it did in the three years before."
He continues: "The second major lesson of the last month of controversy is that the organizations entrusted with law enforcement and intelligence in the United States had not fully accepted the gravity of the threat prior to 9/11. Because this is now so clear, there will be a tendency to overemphasize organizational fixes. The 9/11 commission and President Bush seem to be in a race to propose creating a 'director of national intelligence,' who would be given control over all American intelligence agencies. The commission may also recommend a domestic security intelligence service, probably modeled on Britain's MI-5. While some structural changes are necessary, they are a small part of the solution. And there is a risk that concentrating on chain-of-authority diagrams of federal agencies will further divert our attention from more important parts of the agenda. This new director of national intelligence would be able to make only marginal changes to agency budgets and interactions. The more important task is improving the quality of the analysts, agents and managers at the lead foreign intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency. In addition, no new domestic security intelligence service could leap full grown from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security. Indeed, creating another new organization while we are in a key phase in the war on terrorism would ignore the lesson that we should have learned from the creation of Homeland Security. Many observers, including some in the new department, now agree that the forced integration and reorganization of 22 agencies diverted attention from the missions of several agencies that were needed to go after the terrorists and to reduce our vulnerabilities at home. We do not need another new agency right now. We do, however, need to create within the FBI a strong organization that is vastly different from the federal police agency that was unable to notice the al-Qaeda presence in America before 9/11. For now, any American version of MI-5 must be a branch within the FBI -- one with a higher quality of analysts, agents and managers."
He concludes, "Finally, we must try to achieve a level of public discourse on these issues that is simultaneously energetic and mutually respectful. I hoped, through my book and testimony, to make criticism of the conduct of the war on terrorism and the separate war in Iraq more active and legitimate. We need public debate if we are to succeed. We should not dismiss critics through character assassination, nor should we besmirch advocates of the Patriot Act as fascists. We all want to defeat the jihadists. To do that, we need to encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America about how that will best be done. And if there is another major terrorist attack in this country, we must not panic or stifle debate as we did for too long after 9/11." (New York Times)
April 25: Plagued by hundreds of officers leaving the British army to work with private security firms, the Ministry of Defense is begging those firms working in Iraq to stop "poaching" its best officers. The number of army officers requesting "Premature Voluntary Release" has soared since the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Some 350 senior soldiers have applied to leave in the past six months alone, compared with the previous year's total of 499. Many of these officers are going to work with private security firms, earning up to £1,000 a day providing protection. So far, the MoD's request has borne little fruit. Special forces have been particularly badly affected by the exodus, with around 40 SAS operatives quitting the service since April 2003. Details of the "brawn drain" afflicting Britain's military planners emerged as UK security firms working in Iraq raised new concerns about the caliber of staff providing vital protection services for thousands of people in an increasingly perilous atmosphere. A number of the companies have demanded that the British government crack down on "cowboy" companies, claiming that bouncers and security guards are among those passing themselves off as former elite soldiers, and that they are putting lives at risk. The demands for higher standards among guards reveal the extent of the government's problems in Iraq. Ministers are already desperately trying to stop the lucrative private security industry poaching the military's own highly-trained staff as a fast-track route to improving the service they provide in an increasingly competitive sector. A memo circulated among the six British firms providing security in Iraq informally requests that they look elsewhere for recruits. "We have had an informal communication from a senior officer in the regiment who has asked us not to poach anybody," confirms one former SAS soldier who now runs a security company. "We do not have to go out of our way to persuade people to leave. The fact is that guys who are coming to the end of their careers know they can decide to stay on for another year or get out and name their price. They can earn in a day what they would earn in a week and most do a lot better than that." Paul Brown, a director of security firm AKE, says serving soldiers were inevitably a valuable resource for the biggest companies. "Most of them take ex-military personnel, but they also recruit from right across the forces," he says. An MoD spokeswoman said the forces could not stand in the way of people who wanted to leave, but she said they had to undergo a period of "quarantine" before going to other jobs. Up to 15,000 personnel are working for private firms in Iraq, and their costs are expected to swallow up almost a quarter of the funds the United States is providing in the effort to rebuild Iraq. (Scotsman)
April 25: NFL player Pat Tillman, who chose to join the Army Rangers instead of continue his football career, is killed in action in Afghanistan (some sources place the date of his death on April 22). "My great grandfather was at Pearl Harbor, and a lot of my family has...gone and fought in wars, and I really haven't done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that," he said after deciding to leave professional football and join the military. His death is used as a campaign "set piece" by the Bush campaign to rally support for the occupation, at least until the real story of Tillman's tragic death emerges. The original story is that he was killed by enemy fire during a fierce firefight about 25 miles away from a US base at Khost, after helping to kill at least nine of his unit's attackers. Unfortunately, the facts tell a different story -- one that does not tarnish Tillman's heroism, but one that does tarnish the credibility of the Pentagon, and highlights the willingness of the Bush campaign to manipulate facts and images from the war for its own purposes. Tillman will later be proven to have been killed by "friendly fire," and the circumstances surrounding the "firefight" are far less clear than the heroic story crafted by the Pentagon's PR department. Currently it is unclear whether Tillman's unit was firing at an enemy at all; evidently, the firefight was between two units of the army, who were spooked by an unexpected land mine explosion. The units exchanged fire before being able to identify each other, and by the time the confusion was sorted out and the firing called off, Tillman was dead. The Orlando Sentinel's Mike Bianchi writes, "If you die by accident that doesn't make your sacrifice any less significant. Just a lot less marketable." Tillman's mother is more blunt: "The administration tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him."
Tillman is the subject of a short-lived marketing campaign by the Pentagon, who attempts to sell his story as one of telegenic, all-American heroism. (Editor's note: In no way do I wish to impugn Tillman's bravery and patriotism. He died tragically, while serving his country in the noblest of American traditions. No blame attaches to him for the circumstances of his death. Even his apparently out-of-control fellow soldiers can only be blamed so far, as casualties by inadvertent friendly fire are an inevitable result of any war. The blame attaches entirely with the White House and the Pentagon, who falsify the circumstances of his death to try to further sell the war on terrorism to a skeptical citizenry.) On April 30, the Army will award Tillman a Silver Star, in the process further falsifying the story of his death. According to the military, Tillman died while trying to save fellow soldiers pinned down during a Taliban ambush: "Through the firing, Tillman's voice was heard issuing commands to take the fight to the enemy forces emplaced on the dominating high ground" as he "personally provided suppressive fire with an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon machine gun." On May 3, the nation's news channels televise his memorial service from his hometown of San Jose, featuring speeches from California's First Lady, Maria Shriver, and Republican senator and fellow war hero John McCain. When the Pentagon finally admits that Tillman died at the hands of his fellow soldiers, it chooses to issue a quiet press release after Memorial Day, overshadowed by the coverage of the dedication of the World War II Memorial. The story of the Pentagon's manipulations would not become national news until 2005, and the Pentagon resists calls to investigate the incident until after 2006.
Part of the reason for the quickly launched and ill-conceived campaign to transform Tillman's death by accidental friendly fire into another Jessica Lynch-style fiction is to deflect Americans' reactions to the disaster in Fallujah, where Marines, after besieging the city for weeks, have been ordered to retreat, essentially leaving the city in control of the various insurgents. "This is not a withdrawal, this is not a retreat," says General Mark Kimmitt, even as the media shows video footage of American tanks literally going into reverse while pulling out. Another reason is frankly political: the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign does not want to contend with a blizzard of stories about tortured Iraqis and retreating Marines. A "feel-good" story about an American hero fighting like John Wayne against impossible odds is just what the campaign wants; for the American public to find out that the story of Tillman's death had been concocted in a Pentagon public relations office would not serve the purpose. Worse, the campaign doesn't want the public to find out that Tillman, as patriotic and determined to serve as he was, was adamantly against the Iraq war. "They wanted to use him for their purposes," recalls his mother, Mary Tillman. "It was good for the administration. It was before the election. It was during the prison scandal. They needed something that looked good, and it was appalling that they would use him like that." His father says simply, "They blew up their poster boy."
