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

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August 11: Nearly 200 have died, and 600 wounded, as fighting breaks out across Iraq in response to the US's move to clear the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army from the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf. "Major operations to destroy the militia have begun," a US commander says. As tanks roll in to the center of the city, and air strikes level buildings, many of the militia members have retreated into underground tunnels and into the holy sites, including the Shrine of the Imam Ali, a huge mosque revered by Shi'ites throughout the Middle East. Iraqi Deputy President Irbrahim al-Jaffari, calls the US onslaught "vicious;" Najaf deputy governor Jawdat Kadam Najem al-Kuraishi quits in protest. saying, "I resign from my post denouncing all the US terrorist operations they are doing against this holy city." Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi says the shrine would be safe from attack and would not be entered by the US-led forces. "His excellency is holding the armed elements inside the shrine responsible for any harm or damage that may occur," a statement from Allawi's office says. Reporter Nicolas Rothwell writes, "The outcome of the conflict may be inevitable, given the overwhelming firepower on the US side, but the images that may reassure anxious US voters will inflame opinion in the broader Arab world. This dilemma is understood by the rebels and forms the core of their strategy: they have retreated into the holy complex because it is there the US and Iraqi government forces, in destroying the uprising, will do their own cause the greatest harm."
Throughout Iraq and the Middle East, Arab and Muslim religious and secular leaders ask the Americans not to do anything that might harm the sacred mosque of the Imam Ali, in the center of Najaf. Condoleezza Rice realizes that such an attack on the Sadrist forces holed up inside the mosque would permanently alienate Shi'ites throughout the Middle East and destroy any chance of creating a unified Iraq. Orders from Washington flood into Baghdad, counseling caution and diplomacy over pitched fighting.
One problem is Allawi, who as a secular Shi'ite has little use for the clerics who wield so much power in his country. The most revered and powerful Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, is in London for surgery; Allawi doesn't even want him back in the country. Allawi privately wants to storm the mosque no matter what the consequences. "We've got to crush them," Allawi tells US officials. The US, in return, alternately orders and cajoles Allawi to back off on his determination to keep Sistani out of the country, and on his inclination to attack the Sadrists head-on. Instead of pitched battles, US Special Forces and Navy SEALs are dispatched to the city, where their snipers pick off dozens of al-Sadr's men.
Unexpectedly, Sistani gives his blessing to a march on Najaf and the besieging of the Shrine of Ali. Sistani finally engineers a truce after thousands of protesters descend peacefully on Najaf, and he and al-Sadr meet to discuss the standoff. The US promises not to attack al-Sadr's forces as they exit the shrine. Sistani becomes "golden" in the eyes of Bush and the senior war planners; al-Sadr retires to his base of power in poverty-stricken Sadr City, the northeastern quadrant of Baghdad with 2 million residents. (The Australian/Information Clearinghouse, Bob Woodward)
August 11: Further proof that Bush lied about Iraq's supposed nuclear program emerges, when Jafar Dhia Jafar, who ran Saddam Hussein's nuclear program for 25 years, tells the BBC that the program was shut down in July 1991 by UN inspections and US sanctions following the Gulf War. Jafar says that the program was "a few years away" from being able to put together a nuclear bomb, but even so, after the US sanctions under Bush and Clinton, didn't have the resources to keep the program going. "We had orders to hand over the equipment to the Republican guards," Jafar says. "And they had orders to destroy the equipment that we handed over to them." Jafar says that everything was destroyed, such that the program could not be restarted at the time, and it never did restart. Similarly, the country's chemical and biological weapons programs were stopped and never reactivated, he says. "There was no capability," he adds. "There was no chemical or biological or any of what are called weapons of mass destruction." Some materials were never accounted for, giving weapons inspectors reason to believe that there were still some weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but Jafar now says that production figures were exaggerated, and the inspectors' estimates merely reflected the difference between existing materials and the inflated figures. "That doesn't mean the material actually exists," he says. Jafar also says the British and US governments' assertion that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger is false, that Baghdad already had a supply of uranium purchased from Niger in the 1980s. "We had 500 tons of yellow cake [uranium] in Baghdad so why would we get more?" he says. (BBC)
August 11: Terrorism experts worry that the recent spate of bogus terror alerts, and the Bush administration's effort to milk publicity from captures of high-profile terrorist leaders, are hindering efforts to curb terrorism around the globe. Many say that the White House is attempting to use fear to improve Bush's chances for re-election in November. "It causes a problem. There's no doubt about that," says Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies. "The moment you make any announcement, you tell the other side what you know. As a rule of thumb, you should keep quiet about what you know." British security officials are angry over recent US revelations of terrorist threats and arrests, says Paul Beaver, an international defense analyst based in London. He says the attitude among some British intelligence officials was that the "Americans have a very strange way of thanking their friends, by revealing names of agents, details of plots and operations." Larry Johnson, a former senior counterterrorism official at the State Department and CIA, says that the leaks were part of a pattern in which the administration had undercut its own efforts to fight terrorism by divulging details when doing so was deemed politically advantageous. The administration "has a dismal track record in protecting these secrets," says Johnson. "We have now learned, thanks to White House leaks, that the al-Qaeda operative was being used to help authorities around the world locate and apprehend other al-Qaeda terrorists," Johnson says, citing reports that the disclosures "enabled other al-Qaeda operatives to escape." He adds, "Protecting secrets and sources is serious business. Regrettably, the Bush administration appears to be putting more emphasis on politicizing intelligence and the war on terror. That approach threatens our national security, in my judgment." Kai Hirschmann, deputy director of the Institute for Terrorism Research in Essen, Germany, says the Bush administration is "creating an overall tension that has both tactics and politics around it. When I hear things about concrete targets such as airports and stock exchanges, I am less worried something will happen there. You don't publicize things. You don't communicate what you know through the media." (Los Angeles Times/Truthout)
August 11: The US budget is $395 billion in the hole, and the record-breaking deficit is expected to top $400 billion in the next few months. The Bush administration is expected to ask Congress for a third increase in the federal borrowing limit, which is expected to prompt a floor fight from Democrats and budget-conscious Republicans. (Reuters/CNN/Truthout)
August 11: The Pentagon has authorized $700 million for militias around the world to train for anti-terrorism procedures. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, tells the House Armed Services Committee the money would be used "for training and equipping local security forces -- not just armies -- to counter terrorism and insurgencies." No specific beneficiaries of the program were named, but US officials have repeatedly expressed concern about vast tracts of land along the Afghan-Pakistani border, in Iraq, the Caucasus, the Horn of Africa and various islands in the Philippines, where radical Islamic fighters could set up shop. The strategy has already been used in Afghanistan, where US special forces managed to forge alliances with local warlords, who became instrumental in bringing down the Taliban government in 2001 and keeping its remnants at bay. "Indeed, our most important allies in the war on terrorism will be Muslims who seek freedom and oppose extremism," Wolfowitz says. To help establish contact with local chieftains, the Pentagon is considering hiring immigrants to serve as "bicultural advisers" in unfamiliar areas of the world and implementing a number of economic aid projects there, according to defense officials. (AFP/Sydney Morning Herald)
August 11: The Pentagon announces that Halliburton's subsidiary KBR has failed to account for more than $1.8 billion in funds for work the firm was responsible for doing in Iraq and Kuwait. The money is nearly half of the $4.18 billion allocated by the US government to KBR to feed, clothe, and house US troops in the two countries. Nevertheless, the Army decides to continue paying Halliburton, giving the company a third extension to provide documentation proving where the money went. Army spokesperson Linda Theis says the Army is trying to be "fair and equitable." But Democratic representative Henry Waxman retorts, "The Bush administration is giving Halliburton special treatment yet again. Even after eight critical audit reports by three different government agencies, the Pentagon is still waiving procurement rules and extending deadlines for Halliburton to submit accurate cost information." (Reuters/Truthout, Washington Post)
August 11: Porter Goss, the Bush nominee to head the CIA, authored legislation recently introduced in the House that would allow Bush the authority to direct CIA agents to conduct law-enforcement operations inside the United States, including arresting American citizens. Goss's legislation was introduced on June 16, touted as an "intelligence reform" bill to substantially restructure the US intelligence agency by giving the director of the CIA -- Goss, if confirmed -- broad new powers to oversee its various components scattered throughout the government. But only now has one portion of the bill received public attention: the redefining of the director's authority to substantially alter, if not entirely overturn, a 57-year-old ban on the CIA conducting operations inside the United States. The language contained in the Goss bill alarms civil-liberties advocates. It prompts one former top CIA official to describe it as a potentially "dramatic" change in the guidelines that have governed US intelligence operations for more than a half century: "This language on its face would have allowed President Nixon to authorize the CIA to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters," says Jeffrey Smith, who served as general counsel of the CIA between 1995 and 1996. "I can't imagine what Porter had in mind." The bill, though it is not believed to have a chance of passing, is likely to come up in Goss's confirmation hearings as part of Congress's exploration of his attitudes towards civil liberties. Those hearings are expected to be contentious, but when the final vote comes, Democrats are expected to let Goss be confirmed, if only to not appear "obstructionist" on matters concerning national security.
