August 2004: Week One: Page Two: This Far and No Further

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Bogus terror alerts upstage Kerry's nomination, and prove to be politically manipulated

August 3: As predicted, the Bush administration issues a raft of terror alerts immediately after the Democratic convention, in an attempt to end the post-convention media coverage and shift the media's attention back onto the threat faced by Americans. The alerts are limited to New York City, Newark, and Washington, and are based on three-year old evidence, much of it collected from public sources on the Internet. "President Bush has told you, and I have reiterated the promise, that when we have specific credible information, that we will share it," intones DHS director Tom Ridge. "Now this afternoon, we do have new and unusually specific information about where al-Qaeda would like to attack." WSWS's Bill Van Auken writes, "Monday saw the deployment of black-uniformed paramilitary police armed with assault rifles outside the stock exchange and other major financial centers in New York and neighboring Newark, as well as stepped-up security at the headquarters of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington. Major arteries into New York were closed to commercial traffic and trucks subjected to searches." The alerts are based on information culled from an al-Qaeda operative arrested last week in Pakistan, who provided US interrogators with what they call a "treasure trove" of information. However, nothing the operative says is of any imminence. Most of it concerns the fact that, before 9/11, al-Qaeda supporters had "cased" financial centers in New York, Newark, and Washington. "There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," says one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? ...I still don't know that." Officials admit that that there is no indication that any terrorist action was imminent: "What we've uncovered is a collection operation as opposed to the launching of an attack," says one. So, once again, the administration is issuing bogus terror alerts for political reasons. However, administration officials insist that even three-year-old intelligence, when coupled with other information about al-Qaeda's plans to attack the United States, justifies the massive security response in the three cities. "It's serious business," Bush says of the alerts. "I mean, we wouldn't be, you know, contacting authorities at the local level unless something was real."
The banking alerts that the administration is touting as imminently dangerous were first reported on in 2002, in a Time article about al-Qaeda terror leader Abu Zubaydah on May 24, 2002, and a CNN report from that same week. Zubaydah has been in joint Pakistani and American custody since March 2002.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean tells CNN that he worries "every time something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism. It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there's some of both." The comment provokes a blizzard of condemnations from Republicans; even conservative Democratic senator Joe Lieberman, who is aligning himself closer and closer to the Bush administration, calls Dean's comment "outrageous," saying, "No one in their right mind would think the president or the secretary of homeland security would raise an alert level and scare people for political reasons." John Kerry swiftly moves to disassociate his campaign from Dean's remarks. Van Auken writes, "On the contrary, millions of perfectly sane people throughout the US know full well that this administration has already manipulated intelligence and inflated terrorist threats for political reasons. They have seen government officials seize upon the tragic events of September 11, 2001, to intimidate political opposition and justify everything from unprovoked war to tax cuts for the wealthy. They have watched the unraveling of the multiple false pretexts given for the long-planned war to conquer Iraq and its oil resources. Most prominent among these was the lie that the Iraqi regime was arming terrorists with 'weapons of mass destruction' for an imminent attack that could be forestalled only by war. There is ample reason to question the timing and validity of the latest terror scare. It came on the very eve of a White House press conference touting the administration's partial adoption of recommendations made by the 9/11 commission for revamping the US national intelligence apparatus. Flanked by his senior cabinet ministers and the acting director of the CIA, Bush used the terror alert as a backdrop for his proposals, declaring the alert a 'solemn reminder of the threat we continue to face,' and projecting a war on terrorism that would continue without foreseeable end."
Even the capture of the al-Qaeda operative, Tanzanian-born Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, is suspect. The US government has been proven to be bribing and pressuring Pakistani government officials to stage the capture of so-called "high-value targets," senior figures in al-Qaeda or the Taliban, to coincide with the Republican National Convention and the run-up to the November election. Pakistani security forces arrested Ghailani on July 25, but the announcement of his arrest was delayed until July 30, just hours before Kerry was to give his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention. Van Auken writes, "There is every reason to believe that the Bush administration is timing its warnings and announcements in the 'war on terrorism' based on the crassest political considerations. The latest scare, coming in the immediate aftermath of the Democratic convention and at the outset of Kerry's national campaign, has the effect of driving Bush's rival out of the headlines. Moreover, the warnings in New York serve the purpose of intimidating the mass protests that are expected in the city when the Republican National Convention begins at the end of this month, and creating a climate conducive to repressive action."
Liberal columnist and author William Rivers Pitt is contemptuous of the entire debacle, writing, "The data was three years old, gathered on the Internet, and delivered to the American people in tones of doom, as if the hammer were about to fall at any moment." He also points out that Laura Bush and daughters Barbara and Jenna made high-profile visits to the Citigroup Center in New York City on Monday, the first day of Ridge's new orange alert. This was one of the target buildings, according to Ridge. So, Pitt asks, "George W. Bush sent his entire family to the very place that was supposedly about to be blown to smithereens?" Pitt continues, "Bush and his administration officials are using terrorism -- the fear of it, the fight against it -- to manipulate domestic American politics. They are, as they have every day for almost three years now, using September 11 against their own people. They are also getting stumblingly obvious about it. We are being lied to, clumsily, again. ...That Bush and his people are using terror to manipulate the American people isn't the worst part of this, hard as that may be to believe. The worst part of this is that September 11 happened, that warnings of a potential attack are necessary to the public safety when merited, and that every time Bush uses these warnings to assist his election campaign, the people tune out the warnings even further. This may well get a lot of people killed someday. When you cry wolf long enough, people will ignore you when the wolf actually comes to the door." (Washington Post, Truthout/USLAW, WSWS, Time/CNN/Buzzflash)
August 3: The Securities and Exchange Commission fines Halliburton $7.5 million for failing to tell investors that it was changing the way it booked cost overruns. By changing its accounting so that it booked the cost of projects up front instead of waiting until the money was actually received, Halliburton was able to boost its earnings by 46 percent between 1998 and 1999. However, it did not tell investors that it was making this change in its accounting methods. The SEC also criticized Halliburton's response to the agency's investigation, saying in its complaint that "there were unacceptable lapses in the company's conduct during the course of the investigation, which had the effect of delaying the production of information and documentation necessary to the staff's expeditious completion of its investigation." Meanwhile, a class action lawsuit brought by Halliburton shareholders makes more serious charges. Based on testimony by four former company managers, the suit says that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root inflated profits by overbilling for services, understating costs, and overstating revenue. According to the suit, one of the managers said that supervisors told her to do "whatever it took" to meet Wall Street profit estimates. The lawsuit also says that executives misled investors in 2001 about asbestos liabilities posed by the 1998 purchase of Dresser Industries. The suit lists four executives as defendants alongside Halliburton. One of those defendants is Halliburton CEO David Lesar. Citizens' watchdog group Public Citizen says of the verdict, "The penalty imposed today against Halliburton to settle allegations of accounting irregularities when Vice President Dick Cheney was at the company's helm is too small and avoids addressing Cheney's responsibility for the fraud. To settle allegations that the company improperly altered its accounting during Cheney's tenure as CEO, Halliburton agreed to pay just $7.5 million, which pales in comparison to the estimated $120 million by which accounting tricks boosted Halliburton's profits during Cheney's stewardship." (New York Times/Citizen Works, Public Citizen)
August 3: Another Bush rally ends with protesters denied their civil rights. A Springfield, Missouri rally takes place in a local field house, with ticket-bearing audience members entering without incident, and protesters and supporters both bearing signs rallying close by, supervised but not hindered by Secret Service members. Then the Secret Service orders the anti-Bush protesters to move 200 feet away, but lets the pro-Bush supporters stay put. When protesters complain to local police, the police reply, "We're just following orders." While the anti-Bush protesters are herded unwillingly into what the Bush campaign workers call a "free speech zone," the pro-Bush faction continues waving their signs and cheering close to the doors of the field house. Things get worse. As the rally is set to begin, some anti-Bush protesters with valid tickets attempt to enter the field house; instead of being allowed in, they are manhandled out of the field house, and have their tickets taken and torn up. A woman is arrested after a police officer shoves her forcibly out of the field house and she strikes him in the chest. Two others are arrested for trespassing, though the field house is on public ground. (Springfield News-Leader/525 Reasons)
August 3: Columnist Paul Krugman analyzes the media's "script" that drove their coverage of the Democratic convention. Mainstream outlets such as ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN doled out only an hour a night of live coverage, spending almost as much time analyzing and dissecting the events of the day -- and that coverage, writes Krugman, followed a script designed to paint the Democrats as "angry Bush-haters who disdain the military." (Polls show that viewers watching the unedited, comment-free coverage on C-SPAN got a far different impression of the proceedings.) Krugman notes that Campaign Desk, which is run by the Columbia Journalism Review, concluded after reviewing convention coverage that CNN "has stooped to slavish imitation of Fox's most dubious ploys and policies." Krugman notes, "seconds after John Kerry's speech, CNN gave Ed Gillespie, the Republican Party's chairman, the opportunity to bash the candidate. Will Terry McAuliffe be given the same opportunity right after President Bush speaks?" In many instances, commentators simply lied in order to stay on the script. On Fox, Michael Barone asserted that conventioneers cheered when Kerry criticized President Bush but were silent when he called for military strength. The video shows "tumultuous cheering when Mr. Kerry talked about a strong America" and strengthening America's military.