Months later, it is found that CENTCOM commander General John Abizaid had been informed of the real details of Tillman's death the day before the Pentagon released its falsified press release about Tillman's death by enemy fire. It took a month for Tillman's family and the American people to be told the truth -- and then, only some of it. "The administration was clearly using this case for its own political purposes," says Tillman's father, Patrick. The family is shocked to learn that crucial evidence in the case, including Tillman's uniform and gear, had been destroyed almost immediately in order to cloud the circumstances of his death. "This cover-up started within minutes of Pat's death, and it started at high levels," the elder Tillman says. (MSNBC, Orlando Sentinel, Vanity Fair, Frank Rich pp.123-4, 129-30)
April 25: Commenting on a huge march in Washington, DC in favor of women's right to choose abortion, Bush campaign coordinator makes a staggering comparison between the tragedy of 9/11 and the right to choose: "I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. President Bush has worked to say, 'let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions.' And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life." Hughes's statement is far more clever than is grasped at first glance; the driving force is to equate support for abortion choice with a support for terrorism. The Democratic Party writes on its Web site, "If campaigns could be reduced to mathematical formulae, Bush's would be easy: September 11 + everything. Where does it end?" (Democratic Party)

April 26: While the Bush administration has promised to ensure that troops in Iraq are provided everything they need to carry out the occupation, the reality is far different. The administration continues to withhold funding that field commanders say is desperately needed to plug shortfalls in armor and protection equipment. A new study circulating through the US Army shows that the shortfalls may have caused 25% more American casualties in Iraq. The study shows that of the 190 soldiers killed by landmines, improvised explosive devices, or rocket-propelled grenade attacks, "almost all those were killed while in unprotected vehicles, which means that perhaps one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them." Additionally, "thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs." Instead of following through on his promise to give the military the protection equipment it needs, however, Bush has left major funding holes in the most basic areas. The situation has gotten so dire that military commanders last week desperately begged Congress to fill key shortfalls left by the President's budget. They described a $132 million shortfall for bolt-on vehicle armor, an $879 million in shortfall for combat helmets, and a $40 million shortfall for body armor. In response, the Bush administration has drastically reduced the number of M-1 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles in Iraq, even as the fighting intensifies. More and more troops are left to travel and fight in lightly armored Humvees, trucks, and troop carriers that are far more vulnerable to attack. (Washington Post/MSNBC/Chicago Tribune/Daily Misleader)
April 26: Britain is considering sending more troops to Iraq to bolster US forces there. Spokesmen for Tony Blair and the Ministry of Defense say the government is weighing whether to send forces to make up for the loss of 1,400 Spanish troops who are being pulled out by the new government in Madrid and to deal with escalating violence in Iraq. While the officials would not confirm numbers, press reports here indicated they were considering sending up to 2,000 more British soldiers to supplement the current force of 7,500. Currently most British forces are deployed around the southern city of Basra, which has remained relatively calm after the overthrow of the Hussein regime. British forces have suffered relatively light casualties. New troops might be dispatched to take the place of the Spanish in more volatile cities such as Najaf, home of Moqtada Sadr, the Islamic cleric whose forces have staged an uprising against the US-led occupation. If this occurs, British forces will no doubt begin suffering the same kind of casualties that have plagued US troops. Expect further alienation of British civilians, a majority of whom already oppose the war. (Washington Post)
April 26: Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan's assertions that he did not learn of President Bush's decision to launch war on Iraq before Secretary of State Colin Powell are false, journalist Bob Woodward says. "For some reason, Bandar wants to fuzz this up," says Woodward, whose book Plan of Attack tells of a meeting in early January 2003 in which Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld briefed Bandar on war plans. Woodward says Bandar woke him up with a late phone call the night of April 22 and ended up acknowledging that Woodward's description of the meeting was accurate. Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, has said Woodward was correct when he said he attended a meeting at the White House on a Saturday -- two days before Powell was told of the decision to go to war. However, Bandar told CNN host Larry King that Woodward left out critical information. "Both Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld told me before the briefing that the president has not made a decision yet, but here is the plan," Bandar told King. "Not true," responds Woodward. "In this meeting you have the secretary of defense saying -- according to the secretary of defense's own words -- 'you can take this to the bank; this is going to happen.' And I interviewed the president, and we spent a long time going over that meeting and the meeting with Colin Powell. And the president is the one who said, like to Colin Powell, 'time to get your war uniform on.' That's not a maybe. That's: War is coming. It could not have been clearer. For some reason Bandar wants to fuzz this up." Woodward continues, "Bandar called me last night. Woke me up -- a quarter of 12. And we went through this. And I said, 'What are you doing?'" Woodward says Bandar told him that he had officially been told that a decision had not been made, but that the White House had made it clear the decision was in fact made. "I said, 'Well, the issue here is when you left that meeting did you think the president had decided on war?'" Woodward says. "Bandar said 'absolutely.'" (CNN)
April 26: David Obey, the ranking Democrat of the Committee on Appropriations in the House of Representatives, and Robert Byrd, the ranking Democrat of the Committee on Appropriations in the Senate, write a joint letter to President Bush asking that he inform Congress, as required by law, how the $40 billion Emergency Response Fund monies have been spent. The fund was established on September 14, 2001 to assist the victims of the 9/11 attacks and to strengthen homeland and national security. "To the best of our knowledge, as the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee during 2002, we were provided no consultations by the White House, as required by law, about the use of the $20 billion of funds that were made available to the president for allocation," they write. "If this is not an accurate view, please advise us of any record of consultations with Appropriations Committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as was required by statute prior to the expenditure of these funds." They believe that the monies have been grossly misallocated, including $700 million of the victims' funds used to prepare bases in the Persian Gulf for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Department of Defense has confirmed that $178 million was taken from the fund and used for "supporting the global war on terrorism" in Kuwait, Qatar, and other countries in the region, months before Congress approved the Iraqi war resolution. "These funds were spent on 21 projects," they write. "We have no record of consultation prior to the expenditure of these funds, nor is there sufficient detail in the Department of Defense quarterly reports to indicate whether funds were used to prepare for the war in Iraq."
They also note that, contrary to the law, the administration has yet to report on the uses of the fund, something they are required to do every three months. "The last report was sent on May 9, 2003, reflecting obligations through Feb. 28, 2003, some 14 months ago," they write. They also question the transfer of $290 million from the fund to the government of Afghanistan: "In the transmittal, the director of the Office of Management and Budget indicated that the funds would be drawn from funds previously allocated to the Department of Defense. Yet the May 9, 2003 OMB quarterly report indicated that as of Feb. 28, 2003, DoD had already obligated all but $21 million of its funds. While we had objection to the support for the government of Afghanistan, your report begs the question, from whence came the money? Further, why has there been no quarterly report since May 9, 2003?" $4 million more was used to create the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. "This commission was created, without authorization from Congress, by an executive order that does nothing to guarantee the panel's independence from the White House, and that does not endow the commission with the power to subpoena necessary information from potentially uncooperative witnesses. Again, there was no consultation with the Congress, as required by law, prior to the allocation of these funds." They conclude, "When the Congress provided the extraordinary authorities in response to the al-Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it expected that tax dollars would be managed carefully so as to provide assistance to the victims of the attack, to secure our homeland and to improve our national security. The letter of the law and consultation with the Congress in the expenditure of appropriated funds provides our citizens with assurance that their tax dollars are spent in accordance with congressional intent. Transparency in this regard is critical. We need a full accounting of the entire $40 billion Emergency Response Fund. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter." As of yet, the Bush administration has failed to respond. (TomPaine)
April 26: All 18 Democratic members of the House Committee on Government Reform, along with independent Bernie Sanders, sign a stinging letter written by Henry Waxman to Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson protesting the administration's systematic attempts to withhold information about the cost estimates of the Medicare Modernization Act. The letter notes that cost estimates not publicly released are significantly higher than what the Bush administration is telling the public -- $559 billion as opposed to the publicly shared estimate of $400 billion. The letter threatens legal action if full disclosure is not immediately made. (House of Representatives)
April 26: Ten companies with billions of dollars in US contracts for Iraq reconstruction have paid more than $300 million in penalties since 2000 to resolve allegations of bid rigging, fraud, delivery of faulty military parts and environmental damage. The United States is paying more than $780 million to one British firm that was convicted of fraud on three federal construction projects and banned from US government work during 2002. A Virginia company convicted of rigging bids for American-funded projects in Egypt also has been awarded Iraq contracts worth hundreds of millions. And a third firm found guilty of environmental violations and bid rigging won US Army approval for a subcontract to clean up an Iraqi harbor. Seven other companies with Iraq reconstruction contracts have agreed to pay financial penalties without admitting wrongdoing. Together, the 10 companies have paid to resolve 30 alleged violations in the past four years. Six paid penalties more than once. But the companies have been awarded $7 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts since then. "We have not made firms pay the price when they screw up," says former Pentagon official Peter Singer, who worked on a task force overseeing military and contract work in the Balkans. "But it's not the company's fault if it has a dumb client. I'm not blaming the companies, I'm blaming the government," says Singer, now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. The contracts are legal because the Bush administration repealed regulations put in place by the Clinton administration that would have allowed officials to bar new government work for companies convicted or penalized during the previous three years. Federal regulations require government contractors to have a "satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics." The government can ban unethical companies from getting new contracts through a process called debarment. Companies often avoid debarment by agreeing to settle misconduct cases and pay penalties without admitting guilt. AMEC was the only one of the 10 punished Iraq contractors ever debarred, and it was banned for just one year. If a US company is not on the list of banned firms, it can compete for Iraq work, says Army Major Gary Tallman, a spokesman for the Iraq contract management office. "If they pay their fine or do what they have to do to get off a debarment list, they are back in good standing and eligible to compete," he says.
The Clinton administration tightened contracting rules shortly before leaving office in 2001, instructing officials that repeated violations of federal laws would make a company ineligible for new contracts. Officials still would have been able to award contracts to punished companies for overriding reasons such as national security. But the Bush administration suspended the new rules during its first three months in office, and revoked them in December 2001. Business groups had objected to the Clinton changes, arguing it was unfair to deny contracts for reasons unrelated to how well a firm could do the work. The two largest government contractors in Iraq, Bechtel Corp. and Halliburton Co., have paid numerous penalties in the past three years. Halliburton paid $2 million in 2002 to settle charges it inflated costs on a maintenance contract at now-closed Fort Ord in California. Vice President Dick Cheney's former company did not admit wrongdoing. Halliburton took in $3.6 billion last year from contracts to serve U.S. troops and rebuild the oil industry in Iraq. Halliburton executives say the company is getting about $1 billion a month for Iraq work this year. Federal authorities also are investigating whether Halliburton broke the law by using a subsidiary to do business in Iran, whether the company overcharged for work done for the Pentagon in the Balkans and whether it was involved in an alleged $180 million bribery scheme in Nigeria. The company admitted in 2003 that it improperly paid $2.4 million to a Nigerian tax official.