A former top US intelligence official who refuses to let his name be revealed says that the Goss bill will allow Bush to issue secret findings allowing the CIA to conduct covert operations inside the United States, without even any notification to Congress. The former official says the proposal appeared to have been generated by Goss's staff on the House Intelligence Committee, adding that the language raises the question: "If you can't control a staff of dozens, how are you going to control the tens of thousands of people who work for the US intelligence community?" Ever since the creation of the CIA in 1947, the agency has been excluded from federal law-enforcement within the United States. That function was left to the FBI, which must operate in conformity to domestic laws and, in more recent years, under guidelines promulgated by the attorney general designed to insure protection of the rights of citizens. (MSNBC)
August 11: John Kerry reiterates his explanation of his "yes" vote for authorizing military intervention in Iraq, refuting Republican claims that he "flip-flopped" on his support for the war. "I've been consistent all along," he says. "I thought the United States needed to stand up to Saddam Hussein, and I voted to stand up to Saddam Hussein, but I thought we ought to do it right, reach out to other countries and build an international coalition." The claim will become a staple of Kerry's speeches and interviews, but is apparently too nuanced for much of the mainstream media, which continues to repeat and build the "flip-flopping" claims. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
August 11: Former presidential candidate Howard Dean accuses the Bush administration of playing politics with its issuance of terror alerts, and offers the following proof:
- Karl Rove told members of the Republican National Committee during a January 2002 speech that Republicans "can go to the country" on national security issues and invited his party to politicize the war in an election year. And the White House strategy for the 2002 elections, formulated by top presidential advisors, advised Republican candidates to campaign with messages highlighting the war on terrorism.
- The al-Qaeda operative whose capture led to the release of information was captured on July 13, twenty days before President Bush's press conference. The bulk of the information received was over three years old, some was eight months old. Even if the computer discs were found a few days after the capture of the terrorist, that means that the administration either chose the timing of the release, presumably for political reasons, or they lacked the resources to process the information in a timely manner. The day after Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge was accused of considering politics for the timing of the announcement, he suddenly claimed that it took them a long time to process and translate the information.
- The administration has denied that the Department of Homeland Security gets involved in politics. In fact, last year the Department of Homeland Security was reportedly used for political purposes when it attempted to track down the whereabouts of Texas lawmakers who left the state to foil a Republican attempt to gerrymander Texas congressional districts.
- And, the Department of Homeland Security indulged in politicking again at the press conference on August 1. Ridge spent time informing Americans that the President was a great leader in the fight against terror, telling his listeners, "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."
- This is not the first or second time this administration has misled the public. For example, Weapons of Mass Destruction still have not been found in Iraq, even though Bush convinced the American public and Congress that this was one of the primary reasons to support sending approximately 135,000 troops to Iraq.
- News organizations like the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and the New York Times interviewed national security experts and political strategists, including a "top GOP operative" and "some senior Republicans" who have also questioned the timing of the recent announcement.
Dean writes, "Terror is one of the most serious short term problems America faces and along with the soaring deficits and the continuing degradation of our environment, it is one of our most serious long term problems. All of us want the President to succeed in fighting this incredible threat. I am one American who would like to see more substance and less politics in this fight, so I can look forward to a future filled with hope, not fear." (YubaNet/Truthout)
August 11: Attack ads against Democratic US representative Martin Frost of Texas are proven to be the work of a racist organization. The Coalition for the Future American Worker (CFAW) has bought close to $200,000 in ads on local Dallas television news stations attacking Martin Frost. The CFAW is a front group for an extremist organization named the Pioneer Fund; the Pioneer Fund is an organization devoted to the study of the differences between the races. While pretending to be nothing more than an advocacy group, they are in reality eugenicists who believe that "whites are inherently more intelligent," according to the New York Times. Previous ads against Frost from the group have been yanked by at least one Texas television station for being grossly inaccurate, irresponsible, and racially biased. Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson has said of CFAW leader Dan Stein, "There are reasonable critics of immigration, but Dan Stein is not one of them." (Martin Frost/Buzzflash)
August 11: Comedian and political pundit Bill Maher weighs in on the controversy of Bush's performance the day of 9/11, now resurrected by Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and John Kerry's comments on the film. One of the most powerful sections of the film is the unedited footage of Bush sitting for seven minutes after being informed of the second attack on the WTC, saying nothing except to read from My Pet Goat. He also wasted 20 more minutes posing for photographs and talking to children and school personnel. Maher is incredulous at some of the excuses made for Bush by his handlers and supporters. Maher writes, "The fact that Bush wasted 27 minutes that day -- not only the seven minutes reading to kids but 20 more at a photo op afterward -- was, in my view, the most outrageous thing a President has done since Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court. Watergate was outrageous but it still did not carry the possibility of utter devastation, like a President's freezing at the very moment we needed his immediate focus on an attack on the United States. This is an issue about the ultimate presidential duty, acting in an emergency. If nothing else in Washington is nonpartisan, this should be. But it is not. Republicans are tying themselves in knots trying to defend Bush's actions that morning. The excuses they put forward are absurd:
"He was 'gathering his thoughts.' This was a moment a President should have imagined a thousand times. There is no time in the nuclear age for a President to sit like Forrest Gump 'gathering thoughts' after an attack has begun. Gathering information is what he should have been doing. From the White House press secretary: 'The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening.' I agree that gaining a better understanding of what was happening should have been his goal. What I don't get is how that goal was reached by just sitting there instead of getting up and talking to people. Is he a psychic? Was he receiving the information telepathically?
"'He didn't want to scare the children.' Vice President Cheney has said of Kerry, 'The senator from Massachusetts has given us ample reason to doubt the judgment he brings to vital issues of national security.' So Kerry's judgment is suspect, but at a moment of national crisis, Bush's judgment was: Better not to scare 20 children momentarily than to react immediately to an attack on the country! If he had just said, 'Hey, kids, gotta go do some President business -- be good to your moms and dads, bye!' my guess is the kids would have survived. I cannot see how someone who considers himself a conservative can defend George Bush's inaction. Conservatives pride themselves on being clear-eyed and decisive. They don't do nuance, and they respect toughness. But Bush choked at the most important moment a President could have. We're lucky al-Qaeda had done its worst by the time he pulled himself away from the photo op. Next time, it might not be that way." (New York Daily News)
August 11: The liberal Web blog "Seeing the Forest" angrily responds to an e-mail from the Heritage Foundation, through its Town Hall Web site, touting the Swift Boat Veterans' book Unfit for Command. Town Hall's e-mail repeats some of the worst accusations of the book, including a tremendous set of lies about his Vietnam service: none of Kerry's three Purple Hearts were for injuries worth reporting, Kerry lied about his rescue of Swift Boat crewman Jim Rassman, Kerry spent much of his time in Vietnam falsely filming himself in "scenarios carefully constructed to look dangerous," Kerry's own crewmen asked him to go home after becoming fed up with his "reckless behavior," and his slaughter of a village's domestic animals and torching of huts with a cigarette lighter. All of these allegations have been proven to be the most scurrilous of lies. But there are more. The book asserts that Kerry is indeed a war hero: "to the Communists! Why Kerry's photo was found in the 'Heroes of the Vietnamese Resistance' section of a war museum in Communist Vietnam;" the accusation that the "Winter Soldier" atrocity hearings in 1971 were rife with "veteran impersonators who concocted incidents that were exaggerations or pure fabrications;" "proof" that Kerry lied about confronting his military superiors with objections to military policies he considered inappropriate; as a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Kerry attended a meeting where "plans were discussed to assassinate prominent United States Senators who supported the war;" and how "Kerry met secretly with Communist delegates at the Paris Peace Conference during the Vietnam War, and why some believe he violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and federal law."