"Another technique, pervasive on both Fox and CNN," Krugman writes, "was to echo Republican claims of an 'extreme makeover' -- the assertion that what viewers were seeing wasn't the true face of the party. (Apparently all those admirals, generals and decorated veterans were ringers.)" Krugman continues, "But the real power of a script is the way it can retroactively change the story about what happened. On Thursday night, Mr. Kerry's speech was a palpable hit. A focus group organized by Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, found it impressive and persuasive. Even pro-Bush commentators conceded, at first, that it had gone over well. But a terrorism alert is already blotting out memories of last week. Although there is now a long history of alerts with remarkably convenient political timing, and Tom Ridge politicized the announcement by using the occasion to praise 'the president's leadership in the war against terror,' this one may be based on real information [note: it is not]. Regardless, it gives the usual suspects a breathing space; once calm returns, don't be surprised if some of those same commentators begin describing the ineffective speech they expected (and hoped) to see, not the one they actually saw." (New York Times/PK Archive)
August 3: Terry Krepel of the liberal Web site ConWebWatch calls on the conservative Internet news site, WorldNetDaily, to repudiate the raft of lies and slanderous personal attacks it is mounting on John Kerry and his family. Publisher Joseph Farah has, in recent columns, slammed the Kerrys, calling Kerry "a privileged rich boy," "traitorous," "rotten to the core," and "truly dangerous...truly contemptuous...truly egomaniacal...truly without character...truly transparent as a political huckster and charlatan." Farah has attacked Teresa Heinz Kerry as "mentally unbalanced," adding: "Let me make this simple: This woman is nuts. She's certifiable." Farah's site is funded by, among other prominent Republican financiers, Pittsburgh billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. WND has run at least four stories repeating the baseless, Drudge Report-sourced lie about Kerry's so-called affair with an intern. It has also accused Kerry of helping a defense contractor who later illegally donated to Kerry's campaign, but failed to note that the Kerry campaign returned the money, and the contractor donated heavy sums to three Republican candidates. WND has also pounded on the false allegations that a charitable foundation, the Tides Center, associated with Heinz Kerry has donated money to violent, extremist organizations: "Teresa Heinz Kerry was behind the funding of radical causes including Act-Up, Islamist jihadists, anarchists who disrupted the Seattle World Trade Organization meeting and communist front groups," Farah wrote. Not only is Heinz Kerry not on the board of directors of Tides, as Farah asserts, but the center only donates money to environmental causes, a fact that is easily ascertained by examining their financial statements. Farah and WND do not confine their allegations to the opinion pages, but spill them over into what they call "straight news" stories. WND is the publisher of The Many Faces of John Kerry, a "biography" of the candidate by Whitewater investigator David Bossie of Citizens United, who is best remembered for doctoring tapes to try to show that Bill Clinton broke the law. In 1998, WND criticized Bossie for his lies and unethical behavior, saying that Bossie "was either extremely incompetent or was intentionally trying to sabotage investigations." Apparently, times have changed for WND. WND is also in the middle of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's attacks on Kerry's war records, and has promoted their false allegations that Kerry lied about his experiences in Vietnam that earned him three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star.
The nonpartisan FactCheck Web site also disproves WND's bogus claims about Heinz Kerry. It writes, "One false message claims Teresa Heinz Kerry gave $4 million to a foundation that used the funds to support a list of 'radical' groups, including one with alleged links to Hamas and another that is said to have offered to provide a lawyer for Saddam Hussein. But public records show otherwise. Heinz Kerry's foundation money was directed to projects such as 'Sustainable Pittsburgh,' which promotes 'smart growth' strategies. Another widely circulated e-mail claims Kerry and his wife 'own' dozens of H.J. Heinz Company factories in Europe and Asia. It accuses Kerry of hypocrisy for denouncing offshoring of US jobs while 'making millions off that cheap labor.' That's also false: neither of them own Heinz. Public records show Heinz Kerry isn't an officer of the company, isn't on the company's board of directors, and isn't even close to being the largest shareholder. The Heinz Endowments do own Heinz stock -- less than 4% of the company -- but income from that stock goes to charity, not to the Kerrys personally." The remainder of the article specifically debunks each claim. (ConWebWatch [includes links to all of the WND stories in question], FactCheck)
August 3: Republicans in Arizona are crying election fraud -- perpetrated by their own party members. In May, Republican Mike Hellon lost his party post as national committeeman to conservative challenger Randy Pullen, by a mere five votes out of 573 cast. But when questions arose about the validity of the vote, and the party leadership mounted an investigation, the investigation showed that Pullen supporters committed vote fraud -- some voted more than once using other delegates' credentials in a move they term "stuffing the ballot box." The party's attorney declared that "the available evidence is sufficient to conclude that illegal voting likely took place in the election for national committeeman," enough "to make an election challenge." But party bosses didn't want a public scandal, so they squelched calls for a new election. Hellon was denied the seat he won. "It speaks volumes about the integrity of the process," he says. "This isn't the party that I have served for 31 years." Interestingly, Pullen is one of the leading supporters of the Protect Arizona Now initiative, which would, in violation of federal law, force voters to prove their citizenship in order to vote and to apply for state and local government services. Pullen and his supporters insist that "massive vote fraud" routinely occurs in Arizona due to votes cast by immigrants. Party leaders like state representative Randy Graf insists that the fraudulent election of Pullen was merely a "misunderstanding" that will be fixed by the next election. But Arizona Daily Star columnist Ernesto Portillo writes, "so when some GOP stalwarts commit electoral fraud, it's a misunderstanding. But if a non-citizen were to vote, that would be dishonest. Sorry, they can't have it both ways." (Arizona Daily Star)
August 3: Reporters from all over the globe are in America covering the conventions and upcoming elections. "I actually think there's more interest in the foreign press than in the American press about what's going on in Florida, and the sanctity of the vote," says BBC reporter Greg Palast, an expatriate American whose investigations of the 2000 election vote fraud made blazing headlines in Britain, but not America. "The discussion of how the vote may not be fixed in Florida as last time, whether the President's brother is playing games with the voting," says Palast. "That's a much bigger discussion in Europe, in Brazil, in Latin America, in Asia." (First Coast News)

August 4: Egypt strongly denies that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarek told a US general before the Iraqi invasion that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction. General Tommy Franks, the former commander of the US Central Command, has said that Mubarek told him Saddam Hussein had such weapons. "This allegation is absolutely devoid of any truth," says Mubarek's spokesperson, Maged Abdul Fatah. Franks made the statement to the US magazine Parade in an interview about his new book, American Soldier. Franks claims that both Mubarek and Jordan's King Abdullah told him about Iraq's WMDs. Franks says that Mubarek told him in January 2003, "Saddam has WMD -- biologicals, actually -- and he will use them on your troops." According to Fatah, "Mubarak's response [to Franks] was clear: Egypt is following all that is being said about this issue, but it cannot confirm that Iraq possess WMDs and it does not have any information about the possibility of Iraq using these weapons, if they exist, against US forces." (AFP/Neil Rogers)