Bechtel paid more than $110,000 to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department in 2000 and 2001 to settle alleged safety and environmental violations. Bechtel has prime construction contracts in Iraq worth more than $2 billion. "We were chosen on ability and cost," says a Bechtel spokesman. Bechtel also hired three subcontractors in Iraq that have been fined more than $86 million in the past four years, though none had been banned from getting new contracts. American International Contractors Inc. paid $4.7 million in fines in 2000 after pleading guilty to bid rigging on a US-funded water project in Egypt. AICI has part of a $325 million contract to rebuild Iraq's transportation systems, has a share of a $500 million contract for emergency construction needs in the Pentagon's Central Command region, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan, and is in a partnership that has a $70 million construction contract at Al-Udeid air base in Qatar, used to support troops in Iraq. Fluor Corp. paid $8.5 million to the Defense Department in 2001 to settle charges it improperly billed the government for work benefiting its commercial clients. The company did not admit guilt. Fluor and AMEC created a joint venture that has $1.7 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq's electricity, water, sewer and trash removal infrastructure. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. paid a $969,000 fine in 2002 for environmental damage in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Bechtel awarded the company a subcontract to clear the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. The firm also pleaded guilty to price fixing on Army Corps of Engineers contracts in 1988. Northrop Grumman Corp., whose Vinnell Corp. subsidiary was awarded a $48 million contract to train the new Iraqi Army last year, has been penalized $191.7 million in the past four years, including $750,000 paid to the Pentagon in 2000 in a case involving allegations of providing faulty replacement parts for the JSTARS airborne surveillance system. (AP/San Jose Mercury News)
April 26: The respected, non-partisan journal Scientific American rips the Bush administration for what it calls politcal "Lysenkoism" in its handling of scientific matters. The article says, "In February [Bush's] White House received failing marks in a statement signed by 62 leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science, and advisers to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. It begins, 'Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy. Although scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective to avoid perilous consequences.... The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle.' Doubters of that judgment should read the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) that accompanies the statement.... Among the affronts that it details: The administration misrepresented the findings of the National Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate change. It meddled with the discussion of climate change in an Environmental Protection Agency report until the EPA eliminated that section. It suppressed another EPA study that showed that the administration's proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination of fish. It even dropped independent scientists from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug abuse in favor of ones with ties to industry."
The article offers its own examples, including HHS's deletion of information from its Web site that does not support Bush's preference for "abstinence-only" sex education policies. The Office of Foreign Assets Control made it much more difficult for anyone from "hostile nations" to be published in the US, so some scientific journals will no longer consider submissions from them. And the Office of Management and Budget has proposed overhauling peer review for funding of science that bears on environmental and health regulations -- in effect, industry scientists would get to approve what research is conducted by the EPA. "None of those criticisms fazes the president, though," the article charges. "Less than two weeks after the UCS statement was released, Bush unceremoniously replaced two advocates of human embryonic stem cell research on his advisory Council on Bioethics with individuals more likely to give him a hallelujah chorus of opposition to it. Blind loyalists to the president will dismiss the UCS report because that organization often tilts left -- never mind that some of those signatories are conservatives. They may brush off this magazine's reproofs the same way, as well as the regular salvos launched by California Representative Henry A. Waxman of the House Government Reform Committee...and maybe even Arizona Senator John McCain's scrutiny for the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. But it is increasingly impossible to ignore that this White House disdains research that inconveniences it." (Scientific American)
April 26: Truthout's William Rivers Pitt warns that the incursions into the cities of Fallujah and Najaf could have horrific consequences for the US throughout the Islamic world. "Fallujah is a Sunni town," he writes. "Through the almost mystical bungling of the Bush administration, it has become tied to the holy city of Najaf, a Shi'ite stronghold. This city, like Fallujah, has been surrounded by American forces and faces imminent attack. If an attack against Najaf is indeed undertaken, the consequences for Iraq, and indeed for the entire Middle East, will be unimaginable. Najaf is the site of the tomb of Ali, the most important Shi'ite saint. It is a holy city, like Mecca and Medina, and is the symbolic capital for Shi'ites all around the world. If American forces attack Najaf, every Shi'ite on the planet will have a dog in the fight. Iran, a Shi'ite-controlled nation, may well become involved. Shi'ite religious leaders will issue fatwas demanding massive numbers of suicide attacks against Americans." To make the situation worse, Fallujah is an extremely poor site for combat, an ancient city with a "dizzying maze of narrow streets, wide boulevards and back alleys. Most of the apartments have porches that will serve Iraqi snipers and RPG-toting helicopter hunters well. Every neighborhood has a mosque, a school, markets and clinics which, if struck by an errant American bomb, will deliver horrible numbers of civilian casualties." The political situation is equally untenable. "Hajim al-Hassani, of the Iraqi Islamic Party, sits on the American-compiled Iraqi Governing Council, but has little credibility among the people in Falluja. He is seen as not having been able to stop American forces from fighting in that city, and the Iraqi Islamic Party itself has been accused of collaboration with America. The mayor of Falluja, Mahmoud Ibrahim, is disliked by many of the city's residents. He informed officers of the American forces a few days ago that he had no control over Jolan, Hayal Askeri and Shuhada, three sections of the city which make up half its area. In other words, both representatives for this town are basically useless in any effort to call a halt to the attack." Pitt writes, "Do the math. American forces attack Falluja, and become ensconced in a brutal street-to-street fight within the confines of that maze-like city. 300,000 civilians will be caught in the crossfire, and the resulting carnage will enflame the Iraqi people to a degree not yet seen. American forces will absorb brutal casualties. If the US decides to avoid troop casualties by bombing Fallujah in a repeat of Shock and Awe, the loss of civilian life will be beyond severe. Simultaneously, American forces attack Najaf, a holy city central to the spiritual lives of millions of Shi'ites around the world. An explosion of rage will engulf the Middle East. Iran, which has something resembling a real army, could very well drive across the border to engage American forces that are already stretched. This war, already a ridiculous mess, will become an unmitigated catastrophe. Anyone who thinks Iraq is a bad situation now should reserve judgment until the end of this week. George W. Bush and his crew have clearly forgotten the First Law of Holes: When you find yourself deep in a hole, stop digging. If this is what Bush meant when he talked about 'changing the world' in his recent prime-time press conference, we are all in a great deal of trouble." (Truthout)
April 26: Reporter James Moore, who has dealt with the Bushes for twenty years or more from his post in Texas, discusses the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson by the White House and gives his reasons why he thinks Karl Rove was behind the leak. He recalls that in 1992, Karl Rove, now the president's chief campaign advisor, was ostensibly fired for leaking information to columnist Robert Novak, who printed the Valerie Plame Wilson information. Moore says that before the 1992 Bush re-election campaign in Texas, "Well, Karl was running around to all of us [in the Texas press], talking about how the campaign was in a state of disarray, telling us that it was a mess. Rob Mosbacher, Jr. was running the campaign. Karl didn't particularly like that. But what he really didn't like was that Mosbacher had a million dollars in the budget for direct mail. Karl was a big direct-mail guy, and Mosbacher only gave Karl $250,000 of the budget, and he spent $750,000 with someone else, because he thought that they were better. All of a sudden, Karl starts talking to all of us in the Texas press corps about how bad things are, wanting us all to write this story about the campaign in disarray. We knew what was going on. We knew Karl's jealousy and everything else. So none of us ever did anything. The next thing you know, there's a column written by Robert Novak about the Texas campaign being an absolute mess. And it was a story we had all ignored. And Novak wrote about a meeting in Dallas between Phil Graham and the party chair, Fred Meyer, and Karl and Rob Mosbacher, and George H.W. Bush, and how they're trying to get the mess straightened out, et cetera. It was a few days after that that President Bush and Mosbacher and Meyer sat down and Mosbacher said, 'Look, Mr. Bush, there's only one person who had any motivation to leak this story, and he's the person who knows Robert Novak. And I think we should fire him.' And H.W. Bush agreed and they fired Karl for leaking that story to Robert Novak. It's a long-standing relationship. It's a history of behavior. And it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to connect the dots on Karl's behavior. And in the case of what happened to Valerie Plame and Ambassador Wilson, it's astonishing. It's astonishing in its meanness, and for an administration that wraps itself in the flag and wants the National Anthem playing in the background every time it opens its mouth, it's astonishing to me that it's willing to allow someone to frankly commit treason."
Moore is asked, if Rove indeed is the source of the Plame leak, why would he do such a thing? Moore replies, "Karl is very good at rationalization and compartmentalizing. I also think he's pathological. I think that there is a reality that he perceives that, in many ways, is disconnected from the real world. Karl thinks that anything he does to advance the cause of his party and the policies that he and his party perceive are good for the USA, any means that effectuate those ends are good and are acceptable. If there are some casualties, just as in the war in Iraq, that has to be lived with to accomplish the end game, and to make a particular policy or goal happen. Eliminating Joe Wilson's dissent and causing him grief was a pure act of vengeance, and an effort to both silence him and send a message -- just as when he was chewing out Wayne Slater on the tarmac in Manchester [a reporter who asked about the Bush campaign's smear efforts against John McCain in the 2000 primaries]. It sends a message to everybody else: Don't mess with us. We're in charge, and we're going to do it the way we think is best. And if you mess with us, this could happen to you. Party first. His party's first in this case."