Such astonishing accusations can only be met with violence, blogger Dave Johnson believes: "If you believed this kind of stuff, what would you be willing to do to keep Kerry from taking or keeping office? Remember the plane crashing into the White House, not to mention the OKC bombing, at the height of the same kind of stuff being blasted out from the Right's lie factory? And this is August. As the election draws near this kind of talk has to lead to much more serious opposition to Kerry from people who buy into this crap. I mean, they're accusing Kerry of being a Communist agent who plotted to 'assassinate prominent United States Senators!' This isn't a joke. There are people who believe this stuff. That's why they do it -- because it works! Then what comes if he wins -- and is allowed to take office? I think this gives you an idea of the nature and intensity of attacks to be expecting from this crowd -- from now on. Will we -- and the elected Democrats -- be there to help Kerry, or will he be on his own, like Clinton was?" (Seeing the Forest)
August 11: Plans are underway to protest and possibly disrupt the Republican National Committee. A loose aggregate of anti-war protest organizations, liberals, progressives, civil libertarians, pro-choice groups, and downright anarchists are working, sometimes together but mostly independent of one another, to organize protest rallies and marches and, perhaps, something more intrusive. Anarchist Jamie Moran says, "We want to make their stay here as miserable as possible. I'd like to see all the Republican events -- teas, backslapping lunches -- disrupted. I'd like to see people from other states following their delegates, letting them know what they think about Republican policies. I'd like to see impromptu street parties and marches. I'd like to see corporations involved in the Iraq reconstruction get targeted -- anything from occupation to property destruction." Of course, the RNC, the Secret Service, and 36,000 New York policemen have other plans. Plans for less intrusive protests, rallies, marches, and street theater presentations are in the final stages of development. Marches and rallies, legal and illegal, are being planned for every day that the Republicans are in New York. Street theater plans include a Roman-style vomitorium in the East Village a few days before the convention starts, meant to signify Republican gluttony. Cheri Honkala, an organizer from Philadelphia, is mobilizing homeless people, public housing tenants and others for a big, illegal "poor peoples' march" on August 30. Activists are holding weekend workshops where direct-action novices practice street blocking, and DIY medics learn to treat victims of pepper spray and police violence. Political writer Jason Flores-Williams of High Times envisions "something so gigantic that it can't be misinterpreted...a total expression of seething hatred that will go down in history as a moment in time when people stood up to the worst administration we've ever had."
Like many others, Mike Van Winkle, spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, is preparing for violent resistance from the police, who often treat peaceful protesters as terrorists. "You can make an easy kind of link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest," he recently told the Oakland Tribune. "You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act." Police and government officials planning for the Republican convention envision a "Miami-style" response, after the response to a November 2003 confrontation in that city, where, in essence, the streets are placed under martial law, civil rights are abrogated, and police respond with violence and sometimes brutality against even the most peaceful of protesters. Current plans provide for a "designated protest area" in the southwest corner of Madison Square Garden, cut off from the view of conventioneers, speakers, and the media by layers of barbed wire and a deep cordon of police. "I am very concerned that activities during the Republican convention will be silenced or pushed out of the way, supposedly for the 'comfort' of those participating at the convention," state assemblyman Richard Gottfried says. "Our civil rights cannot be sacrificed for political purposes." Moran says, "I think people will fight back if they're provoked. Usually a riot is an explosion of energy and anger at a situation. The cops create a situation where peoples' desires are completely foiled, so they lash out. I don't think that's unhealthy."
Protest permits have proven so hard to acquire that many groups have given up on the permits and plan to protest anyway. "People are like, 'We've voted, we've asked for permits, we've played nice,'" says Moran. "In the last couple of months, the conversations have started shifting toward direct action." Bill Dobbs, spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, says the Secret Service and the police are "flirting with or inviting chaos." UFPJ at one time planned a peaceful march down the West Side Highway after their repeated requests for permits to gather in Central Park were turned down, and the city suggested they hold their march in Queens. "The Parks Department slammed the door in our face," says Leslie Cagan of UFPJ. Other groups say that UFPJ's compromise with the city is an insult, and will hold their own marches and rallies near the Garden with or without permission; stung by the criticism, UFPJ abandoned the compromise and is fighting again for permits to march in Central Park.
Some Bush opponents worry that violence on the streets of New York will help the Republicans by making them look like Middle American moderates besieged by nutty radicals. They note that the Chicago '68 debacle helped cement Richard Nixon's reputation as the law-and-order candidate. "The wilder and more disreputable the demonstrators look, the better for the Republicans," says Paul Berman, a former student organizer and author. "At the height of the antiwar movement, Nixon specifically directed his motorcade to go through the middle of an antiwar riot in California in order to have people throw rocks at him or shout obscenities so that the TV would pose the question that night to the American public: 'Whom do you prefer, President Nixon, or a dope-smoking hippie communist rock thrower?' And the country had no doubt. This was just genius on his part. If Bush ends up winning the election, it will be because of this kind of tactic." Like many other younger activists, Moran disagrees. "I've heard some old-timers say, 'If you people riot it will hand Bush the presidency,'" he says. "I think that's just lazy thinking. Any situation where we are joined by regular New Yorkers in the streets is a positive thing. ...The last four years definitely created a lot of rage in people. People may decide to unleash that rage on war profiteers. Our collective isn't going to condemn that. It's not our objective." (Guardian)

"Change the channel." -- Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt's advice to Iraqis who see TV images of innocent civilians killed by coalition troops, August 12, 2004

August 12: The Iraqi Interior Ministry says it has refused to arrest former Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, even though Chalabi faces a warrant issued for counterfeiting by an Iraqi court. Chalabi's nephew Salem, who is heading the special tribunal sitting in judgment of former dictator Saddam Hussein, faces several charges, including murder. (AP/Fox News)
August 12: The New York Times's Susan Sachs and Judith Miller report that the UN/Iraq food-for-oil program was rife with corruption, with Saddam Hussein demanding kickbacks; the UN committee in charge of overseeing the program, according to Sachs and Miller, paid virtually no attention to the evidence of criminal corruption. While the excesses and possible crimes associated with the oil-for-food program are well documented, reporters Sachs and Miller -- especially Miller -- will later be shown to be once again carrying water for the Bush administration, this time in making unfounded allegations against the UN program supervisors and, indirectly, against Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Most of the allegations will be bogus. It is true that the program did not conduct itself with efficiency and propriety: "Everybody said it was a terrible shame and against international law, but there was really no enthusiasm to tackle it," recalls Peter van Walsum, a Dutch diplomat who headed the Iraq sanctions committee in 1999 and 2000, recalling the discussions of illegal oil surcharges. "We never had clear decisions on anything. So we just in effect condoned things." The idea was that, under UN supervision, Iraq would trade its oil profits for much-needed food, medicine, and other relief supplies for its populace. The huge amount of money involved, over $10 billion a year, quickly became more than UN overseers could keep track of, and it didn't take long for corruption to set in. Van Walsum says he sometimes suspected that his fellow diplomats were disinclined to hear about potential fraud because they were concerned about protecting the interests of friendly companies and foreign allies eager to trade with Iraq. "Everyone," he says, "was living in the same glass house." (New York Times/Free Republic)
August 12: Food and Drug Administration head Lester Crawford says that "cues from chatter" have led the agency to issue warnings that terrorists might try to attack the domestic food and drug supply, particularly illegally imported prescription drugs. He adds that, while he has been briefed about al-Qaeda plans uncovered during recent arrests and raids, he refuses to comment on any specific threats. The Department of Homeland Security contradicts Crawford, saying that no such threat can be documented. Spokesman Brian Roehrkasse says, "While we must assume that such a threat exists generally, we have no specific information now about any al-Qaeda threats to our food or drug supply." Crawford says the possibility of such an attack is the most serious of his concerns about the increase in states and municipalities trying to import drugs from Canada to save money. In order to raise the fear level, Crawford cites the 1982 Tylenol case, where packages in a Chicago neighborhood were laced with deadly toxins, leading to the deaths of seven unsuspecting consumers. "I would think that's something they would be looking at," Crawford says of terrorists. "Nothing like that has happened. But it is a source of continuing concern."