August 4: Retired Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the former Army commander of Abu Ghraib prison, claims there was a conspiracy among her superior officers to keep her in the dark about the abuses inflicted by US soldiers on Iraqi prisoners under her command. "I have been told there's a reliable witness who's made a statement...indicating that not only was I not included in any of the meetings discussing interrogation operations, but specific measures were taken to ensure I would not have access to those facilities, that information or any of the details of interrogations at Abu Ghraib or anywhere else," she says. When asked if she thought there was a conspiracy at senior level to stop her knowing what was going on, she replies, "Correct," and adds, "From what I understand ... it was people that had full knowledge of what was going on out at Abu Ghraib who knew that they had to keep Janis Karpinski from discovering any of those activities." Asked whether she thought the conspiracy reached up to the Pentagon or the White House, she say, "The indication is that it may have." She denies reports that she watched specific instances of abuse take place: "I was never at a location where, if a prisoner was in a detention cell, he would have been hooded. That never took place." (AP/Truthout)
August 4: Three former prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, all British citizens, allege that during their two years of captivity they were subject to abuse and torture. The "Tipton Three" say, through their lawyer, that they were subject to beatings, sleep deprivation, and in the instance of Rhuhel Ahmed, interrogation with a gun to his head: "One of the US soldiers had a gun to his head and he was told if he moved they would shoot him." Lawyer Gareth Peirce says the report shows Britain's complicity in the human rights abuses at Guantanamo: "The [British government] attitude displayed the hypocrisy of the public face in the UK saying we're doing all we can and the private face there in Guantanamo involved up to their elbows in the oppression." (Guardian/CommonDreams)
August 4: At least 30% of the absentee ballots requested by overseas soldiers may go uncounted because they were sent out too late, unless Bush extends the deadline for their return. "Every election cycle, election authorities such as Chicago receive military absentee ballots days or even weeks after the deadline, thus disqualifying these votes from being included in the election tally," writes Democratic election official Theresa Petrone of Chicago. "With hundreds of thousands of military personnel serving overseas, the voting bloc obviously could determine the outcome of our next presidential election." 340,000 ballots have been sent out already. (AP/Army Times)
August 4: Ohio ex-felons are being given misinformation about their voting rights by Hamilton County (Cincinnati) election officials, in an apparent attempt to keep them from exercising their right to vote in November, according to a prison advocacy group. The Prison Reform Advocacy Center recently surveyed 140 former state prison inmates and talked to all 88 county boards of elections. The group found that one in five ex-felons don't realize they can re-register to vote, and some election boards were unaware of the law. "This is absolutely unacceptable that boards of elections that are supposed to know Ohio law...are giving misleading, inconsistent and flat-out wrong information to ex-offenders," says David Singleton, executive director of the center. In Ohio, ex-felons have to re-register before they can once again vote. Ex-felons who try to register to vote by mail in Hamilton County are required to attach a document from the state prison system or adult parole authority proving they are no longer in prison. Singleton says the requirement is unnecessary under Ohio law, but Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican secretary of state who also co-chairs the Bush re-election campaign, says the requirement is acceptable. Singleton also says the Hamilton County office is one of 20 in the state that incorrectly said ex-felons were not eligible to vote. Reform Advocacy Center officials called each office three times, posing as ex-felons, and were often given misinformation about their voting rights. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
August 4: The CIA has ordered Michael Scheuer, the former analyst who anonymously published the book Imperial Hubris, to curtail his TV appearances and news interviews. Scheuer is a longtime counterterrorism official at the CIA who previously ran the agency's unit that concentrated on Osama bin Laden. In his book and in subsequent interviews, he has said he believes that the war in Iraq has been a major distraction from the effort to fight al-Qaeda and that the war has also inflamed Islamic resentment against the United States while aiding al-Qaeda's recruitment among Muslims. The CIA insists that Scheuer receive written authorization from the agency before taking part in any more media interviews. (New York Times/RougeForum)
August 4: US Representative Rodney Jackson of Louisiana, after qualifying to run for re-election as a Democrat, announces he is switching parties to run as a Republican. "The Democratic Party invites you under its umbrella, but if you don't agree with everything then you're not welcome," he complains, adding, "They pushed me out from under the umbrella." Alexander doesn't mention that his district, LA-05, has recently become more conservative in makeup, making it more difficult for a Democrat to win; he also fails to inform voters that he was apparently persuaded to switch by the Republican House leadership, who promised him a seat on the House Appropriations Committee if he switched parties. Jackson will win re-election. (Monroe News-Star/Democratic Underground)
August 4: After reviewing the media coverage of the Democratic convention, the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) concludes that most of the mainstream media outlets went into the convention with a script, and they followed that script regardless of what was said or done at the convention. Some of it was accurate, for example, that the Kerry campaign was insisting on a positive tone and a relative moratorium on attacks on Bush or his administration. Many press mavens spent their time at the convention trying to find people who were willing to deviate from that prescription, and gleefully let fly at former candidate Al Sharpton for his pointed attacks on the administration's failed policies. MSNBC, whose commentators busily derided Sharpton before he stepped onto the stage, actually cut coverage of Sharpton during his speech as "a favor to the Democratic party." Before Sharpton spoke, MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews attacked Sharpton for being a "humorist" who "probably hurt this campaign." Newsweek's Howard Fineman, alongside Matthews, agreed that Sharpton's campaign "was not to be taken seriously, frankly." Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin asked the panelists to "think of the contrast between Jesse Jackson in '88...or you think of Obama the other night, last night, where he's a future candidate." Goodwin didn't make clear why Sharpton could only be compared to other African Americans. Nor did Fineman, the author of several love-letter profiles of Bush, explain where he thought Sharpton ought to have been staying on the campaign trail.
Though the convention delegates reacted quite enthusiastically to Sharpton's speech, MSNBC cut away from the speech in order to continue their attacks on Sharpton unhindered by the activist's actual remarks. Matthews pondered: "I have got to wonder tonight, Howard and Doris, if this is doing any good for the Democratic Party. They're trying to reach those middle 20 percent." Fineman echoed his consternation, saying he was "very surprised, given the way the Kerry campaign has tried to control and modulate this message here. They didn't need to do this tonight. African-American voters are going turn out in droves for John Kerry and John Edwards regardless. They will walk through walls for them.... He is the only guy -- he could actually turn off the black vote, yes." Goodwin concurred: "In fact, the yelling in the rally right now is like chalk on a board, a blackboard. It's grating. You can't bear to listen to it." (MSNBC's viewers, of course, weren't allowed to determine for themselves whether the "yelling," as they termed it, was listenable or not.) Instead, Fineman observed, "I think, frankly, it's an insult. It's an insult, I think, as an outsider, to African-American voters that they're giving this guy as much time as they are."