Moore expands on Rove's strategy of demonization against Democratic candidates: "The problem is that Democrats, although they have made some compromises and are starting to play the same sorts of games that Karl is willing to play, they still have faith in the process and the intellect of the electorate to make these distinctions and these judgments. What Karl relies on is the American public's busy-ness with their personal lives. The whole MO of Rovian Republican politics is that he knows we're all too busy to read deeply into the 3,000-word page story in the front page of the New York Times. He knows we're all too busy getting our kids to school, or paying our mortgages, or worrying about health care. So if he hits us with the right images and the right messages, then we're going to get his message because the Democrats are too busy worrying about context and nuance, and telling the truth, while he's busy out there creating his alternative reality. And it wins over and over and over, because we're all so easily distracted. The truth is that people get their information for their political decisions precisely the way Karl says they do -- from images. That's why one of the big images in the first go-round was George W. Bush on that aircraft carrier. And it's why he plays this game. As you may recall from [Moore's] first book {Bush's Brain], in an interview he said, 'Run your campaign as if people are watching television with the sound turned down.' And that's what they do. And if somebody walking past their television sees Max Cleland on camera morphing into Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, they're going to remember that. And they're not going to be angry about that happening. They're just going to remember that imagery, and they're going to go: Ah, I can't vote for that guy. Somehow, some way, he must be associated with Osama. And it's working. It's working to our detriment and their positive effect. ...There are too many media distractions now. And the issues are not triumphing, unless it's an issue of the moment. If there's an issue that may have impact, it'll be in the closing weeks of the campaign. Issues aren't the way it happens any more. Images are." (Buzzflash)
April 26: Leftist investigative reporter Greg Palast decries the naming of Bush colleague and family friend James Baker as the newly named head of the organization in charge of restructuring Iraq's international debt. Baker's law firm, Baker Botts, represents Saudi Arabia against a lawsuit filed by the families of 9/11 victims, and more directly, represents Saudi Arabia in its efforts to claim $30 billion in Iraqi debt. Baker Botts also represents, among other oil clients, Exxon Mobil. "How can Baker serve the Saudis, Exxon and our president at the same time?" asks Palast. "After all, in 2003, Henry Kissinger ran away from [his] appointment to the September 11 Commission with his consulting firm tucked between his legs after the US Senate demanded he reveal his client list. In the case of Jim Baker, our elected Congress will have no chance to ask him who is paying his firm nor even require him to get off conflicting payrolls. To get around the wee issue of conflicts galore, the White House crafted a neat little subterfuge. The official press release says the President has not appointed Mr. Baker. Rather Mr. Bush is 'responding to a request from the Iraqi Governing Council.' That is, Bush is acting on the authority of the puppet government he imposed on Iraqis at gunpoint." The fact that the IGC would "ask" for Baker, of all people, to restructure their country's debt is more than an amazing coincidence. Baker has long been a political troubleshooter for the Bush family, most recently directing the legal stratagems that maneuvered the disputed 2000 election into the friendly arena of the US Supreme Court. Baker is also a senior counsel for the Carlyle Group, which boasts deep connections to both Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, as well as deep ties to the Saudi royal families and Saudi business families such as the bin Ladens. Baker's appointment is part of the State Department's secret "Iraq strategy," which in Palast's terms, is all about "creating a free-market Disneyland in Mesopotamia, with 'all' state assets -- and that's just about everything in that nation -- to be sold off to corporate powers. The Bush team secret program ordered: '...asset sales, concessions, leases and management contracts, especially those in the oil and supporting industries.'" According to Palast, US troops remain in Iraq "to prevent or forestall elections. Because no democratically elected government of Iraq could ever sell off its oil. Democracy would have to wait, at the point of a gun, for the 'assets sales, concessions, leases' to Bush's corporate buck-buddies. There you have it. The secret 'Strategy' tells us that, if Bush didn't go into Iraq for the oil, he sure as hell ain't leaving without it." (Greg Palast/Working for Change)
April 26: The Secret Service is investigating the case of a 15-year old boy drawing pictures of Bush as the devil. The boy, who lives in Prosser, Washington, drew the pictures while in school and was turned in by his art teacher; the school has disciplined the child but will not say to what extent. Kevin Cravens, a friend of the boy's family, says, "If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat to the president, then we are living in '1984'." Prosser chief of police Win Taylor counters, "From what I saw, [school officials] were right to be concerned." (ABC/The Denver Channel, CNN)

Supreme Court hears arguments on releasing Cheney's energy task force records

April 27: The Supreme Court is ready to hear arguments in the court case brought by Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club asking that the 2001 energy task force headed by Dick Cheney make its records public, a request that the Bush administration has denied for three years. It is widely known that Cheney's task force was comprised almost exclusively of corporate energy executives and officials, and that the task force's recommendations, which form the heart of the administration's energy policies, were crafted to favor corporations against American consumers and the environment. The White House, which has been ordered by lower courts to turn over the records, has refused, saying the courts have no right to even ask for such records. "The case is another confrontation in a series of recent confrontations between the judicial and executive branches," says legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "The federal courts have ordered the White House to turn over this information. Not only does the White House say it won't — it says the courts have no right to ask in the first place. But the Supreme Court gets the last word on that question and now they'll begin to answer it." The plaintiffs want the task force papers made public to see what influence energy industries had in outlining national energy policy. "They don't want anybody to know anything," says the Sierra Club's legal director, David Bookbinder. "What they are advocating is a view of the imperial presidency that we have not seen since the worst days of Watergate. This is not an issue of principle. The only principle that the Bush administration is expounding here is that no one is entitled to know anything about how it conducts its business."
The Sierra Club accuses the administration of shutting environmentalists out of the meetings while catering to energy industry executives and lobbyists. "The vice president invited in the coal industry, the oil industry, the nuclear industry, to write the administration's energy policy," adds Bookbinder. "If you look at the policy itself, it reads as if it were written by the oil, coal and nuclear industries." Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the justices in court filings that no energy industry officials participated improperly in meetings. He maintains that forcing information about the sessions into the open violates the separation of powers among the branches of government. "We don't think that our requests are burdensome," says Bookbinder. "All we're asking for is who attended the meetings." The case requires the court to clarify a federal open-government law. "It's hard to see much room for middle ground in this case," says Cohen. "Either the Justices are going to order the vice president to turn over this information or they won't. Either the concept of separation of powers applies to protect the White House from this requirement or it doesn't." All nine members were hearing arguments, despite a controversy over a hunting trip Cheney took with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an old friend, weeks after the high court agreed to hear Cheney's appeal. Scalia, the vice president and two of Scalia's relatives flew together on a government jet to Louisiana for the duck hunt at a camp owned by an oil rig services executive. Scalia refuses to recuse himself, insisting he will be impartial. "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," Scalia wrote in rejecting the Sierra Club's request that he disqualify himself.
The New York Times opines, "When Justice Scalia's hunting trip became public, there were widespread calls for him to recuse himself. The Supreme Court said that the decision was Mr. Scalia's, and that he had chosen not to. That may resolve the question legally, but it remains troubling. If the court decides this case, which has implications for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, by 5 to 4, with Justice Scalia casting the deciding vote, it will bring back memories of Bush v. Gore. And it will further harm the reputation of a court whose authority has always derived from its claim to be a legal body, not a political one." (CBS, New York Times)
April 27: Over 50 British former diplomats have signed a letter harshly criticizing Tony Blair's policies towards the Middle East and Iraq in particular. The letter urges Blair to start influencing America's "doomed" policy in the Middle East or stop backing it. The diplomats say they have "watched with deepening concern" as Britain followed the US lead in Iraq and Israel and called for a debate in Parliament. Blair responds with the bland statement that "stability, peace and freedom" remain the objective in the Middle East and Iraq. The attack by the 52 diplomats, including former ambassadors to Baghdad and Tel Aviv, is unprecedented in scope and scale. The document's co-ordinator, former British ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles, says, "A number of us felt that our opinion on these two subjects, Iraq and the Arab-Israel problem, were pretty widely shared and we thought that we ought to make them public." He adds on the subject of Iraq, "We do think that through lack of planning and through a misunderstanding, a misreading of the situation, we have got ourselves into an extremely difficult situation." Blair is urged to sway US policy in the Middle East as "a matter of the highest urgency." "We feel the time has come to make our anxieties public, in the hope that they will be addressed in Parliament and will lead to a fundamental reassessment," the letter reads. The list of diplomats includes includes many former ambassadors in the Middle East. The letter requests that Blair use his alliance with Bush to exert "real influence as a loyal ally... If that is unacceptable or unwelcome, there is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure." The ambassadors accuse the US-led coalition of having "no effective plan" for Iraq after the war and an apparent disregard for the lives of Iraqi civilians. They say Blair had "merely waited" for the US to advance a "road map" for peace that had raised expectations of a lasting Israeli-Palestinian settlement. They condemn Bush's decision to endorse an Israeli plan to retain some settlements in the West Bank as an illegal and one-sided step, and criticize Blair's public support for the move. "Our dismay at this backward step is heightened by the fact that you yourself seem to have endorsed it, abandoning the principles which for nearly four decades have guided international efforts to restore peace in the Holy Land," the diplomats say. They urge Blair to act urgently to challenge the UK's portrayal as a partner in US policies condemned by the Arab and Muslim world. (BBC)
April 27: Senator Richard Lugar, widely considered one of the most expert Republicans on foreign policy issues, criticizes the Bush administration for incompetence in its efforts to solve global problems diplomatically. Lugar is specifically critical of the Bush administration's attempts to get a UN resolution endorsing its plan for transfer of power in Iraq; he says that while careful diplomacy is needed, but within the Bush administration, "diplomacy is deficient." Bush has alienated the UN by refusing to allow its participation in the Iraq occupation; only now, when his administration feels the UN is necessary to facilitate the transfer, has he sought UN assistance. "Even if the decisions are correct, the diplomacy is deficient," Lugar says. "By that I simply mean not many people agree with us, or like us or are prepared to work with us. That will really have to change." He lays the responsibility for the poor international relations directly on Bush. "It starts with the president and proceeds, really, through the Cabinet and those who are advising him. Each administration has to determine which kind of tone it wants to establish in these matters, and that obviously starts with the president," he says. In addition to improving US relations with the United Nations, Lugar says, the Bush administration will have to explain to voters why it has changed its view about the United Nations' appropriate role and deal with the growing anti-American sentiment in Iraq: "Americans will say why in the world should the French and Russians...after we have done all the fighting, have all the people on the ground, have paid all the money, why should they have a say in this? But then we're back to square one, where is where our administration has been until a short time ago, which is that they shouldn't have any say." He continues, "When you see the polling of the Iraqis now, they don't like us; they resent our being there." Asked whether the United States should leave immediately, Lugar says, "They say no, but they don't want the US there any longer than you have to be -- and that's among the more benign people, not the insurgents." In recent months, Lugar, long a mainstay of the GOP's foreign policy initiatives, has been largely ignored by the White House, which does not seem to appreciate his attempts to nudge the administration towards a coherent plan for postwar Iraq. "They're going to have to determine, really, who they want to have around the table," he says of the talks about transfer of power, and acknowledges that his opinions have not been sought: "I do not purport to have played a significant role in those talks." (Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette)