The terrorist alert about prescription drugs is, of course, completely bogus. But the concerns by the pharmaceutical companies about cheap Canadian imports is real, and is the apparent source of the false terror alert. US drug companies fear that their profits will be undercut by the importation of prescription drugs, especially among Medicare and Medicaid patients who often have limited incomes and find it difficult to pay expensive US pharmaceutical prices. As with so many other "terrorist threats" announced by Bush officials, this is an excuse to protect corporate profits. (AP/RedOrbit, Al Franken)
August 12: Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, subpoenas New York Times reporter Judith Miller to testify before his grand jury. (The Times finds itself attacked by Fitzgerald from two sides: Fitzgerald is also working an unrelated case concerning two Chicago Islamic charities and their possible contributions to terrorist organizations; he has just informed the Times that he has been given authorization by the Justice Department to review the phone records of Miller and fellow reporter Philip Shenon.) The Times, unlike NBC, decides to fight the subpoena. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
August 12: While the handover of power to a "sovereign" Iraqi government meant little in terms of the day-by-day events in that wartorn country, it did have a powerful positive effect, writes Salon's Eric Boehlert -- on the positive US media coverage of the occupation and, by proxy, of the Bush administration. The 15-minute ceremony on July 28 spawned hours upon hours of mostly positive, sometimes fawning coverage on Fox, MSNBC, and other television news outlets. Since the handover, violence in Iraq has escalated, kidnappings by insurgents have multiplied, electricity is still in short supply, and the national conference necessary for free elections has been indefinitely postponed. "On June 28, my feeling was nothing was going to change because of the handover," says Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "There were still going to be car bombings and US soldiers being killed, and that's exactly what's happened. Nothing has changed." Nothing except the new barrage of rah-rah media coverage. "Clearly the volume in press coverage has gone way down," says Cook. "'Sleepy' is a good word to describe it. The coverage doesn't compare with anything we'd seen during the previous 12 months from Iraq. The drop-off has been noticeable."
Nancy Lessin of the anti-war group Military Families Speak Out says, "From the very beginning this has been an administration that wanted to hide the toll of the war -- and the media have been absolutely complicit in that. In April of this year, violence in Iraq was up and it was hard to keep the war off the front pages. But as soon as possible the pictures changed. Since June 28, [the war has] been off the front pages again." "It's incredible how the press has veered away from Iraq" since June 28, says Peter Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. Last week, "six US soldiers were killed in 24 hours, and there was nothing. If you're President Bush and you see headlines about Martha Stewart and Laci Peterson, you've got to count yourself lucky, because that means the focus is no longer on Iraq." Reporter Ken Dilanan of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who covers the war from Iraq, says, "I covered the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August of 2003, and that was a shock. As I recall, CNN broke into its regular programming live and stayed with it all day. That was with 24 people dead. Nowadays that happens every week, and it's on Page A14." Press fatigue "was bound to set in," agrees Cook. "But it is uncanny how it occurred right after the change in sovereignty on June 28." Between cheery stories about the handover, intense coverage of the non-story about Sandy Berger's alleged theft of classified documents, and a barrage of coverage about the bogus terror alerts of early August, Iraq has dropped off the news radar -- and "the Bush administration is better off with no news from Iraq," says Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who served in Baghdad as an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority last spring. "It seems the mainstream press has bought in to the White House line about June 28 -- 'OK, we're in a new phase,'" says Lessin. "But we still have 138,000 troops there and are occupying a country. It hasn't changed. If it has changed, it's increased the violence in many areas. Then again, the press has [always] been in the lap of the administration, and once again it's playing its role of lapdog." (Salon/Guardian)
August 12: The Bush administration is using an obscure Supreme Court decision from 2001 to justify the draining and "development" of thousands of acres of formerly protected wetlands, resulting in tremendous damage to the nation's environment. The decision reclassified wetlands that do not cross state boundaries, removing them from the protection of the EPA, allowing the US Army Corps of Engineers and a plethora of private developers to drain the wetlands for commercial use. James Connaughton, who chairs the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, says the acreage in the report authored by NRDC, the Sierra Club, Earthjustice and the National Wildlife Federation pales in comparison to Bush's plan to create and "improve" 3 million acres of wetlands. "Everybody loves what we're doing," he says, and calls the report "highly questionable."
The Department of Homeland Security is also proposing allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, the Border Patrol, and more than a dozen other agencies to ignore environmental regulations if agency officials feel such reviews are impinging on their efficacy. The directive, which does not require congressional approval, would also allow the agencies to conceal information they consider sensitive from a national-security standpoint. Environmentalists and civic groups are horrified. "What they've proposed is outrageous," says Sharon Buccino, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, "not just from the point of view of exploiting the issue of national security to bend the [environmental] rules, but because it inhibits Americans' democratic right to the freedom of information -- in this case, information that the American public could use to protect itself from potentially considerable health risks." The DHS directive would permit logging of live trees on up to 70 acres and salvage logging projects on up to 250 acres on DHS-controlled lands without any environmental review. Similarly, the Border Patrol would be allowed to build roads through national forests with zero public input if DHS decides the projects must be classified for national-security reasons. The directive would grant a categorical exclusion from National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews for the use of pesticides on all "buildings, roads, airfields, grounds, equipment, and other facilities" under DHS jurisdiction. And Homeland Security agencies across the board would be exempted from environmental reviews for dredging and repair activity within waterways and wetlands under their control. There's also a proposed exemption for DHS agencies from NEPA reviews of their hazardous and non-hazardous waste disposal. The directive would also allow the DHS to work with the Department of Energy on plans to build new natural-gas pipelines in the US and keep those projects classified if they deem it necessary for the sake of national security. Communities located near proposed pipelines might have no knowledge of the disproportionate security risk they face, nor any opportunity to give feedback.
"The DHS directive raises major questions about the fine line between protecting national security and jeopardizing public and environmental safety," says Brian Segee, associate counsel for Defenders of Wildlife, adding that the Bush administration is using fear tactics to roll back protections purely for the sake of cutting corners. "We're all for expediency and keeping secrets when it's necessary, but if our government refuses to tell us that there is hazardous waste in our backyard, or that environmental damage is occurring on our public lands, are we truly safer as a nation?" (Washington Post, Grist)
August 12: The Bush administration is using tactics reminiscent of the stolen 2000 elections in Florida to ensure the defeat of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in that country's upcoming elections, reports investigative journalist Greg Palast. Palast has received copies of confidential pages from a contract between the Justice Department and ChoicePoint, the data mining firm in Atlanta that successfully purged tens of thousands of legitimate Democratic voters from the Florida electoral rolls in 2000. Justice has entered into a $67 million deal with ChoicePoint for computer profiles on citizens in several nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, the UAE, Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Argentina. (One of the groups seeking Chavez's recall, Sumate, had at every voter registration booth a laptop computer with the voter rolls, where they challenge the registratoin of pro-Chavez voters. While the connection between ChoicePoint and Sumate is unproven, it is known that Sumate received large cash payments from the Bush administration.) While it is understandable why the US would want to monitor citizens in countries like Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, which support Islamic terrorism, the explanation of why it wishes to monitor citizens of Latin American countries is less clear. It becomes clearer when one realizes that these countries are involved in elections with candidates -- including presidents Lula Ignacio da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirschner of Argentina, Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador and Venezuela's Chavez -– challenge the globalization demands of the Bush administration. Mexico, for one, threatened to arrest and charge ChoicePoint executives once it learned of the corporate spying; ChoicePoint protested its innocence and offered to destroy the files of any nation that requests it.