After MSNBC pulled the plug, Matthews told his viewers, "We're doing a favor to the Democratic party right now. This is a partisan act. We've taken him off the air." The pundits shared a laugh, before Fineman added: "It's completely counterproductive to what the aim of tonight was, to introduce John Edwards as the spokesman of and tribune of rural people, moderate voters, you know, not necessarily African-Americans, who are already in the camp, already in the camp of the Democratic Party." Interviewing Sharpton after he spoke, even NBC anchor Brian Williams appeared clueless about Sharpton's speech, referring to the "teleprompter that just sat there for what seemed like a half-hour while you did a riff on whatever you did a riff on." FAIR asks, "Has it really come down to reporters taking politicians to task for not just reading off a teleprompter?" (FAIR)
August 4: Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist John Fund lied about the content of a media poll of delegates to the Democratic convention in order to allege that their views fall outside of the political mainstream. In a recent Journal column, he grossly distorted one statistic from the poll and cited two other statistics that do not appear in the poll at all. To add insult to injury, Fund repeated the long-discredited Republican talking point that Kerry is "the most liberal" senator in Congress. Fund wrote on August 2, "Nine out of 10 delegates polled totally oppose the Iraq war, three-fourths support abortion with no restrictions whatsoever. Only 4% want tax cuts and 95% say that gay marriage should be legally recognized." The Media Matters article goes into detail about the poll; to sum it up, Fund misrepresents the Democratic delegates as being far more liberal on abortion than they really are, 82% of the delegates want some form of tax cuts, and 44%, not 95%, of the delegates support gay marriage. (Media Matters)
August 4: The conservative authors of a new book, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order, blasts the Bush administration neo-cons for their invasion and occupation of Iraq from a more traditionally conservative viewpoint. The authors are Stefan Halper, a US policymaker under past Republican administrations who now teaches at Cambridge, and Jonathan Clarke, a retired British diplomat currently based at the libertarian Cato Institute. Halper and Clarke state, with strong evidence, that the invasion went against the wishes of the largest oil industries, epitomized by the critiques of well-connected former Republican officials such as George H.W. Bush, James Baker, and Brent Scowcroft. They also argue that the invasion was ideologically based, and has been a disaster for the American economy (aside from a few firms like Halliburton and some of the larger arms-makers). Worse, in the course of the occupation, the authors argue, the Bush administration has forfeited the cooperation and goodwill of traditional American allies such as France and Germany, as well as the goodwill of a plethora of developing nations.
Reviewer Jim Lobe writes, "To Halper and Clarke, the neo-conservative worldview revolves around three basic themes: that 'the human condition is defined as a choice between good and evil;' that military power and the willingness to use it are the fundamental determinants in relations between states; and that the Middle East and 'global Islam' should be the primary focus in US foreign policy. These core beliefs create certain predispositions: analyzing foreign policy in terms of 'black-and-white, absolute moral categories;' espousing the 'unipolar' power of the USand disdaining conventional diplomacy, multilateral institutions or international law; seeing international criticism as evidence of 'American virtue;' regarding the use of military power as the first, rather than last, resort in dealing with the enemy, particularly when anything less might be considered 'appeasement;' and harking back to the administration of former President Ronald Reagan as the exemplar of 'moral clarity' in foreign policy. This last tendency particularly galls the authors, not only because it ignores the fact that neo-conservatives expressed bitter and well-documented disenchantment with Reagan...over his distancing the United States from Israel after the Lebanon invasion in the early 1980s and his eager grasp after 1985 of the outstretched hand of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, but also because they see Reagan as a fundamentally optimistic leader who, in the words of his secretary of state, George Shultz, 'appealed to people's best hopes, not their fears.' By contrast, according to Halper and Clarke, 'the neo-conservative vision is one of fear cantered around (Thomas) Hobbes' doomsday vision of man in his primitive state' and 'extreme pessimism' reflected in the political philosophy of Leo Strauss, whose thought exercised a strong influence on the neo-conservative movement through its godfather Irving Kristol and assorted disciples, some of whom have risen to prominence within and around the Bush administration, particularly in the national-security arena." (IPS/CommonDreams)
August 4: Salon's James Pinkerton says the Washington Post, who still prides itself on leading the media investigation into Whitewater over 30 years ago, has now become a blatant apologist for the excesses of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, and as a result, has forfeited any perception of journalistic integrity they may retain. The Post's neocon editorial page is one of Bush's most valuable media allies: Pinkerton writes, "It's possible, of course, to find more hawkish voices than that of the Post, but none have the same wide circulation or impact -- and none have the Post's liberal reputation. Which is a gift to the neocons, who can say, 'Even the liberal Washington Post agrees with us!'" Pinkerton cites the Post's July 30 editorial, printed the morning after the Democratic convention, which lambasted John Kerry for not embracing Bush's plans for extending the occupation of Iraq. The editorial says, "Kerry last night elided the charged question of whether, as president, he would have gone to war in Iraq. He offered not a word to celebrate the freeing of Afghans from the Taliban, or Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, and not a word about helping either nation toward democracy. ...Kerry could have spoken the difficult truth that US troops will be needed for a long time. He could have reaffirmed his commitment to completing the task of helping build democracy." In other words, Kerry could have embraced Bush's foreign policy, and the Post's editorial writers are angry that he did not.
Pinkerton writes, "If I didn't know better -- the Washington Post is, after all, by great reputation, a liberal newspaper -- I would think that the Post was trying to sabotage the Democratic candidate by seeking to talk him into upholding an open-ended war policy that antagonizes most Democrats and independents. It was in another wartime election year, 1968, that such misplaced hawkishness arguably cost Democrat Hubert Humphrey the White House. In clinging to LBJ's war policy, the Minnesotan, once the icon of liberal Democrats, depressed his own turnout in dovish states like Iowa, New Jersey and Vermont, all of which he lost to Nixon. But in fact, the Post is seemingly doing its best to undo its port-side editorial reputation. The July 30 editorial was followed by one on July 31 that laid out the neocon marching orders for Iraq. Adopting the peremptory style that has worked so well for US diplomats in the past few years, the paper declared, 'The United Nations...must step up to the job' of providing peacekeeping forces for Iraq. But then, the Post quickly added, if other nations 'won't provide the troops...the United States should fill the gap.' Which is to say, the Post's editorial war stance is about the same, these days, as that of the Wall Street Journal." And its August 1 editorial presents the neocon arguments in favor of a military approach to the problems in the Sudan. Pinkerton concludes, "If the bugle-blowing Post of today had been around in the '60s, the war in Vietnam might have taken a different turn. And in the '70s, the presidency of Richard Nixon might have taken a different turn, too." (Salon)

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -- George W. Bush, August 5, 2004 (links to video clips)

August 5: Bush signs a wartime defense bill allocating a staggering $417.5 billion for the Defense Department, $25 billion of that to go to the Iraq occupation. Overwhelmingly approved by a Congress eager to show election-year support for the military, the measure includes money for 39 more Army Black Hawk helicopters, a Virginia-class attack submarine, three guided-missile destroyers and a 3.5% pay increase for troops. Earlier in the year, Bush had insisted that no more money would be required to pay for the occupation through the rest of the fiscal year, but Bush bowed to pressure from Congress to allocate more money. The bill also has nearly $78 billion for weapons purchases, $3 billion more than Bush requested. Included is more money for Air Force unmanned Predator aerial attack vehicles, Stryker combat vehicles for the Army and a DD(X) destroyer. There is $10 billion for continued work on a national missile defense system, and $100 million for the Air Force to modernize its fleet of midair refueling tankers, though House language was dropped requiring 80 of the craft to be purchased from the ailing Boeing Company. (AP/USA Today)
August 5: While the July 28 handover of power to an Iraqi interim government ostensibly turned governance in that country over to native Iraqis, in reality the handover was little more than a sham. The Iraqi government still operates under a mass of economic regulations and restrictions -- former administrator Paul Bremer's "100 Orders" -- that give sweeping advantages to American firms, while ensuring that the US continues to benefit from the Iraqi economy at the expense of the Iraqi people. Antonia Juhasz, project director at the International Forum on Globalization, writes, "The Bremer orders control every aspect of Iraqi life — from the use of car horns to the privatization of state-owned enterprises. Order No. 39 alone does no less than 'transition [Iraq ] from a...centrally planned economy to a market economy' virtually overnight and by US fiat." And the new Iraqi constitution solidifies the 100 Orders' place in Iraqi law. Some of the effects, as Juhasz writes:
- Order No. 39 allows for privatization of Iraq's 200 state-owned enterprises; 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses; "national treatment" — which means no preferences for local over foreign businesses; unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds; and 40-year ownership licenses. Thus, it forbids Iraqis from receiving preference in the reconstruction while allowing foreign corporations -- Halliburton and Bechtel, for example -- to buy up Iraqi businesses, do all of the work and send all of their money home. They cannot be required to hire Iraqis or to reinvest their money in the Iraqi economy. They can take out their investments at any time and in any amount.