April 27: After complaints from Republican congressional staff members and conservative groups such as the Traditional Values Coalition, Bush administration officials have decided to withhold money for an international health conference that opponents say promotes abortion. The Department of Health and Human Services, which has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Global Health Council over the past few years, refuses to contribute $170,000 for the June conference because it appeared the money could be used for lobbying, according to HHS spokesman Bill Pierce. Conservative activists, however, take credit for persuading the administration to abandon a conference the federal government has supported for 30 years. "Obviously this conference does not reflect the administration policies," says Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition. Initial reports that the liberal MoveOn.org would participate demonstrated a "clearly political agenda" that was not "in sync" with the Republican administration, she adds. STOPP International, a subsidiary of the American Life League, and Focus on the Family also lobbied against giving federal money to the conference, Lafferty says. House Republican aides Sheila Maloney and John Cusey distributed an e-mail alert addressed to "Pro-life Groups" saying it was "outrageous" that taxpayer money would underwrite the event. In particular, Maloney, legislative assistant at the Republican Study Committee, warned that the conference included speakers from the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Population Fund, groups that she said "perform abortions or help the communist Chinese force them on women." Conference organizers said the three-day meeting will include a diverse mix of experts speaking on such topics as reproductive health, infectious diseases and emerging threats such as SARS, nutrition and disaster assistance. The theme of the conference is "Youth and Health: Generation on the Edge." Louis Sullivan, HHS secretary in the first Bush administration, is a member of the board of the council. "There's balance in this thing," says James Sherry, vice president of Global Health Council. "You can't deal with global health and not have some issues of controversy come up." MoveOn.org was asked to speak about using technology to organize grass-roots groups but could not attend, Sherry says. As part of a five-year $1 million grant, the U.S. Agency for International Development has pledged about $150,000 for the conference. Sherry said the council has been told "to expect a letter" forthwith rescinding that portion of the grant. (Washington Post)
April 27: The seemingly spontaneous outburst on April 23 by House Republicans against John Kerry is actually part of a well-orchestrated smear campaign organized by the Bush re-election campaign. Several House Republicans called Kerry "Hanoi John," an obvious reference to Jane Fonda. Republican operative Ted Sampley recently said that Kerry "is not truthful and is not worthy of the support of US veterans.... To us, he is 'Hanoi John.'" Sampley is the same official who orchestrated the Bush campaign's smear against John McCain in 2000; Sampley alleged that McCain was insane from his years as a POW in Vietnam, and called McCain "the Manchurian Candidate." McCain is publicly deploring the efforts to smear Kerry, calling Sampley "one of the most despicable characters I've ever met." McCain says he hopes that in the midst of a war in Iraq, politicians "will confront the challenges facing us now, including the conflict we're presently engaged in, rather than refighting the one we were engaged in more than 30 years ago." McCain recalls that he had worked with Kerry on "POW/MIA issues and the normalization of relations with Vietnam" and wanted to stand up for his war comrade because "you have to do what's right." "He's my friend," McCain says of Kerry. "He'll continue to be my friend. I know his service was honorable. If that hurts me politically or with my party, that's a very small price to pay." Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne notes that as questions about Bush and Cheney's own avoidance of Vietnam service continue to mount, the efforts to distract voters with attacks on Kerry's record and character will also continue. (Washington Post)
April 27: As part of the orchestrated attack on John Kerry's war record, Republicans are asking Kerry about his well-publicized throwing of his medals or ribbons over a fence while at a 1971 anti-war protest in Washington. For the record, Kerry, who won at least 13 citations during his service in Vietnam, including a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts, threw "a handful" of ribbons over the fence during the protest in 1971; he also threw two medals belonging to other veterans who couldn't be at the rally but wanted to make their statement. He still has almost all of the medals he was awarded. Many military members, including Kerry, use the terms "medals" and "ribbons" almost interchangeably. Kerry has said on numerous occasions that he threw his medals over the fence, while at other times he says he threw his ribbons. The US military views them as essentially the same thing, though ribbons, not medals, are usually worn with the uniform except in specific circumstances. "This is a phony controversy," Kerry says. He calls the entire issue "a distraction" and just another smear tactic by the Bush campaign: "It's coming from a president who can't even prove that he showed up for duty in the National Guard." (USA Today, USA Today)
April 27: Vice President Dick Cheney veers away from making a speech on foreign policy to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, and slams John Kerry's foreign policy expertise. He accuses Kerry of "inconsistencies and changing rationales" on Iraq and says he "has yet to outline any serious plan for winning the war on terror." Cheney compares Bush to Winston Churchill, who made his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton in 1946, says that Hussein would still be in power if Kerry were president, and continues to say, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that Iraq possessed WMDs and had connections to al-Qaeda. Fletcher Lamkin, president of Westminster College, e-mails students and faculty after Cheney's speech to say he was "surprised and disappointed" Cheney had engaged in "Kerry-bashing." He says the college was told the speech would be about foreign policy and would not refer to the election or to Kerry. "I must admit that I was surprised and disappointed that Mr. Cheney chose to step off the high ground and resort to Kerry-bashing for a large portion of his speech," Lamkin writes. Cheney spokeswoman Nicolle Devinish dismisses Lamkin's distress, saying that he should have known the speech was intended as a "campaign message event." "It was a major foreign policy address and it's my understanding that the college was made aware the Senator Kerry's different views on foreign policy would be mentioned throughout," she says. Lamkin, who describes himself as a split-ticket voter, said he tends to be a bit on the conservative side because of his military background. He is a former administrator at West Point. "I'm pretty independent," he says. "I can't tell you I am for one or the other, I'm not. As a college president, I try to remain someone who has all viewpoints represented on the campus fairly and equally." He says he was not expecting a speech minus any mention of presidential politics during an election year, but that the second half "was all about politics and a political stump speech and in that respect it was disappointing." Lamkin says he will invite Kerry to speak at Westminster "in the interest of balance and fairness and integrity...." Kerry is considering making the visit. (USA Today, AP/Guardian, Guardian)
April 27: John Kerry says that George W. Bush knowingly exaggerated evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and says Bush made "colossal mistakes" before, during and after the war. "We know that the president and the White House exaggerated material that they were given purposefully, even though they were told otherwise," Kerry says. "We know they gave misinformation, and yet the president says he's never made a mistake." He accuses Bush and his advisers of having gone to war in Iraq simply "because they could:" "I think it comes down to this larger ideological, neocon concept of fundamental change in the region," he says. But "they misjudged exactly what the reaction would be and what they could get away with." Kerry continues, "I think the president has made some colossal mistakes, not the least of which is taking our nation to war in a way that was rushed, that pushed our allies away from us, that is costing the American people billions of dollars more than it ought, that is putting our young soldiers at greater risk they they ought to be, without a plan to win the peace. And he broke his promise to go to war as a last resort." In response to the Bush campaign's relentless attacks on his military record, Kerry says that until now, he has always refrained from criticizing anyone who did not serve in the Vietnam War. But, he says, the rules had changed since the Bush campaign began aggressively questioning his military record. Kerry says it was "accountability time" for Bush and Cheney, criticizing them for having launched heavy attacks during the 2000 presidential campaign questioning the heroism of Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who spent almost 6 years in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, and Democratic Senator Max Cleland of Georgia, who returned from Vietnam a paraplegic. Bush served in a stateside Air National Guard assignment before going AWOL, while Cheney, who received three student and family deferments, did not serve in the military at all. "I think it's an effort by the Republicans to do what they always do," Kerry says. "I'm not going to let them do it. It shows how desperate they are." Kerry says his own antiwar activism, which began after he returned from two tours of duty in Vietnam, was "honorable and in the best values and traditions of America, and I'm proud of that." Of his and his fellow sailors' service, he says, "I've never expressed anything except pride for our actions," specifying that he meant not only himself but also his fellow sailors. "I'm proud of our service. I said that in the days after I came back from Vietnam, even though things were happening in larger policy that I thought were wrong, and I talked about them." Kerry says he has not seen a statement his campaign issued Tuesday accusing Bush of receiving special treatment during his service in the Guard and of failing to prove that he showed up for duty during part of his service. But he said the president had a responsibility to lay such questions to rest. "You know why he should answer that question? Because I answered the questions," says Kerry, who remained largely silent earlier this year when the controversy over Bush's military record flared anew. "I've never begrudged people the choice that they made, but once you've made a choice, I think you have a responsibility to honor the choice that you made." (MSNBC)
April 27: On the heels of Kerry's discussion of his and Bush's war records, Kerry's campaign issues a list of "key unanswered questions" for Bush regarding his own dismal military service. The list, along with commentary, is as follows:
- Bush Has Said He Used No Special Treatment To Get Into The Guard. How Does He Explain The Fact That He Jumped Ahead Of 150 Applicants Despite Low Pilot Aptitude Scores? A family friend of Bush's father pulled strings to secure Bush's spot; Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard after his student deferment ran out when he graduated from Yale in 1968. Before he graduated, Bush personally visited Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt -- the commander of the Texas Air National Guard -- to talk about the Guard. After Bush met with Staudt, he applied and was quickly accepted -- despite a waiting list of over 150 applicants. Staudt recommended Bush for a direct appointment, which allowed Bush to become a second lieutenant right out of basic training without having to go though officer candidate school. The direct appointment also cleared the way for a position in pilot training school. When Bush applied for the Guard, his score on the Air Force pilot aptitude section, one of five on the test, was in the 25th percentile, the lowest allowed for would-be fliers. Although a Bush spokesman claimed Bush was fast-tracked because the Guard needed pilots, Charles Shoemake, a chief of personnel in the Texas Guard from 1972 to 1980 remembered no such shortage. "We had so many people coming in who were super-qualified," Shoemake said. Texas Guard Historian Tom Hail said there was no apparent need to fast-track applicants. "I've never heard of that," he said. "Generally they did that for doctors only, mostly because we needed extra flight surgeons."