That offer apparently doesn't extend to Venezuela. Recently, Palast showed Congressman Nicolas Maduro the ChoicePoint-Ashcroft agreement. Maduro, a leader of Chavez' political party, was unaware that his nation's citizen files were for sale to US intelligence. If the lists somehow fell into the hands of the Venezuelan opposition, it could immeasurably help their computer-aided drive to recall and remove Chavez. A ChoicePoint spokesman says the Bush administration told the company they haven't used the lists that way. Palast has found evidence of a $53,000 payment from the US government to Chavez' recall organizers, who claim to be armed with computer lists of the registered. How did they get those lists?, Palast asks. He writes, "The fix that was practiced in Florida, with ChoicePoint's help, deliberate or not, appears to be retooled for Venezuela, then Brazil, Mexico and who knows where else. Here's what it comes down to: The Justice Department averts its gaze from Saudi Arabia but shoplifts voter records in Venezuela. So it's only fair to ask: Is Mr. Bush fighting a war on terror -– or a war on democracy?" (Alternet, Greg Palast)
August 12: An ostensibly black citizens' group, People of Color United, is running attack ads against John Kerry on black-owned radio stations, calling Kerry "rich, white and wishy-washy" and mocking his wife for boasting of her African roots. The group is financied by white Republican insurance owner J. Patrick Rooney, who founded Medical Savings Insurance Company, a firm that was formed to take advantage of Bush's new "health savings accounts" in the 2003 Medicare legislation. The ad complains that Kerry does not support unemployment benefits for blacks (he does) and says of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, "His wife says she's an African American. While technically true, I don't believe a white woman, raised in Africa, surrounded by servants, qualifies." Heinz Kerry spent much of her childhood in Mozambique, under far less opulent circumstances than the ad alleges, and has spoken movingly of her experiences with discrimination. The Kerry campaign denounces the ads, all of which are being aired on radio stations with largely black audiences. "It's disgusting that the president's political allies are now using race as a political weapon," says Bill Lynch, deputy manager of the Kerry campaign. "First a group of right-wing Swift boat veterans began smearing John Kerry's military service, and now another group has resorted to playing racial politics." The ad alleges that Kerry missed a critical vote on unemployment while campaigning on May 11, 2004, an allegation that is technically true, but fails to mention that the Republican leadership scheduled the vote for that day to ensure that Kerry would not be in Washington to cast the deciding vote; additionally, at least one of the 12 Republican senators who voted yes would have switched had Kerry arrived, ensuring that the legislation would fail. Like other groups such as Citizens United and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, People of Color United denies any connection with the Bush campaign; like these groups, POCU is funded largely by Republican donors with close connections to the Republican National Committee and the Bush campaign. (Washington Post)
August 12: A test of Sequoia Voting Systems paper-trail voting machines in California fails to record votes cast during a demonstration for state senators. The machines are scheduled to make their debut next month in Nevada primary elections. The company advertises that its touch-screen machines provide "nothing less than 100 percent accuracy." "It goes to our point that a paper trail is very much needed to [ensure] that the machine accurately reports what people press," said Susie Swatt, chief of staff for Republican state senator Ross Johnson, who witnessed the malfunction in the Sequoia machine. With a paper-trail system, the voting machines would print out a record when voters cast ballots on a touch-screen machine. Voters could examine, but not touch, the record before casting their ballot. The paper would then drop into a secure ballot box for use in a recount. For nearly a year, voting companies and many election officials have resisted the call for a paper record. Election officials say that putting printers on voting machines would create problems for poll workers if the printers break down or run out of paper, and the paper records will cause long poll lines with voters taking more time to check the record. Voting activists maintain, however, that election officials don't want the paper trail because it opens the way for recounts and lawsuits if paper records don't match digital vote tallies, and say that paper records will provide proof the machines are not as accurate as companies claim. (Wired News)
August 12: On CNN's Crossfire, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth co-founder John O'Neill claims to be apolitical and without ties to any Republican organization: "I've had no serious involvement in politics of any kind in over 32 years." O'Neill is lying. Records show that since 1990, O'Neill has donated $14,650 to federal candidates or national political organizations, all Republicans. Furthermore, O'Neill has extensive ties to the GOP, having worked for the Nixon White House and clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist in the late 1970s. (Media Matters)
August 12: The Democratic governor of New Jersey, James McGreevey, announces his resignation from office after revealing that he is gay, and that he has had an extramarital affair with a man. McGreevey, who has two children, says of his struggle with his sexuality that he has always had "a certain sense that separated me from others. ...At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is. And so, my truth is that I am a gay American." Former aide Golan Cipel is readying a sexual harassment suit against McGreevey for sexual harassment he claims happened during 2002, but it is not clear that Cipel is McGreevey's former sexual partner, or if, now that McGreevey has resigned, Cipel will continue with the lawsuit. (CNN)
August 12: While George W. Bush is far more popular with hard-line conservatives than his "too-liberal" father, there are those on the right who see a possible Kerry victory in November as a blessing in disguise. Their thinking is the same as in 1976: oust the too-moderate Republican in office (then Gerald Ford) in favor of a Democrat, work tirelessly for four years to destabilize the Democrat president, and then install a new, more acceptable conservative as the chief executive. "Paleoconservatives" who largely follow Pat Buchanan, civil libertarians, and more moderate Republicans all have their axes to grind with Bush. Some see him as not nearly conservative enough, and point to Bush's economy and enormous growth of the federal government as proof of their assertions. Some, including many neoconservatives, believe Bush is being far too timid in Iraq and the Middle East, and want military conquest of Iraq and its neighbors, particularly Syria. And some would like a more recalcitrant president to achieve government gridlock and the subsequent halting of most federal spending. Economist writers John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge observe, "A Kerry administration is much more likely to be gridlocked than a second Bush administration because the Republicans look sure to hang on to the House and have a better-than-even chance of keeping control of the Senate." Micklethwait and Wooldridge conclude with the following history lesson: "When the British electorate buried President Bush's hero, Winston Churchill, and his Conservative Party, Lady Churchill stoically suggested the 'blessing in disguise' idea to her husband. He replied that the disguise seemed pretty effective. Yet the next few years vindicated Lady Churchill's judgment. The Labour Party, working with President Harry Truman, put into practice the anticommunist containment policies that Churchill had championed. So in 1951, the Conservative Party could return to office with an important piece of its agenda already in place and in a far fitter state than it had been six years earlier. It held office for the next 13 years." (Christian Science Monitor)
August 12: A New York Observer reporter catches Fox News political pundit Sean Hannity doctoring an audio clip from his June interview with the Center for American Progress's John Podesta. The clip has been heavily edited to "prove" that Podesta had lied on the program. The cuts make it seem as if former presidential candidate Howard Dean said that Bush had been warned about the 9/11 attacks ahead of time by the Saudis; Hannity edits the Dean clip to remove crucial statements making it clear that Dean considers such claims mere theory, and including Dean's own rebuttal: "No, I don't believe that. I can't imagine the president of the United States doing that." Hannity, who tried to grill Podesta about Dean's so-called allegation, then edits Podesta's response to remove his own caveats to the theory, including the key statement, "If Howard Dean was suggesting that the President knew about 9/11 and did nothing about it, then I think he's dead wrong." Of course, Hannity's doctored clip causes a brief but intense flurry of media criticism aimed at both Dean and Podesta. (Center for American Progress)
August 12: MSNBC's Hardball, hosted by Chris Matthews, features a long interview with Swift Boat Veteran co-founder John O'Neill. O'Neill promulgates a raft of lies new and old about Kerry's Vietnam service and his organization's response. Matthews, usually a fairly reliable promoter of Bush administration policy and sometimes a cheerleader for the president, is not as welcoming to O'Neill as, say, Fox News pundits. O'Neill tries to claim that Kerry did not serve two tours of duty in Vietnam, and explains this assertion by saying that Kerry's first tour of duty, as a crew member on the Naval vessel USS Gridley, didn't count as a Vietnam tour, even though the Navy considered the Gridley's operations as support for the Vietnam War and recorded the tour as "combat theater duty." O'Neill disputes Matthews's characterization of him as "a Republican from Texas," claiming that he hasn't voted for a Republican since 1998. There is no way to know if this is true or false, but it is documented that O'Neill contributed almost $15,000 in political donations to federal Republican campaigns since 1990. And it is documented that O'Neill voted in the 1998 Republican state primary in Houston. O'Neill also denies factual reports that Nixon aide Charles Colson actively solicited O'Neill to oppose Kerry in the media.
After criticizing Kerry's numerous Purple Hearts and decorations for valor, O'Neill says that Kerry merely displayed an "ordinary degree of courage" in Vietnam, despite risking his life, being shot at, and being wounded three times. He then says that, despite his courage, Kerry is "millions of steps behind...everybody." On this topic, Matthews and O'Neill have the following exchange:
Matthews: "[I]f a man shows any courage in the battlefield, he's done more than most people do in this country. He's gone out and fought for his country and risked his life for his country and shot one of the enemy for his country. That puts him a step above most people, doesn't it?"
O'Neill: "I think he is millions of steps behind, because he went over...."
Matthews: "Behind whom?"
O'Neill: "Behind everybody."
Matthews: "Behind Bush? President Bush?"
O'Neill: "Yes. I'm not going to speak to President Bush."
Matthews concludes the session by stating, "Well, I've already heard enough that he's [Kerry] done more than I ever did for my country and a lot more than anybody else...and more than the president." (Media Matters)
August 12: Conservative lawmaker Colette Rosati, running for reelection for her seat in the Arizona state legislature, attempts to smear her competitors in the primary race as being homosexual, without any evidence whatsoever. In an August 6 e-mail sent to backers, Rosati says of her opponents Michele Reagan and Royce Flora, Reagan "is not married and the other [Flora] is but has no children. Hmm...." Unfortunately for Rosati, these allusions to homosexuality appear to have backfired. "Is she trying to refer that I'm a lesbian?" Reagan asks. "My boyfriend got a kick out of that. I have a voting record. Go after that." Meanwhile, it turns out that Royce and Ann Flora don't have any children because Ann has had three miscarriages, cancer and a hysterectomy. "It hits women hard, saying things like you can't have children," says Ann Flora. Rosati "claims to be a good Christian, yet these are the tactics she stoops to? My intention is to stay out of the mud, which is where she is most comfortable." Rosati hung up on reporters during a telephone interview when asked about the e-mail. Later, Rosati's spokesman Chris Baker makes a typically backhanded apology on behalf of Rosati: "It was an offhand comment that she regrets making. She never intended to hurt the feelings of either Royce or Mr. Flora's wife. At some point in the near future she will contact them and discuss the issue privately."