- Orders No. 57 and No. 77 ensure the implementation of the orders by placing US-appointed auditors and inspector generals in every government ministry, with five-year terms and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and regulations.
- Order No. 17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq's laws. Even if they, say, kill someone or cause an environmental disaster, the injured party cannot turn to the Iraqi legal system. Rather, the charges must be brought to US courts.
- Order No. 40 allows foreign banks to purchase up to 50% of Iraqi banks.
- Order No. 49 drops the tax rate on corporations from a high of 40% to a flat 15%. The income tax rate is also capped at 15%.
- Order No. 12 suspends "all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for goods entering or leaving Iraq." This led to an immediate and dramatic inflow of cheap foreign consumer products -- devastating local producers and sellers who were thoroughly unprepared to meet the challenge of their mammoth global competitors.
Juhasz notes that these orders, by fundamentally altering Iraq's existing legal structure, violate the Hague regulations of 1907, which were ratified by the US, as well as the US Army's Law of Land Warfare. Indeed, British attorney general Lord Goldsmith warned Tony Blair that "major structural economic reforms would not be authorized by international law." Juhasz writes, "With few reconstruction projects underway and with Bremer's rules favoring US corporations, there has been little opportunity for Iraqis to go back to work, leaving nearly 2 million unemployed 1 1/2 years after the invasion and, many believe, greatly fueling the resistance. The Bremer orders are immoral and illegal and must be repealed to allow Iraqis to govern their own economic and political future." (Los Angeles Times/CommonDreams)
August 5: The International Red Cross publicly states that the case of the "Tipton Three," three British citizens tortured and abused at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, could possibly be an example of American and/or British war crimes. The former detainees have revealed that they had been beaten, shackled, photographed naked and in one incident questioned at gunpoint while in US custody. The Red Cross is joined by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, which argued that if the allegations were true they indicated systematic abuse, amounting to torture. The three were picked up in Afghanistan and held at the facility for two years before recently being released without charge. One man, Rhuhel Ahmed, alleges that an SAS soldier had interrogated him for three hours in Afghanistan while an American colleague held a gun to his head and threatened to shoot him. The trio also said that they had repeatedly complained of abuse to British consular officials. "some of the abuses alleged by the detainees would indeed constitute inhuman treatment," says Florian Westphal, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. "Inhuman treatment constitutes a grave breach of the third Geneva convention and these are often also described as war crimes." Sherman Carroll, spokesman for the Medical Foundation, says the report rings true in light of revelations about techniques of interrogation and torture elsewhere: "If [the detainees] had used the word torture, I would agree with that. This is more than 'torture-lite' [stress and duress techniques]...Guantanamo Bay should be closed down." But US officials deny the allegations and say that Guantanamo prisoners are treated humanely. (Guardian)
August 5: Abu Zubaydah, the imprisoned al-Qaeda leader in Pakistani custody since 2002, is known to have fed false information to US authorities that led to bogus terror alerts in 2002. Zubaydah's information was among the data that led the administration to issue similarly false terror alerts on August 3. According to Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda attack on US financial buildings in New York, Newark, and Washington was imminent; the White House latched on to the report, calling it "another new stream of information," and issued splashy terror alerts that captured the attention of the media and distracted it from the stories arising from John Kerry's nomination as the Democratic nominee for president. Zubaydeh's information was years out of date and easily debunked. "Horsesh*t," grouses an anonymous Homeland Security agent. "We're chasing ghosts and we're chasing our tails. How many times must this clown lead us around by the nose before we learn we have been made fools of once again?" DHS secretary Tom Ridge declares, "I categorically state that the none of the terror threats are politically motivated." (AP/Capital Hill Blue)
August 5: "JuliusBlog" provides a fascinating timeline graphic, linked here, to the various terror alerts issued by the Bush administration and the popularity ratings of Bush. He notes the following: whenever Bush's ratings dip, there's a new terror alert. Every terror alert is followed by a slight uptick of Bush approval ratings. Whenever there are many unfavorable headlines, there's another alert or announcement. As the elections approach, the number and frequency of terror alerts keeps growing, to the point that they collapse in the graphic. At the same time, Bush ratings are lower than ever. Julius notes, "[F]or the record, we are not claiming that all these alerts are politically motivated. We are sure a considerable amount of these alerts were legit and caused by real and immediate information of potential threats. What is important to note is that many of these 'immediate' terror alerts were later [shown to be based] on discredited [data] (in some cases they used old data, in other cases the announcements were less immediate and less urgent that we were lead to believe, as the press reported.) Those are the cases that could be interpreted as politically motivated, especially when they seemed to coincide with political news and events unfavorable to the administration." (JuliusBlog)
August 5: The ballyhooed Justice Department investigation into who leaked classified information to the media comes to a sudden end when investigators find that the leaker is a Republican senator. Investigators conclude that Richard Shelby, a Senate Republican, verbally divulged the information to Fox News's chief political correspondent Carl Cameron. Cameron confirmed to FBI investigators that Shelby gave the information to him during a June 19, 2002, interview, minutes after Shelby's Select Committee on Intelligence had been given the information in a classified briefing. Cameron did not air the material, but moments later, he reiterated the information to CNN reporter Dana Bash, who aired the material about a half hour later. Justice Department officials have closed the probe and referred the investigation to the Senate Ethics Committee, which is expected to make the entire issue disappear. The disclosure involved two messages that were intercepted by the National Security Agency on the eve of the 9/11 attacks but were not translated until September 12. The Arabic-language messages said "The match is about to begin" and "Tomorrow is zero hour." The Washington Post, citing senior US intelligence officials, reported the same messages in its June 20, 2002, editions. National security officials were outraged by the leak, and moments after the CNN broadcast a CIA official chastised committee members who had by then reconvened to continue the closed-door hearing. Intelligence officials, who consider intercepted communications among the most closely guarded secrets, said the breach proved that Congress could not be trusted with classified information. But experts in electronic surveillance said the information about the NSA's intercepts contained nothing harmful because it did not reveal the source of the information or the methods used to gather it. Vice President Cheney upbraided the Senate and House committee chairmen in separate phone calls the next day, and White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush had deep concerns about "anything that could harm our ability to maintain sources and methods, and anything that could interfere with America's ability to fight the war on terrorism." The panels' chairmen, Democrat Bob Graham and Republican Porter Goss, responded immediately by requesting a Justice Department investigation into the disclosure, an unusual move that brought criticism from other members of Congress. The FBI asked 17 senators to turn over phone records, appointment calendars and schedules. The FBI probe included an interview with a staff member on the intelligence committee who said that Shelby was trying to leak the information to show the shortcomings of the intelligence community. Shelby had called repeatedly for the resignation of then-CIA Director George Tenet, whom he said was not up to the job. The Shelby probe was one of several ongoing leak investigations, including one trying to determine who leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame Wilson, to columnist Robert Novak. (Washington Post)
August 5: A storm of controversy has broken out over the latest "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ad attacking John Kerry's war record. Kerry's former commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliot, recently told the Boston Globe that he had made a "terrible mistake" in signing an affidavit saying that Kerry did not deserve his Silver Star: "It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. ...I knew it was wrong.... In a hurry I signed it and faxed it back. That was a mistake." The SBVT then released a statement saying that they had another affidavit from Elliot claiming he was misquoted by the Globe and reaffirming his claims: "I fully reaffirm my statement in the Swift Boat [ad] in which I said that John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam," the statement reads. The Kerry campaign calls the ad "an inflammatory outrageous lie," and has asked local TV stations not to air it. "Some of these men defended John Kerry's honor on his military record in 1996 and so they were either lying then or lying now," says Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan. "Either way, it is gutter politics."