- Col. Albert Lloyd Said A Report From Alabama To Ellington Should Have Been Filed. Where Is That Report? Lloyd also said he did not know whether Bush performed duty in Alabama. "If he did, his drill attendance should have been certified and sent to Ellington, and there would have been a record." According to the Boston Globe, "the White House included with the documents a memorandum from a Texas Air National Guard personnel specialist stating that the documents prove that Bush had a 'satisfactory year' for 'retirement/retention' purposes between May 27, 1972, and May 26, 1973. But that specialist, retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., acknowledged in an interview last night that he evaluated Bush using the lower of two measures for rating Guard service. Guardsmen, he said, needed to serve more days to meet minimum-training requirements than to meet the lower threshold to receive retirement credit for the year. 'Should he have done more? Yes, he should have,' Lloyd said of Bush, who was a fighter-interceptor pilot. 'Did he have to? No.'"
- Why Did Bush Miss His Medical Exam In 1972? On September 29, 1972, Bush was officially suspended from flying for missing his annual medical examination. The orders note that Bush's suspension is authorized under the guidelines presented in Air Force Manual 35-12 Para 2-29m, which reads that Bush's local commander "will direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination."
- Where Are The Complete Results Of The Required Investigation Into Bush's Absence From The Exam? The order suspending Bush from flight duty stated: "Verbal orders of the Comdr on 1 Aug 72 suspending 1STLT George W. Bush...from flying status are confirmed.... Reason for Suspension: Failure to accomplish annual medical examination. Off will comply with para 2-10, AFM 35-13. Authority: Para 2-29m, AFM 35-13. Para 2-29m, AFM 35-13: "When a Rated Officer Fails To Accomplish a Medical Examination Prescribed by AFM 160-1.... (1)The local commander who has authority to convene a Flying Evaluation Board will direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination. After reviewing the findings of the investigation, the local commander may convene a Flying Evaluation Board or forward through command channels a detailed report of the circumstances which resulted in the officer's failure to accomplish a medical examination, along with a recommendation that the suspension be removed. (2) The individual's major command will forward the report along with the command recommendation to USAFMPC/DPMAJD, Randolph AFB TX 78148 for final determination."
- Why Did Bush Specifically Request To NOT Be Sent Overseas For Duty? On Bush's application to the 147th Fighter Group at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas, Bush was asked what his "Area Assignment Preferences" were. Bush checked the box beside "Do Not Volunteer" for overseas duty.
- Why Does The White House Say Bush Was On Base When Bush's Superiors Had Filed A Report Saying He Was Gone For A Whole Year? Bush's superior officers William D. Harris Jr. and Jerry B. Killian, wrote on his yearly evaluation form, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report," and that a "civilian occupation made it necessary for him to move to Montgomery, Alabama. He cleared this base on 15 May 1972 and has been performing equivalent training in a non flying status with the 187 Tac Recon Gp, Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama." ...But the White House claims Bush was on base the same day his superiors filed their report. White House release says Bush was paid on May 2, 1973, the very day his superiors reported that "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report." Rufus G. Martin signed a report on Bush's evaluation in November 1973, saying Bush was "Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30 April 73." Retired colonel Martin, the unit's former administrative officer, said he too thought Bush had been in Alabama for that entire year. Harris and Killian, he said, would have known if Bush returned to duty at Ellington.
- Why Is The Pentagon Under Orders To Not Discuss Bush's Record With Reporters? Freedom of Information officers are under orders from senior Pentagon officials to ignore requests on Bush files. According to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, "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."
- Where Are Bush's Flight Logs?
- Why Hasn't Bush Himself Demonstrated That He Showed Up For Service in Alabama?
As yet, the Bush campaign has yet to address any of these issues. (John Kerry)
April 27: Author James Moore continues to probe the deficiencies in the records of Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. "The story keeps changing," he writes. "And regardless of what the White House says about George W. Bush and his time in the Texas Air National Guard, journalists tend to accept the explanation. I can't. The president of the United States is lying to hide his behavior while he was a young pilot during the Vietnam War, and he has almost taken away reporters' ability to get the whole story. Unfortunately, the national media have other distractions, and they apparently don't think the Guard story is important enough to warrant additional effort. I think they are wrong." Moore makes a critical point: "The president's behavior while under oath to serve in the military is an important matter. By George W. Bush's own admission, there were at least eight months in 1972 when he was not performing assigned Guard duty. What if today's Guard members behaved as irresponsibly as Bush did during his hitch? Where would our war on terrorism be if they all acted as capriciously as he did and they took off to go do something else while they were still under oath to serve? That's what the records prove George W. Bush did. Aren't there young Americans in Iraq, who have been called to active duty in a war zone, who would rather be in Alabama?" Moore points out that critical documents of Bush's TANG service have never been released: "The mandatory written report about Bush's grounding is mysteriously not in the released file, nor is any other disciplinary evidence. A document showing a 'roll-up,' or the accumulation of his total retirement points, is also absent, and so are his actual pay stubs. If the president truly wanted to end the conjecture about his time in the Guard, he would allow an examination of his pay stubs and any IRS W-2 forms from his Guard years. These can be pieced together to determine when he was paid and whether he earned enough to have met his sworn obligations."
Based on released documents, Moore provides a summation of Bush's Guard service: "In April of 1972, the young lieutenant made a unilateral decision that he was no longer going to fly. Although he had taken an oath to serve for six years in his privileged position in the Texas Air Guard, George W. Bush left for Alabama two years before his hitch was up. Taxpayers had spent close to a million dollars training him to fly a fighter jet, but he was intent on working in a U.S. senate campaign. Bush's Guard file shows that he did not request a transfer until a few months later, and it was turned down. Bush, who was due to report to his Houston air base for a physical on or before his July 6 birthday, failed to return from Alabama. He was subsequently grounded on orders from Maj. Gen. Francis Greenlief. And this is where the mystery begins. Taking away a pilot's wings was not a minor decision. During the course of investigating this matter over the past decade, I was told by numerous Guard sources that pilots simply did not skip their physicals for any reason. Bush may have thought this was a good strategy for getting out of his obligation to the Guard. However, there had to be an investigation into his grounding. Normally, a formal board of inquiry would have been convened to examine the pilot's failure to keep his physical status current. At a minimum, a commanding officer would have been expected to write a narrative report on why one of his pilots had been taken off the flight duty roster. Either that report, or the findings of the board of inquiry, would then be sent to the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver and to the Texas Guard headquarters in Austin. A pilot simply did not walk away from all of that training with two years remaining on his tour of duty without a formal explanation as to what happened and why. This narrative report is the document the public has never seen and the Bush White House is unlikely to ever release. Disciplinary action taken against Bush ought to be a part of his personnel record. No such files have ever been disclosed."
The unreleased documents should give journalists the ability to determine exactly how much of his Guard obligation Bush actually met, and whether his grounding was caused by his rumored abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs. One good source of his entire military career, such as it was, is the records on file with the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver and the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. Those records are considered private, and they cannot be released to anyone without the signature of the serviceman or woman. The White House has never indicated that Bush has signed the authorization form. What records have been released were given to Major General Danny James, commander of the Air National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Virginia, who formerly commanded the TANG and, after scrutinizing Bush's records, was later promoted to a Washington post by Bush. James' staff printed out all of the documents on the film and James vetted the material. After James reviewed, and possibly edited or deleted some of the records, they were then sent to the White House for further scrutiny prior to release to the news media. Compare the Bush response to the response of Senator John McCain. In 2000, when slurs about McCain's mental stability were made by the Bush campaign, McCain released a foot-high stack of unvetted, raw reports covering every detail of his military career. Political reporters, who suspected the story originated with Bush political strategist Karl Rove, were being told by third parties that McCain had mental problems caused by his time as a POW that made him a presidential risk. The rumors dissipated quickly after McCain released his records.
Additionally, James is the officer who ordered that Bush's files be "cleaned up" in 1997. Joe Allbaugh, Bush's chief of staff in Texas, was overheard by Guard officer Bill Burkett as telling James to "clean up the governor's files and remove any embarrassments in case he wants to run for reelection or something higher. ...Karen [Hughes] and Danny [Bartlett] are going to be coming out to take a look at this file," Allbaugh said. "They're going to write a book." James denies this conversation ever took place, but Burkett says he heard James repeat the instructions the next day. A week later, Burkett recalls coming into the office of General John Scribner, who was standing next to a 10-gallon gun-metal-gray wastebasket. Scribner had the military personnel records jacket of George W. Bush open in front of him and was sorting through papers it contained. "What are you doing?" Burkett's friend CWO George Conn asked. "Just going through this," Scribner answered. "It looks like they are going to have to reconstruct this out of Denver." In Burkett's recollection of this meeting, Conn took Scribner aside to talk and Burkett went through papers that had been placed in the trash. He said he saw critical documents, such as retirement and cumulative-points records, being discarded. He was unable to determine if the report on Bush's grounding was in the trash. Scribner, who is now retired, denies the incident. "I have no memory of anything like that taking place," he says. Conn verifies that the incident indeed occurred, though he has later recanted his support for Burkett, possibly in order not to jeopardize his career as a civilian employee of the US Army. And, other evidence supports the claims that Bush's records were purged. (Burkett believes that Conn recanted his testimony over fear of losing his job with the Defense Department.)
Moore says that, ironically, he may be responsible for the entire purge of Bush's records. In 1994, during Bush's campaign for governor of Texas, Moore asked Bush, "How did you get into the Guard so easily? One hundred thousand guys our age were on the waiting list, and you say you walked in and signed up to become a pilot. Did your congressman father exercise any influence on your behalf?" Bush responded, "Not that I know of, Jim. I certainly didn't ask for any. And I'm sure my father didn't either. They just had an opening for a pilot and I was there at the right time." This explanation is highly unlikely; Bush, like the sons of Senator Lloyd Bentsen and John Tower, of Governor John Connally, and of Sidney Adger, George H.W. Bush's closest friend in Houston, was assigned to the "champagne unit" of the Texas ANG. Moore recalls, "'As soon as you asked that question,' one Guard officer told me, 'they went about the business of building their alternative story. They contacted all of Bush's commanders and friends from that time to make sure they would all stand by Bush.' And, undoubtedly, Rove and company went to work on cleaning up the files. The stonewalling on this is still succeeding. Reporters calling the National Guard offices in Arlington and the Pentagon are being told the staff is no longer authorized to speak about the president and his time in the Guard. One national reporter, who is still trying to get to the bottom of the controversy, told me the White House said they were not going to talk about the Guard matter any further. And, sadly, the questions have stopped."