The e-mail also criticized a recent effort among the gay community to register voters, and tied Planned Parenthood into her attacks. She wrote that it is those groups "against one mom with a husband -- and two teens in her kitchen. The dark side is actually going to...certain types of bars to register voters." Former state representative Steve May, an openly gay Republican, says the e-mail is an attack on the recent campaign among gay and lesbian groups to register voters. "The fact that she can't even say the word 'gay' is fascinating," he says. "I think she is really out of step with the dignity that most citizens afford most other human beings." Baker said Rosati was not referring to the gay community as the "dark side" nor was she trying to imply her opponents were gay. He says the comment was directed toward groups that openly oppose Rosati. Planned Parenthood's political committee endorsed Reagan, among other candidates, and the Arizona Human Rights Fund, a gay rights political advocacy group, wrote in its endorsement pamphlet: "Do not vote for Colette Rosati." "It was the heat of the campaign," Baker says in what appears to be the lamest of excuses. "I think she was just jokingly saying the 'dark side,' much like one side versus the other." Baker's excuse-making aside, both sides obviously got Rosati's message. (East Valley Tribune, Democratic Underground)

White House admits no evidence of terror attacks that triggered alert

August 13: The White House admits that it has no evidence of any imminent al-Qaeda attacks, though two weeks ago, Homeland Security head Tom Ridge warned of very specific attack information regarding attacks against financial institutions in New York City, Washington, and Newark. "I have not seen an indication of an imminent operation," says a White House official who refuses to be identified. Immediately after the warning, police sealed off some streets near the Citigroup Center building and the New York Stock Exchange in New York; put employees at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington through extra security checks; and added barricades and a heavily armed presence around Prudential Financial Inc.'s headquarters in Newark. In Washington, Capitol Police blocked all traffic flow near the building and began searching vehicles, even though no new threats to the Capitol had been found. District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams protested the measures, calling them "unworkable and unacceptable." Subway riders in Washington have had to get used to sharing their commutes with police bearing machine guns. New Yorkers have been agitated by FBI warnings of threats posed by helicopters and limousines, while city authorities are beefing up security in advance of the Republican National Convention, which begins August 30.
White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend told Fox News last weekend that authorities believe discovery of the surveillance has disrupted al-Qaida's plans to carry out the attacks on the financial buildings. That statement, like the terror alerts themselves, is specious on its face. Townsend said on CBS that she believes the surveillance of the US financial buildings might be related to a potential election-period threat, another worry that the administration has aired without evidence. (AP/Military.com)
August 13: The Bush administration insists that the detainees in Guantanamo have "no legal rights" and no legal recourse except those granted to them by US officials. The Justice Department, after making these assertions in court papers filed in response to potential lawsuits from detainees, says that it will grant defense lawyers access to detainees if the lawyers consent to restrictions that include undergoing body searches and allowing the military to monitor their conversations with their clients. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the president's war powers are not "a blank check." The court said that a US citizen held in a Navy brig in South Carolina and nearly 600 suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives held in Cuba have a right to contest their detentions. Justice Department lawyers accuse the detainees' attorneys of stretching the Supreme Court's ruling "way out of proportion." They say the Supreme Court decided only whether federal courts have authority to review challenges by the detainees and did not address whether captives have a right to lawyers. Attorneys for the detainees accuse the administration of doing an end-run around the Supreme Court. "One would never know that this case had just been to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the government made -- and lost -- virtually the same arguments it now recycles here," they write. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington plans to hear arguments on the dispute. Duke University law professor Scott Silliman says that the administration's stance stems from concern about how far federal judges will delve into the capture of the detainees. So far, 13 cases have been filed in Washington on behalf of 60 detainees. As a result, the government's emerging strategy is "to fight them tooth and nail," says Silliman, a former Air Force lawyer. Justice Department lawyers say restrictions are needed to protect national security; the detainees' lawyers say the policy is an assault on the attorney-client privilege and will "chill" their relationships with the captives. The pending lawsuit has been filed on behalf of 12 Kuwaitis in detention; the military says three of the Kuwaitis pose such a danger to national security that every conversation with their lawyers must be monitored. (USA Today/Truthout)
August 13: New York Times reporter Judith Miller, already proven to have aided and abetted the Bush administration in promoting misinformation and lies about Iraq's nonexistent WMD program, has been subpoenaed to testify about her role in the Valerie Plame Wilson outing. Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger says, "We regret that the special prosecutor has chosen to issue a subpoena that seeks to compel Judy Miller to reveal her confidential sources. Journalists should not have to face the prospect of imprisonment for doing nothing more than aggressively seeking to report on the government's actions. Such subpoenas make it less likely that sources will be willing to talk candidly with reporters and ultimately it is the public that suffers." Sulzberger does not mention the strong possibility that Miller was again colluding with government officials to punish Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, for his criticism of the Bush administration over the Iraqi WMD controversy. (New York Times/TalkLeft)
August 13: The Kerry campaign blasts the Bush administration for shifting the burden of taxes away from the rich and onto the middle class and poor. Using stories from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, campaign spokesman Phil Singer says in a press release, "George W. Bush keeps trying to mislead Americans into thinking we're turning the corner, but truth is that he is turning his back on middle class families. By putting more of the tax burden on them and ignoring record health care and energy costs, the Bush policies are exacerbating the squeeze that working families have been feeling for the last four years. John Kerry knows we can do better and has a plan to provide a more generous tax cut to the middle class." According to the news stories, Bush's economic initiatives have been disastrous to everyone except the wealthiest Americans. Some examples and highlights:
- Since 2001, Bush's tax cuts have shifted federal tax payments from the wealthy to a wide range of middle-class wage earners, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
- While some higher-end middle-class wage earners got tax cuts, theirs were far smaller, proportionately and in real dollars, than those enjoyed by the wealthy. After the tax cuts took effect, the after-tax average income for people in the top 1% of income earners rose over 10%, while those in the middle 20% rose a mere 2.3%, and those in the bottom fifth rose a meager 1.6%. Bush's tax cuts are proportionately 70 times larger for the top 1% than for the middle class. A full third of the entire tax cuts in Bush's system went to the top 1%, who already made over $1.2 million per year.
- The money shoveled out to the wealthiest 1% could have gone instead to completely funding health care for Americans (under the Kerry plan) and Kerry's education initiatives.
- Under Bush, the economy plummeted from record surpluses of $236 billion in 2000 to a projected record deficit of $422 billion. The private sector has lost 1.8 million jobs and continues to hemorrage. The "job recovery" touted by Bush is real, but the weakest the US economy has seen since 1949. Job creation has been less than a third of what Bush predicted in 2003, and in total has created 7 million fewer jobs than Bush's predictions.
- While Bush constantly claims that his tax cuts have stimulated the economy, they have done the exact opposite. And Bush continually pushes non-stimulus corporate tax cuts like the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax and cuts for the estate tax, which affects the wealthiest of Americans almost exclusively, and capital gains tax cuts. Eliminating the corporate AMT would have given $25 billion in immediate rebates to just 16 companies -- including a $254 million rebate to Enron. A Goldman Sachs analysis concludes that all of these tax cuts would be "especially ineffective" in stimulating economic growth. Billionaire Warren Buffet describes one of Bush's tax cuts as "class welfare -- for my class." (US Newswire)
August 13: Economist Paul Krugman refutes the "psuedo-populist" Bush claims that his vision of what he calls an "ownership society" is good for middle-class Americans. In reality, Krugman shows, Bush's economic policies are "highly elitist." Bush says in a recent ad, "I understand if you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of America;" Krugman retorts, "Call me naïve, but I thought all Americans have a vital stake in the nation's future, regardless of how much property they own." He then writes, "The Bush tax cuts have, of course, heavily favored the very, very well off. But they have also, more specifically, favored unearned income over earned income -- or, if you prefer, investment returns over wages. Last year Daniel Altman pointed out in the New York Times that Mr. Bush's proposals, if fully adopted, 'could eliminate almost all taxes on investment income and wealth for almost all Americans.' Mr. Bush hasn't yet gotten all he wants, but he has taken a large step toward a system in which only labor income is taxed. The political problem with a policy favoring investment returns over wages is that a vast majority of Americans derive their income primarily from wages, and that the bulk of investment income goes to a small elite. How, then, can such a policy be sold? By promising that everyone can join the elite." Of course, such promises are inherently specious. Krugman concludes, "As Mr. Bush has said: 'Fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- can't get fooled again.'" (New York Times)
August 13: New York Times columnist Bob Herbert reports on the ongoing detention of Haitian refugee David Joseph, a small, quiet 20-year old who has been held for two years at the federal Krome Detention Center without charge. Joseph has been charged with no crime, and entered the US in search of asylum. A federal judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals have both ordered Joseph's release pending final review of his asylum application, but attorney general John Ashcroft has so far defied those orders, insisting that Joseph remain in jail. "I thought I would come here for a few days and be released," he says. "But I watch the other people come and go, and I am stuck here." Ashcroft personally intervened in Joseph's case, summarily blocking his release. According to Ashcroft, releasing this young Haitian would tend to encourage mass migration from Haiti, and might exacerbate the potential danger to national security of nefarious aliens from Pakistan and elsewhere who might be inclined to use Haiti as a staging area for migration to the US. Ashcroft's reasoning is ridiculous. Joseph (whose younger brother, Daniel, was with him when they entered the US, and is currently in foster care) is a refugee from political chaos who has an uncle in New York eager to take him and his brother under his care.