The Kerry campaign has countered with affidavits from three of Kerry's colleagues in Vietnam who were personally involved in the actions in question, including one, James Rassman, who says Kerry saved his life. Those questioning Kerry's medals, Rassmann says, are "angry about John speaking out against the [Vietnam] war." The White House has tried to finesse the issue, accusing Kerry of running similarly negative ads and saying, falsely, that the Bush campaign has no connection to the SBVT. "We have not questioned Kerry's service in Vietnam," spokesman Scott McClellan says ingenuously. "We have called for an immediate cessation of these ads and hope John Kerry will, too." The ad coincides with a new book by the SBVT, Unfit for Command, which rolls forth a farrago of lies, insinuations, and misstatements about Kerry's wartime record, based largely on second- and third-hand stories from people who never served with Kerry. The book has become a best-seller. It is coauthored by Jerome Corsi and John O'Neill; Corsi is a longtime poster on the radically conservative Internet blog Free Republic, where he made numerous racist posts before deleting them (those posts are documented just below). O'Neill has long been an enemy of Kerry, and in 1971 appeared on the Dick Cavett TV show to debate Kerry over Kerry's involvement with Vietnam Veterans Against the War at the behest of then-president Richard Nixon.
More interestingly, the Kerry campaign has amassed 36 pages of documents proving that the SBVT is funded and promoted by Texas Republicans with strong ties to Bush. "Far from being a grassroots organization of veterans, this group is a front for the right-wing Texas Republicans to try and take away one of John Kerry's political strengths -- his service to the country in Vietnam," the Kerry campaign says. Houston homebuilder Bob Perry has donated at least $100,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Perry's other donations in the 2003-04 cycle include $10,000 to the pro-Republican Club for Growth and at least $19,250 to federal candidates and party committees, including $2,000 to Bush's re-election effort. Over the past four years, Perry has given around $5 million to Republican candidates and causes. Perry is known to be close to the Bush family, and active in state and national Republican politics. In addition, the SBVT was organized with the assistance of Merrie Spaeth, a Republican public relations executive whose late husband, Tex Lezar, ran for Texas lieutenant governor on George W. Bush's ticket in 1994. (Spaeth helped organize the savage anti-McCain smear perpetuated by the Bush primary campaign in 2000.) The SBVT Web site is operated by William Franke, a conservative St. Louis businessman with close ties to attorney general John Ashcroft and the Missouri Republican Party. Perry is joined in financing the SBVT by members of the Crow family, another set of heavy Republican donors from Texas. The group has paid commissions to Robert Hahn, a right-wing activist who runs the Free Republic Web blog. And the SBVT ads are produced by the same team that had done the 1988 ads for the elder Bush's presidential campaign that successfully mocked Democratic contender Michael Dukakis after Dukakis made the unfortunate attempt to shore up his military credentials by driving a tank for the cameras. (AP/CBS, Boston Globe, Democratic Underground, Frank Rich p.139-40)
A fine source for the reality behind the Swift Boat Veterans' allegations is Swift Vets and POWs for "Truth" v. The Truth. This site contains far more information than is contained within my pages.
August 5: George W. Bush, Bush family members, and top White House officials received over $127,000 in gifts last year from Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah. The State Department's annual tally of gifts to administration officials shows that Abdullah gave them $127,600 in jewelry and other presents last year, including a diamond-and-sapphire jewelry set for first lady Laura Bush that was valued at $95,500. Federal law prohibits government officials from taking more than $285 in gifts, so the jewelry and other goods, technically federal property, are housed at the National Archives. The gift receivers, however, can take the gifts out on "indefinite loan." Abdullah also gave the Bush family two sets of diamond and white gold jewelry by the exclusive Italian jeweler Bulgari and an $8,500 mantle clock "elaborately detailed in silver and gold vermeil." Bush received the gifts on June 3, 2003, while he was at a Middle East summit with Arab leaders, including Abdullah, in Egypt. Abdullah's other gifts included ornamental daggers with ivory handles, worth $1,500, for Chief of Staff Andrew Card and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice; a miniature silver sword for Secretary of State Colin Powell, worth $1,500; and a small golden statue of a horse for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, worth $700. The second-largest single gift was for Bush himself, from Russian President Vladimir Putin: a book of original watercolor portraits of the 43 US presidents, bound in red velvet studded with precious gems. It was valued at $45,000. Other foreign leaders gave Bush pens, watches, briefcases, ceremonial clothing, framed artwork and a plethora of ornate and valuable trinkets and jewelry. White House spokeswoman Erin Healy says, "These are gifts that President and Mrs. Bush have accepted on behalf of the nation. Protocol dictates that leaders of nations exchange gifts." (Knight-Ridder/CommonDreams)
August 5: With the war in Iraq losing public support, the Bush administration has countered by making a public-relations decision not to feature Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a frequent speaker for administration policy. By keeping Rumsfeld out of the public eye, they believe Iraq will assume a lower profile among voters. Some administration officials disagree with the decision: "He's our rock star," says one senior administration official. "He should be out there." Rumsfeld, once a fixture on TV talk shows and news programs, has not made such an appearance in months, and of those he has made, he has appeared most frequently on local media or on cable news programs such as those hosted by Fox News, which can guarantee him a friendly audience and interviewer. "He's not a rock star anymore," says a senior Republican aide. The centrist Brookings Institute's Ivo Daalder says, "Look at the front page -- Iraq is not there. I think this is a deliberate strategy by the Bush administration: This is what [the transfer of sovereignty] was all about." Daalder believes that the administration's strategy is "working politically -- it is protecting the president, and that's its purpose. The essence of the administration's strategy, starting back last November, was to have Iraq disappear from the American political scene so it would not be here, politically, by the time the election came around." But Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute believes differently: "The purpose that brought him to the fore -- remember his stud muffin era? -- to discuss the issues that were facing us on a really daily basis, they are certainly not front and center anymore, and thank goodness." (Los Angeles Times/CommonDreams)
August 5: In an attempt to shore up his moderate-conservative credentials among the right wing of the Democratic Party, John Kerry has released a list of around 200 entrepeneurs who support his campaign. Many are from the entertainment industry, including Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein; former Hollywood mogul Barry Diller; the chairman of Warner Music, Edgar Bronfman; Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg; Peter Chernin, the chief operating officer of News Corporation; Jann Wenner, chairman of Rolling Stone magazine's publisher, Wenner Media; and fashion designers Donna Karan, Vera Wang and Diane von Furstenberg. Other industry moguls backing kerry include Robert Fisher, chairman of The Gap, August Busch, president of Budweiser's brewer, Anheuser-Busch, Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape; and Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google; as well as a number of Wall Street financiers and bankers. Kerry has already enlisted billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Apple Computers founder Steve Jobs to his team, but the Republicans have deeper support among the business community and Bush has raised far more than Kerry from corporate donors. Owsley Brown, chairman of Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Daniel's, is a former Bush supporter now backing Kerry. He says, "It's not something someone does lightly and certainly not for someone like me, a registered Republican all my life. But it seems pretty clear that our choice last time has not been such a good one for the United States." Former Chrysler chief Lee Iacocca campaigned for Bush in 2000 but has switched to Kerry, saying Bush is taking the US "in the wrong direction." Wall Street chiefs backing Kerry include Robert Hormats, the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, Thomas Lee, who runs the venture capital firm Thomas Lee Company, Arthur Levitt, the former chairman of the securities and exchange commission and the investment banker Bruce Wasserstein. (Guardian/CommonDreams)
August 5: CBS producer Dick Meyer writes a hard rejoinder to Bush's August 2 statement that "[w]e are a nation in danger." "I don't buy it," Meyer writes. "I think America in 2004 is about as far removed from fundamental danger as any nation in history has ever been. We may be scared, but we are, in fact, safe. Safe, at least, by any reasonable historic measure. No other country on earth has military might even close to ours. Has such a global monopoly on armed power ever existed? Has any nation had less to fear from its neighbors and foreign armies?" Meyer believes that Bush is indulging in that favorite attention-getting tactic, fearmongering. "Modern America does know real danger. The nuclear duel of the Cold War was real danger. America is safer than it was when the Soviet Union existed. The threat of nuclear proliferation, of a nuclear attack from a small state or terrorists, existed then, too. The country is probably better prepared to prevent that now. We are safer from plague, pestilence, famine and weather than any of our ancestors ever were. We have one of the most stable governments in human history. There is no risk of a dictator, a Gestapo or a civil war. ...America does have enemies -- crazy, sadistic, tenacious, growing and wily enemies. America is an open and ethnically diverse society with vast borders, huge tourism and immigration. So the country is of course vulnerable to terrorism.