In his subsequent book, Bush's Quest for Re-Election, Moore writes that he believes Bush may have been suspended from flying because of a tough new military screening program designed to keep unreliable pilots from access to nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The Human Reliability Program was used to screen all US Air Force and National Guard pilots; if Bush failed the HRP standards (no records have yet been released to show one way or the other), he would not have been allowed to fly TANG jets, some of which were nuclear-capable. (Salon, Mark Crispin Miller)
April 27: Another pilot was suspended from duty at the same time, and from the same unit, as George W. Bush. The pilot is James Bath, a Houston financier and close friend and business colleague of the Bush family. Bath's name is blacked out of documents released by the White House regarding Bush's military service, but earlier copies of the documents clearly show Bath's name. Bath acknowledges that he was the man in question, but dismisses the suspensions as trivial. "It happens all the time, especially in the Guard," he says. "In a regular squadron it is real easy to get your physical, but in a Guard unit, it is a different kettle of fish because the flight surgeon is also a civilian." Bath also says that Bush did not skip the physical (which led to his suspension) because of drug use: "I'm telling you that it [drug use] did not happen. It is beyond laughable. I wasn't with him 24/7, but [Bush] did not use drugs. [He] did not use drugs, and I really know the facts." Whether Bath's assertions are true or not, it is likely that the White House purged his name from the released documents because of Bath's participation in a myriad of business deals between the Bush family and the Saudi ruling family, a relationship that funnelled over $1.4 billion into the Bush empire over 20 years. Around 1974, Bath befriended two Sauds, Salem bin Laden and his close associate, Khalid bin Mahfouz, heir to the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, the biggest banking empire in the kingdom. Bath says he liked both men from the outset: "I like the Saudi mentality," he says. "They like guns, horses, aviation, the outdoors. We had a lot in common." In many ways, bin Mahfouz and bin Laden were Saudi versions of the well-heeled good old boys Bath knew so well. "In Texas, you'll find the rich carrying on about being just being poor country boys," he says. "Well, these guys were masters of playing the poor, simple Bedouin kid."
Bath shepherded bin Laden and bin Mahfouz through the political and business world centered in Houston, and both Saudis ended up buying property in Houston. Bin Mahfouz bought an enormous, rambling $3.5 million faux chateau, later known as Houston's Versailles, in the posh River Oaks section of Houston. He also purchased a 4,000-acre ranch in Liberty County on the Trinity River near James Bath's ranch. "They loved the ranch and they loved the country life," says Bath. "There was a real affinity between Texas and life in the kingdom. Khalid would come out to the ranch with the family and the kids, to ride horses, shoot guns, [watch] fireworks. They'd been going to England forever. But Texas -- there was the novelty." The Saudis were courting both sides of the political aisle in the 70s. Clark Clifford, former secretary of defense under Lyndon Johnson, and Jimmy Carter's OMB head Bert Lance were their Democratic contacts. On the GOP side, Bath brought the Saudis into the circles of power inhabited by, among others, the Bush family. Bath was also close to Bush family friend James Baker and Republican John Connelly, who was elected governor of Texas as a Democrat and then switched parties to become Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury in 1971. Bath was the bin Laden family's representative in Texas, as well as bin Mahfouz's. What exactly he was able to do for the Saudis has never been made clear. Bath denies a persistent rumor that he was formerly in the CIA, though he coyly suggests he has some kind of affiliation. He did serve as an investment broker for the Saudis, and made millions from the arrangements.
Author Craig Unger writes, "On behalf of Salem bin Laden, Bath purchased the Houston Gulf Airport, a small, private facility in League City, Texas, near Houston. He also became the sole director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing in the Cayman Islands, which was owned by bin Mahfouz. Through Skyway, Bath brokered about $150 million worth of private aircraft deals to major stockholders in the Middle Eastern Bank of Credit and Commerce International, such as Ghaith Pharaon, a Saudi billionaire, and Sheik Zayed bin Sultan an-Nahayan, president of the United Arab Emirates. To incorporate his companies in the Cayman Islands, Bath used the same firm that set up a money-collecting front for Oliver North in the Iran-Contra affair. He also served as an intermediary between the Saudis and Connally, who, having served as Nixon's Treasury secretary, began to position himself for a shot at the White House in 1980. In August 1977, Connally and Bath teamed up with bin Mahfouz and his friend Pharaon to buy the Main Bank of Houston, a small community bank with about $70 million in assets. Through Main Bank, the young Saudis had established ties to Connally. They were now in business with a legitimate presidential contender who seemed well positioned for the 1980 campaign.
"Having business partnerships with an American presidential candidate elevated them enormously in the eyes of Saudis back home, especially the royal family. At the time, Connally had only one serious political rival in Texas -- George H.W. Bush, a man with little of Connally's charisma. A Connecticut Yankee who constantly had to prove his Texas bona fides, Bush had a somewhat understated style that only accentuated his upper-class New England background. Connally was unabashed about being the biggest lawyer for Arab money in Texas. Bush kept his distance. Next to Connally, he seemed bland indeed. Nevertheless, within a few years, Saudis seeking access to the highest levels of American power soon forgot Lance, Clifford and Connally, realizing that Bush was the man to see. Bath denies that money went from bin Mahfouz and bin Laden through him into Arbusto Energy, the first oil company started by George W. Bush. Bath had fronted for the two Saudi billionaires on other deals, but in this case, he says, '100 percent of those funds were mine. It was a purely personal investment.' Bin Laden and bin Mahfouz, he insists, had nothing to do with either the elder Bush or his son. 'They never met Bush -- ever,' Bath says. 'And there was no reason to. At that point, Bush was a young guy just out of Yale, a struggling young entrepreneur trying to get a drilling fund.' No evidence has emerged to contradict Bath. But in 1982, bin Mahfouz helped develop a 75-story skyscraper for the Texas Commerce Bank, which had been founded by Baker's family. That investment meant that the young Saudi now had shared business interests with the chief of staff to President Reagan."
It's obvious that the Saudis were busily cultivating business and political ties with the powerful Bush family. Later in the decade, bin Mahfouz's associates came to the rescue of Harken Energy, a struggling Dallas oil company of which George W. Bush was a director. Both the bin Mahfouz family and the bin Ladens were members of the Carlyle Group, the giant Washington private equity firm in which Bush Sr. and Baker were major figures. Over the next generation, more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts went from the Saudis to these companies that were so close to the Bushes. Unger concludes, "In the end, we may never know why both Bush and Bath failed to have their medical exams and lost their eligibility to fly in the National Guard. During the 2000 presidential campaign, a Bush spokesman said that Bush did not take the exam because he was in Alabama at the time, while his personal physician was back in Texas. That answer did not hold up under scrutiny, however, because only flight surgeons perform the physicals. When the same question arose this year, White House communications director Dan Bartlett had a different response. He said Bush did not undergo the physical because he knew he would be on a nonflying status in Alabama. Why Bath's name was blotted out in the records of Bush's military service is an entirely different question. But it leads to a story that figures even more prominently in the headlines today. After all, he was present at the birth of the Bush-Saudi relationship." (Salon)
April 27: Sick of attacks on his war record, John Kerry lashes out at George Bush, demanding that he prove he completed his own service in the Texas Air National Guard. "If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard," Kerry says. "Prove it. That's what we ought to have. I'm not going to stand around and let them play games." Until recently, Kerry refused to get into discussions about Bush's service record or lack thereof, but recent sustained attacks against Kerry's service record and his antiwar activities after his return from Vietnam have apparently gone far enough for Kerry. "I did what my conscience told me to do," Kerry says. "I'm proud I stood up and fought against [the Vietnam war]. And I think it is remarkable to me that so many years later the Republicans want to go back and argue about something, particularly when so many of them chose not even to be involved in it, not even to have an opinion about it." Later, Kerry says, "I've defended our nation. I'm prepared to stand up and defend it as president and forever." Bush supporters have tried to turn Kerry's service in Vietnam, a centerpiece of his Democratic campaign, against him even as they say they honor his service to his country. Kerry released his medical records when questioned about the extent of his war wounds, including a report showing he still carries shrapnel in one leg, after allegations that his three Purple Hearts were awarded for "fingernail scratches." After that controversy was silenced, Bush adviser Karen Hughes turned to what Kerry did after returning from Vietnam. Hughes said recently she was offended by Kerry's anti-war activities in 1971 and accused him of not throwing back his medals when he and other veterans protested in Washington. (Hughes did not serve in Vietnam.) "He only pretended to throw his," Hughes said in a CNN interview. "Now, I can understand if, out of conscience, you take a principled stand, and you would decide that you were so opposed to this that you would actually throw your medals. But to pretend to do so -- I think that's very revealing."
Once again, the charges are lies. Kerry has long said that he threw his ribbons over a fence at the Capital, as part of a "giving back" of citations, dog tags, and the like performed by nearly 800 veterans. Kerry has acknowledged inaccurately saying on occasion that he threw his medals, not his ribbons, but says that, like many military veterans, he uses the terms interchangeably. He accuses Republicans of trying to discredit his presidential campaign with a "phony controversy." "The US Navy pamphlet calls them medals," he says. "We referred to them as the symbols, they were representing medals, ribbons. Countless veterans threw the ribbons back." Meanwhile, even as they mount their attacks, Bush campaign and White House spokespersons say that the campaign doesn't intend to review events that happened "30 or 40 years ago," but intends to focus on the policies of today.