Herbert writes, "Keeping Mr. Joseph imprisoned for years is inhumane. What's really at work here is the Bush administration's unwillingness to budge even an inch from its unfair and frequently cruel treatment of Haitians seeking refuge in the United States. Mr. Joseph and a younger brother, Daniel, were among more than 200 Haitians aboard a boat that landed at Key Biscayne, Fla., in October 2002. The boys' immediate family had been viciously attacked in the political turmoil that wracked their homeland, and David Joseph still does not know whether the mother and father he left behind are alive." "He was fleeing persecution," says Selena Mendy Singleton, a vice president of TransAfrica Forum, a research and policy group that is among several organizations supporting Joseph's request for asylum. "He is not a threat to the community. He is not a terrorist. And he meets the criteria to be released on bond. David needs to be let out." In December 2004, Joseph will be expelled from the US and forcibly returned, in shackles, to Haiti. "It's business as usual, and I think it's a human rights tragedy that our country is returning Haitians to Haiti at this time," says Candace Jean, the attorney for Catholic Charities Legal Services who represented both Joseph and his brother Daniel, who remains in foster care where his case is pending. "The saddest thing is David suffered two years of prison in the United States. He should have been granted asylum from the start." Ashcroft has used the Joseph case to assert his right to supersede the authority of the courts and the INS in individual asylum cases. (New York Times/Blythe Systems, Miami Herald/Newsdesk)
August 13: The Republican National Committee and some state Republican committees are refusing to divulge the names of many of their convention delegates. "secrecy and hidden schemes are standard operating procedure in the Bush-Cheney- secret-energy-task-force-undisclosed-bunker Administration," says DNC spokesperson Jay Carson. "Their secret delegate scheme comes as no surprise at this point, but the real issue is that voters in battleground states and residents of New York deserve to know why all there is so much secrecy." RNC chairman Ed Gillespie responds by falsely asserting that the Democrats, too, refused to release the names of their delegates before their convention in July. It is unclear exactly why the GOP is keeping the names of some of its delegates secret. (Buzzflash)
August 13: A liberal counterweight to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, called Citizens for Honest Fighter Pilots, is demanding that Bush explain the gaps in his National Guard service record, including how he failed to show up for his annual physical, how he got suspended as a fighter pilot, and how he escaped any discipline. The group receives virtually no media attention. (Buzzflash)
August 13: The well-regarded urban legend debunker, Snopes.com, proves that a letter circulated through the Internet purporting to be from a neighbor of vice-presidential candidate John Edwards is a fraud. The letter is supposedly from Brian Nicholson, who describes himself as "a neighbor of John Edwards" in a Raleigh, North Carolina neighborhood. The letter describes Edwards as aloof and disdainful of his neighbors, even going so far as to "flip you the bird" if you passed him while he was jogging. The letter claims that Edwards forces the vans and other vehicles congregating around his house from media outlets to stay out of his own driveway, and instead collect in the street, impeding traffic and annoying his neighbors. Several neighbors had vans drive through their yards, destroying much of their landscaping, according to the letter; Edwards refused to compensate the homeowners for the damage suffered. The letter goes on to accuse Edwards of "extortion" in his former career as a trial lawyer, blaming Edwards's sleazy tactics as part of the reason why medical malpractice insurance rates are soaring. The letter even claims that, during trials, Edwards says he receives "messages from dead or brain-damaged children," and that he can "channel" their psyches, possibly because of his own experience with losing his child, Wade, in a car accident. According to the letter, Edwards has parleyed his earnings from these trials into making himself quite wealthy, and has created a corporation with himself as the only stockholder and voting member, for the purpose of dodging taxes. The letter closes with a diatribe about Edwards being an unrepentant liberal, claims that Edwards had decided not to run again for the Senate because he is "hugely unpopular," and finishes, "Now he's a political star. I guess turning his back on the people he claims to represent has worked out well for my neighbor, John Edwards. Nobody else seems to matter."
The letter is easily refuted. Nicholson, who does live in Edwards's neighborhood, himself denies writing it, saying instead that a private message he had e-mailed to a family member was rewritten by someone else and posted as the letter on an Internet site. Nicholson refuses to produce copies of his original message. Many neighbors other than Nicholson say that Edwards and his family are quite friendly. While news vans and vehicles did cause some damage to neighbors' yards, Edwards, in a January 2003 letter to his neighbors, apologized for the damage and promised to pay for any damages incurred. Snopes does not address the charges leveled against Edwards's trial lawyer activities, but there are no other reports of any such behavior, including extortion or "psychic channeling" of victims, either from the medical malpractice victims Edwards represented or from the doctors and hospital administrators Edwards took to court; it is hard to imagine any judge allowing such tabloid shenanigans from any lawyer. And polls taken around the state showed Edwards to be extremely popular with voters and a likely shoo-in for re-election had he chosen to run. No one has as yet stepped up to claim authorship of the letter. (Snopes [includes a transcript of the letter])
August 13: The Public Broadcasting System (PBS), long under fire from conservatives for being "too liberal," has reacted to the recent increase in pressure from the right by caving in to their desires that the non-profit, publicly funded broadcaster skew its political coverage rightward. Though always successful in maintaining a balance in its broadcasting -- relying on relatively non-partisan news broadcasters such as Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer, and balancing liberal commentators such as Bill Moyers with William F. Buckley, Louis Rukeyser, Ben Wattenberg, and a show created by Fortune magazine -- PBS is now giving a show to conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, and, even more egregriously, creating a show for the extremist conservatives of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Carlson, a congenial lightweight, has used his PBS platform to denigrate vice-presidential candidate John Edwards's legal practice as "specializing in Jacuzzi cases" (Edwards represented victims of medical malpractice; Carlson is referring to a case in which Edwards represented the family of a a little girl whose small intestines were sucked out of her body by a malfunctioning wading pool), compared the Democratic Party's efforts to keep track of its own racial data to those of Gestapo head and SS chief Heinrich Himmler, and accused John Kerry of demanding that "dark-skinned foreigners from the Middle East fight our war for us." Carlson has also defended GOP smear tactics against the legless Democratic Vietnam veteran Max Cleland, who was linked with Osama bin Laden in one of the most scurrilous campaigns of the past century. Liberal media expert Eric Alterman writes, "still, the insult of throwing up Carlson to quiet the whining of crybaby conservatives pales in comparison to the injury of offering up millions of dollars in taxpayer and viewer-donated resources of our public broadcasting service to the far-right ideologues behind the Journal Editorial Report. Short of turning the broadcast day over to Rush Limbaugh or Richard Mellon Scaife, it's difficult to imagine a more calculated effort to undermine PBS's intended mission of providing alternative programming than this subsidy to a wealthy, conservative corporation to produce yet another right-wing cable chat show."