"After 9/11, Americans feel that acutely and perhaps that is sad. But no one in government underestimates the country's vulnerability or the power of the unconventional enemy. This does not, however, add up to a nation in danger. It adds up to something that sounds too callous for politicians to say out loud. America is vulnerable to the tragedy and trauma of a terrorists attacks. There is a much more remote danger of an act of terror with a nuclear device that could eclipse 9/11. But there is no danger of the equivalent of war on our soil, of mass loss of life, of a crippled economy, disrupted civilian life and destabilized government. Israel is in danger. Palestinians are in danger. Iraq is in danger. Sudan is in danger. Colombia is in danger. America is not in danger." Meyer goes even farther: "And America is not at war. What happened in Afghanistan and Iraq was war. We should have stuck to that old-fashioned use of the word war. The battle now and ahead with the evildoers is not likely to be helped by calling it war any longer. Perhaps it was necessary to use the rhetoric of war after 9/11 to marshal an adequate and swift response to the newly real threat. Perhaps. We've had wars on crime, a war on drugs and even a war on poverty. Why not a war on terror? There is no intrinsic reason why not. But war, and even war rhetoric, can rationalize unwise and uncharacteristic choices at home –- restricted civil liberties, plundered treasury, over-reaching bureaucracy, fear-mongering, and misplaced secrecy. Both the administration and the opposition party have bungled that balance; the glaring example of that is the dishonest case that was sold and bought for invading Iraq. Both sides have squandered credibility. 'War' is a word that ends arguments. So is 'danger.' The president has tried to sell a lot of policy by saying it was necessary because we are at war and in danger and so have the Democrats. We don't need to declare ourselves 'a nation in danger' or 'a nation at war' to carefully reform the intelligence bureaucracy, to respond to discovered plots and threats, to catch terrorists or to get other nations to help our cause. We don't need to be a nation of crybabies or a nation that cries wolf." (CBS)
August 5: Liberal columnist Sidney Blumenthal notes that the terror alerts issued by the Bush administration, bogus as they are, have had a powerful negative effect on the Kerry campaign. "The effect of the alert has been to throw the campaign into turmoil and momentarily freeze it," he writes. "John Kerry decided to accept the administration's explanations at face value. His critique of Bush's war on terrorism must be made with iron discipline, based on the facts, not suspicions. Yet other Democrats claimed the administration was using the situation for political advantage, putting additional pressure on Kerry, who has to hold fast." Blumenthal calls DHS secretary Tom Ridge's overt attempt to politicize the alerts by saying, "We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror," "clumsy," but the entire agenda behind the alerts was nothing but political. And as political tactics, the alerts were successful. Blumenthal notes that many savvy observers dismiss the alerts as meaningless and emblematic of Bush's politicization of national security, but the effect on the average American voter has been to make Kerry appear defensive and subsidiary to Bush's leadership in the war on terror. (Guardian)
August 5: Independent journalist Gerald Plessner reluctantly uses the word "fascist" to describe Fox News: "But I am inclined to use fascist to describe FOX Network owner Rupert Murdoch, his main mouthpiece Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes, who runs FOX News. Murdoch's and Ailes' goals and O'Reilly's conduct share so much with the actions and words of the Third Reich it is frightening." He refers to the new documentary Outfoxed, which details the absolute control wielded by the Republican National Committee, through Murdoch and Ailes, on the reporting and commentary aired on Fox News. "The film shows how FOX News controls its message through a daily memo from Roger Ailes and other managers to all producers, directors and on-air personalities," Plessner writes. "Every employee is expected to follow and reinforce the daily line, which is enforced with Stalinist-style discipline. The daily memo even issues words to be used by every on-air personality, words like flip-flop. So if you watch Fox and everyone refers to John Kerry as a flip-flopper, it's because the White House and the Republican National Committee did so and FOX backs their propaganda 100%. Everything on FOX News is designed to advance the Republican party. One person in the film said, 'Their slogan "We report. You decide" is the greatest hoax. No news channel reports less and tells its viewers more of how to decide.'" He writes, "I once believed that Alan Colmes, who is Sean Hannity's limp foil, was the most pitiful person on Fox News. But after viewing this film, I wonder how anyone who works there can hold their head up at the supermarket. I am sure money has something to do with it, but even the guy at the news stand in the lobby must have trouble looking at himself in the mirror each morning." (Gerald Plessner)
August 5: Musician Bruce Springsteen explains why he has decided to come out in favor of the Kerry-Edwards ticket, in an op-ed in the New York Times. "Personally, for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics," he writes. "Instead, I have been partisan about a set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for all of our citizens. This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out. Through my work, I've always tried to ask hard questions. Why is it that the wealthiest nation in the world finds it so hard to keep its promise and faith with its weakest citizens? Why do we continue to find it so difficult to see beyond the veil of race? How do we conduct ourselves during difficult times without killing the things we hold dear? Why does the fulfillment of our promise as a people always seem to be just within grasp yet forever out of reach? I don't think John Kerry and John Edwards have all the answers. I do believe they are sincerely interested in asking the right questions and working their way toward honest solutions. They understand that we need an administration that places a priority on fairness, curiosity, openness, humility, concern for all America's citizens, courage and faith. ...Like many others, in the aftermath of 9/11, I felt the country's unity. I don't remember anything quite like it. I supported the decision to enter Afghanistan and I hoped that the seriousness of the times would bring forth strength, humility and wisdom in our leaders. Instead, we dived headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women under circumstances that are now discredited. We ran record deficits, while simultaneously cutting and squeezing services like afterschool programs. We granted tax cuts to the richest 1 percent (corporate bigwigs, well-to-do guitar players), increasing the division of wealth that threatens to destroy our social contract with one another and render mute the promise of 'one nation indivisible.' It is through the truthful exercising of the best of human qualities -- respect for others, honesty about ourselves, faith in our ideals -- that we come to life in God's eyes. It is how our soul, as a nation and as individuals, is revealed. Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting." Springsteen is one of over 20 singers and bands touring the country in support of Kerry; the others include, among others, Pearl Jam, the Dixie Chicks, and REM. (New York Times, Guardian/CommonDreams)
August 5: The Los Angeles Weekly profiles the two creators of MoveOn.org, the liberal fund-raising Web site that has drawn so much flak from conservatives. Husband-and-wife team Wes Boyd and Joan Blades were rather apolitical computer industry figures who created the software company Berkeley Systems and ran it until selling it off in 1997. In 1998, the two were horrified at the treatment meted out to then-president Bill Clinton by the right wing and the media. One night, after dinner, the two sent out a brief e-mail to around 100 friends, asking them to sign a petition asking Congress to "censure the president and move on to pressing issues facing our nation." Those friends circulated the e-mail to their friends, and before long they had garnered over 400,000 signatures. They were amazed, and somewhat bewildered, by the huge response and their instant fame as a new breed of political figures -- Internet activists. They formed the Internet-based organization MoveOn.org, which now boasts 2.2 million members in the US and around 800,000 aborad. In 2000 MoveOn raised over $2 million in small donations for liberal candidates around the country, and helped remove from office several of the Republicans who had voted to impeach Clinton. Boyd and Blades chose not to involve their organization in the Florida election recount, but after 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, became active again.