Politically Incorrect's Bill Maher is incredulous that the ribbons/medals issue is even being discussed: "Why are you covering this?" he asks Hardball's Chris Matthews. "Why are you taking this bait, seriously? Why are you even letting them bait you into covering this complete nonissue? This guy has medals. This guy has ribbons. The other guy didn't go. That's the whole story. The other guy is a draft dodger. They were both rich kids in the '60s. One of them went to where the bullets were flying and one of them found a way not to go and then he lied about that. Stop covering the medals. ...[O]ne guy went into the National Guard, which back then was a way of getting out of it. On top of that, he had the nerve to say to Tim Russert...if my Guard unit had been called up, I would have gone. How very brave, Mr. President, considering that only 8,700 out of 2.5 million men and women who went to Vietnam, only 8,700 Guard people were ever called up there, 0.03 percent. So there was no chance he would have been called up. That's George Bush for you. Hold me back, hold me back. ...The true axis of evil in America is the brilliance of our marketing combined with the stupidity of our people. George Bush has $180 million to spend. With that kind of money, he could convince Americans to drink paint, and he probably will." Maher concludes, "We don't -- you know, in the days before television, people didn't judge presidents on whether he was sunny or warm or likable. They judged on whether he was the best man for the job. I would like to bring that criteria back now that we're at war." (AP/Guardian, New York Times, MSNBC)
April 27: Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe attacks Dick Cheney's own lack of military service, calling him "the last guy who should be lecturing John Kerry" and a Democrat-leaning group suggests that Cheney's wife became pregnant to help her husband avoid serving in Vietnam. Cheney, who has said before that he had "other priorities than military service," received five separate deferments allowing him to skip military service during the Vietnam War. The Thunder Road Group, a consultancy working for America Coming Together, says Cheney's fifth deferment came when his wife became pregnant. The group notes that the rules governing the draft changed Oct. 26, 1965, to allow married, childless men to be drafted. Cheney received a deferment three months later on the grounds that his wife was pregnant. The Cheneys' first child, Elizabeth, was born, the group notes, "nine months and two days after childless men were deemed eligible for the draft." The accusation that Cheney used the pregnancy to avoid serving in Vietnam was made in the 2000 campaign. But as Cheney has raised his profile on defense issues, Democrats say the charge is worth examining. "The facts are out there, and we're just presenting them. It looks as if a little bit more went into the Cheney family-planning decision, but who knows," says Sarah Leonard, a spokeswoman for the Thunder Road Group. "For Dick Cheney, who did everything he could to avoid serving in Vietnam, to attack John Kerry, a man who had the courage to put his life on the line, is a new low," she adds. The Bush campaign is outraged at the pregnancy charges. "This is an outrageous and despicable attack, and Senator Kerry should repudiate it," spokesman Scott Stanzel says.
More generally, a Democratic strategist says that if Cheney is going to attack Kerry's record, Democrats want to ensure that they call his credibility into question. "It's push-back. The guy went out there today trying to whack Kerry on this. It's sort of a 'glass houses' type of situation," says the strategist. The Kerry campaign says that Cheney was "smearing John Kerry's patriotism" during his speech in Fulton, Missouri, and McAuliffe says Democrats have learned from past elections that they must answer such charges instantly and forcefully. "We shockingly saw what they did to Max Cleland in 2002," McAuliffe says of the former Democratic senator from Georgia, who lost his seat after a barrage of ads criticizing him for supporting a filibuster to delay creating the Department of Homeland Security. "We remember how their ads put Max Cleland's face next to Osama bin Laden's and told America that a triple amputee who fought in Vietnam would not defend the security of his country," he says. McAuliffe also questions Cheney's ties to Halliburton, pointing to "over $7 billion in no-bid contracts to rebuild Iraq" that the company has been awarded. The Kerry campaign and outside Democrats say they will continue to ask questions about Halliburton and the energy task force. Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, says Cheney gave a "very serious policy speech" and that McAuliffe chose to respond "in the most personal way." Of Cheney's deferments, David Curry, a University of Missouri at St. Louis professor who has written extensively about the draft, says, "Five deferments seems incredible to me. That's a lot of times for the draft board to say O.K." (Washington Times. , New York Times)
April 27: Amy Goodman, the strongly liberal host of Pacifica Radio''s Democracy Now broadcast, gives an interview to Newsweek about her new book, Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media that Love Them. Goodman, a veteran international reporter who has dodged bullets in East Timor and Nigeria, says that the US media has become nothing more than lapdogs for the Bush administration and corporate interests. She wrote the book because "the media has reached an all-time low. The lies take lives. 'Exception to the rulers' should be the motto of every news organization." In her book, she documents example after example of what she calls the "disinformation two-step," in which an administration "leaks" information to reporters, after which those officials refer to the published accounts to bolster their assertions. She says that the corporate control of the mainstream media has forced more and more Americans to turn to independent organizations such as Pacifica for news that isn't under corporate and governmental control. "It is astounding, the hunger for independent voices [in the media] right now," she says. "That small group of pundits that we see in network after network who know so little about so much now have been fully exposed. With not finding the weapons of mass destruction, you have these pundits wringing their hands [saying] 'How did we get it so wrong?' Well, why not invite into the studio someone who did get it right, who questioned the credibility [of the intelligence about Iraq] more than a year ago? More importantly, why weren't they invited in more than a year ago? We're not talking about this shocking revelation that no one could have predicted. Many people outside of and inside the establishment were saying it wasn't true. They were just marginalized by the press."
She acknowledges that a few dissenting voices were given access to the mainstream media, but, "the question is, 'What is the drumbeat coverage? What is the headline coverage? Who's being interviewed on the front pages of the newspapers of the day?' Or, is there a reference on an inner page in an inside story that says, 'there is some dissenting opinion, however; some weapons inspectors are questioning whether they are really there....' in the 28th paragraph? One can always find that, but what sinks into the consciousness are the headline stories. If you have a media that is mainly there as a megaphone for those in power -- the president, the vice president, the secretary of State -- constantly hammering away at weapons of mass destruction with the occasional -- and I mean occasional -- question, that is what sinks into people's consciousness. And that's why it's so shocking when things aren't found later." She cites a study by FAIR, the media watch organization, focusing on the week leading up to Secretary of State Powell's address to the UN on February 6, 2003, and the week afterwards. Of the 393 interviews done on four major nightly newscasts -- ABC's, CBS's, NBC's, and PBS's -- only 3 were with anti-war representatives. "Three of almost 400!" she says. "This is a media beating the drum for war. This at a time of the week leading up to the largest mass global protest in history, [on] Feb. 15 [2003]. This at a time when at least half the people in this country were saying 'no' to the invasion, were saying 'at least give more time to diplomacy and inspections.' You have a media completely out of step with mainstream America, a media that has its own point of view, that is pushing it forward and what they're doing is simply acting as spokespeople for the administration -- and that's unforgivable. ...You can either give validity to a dissenting point of view or you can shunt it aside. Unfortunately the media, which I do believe should be a sanctuary for dissent, should be a forum for the full diversity of views, just beats the drums for war. That's a serious abdication of our responsibility." She explains why the media is so hand-in-glove with the government: "I think that the airwaves largely reflect the views of their owners. You have, for example, Clear Channel, which owns more than 1,200 radio stations. The Bush-connected networks have benefited enormously from the change of laws [facilitating] media consolidations." (MSNBC)
April 27: Columnist Man Marrow delves into the issue of "cracking Republican code-speak." "Two or more members of a group speak in code as a way to clandestinely communicate complex ideas," he writes, "thus, solidifying alliances within the group and demarking the group's agenda without immediately exposing that agenda to scrutiny from outside the group. Nowhere in the United States is code talking more pervasive than in the Republican Party."
Marrow gives a tongue-in-cheek "glossary," with highly personal definitions, as follows. "Conservative -- Despite the general understanding that a conservative would be one that 'conserves,' the right is not actually interested in conserving anything. I've asked nearly every self-declared 'Conservative' I've ever met just what it is that he or she wants to conserve, and I've yet to get a straight answer. However, from what I have observed, it seems to have something to do with being white and rich. Fiscal conservative -- Back in the 80s, the idea of fiscal conservation had much to do with cutting government spending and balancing the federal budget. Strangely, the only president to see that goal realized was not a Republican. It was President Clinton. Never mind the fact that the national debt quadrupled during the Reagan-Bush-Quayle era. Family values or Christian values -- Probably the most illusive of all Republican code, 'family values' is often synonymous with its great grandfather, 'conservative.' But there are some new connotations too. For example, bigotry, or even outright hatred for homosexuals, is a 'family value' in Republican code-speak. School vouchers and faith-based initiatives -- These codes are new, a product of the current generation of Republicans. But the ideas that they represent aren't new at all. They are what is commonly known as government sponsorship of religion. Tax cuts -- Perhaps the most clever and most effective of all Republican code, 'tax cuts' is a cryptic way of saying to middle-class Republicans, 'We'll give you about $530.' It is also a way of saying to a few hundred thousand of the richest Americans 'We'll give you many thousands, possibly even millions, of dollars.' Pro-life -- Without doubt the most controversial of all Republican code- speak, 'pro-life' means opposition to abortion. But it also means support for the Christian Broadcasting Network. Since the 80s, CBN has been the voice of the more extreme elements of the religious and political right. Its chief elocutionist, the Rev. Pat Robertson, openly claims to be able to magically deflect hurricanes with prayer. 'Pro-life,' however, does not mean opposition to death. President Bush, while governor of Texas, signed death warrants for more than 200 people." Marrow concludes, "so thanks to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Pat Robertson and all the other Republicans. America is fiscally conservative, with family Christian values. We're working with community leaders, and through tax cuts and faith-based initiatives, we'll have homeland security, advance a pro-life agenda, hold enemy combatants indefinitely, win the war on terrorism, stay the course, and send those tax-and-spend liberals packing back to Berkeley where they belong. And if you believe that, good for you." (IUPUI Sagamore)

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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 Four

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Supreme Court hears arguments on releasing Cheney's energy task force records

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