The Columbia Journalism Review recently found at least six dozen examples of disputed Journal editorials and op-eds. Its study discovered that "on subjects ranging from lawyers, judges, and product liability suits to campus and social issues, a strong America, and of course, economics, we found a consistent pattern of incorrect facts, ignored or incomplete facts, missing facts, uncorroborated facts." In many of these cases, the CJR found, the editors refused to print a correction, preferring to allow the aggrieved party to write a letter to the editor, which would be printed much later, and then let the reader decide whose version appeared more credible. Almost never does the paper correct the record or admit its errors. A similar show for the Journal editorial board aired, until recently, on CNBC, prompting Alterman to write, "To find the same combination of conviction, partisanship and ideological extremism on the far left, a network would need to convene a 'roundtable' featuring Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Fidel Castro." Alterman writes, "Given the right's domination of television talk shows and its already strong representation on public broadcasting, the only imaginable explanation for the decision to put PBS resources in the hands of well-financed, well-distributed, unabashedly partisan and journalistically challenged ideologues can be naked political pressure." (Nation/CommonDreams)

August 14: The recent wave of arrests and terror alerts have shown to Western terrorism experts that al-Qaeda, far from being beaten back and in disarray, is resurgent, with a combination of veterans and new recruits pouring new life into the battered but unbowed terrorist organization. A new nucleus of planners based in Pakistan are working on schemes to attack American targets. "We've been able get some information and some clue, an overview of the present structure of al-Qaeda, how it functions," says Pakistan's interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat. "This structure is in a continuous tailspin ever since the arrest of KSM [Khalid Sheik Mohammed]. It has certainly been weakened." But one senior US counterterrorism official, however, says al-Qaeda's "resiliency and their ability to reconstitute is truly remarkable. Until you put your hands on bin Laden and [deputy Ayman] Zawahiri and the other cast of characters, they are not going to switch gears or change careers. This is what they do," the official says. "The challenge is to try to define the current al-Qaeda and come to some consensus that the al-Qaeda that took the embassies in 1998 remains today," the US official says, referring to the bombings of US embassies in East Africa. "We just don't know." "What this is showing with al-Qaeda is that they have a deeper bench than we imagined," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads the Washington office of the Rand Corporation. "Even when they're nailing their top operational people, there's still a centralized command structure functioning. We thought KSM was really a deathblow. It wasn't. They just caught their breath and started up again." "Almost every important al-Qaeda arrest in Pakistan reinforced our analysis that al-Qaeda breakaway cells, each consisting of no more than two dozen people, have emerged as more lethal and committed stand-alone groups," one Pakistani intelligence official says. (Washington Post)
August 14: Senator Tom Daschle, in a tight race for re-election with Republican challenger John Thune, asks Thune for an apology after Thune's campaign manager Dick Wadhams said of Daschle to one of Daschle's aides, "Your boss is a chickensh*t. You know that, right?" Wadhams then said to the aide, Jeremy Funk, "so, let me get this straight. Your boss is too chickensh*t to show up, so they sent you here? How do you feel about that?" Wadhams's barnyard epithets are in response to Daschle's absence from a forum in Sioux Falls hosted by Associated School Boards of South Dakota and the School Administrators of South Dakota, an event Daschle was never slated to attend. "Berating young staffers and referring to public officials with obscenities is not how we do things in South Dakota," Daschle campaign manager Steve Hildebrand states. "John Thune owes Senator Daschle and his staffer an immediate apology." "I know Mr. Wadhams is not from South Dakota, but you don't have to be here long to see that this sort of behavior goes beyond the pale of what is acceptable in South Dakota politics." Wadhams refuses to apologize, and instead demands that Daschle apologize for "ducking" debates with Thune. "It is pathetic when Tom Daschle will not debate John Thune and then sends this staff person to slink around in the shadows and tape John Thune when Thune is the one who shows up for these events." Daschle and Thune are scheduled to debate for the first time on August 18. (Rapid City Journal)
August 14: In what is becoming a predictable pattern, the Washington Post issues a round of mea culpas over its abysmal, cheerleading coverage of the events leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. "We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder," says veteran reporter Bob Woodward. ZMag's Mike Whitney writes, "The war in Iraq was as much the Post's invention as it was Bush's or Cheney's. Presidents don't lead the charge to war...the media does. The best Bush could have done was stand in front of the camera and thump his chest. It takes a well-oiled propaganda machine to whip the public into war fever. Noam Chomsky calls it 'manufacturing consent,' the manipulating of information to produce support for (otherwise) unpopular policies. At the Post they just call it 'a good day's work.'" The Post's Howard Kurtz admits, "The paper was not front-paging stuff. Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff? ...The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times."
Thomas Ricks, a veteran reporter and national security expert, writes, "The front page is a newspaper's billboard, its way of making a statement about what is important, and stories trumpeted there are often picked up by other news outlets. Woodward, for his part, said it was risky for journalists to write anything that might look silly if weapons were ultimately found in Iraq. Woodward said of the weapons coverage: 'I think I was part of the groupthink.'" What Woodward and his colleages are forgetting is the firestorm of dissent and criticism, not to mention the myriad facts disproving the existence of WMDs or the connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, that the Post and its fellow mainstream media outlets failed to report on during the run-up to war. Instead, "from August 2002 through the March 19, 2003, launch of the war, the Post ran more than 140 front-page stories that focused heavily on administration rhetoric against Iraq. Some examples: 'Cheney Says Iraqi Strike Is Justified;' 'War Cabinet Argues for Iraq Attack;' 'Bush Tells United Nations It Must Stand Up to Hussein or U.S. Will;' 'Bush Cites Urgent Iraqi Threat;' 'Bush Tells Troops: Prepare for War.'" Whitney writes, "It would be interesting to know whether Bob Woodward considered this plethora of stories just more innocent 'groupthink' or a concerted effort to feed the pre-war hysteria."
In October 2002, Ricks wrote a piece entitled "Doubts" that quoted dozens of retired military officers and security experts casting doubt on the justifications for the war; the piece was spiked by Matthew Vita, then the national security editor and now a deputy assistant managing editor. Carefully researched stories that went against the pro-war tone from the administration, and the Post's own stance, were spiked, but stories like Barton Gellman's December 12, 2002 story titled "U.S. Suspects Al Qaeda Got Nerve Agent from Iraqis," based on nothing more than quotes from two unnamed Bush adminstration sources, runs the unsubstantiated and later disproven charge that al-Qaeda was providing Iraq with chemical toxins. Whitney writes, "In other words, any story that registered disbelief was abandoned, but even the most far fetched story (like Gellman's) that supported an invasion was slapped up on the front page." Post reporter Karen DeYoung actually seems proud of her paper's role as mouthpiece for the administration: "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," she says. "If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said." And executive editor Leonard Downie claims that the experts who questioned the war wouldn't go on record often enough -- but his paper, and others, quoted unnamed pro-war sources willy-nilly. Downie also asserts that "voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones."
This is specious at best. On the eve of the invasion, polls showed that half the public wanted to delay the invasion to give the UN inspectors more time to do their duty, and millions had already marched in the streets. About half of the editorial pages of the major US newspapers -- though not the hawkish Post -- were expressing their own doubts about the need for war. Many intelligence experts questioned the administration's evidence and were given little play, on or off the record, at the Post. Probably the most ludicrous excuse was given in regard to a story by 32-year veteran Walter Pincus, which questioned the existence of Iraqi WMDs and, after a series of delays, was published only after Woodward intervened, and buried on page A17. According to assistant managing editor for news Liz Spayd, Pincus's stories are "difficult to edit." Vita adds that Pincus's story "was one of the ones that slipped through the cracks." Convenient. Possibly a worse example was a story by Dana Priest and Karen DeYoung revealing that CIA officials had communicated significant doubts to the administration about evidence linking Iraq to an attempted uranium purchase for nuclear weapons. The story was held until March 22, three days after the war began. "Editors blamed a flood of copy about the impending invasion," Kurtz writes.
But, of course, the Post ultimately fails either to learn a lesson from its failures, or to take responsibility for them. It concludes, "Whether a tougher approach by the Post and other news organizations would have slowed the rush to war is, at best, a matter of conjecture. ...People who were opposed to the war from the beginning and have been critical of the media's coverage in the period before the war have this belief that somehow the media should have crusaded against the war. They have the mistaken impression that somehow if the media's coverage had been different, there wouldn't have been a war." It ignores the fact that the Bush administration relied on a supportive, uncritical media to sell its unjustified war to an American populace that did not want a war and needed to be convinced of its necessity. The Post played a key role in that disinformation campaign. Whitney writes, "Their concluding remarks can only be construed as a blanket disclaimer that absolves them of all accountability. What fools we are to think that those who are entrusted with 'maintaining the institutions of democracy through an informed public' have any responsibility to report the truth. The Post may succeed in convincing its readership that it is blameless, but the soaring body count in devastated Iraq tells a different story." And Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell adds, "[R]eaders may feel insulted by Downie's we-couldn't-have-stopped-the-war-anyway plea. This is especially true when a war turns out so badly, in lives lost, in money squandered and as a net loss in the war on terrorism." Mitchell concludes, "Does Downie honestly believe that nothing the media might have done in providing more probing coverage could have possibly stopped the war? Especially when, as noted, public and editorial opinion on the eve of war was divided? Does he take issue with Walter Lippmann's notion that the press plays a vital role in 'manufacturing consent?' And does he really believe his must-read newspaper lacks any clout? If so, what does that say about the state of modern newspapering?" (Washington Post, ZMag, Editor and Publisher/Mona Baker)

Back to August 2004 | On to August 2004: Week Three

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

August 2004, Week Two

Page Two

White House admits no evidence of terror attacks that triggered alert

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