They still aren't particularly comfortable with the attention they've garnered. They were treated like heroes at a recent Take Back America conference, with pundit Arianna Huffington gushing, "It's so incredible to actually revere people, and I do revere all the people of MoveOn.org!" Almost everyone at the conference, which featured MoveOn receiving the Paul Wellstone Citizenship Award, almost everyone stood up when asked if they had taken action at least once during the past year through MoveOn. "It's funny, because they've all become sort of political celebrities," says singer Moby, who provided the musical entertainment at the conference. "None of them expected that, none of them anticipated it. I think they're all a little taken aback [at having gone from] being smart nerdy kids in their bedrooms with computers, and suddenly they're national political stars."
Blades recalls the e-mail that she and her husband sent out in 1998, the inspiration for their organization. "[T]he original MoveOn petition was one sentence that brought people across the political spectrum together: 'Censure the president and move on to pressing issues facing the nation.' You could be Republican, Libertarian, Democrat -- people signed that petition because you could come together around that. It was the healthy, appropriate thing to do." In 2002, the two teamed with a young peace campaigner, Eli Parisier, and he helped transform the organization into one of the prime forces behind the resurgent anti-war movement. However, Blades says MoveOn will not be part of any protests centering around the upcoming Republican convention in New York. "We tend to step into vacuums," she explains. "There was a vacuum of leadership on the issue of [Clinton's] impeachment. No one was saying, Censure the guy. Tell him you did bad, but get back to work -- that was our role. On Iraq, the administration was starting to talk about going to war, and no one was saying anything. One of the beauties of MoveOn is that if we see an opportunity to do something helpful, we can do it, and we can do it in short order."
Financially, the non-profit MoveOn is a tremendous success, raising millions of dollars for liberal candidates in all 50 states. Almost all of their donations come, not from fatcat corporate donors, but from "ordinary" people at events like April's plethora of local bake sales, which brought in $750,000. They function under the controversial "527 rule," named for a section of the tax code that allows organizations like theirs to raise money without restriction as long as they are not affiliated with a particular political party. Officially, MoveOn neither endorses John Kerry nor calls for the defeat of George Bush. They, and organizations like theirs, have had much success in countering the traditional huge monetary advantage enjoyed by Republicans, who routinely raise double or triple the money that Democrats do from corporate donors. Republicans originally cried foul and tried to get MoveOn and other groups shut down; failing to do so, they have begun their own 527 groups, the largest of which, the Club for Growth, has raised around $5 million so far. Since October, MoveOn's voter fund, which goes toward financing campaign ads in battleground states, has raised $10 million.
MoveOn is perhaps best known for its famous "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad competition, where anyone with a computer and some graphical ability could create their own ad, submit it, and have it voted on by the membership. One ad, which was not endorsed or chosen by MoveOn, compared Bush to Hitler, infuriating Republicans and leading to a tremendous surge of often-negative publicity. Republicans countered, after screaming about the inappropriate nature of the ad, with their own ad that compared Kerry, Michael Moore, Howard Dean, and Al Gore to Hitler and other Nazis. The winner of "Bush in 30 Seconds" was "Child's Pay," a powerful ad that dramatized the future cost of the Bush administration's deficits by showing children doing menial jobs such as washing dishes, mopping floors and picking up trash. MoveOn has lined up a number of celebrity artists for future ads, including documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, Rob Reiner, Margaret Cho, Richard Linklater, and Allison Anders. Alicia Silverstone will appear in a spot directed by Woody Harrelson, and Al Franken, Aaron Sorkin, Ed Asner, Kevin Bacon, Danny Glover and Scarlett Johansson will be writing scripts or supplying voice-overs."
Boyd, who still comes across as a businessman, says he likes to build systems and companies from the ground up and nurture them until he can turn them over to someone else. That's his plan for MoveOn, which still only has 10 employees. But on the Internet, a single staffer with a laptop can rally half a million protesters worldwide, which Parisier did in the winter of 2003. Boyd and Blades plan to eventually found another software company, but for now, they remain focused on MoveOn. "The system in this country has really become all about fund-raising," Boyd says. "It has become about leaders spending the majority of their time not on policy or figuring out the big issues that affect us all, because they have to spend that time on the telephone talking to rich people to bring in the money so that they can mount the next campaign. And it's just a disaster. It's a disaster for them personally, and it's a disaster for the country, and because this country's so powerful, for the world. We can't be strategic." Republican pollster Allan Hoffenblum says that the Internet and MoveOn have merely mobilized what he calls "the hate-Bush crowd," the liberal equivalent of Rush Limbaugh's dittoheads. Republicans and swing voters, he says, pay no attention to Web organizations like MoveOn any more than liberals listen to Limbaugh. But many others believe that the Internet can serve the function to liberals what talk radio did for the right. Boyd would like to believe it. "There's a myth of America being a right-wing country," he says. "There's also a myth of America being a divided country. There's so much Americans agree on that we can use this technology, and this way of connecting, to do good work. So we can actually get stuff done instead of fighting." Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, a member of the mainstream Democratic organization, is leery of the effect groups like MoveOn might have: "What would happen if American corporations started attacking Democrats as part of their normal business?" he wonders, failing to notice that many already have through their Republican colleagues. Caddell dislikes any kind of divisiveness, including the tack taken by MoveOn: "What politically is being accomplished by the vitriol inside activist circles towards Bush?" he asks. "It blinds people. It reminds me of watching Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell at work -- all liberals are evil. [Hating Bush] is a secular religious thing, and it's not very smart politically. If I were a Republican, which I'm not, I know what I'd be doing with it."
But many Democrats, particularly on the more left-leaning side of the party, believe that now that the Republicans have so thoroughly divided the country already, they would be foolish not to recognize the fact and use it. MoveOn and other organizations believe that the Democrats can succeed, not by just the traditional appeals to the chronically undecided, numerically small "swing voters," but by energizing the base -- a methodology used for over a decade by the Republicans. MoveOn, says Boyd, is all about bringing "as much diversity into [the] power structure as possible. That is, ordinary citizens...who can provide the countervailing influence against the notion that some kind of inside-the-beltway elite can make all our decisions."
In 2004, MoveOn's initial success was with its unofficial alignment with the Howard Dean campaign; after Dean dropped out, MoveOn succeeded in bringing many Dean supporters in to the Kerry campaign. It managed to transform what was in some ways an anti-war campaign with a presidential candidate at its head, into a more traditional electoral campaign. The combination has resulted in an unprecedented level of support from left-wing and liberal voters for a more moderate, mainstream Democrat. Democrats who last got excited about Gene McCarthy and George McGovern are now canvassing neighborhoods and manning phone banks for John Kerry, whom many of them mock for being a bore and sounding like a Republican even as they work on his behalf.
Perhaps more importantly, MoveOn members are learning that they can have an impact on states outside of their own. Organizers in strongly progressive states like New York and California, or in more conservative states like South Carolina, who once felt that their efforts were going for naught, now can work to get out the vote in battleground states like Ohio and Florida, where every Democratic vote will indeed count. Reporter Brendan Bernhard concludes, "MoveOn has not only successfully channeled the activist left into the election, it has vastly expanded the size of the available cadre by making it so much easier to cross the line from getting into arguments to actually doing something." (Los Angeles Weekly)

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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

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