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

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

Subtle regulatory changes lay waste to environment, profit industry

A mining site, formerly a forested mountaintop

August 17: The Bush administration has allowed incalculable damage to be done to mountains in Appalachia merely by changing a single word in environmental regulations. The wording change applies to "mountaintop removal," a practice in which mining companies rip a mountaintop off and gouge out the coal and minerals from within, leaving bare and shattered earth where once was a green and thriving natural habitat. The "removal" generates a tremendous amount of what was once known as "debris," a word covering the rocky detritus left behind. By reclassifying that detritus as "fill" instead of "debris," mining companies are no longer required by law to find more environmentally safe (and far costlier) methods of removal of the detritus -- "fill" can legally be shoveled into rivers and streambeds. The "fill rule," as the May 2002 rule change is now known, is a case study of how the Bush administration has attempted to reshape environmental policy in the face of fierce opposition from environmentalists, citizens groups and political opponents. Rather than proposing broad changes or drafting new legislation, administration officials often have taken existing regulations and made subtle tweaks that carry large consequences. The cost to the environment of such careful "tweaks" is, literally, earth-shattering. One expert calls mountain removal "strip-mining on steroids." Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a noted environmentalist, writes, "Mining companies blow off hundreds of feet from the tops of mountains to reach the thin seams of coal beneath. Colossal machines dump the mountaintops into adjacent valleys, destroying forests and communities and burying free-flowing mountain streams. According to the EPA, the waste from mountaintop removal mines has permanently interred 1,200 miles of Appalachian streams, polluted the region's groundwater and rivers and rendered 400,000 acres of some of the world's most biologically rich temperate forests into flat, barren wastelands, 'devoid of topography and flowing water.'"
Industry insiders have found a bonanza with the Bush administration. In 1997, Utah mining executive David Lauriski proposed a regulation that would have allowed a severe rise in the amount of coal-dust levels in mines, putting miners at additional risk for black-lung disease. The Clinton administration scotched the proposal. But in 2004, Lauriski again proposed the regulation -- and as the head of Bush's Mine Safety and Health Administration, he had the power to implement it. Lauriski also oversaw the elimination of a raft of Clinton-era safety proposals that would have ensured greater safety for coal miners but cost the mining industry some of their profits. Bush has named industry and mining executives to one regulatory post after another, and they have had virtually a free hand to help their industry out at the expense of the workers and the environment. "They generally want to do whatever the industry wants," says House Democrat Frank Pallone, a member of the House Resources Committee and a critic of the administration's regulation of the industry. "You don't even have to change the law. You can change the regulations and don't do enforcement." And Joseph Lovett, a lawyer for environmental groups suing to block the mountaintop removal rules, says, "This is a results-oriented administration. It knows who it wants to reward." As safety regulations have been gutted, the number of deaths and injuries suffered by coal miners has increased.
Other changes have had similarly huge impacts. When Bush's EPA downgraded mercury emissions from power plants from its former classification as "hazardous" to a lesser category, those plants immediately won 15 more years to implement legally required environmental controls. Earlier this year, the Energy Department helped insert wording into a Senate bill to reclassify millions of gallons of "high-level" radioactive waste as "incidental," a change that would spare the government the expense of removing and treating the waste. Such rulings lay waste to the environment, but ensure higher profits for commercial industry such as West Virginia's coal industry, a key Republican donor in that electoral battleground state. In October 2001, the administration moved to change the focus of a federal mining study that would have recommended limits on the size of new mountaintop mines. And another reclassification now allows ditches dug by coal companies to substitute for natural streams buried in "fill."
More changes are in the works. The EPA proposes a "clarification" of the Clean Water Act that would essentially void a 20-year ban on mining within 100 feet of a stream. And the proposed reclassifying of the government's duties to police state mining agencies from "nondiscretionary" to "discretionary" would leave the mining agencies free from government supervision.
Former mining inspector and safety officer Jack Spadero says, "They call them 'clarifications,' but it's really all about removing obstacles. They've made it easier for companies to dump mining waste into streams, and harder for citizens to challenge them." Of course, Bush officials call it merely "striking a balance" between environmental regulation and expanding domestic energy sources. Jack Gerard, president of the National Mining Association, says, "The administration has been diligent in its efforts to avoid disruptions in our energy supply." The environmental cost is high. Streams that have not been buried completely under mining debris are poisoned by enormously high levels of silt and toxic chemicals. Around 5% of forest cover in West Virginia has been stripped away, and once-popular mountain vistas have been turned into gutted wastelands. Over the next decade, the affected area will be over 2,200 miles, a stripped, burned-over wasteland the size of Rhode Island. "A huge percentage of the watershed is being filled in and mined out, and we have no idea what the downstream impacts will be," says one senior government scientist. "All we know is that nothing on this scale has ever happened before." But since the recovery techniques increase the amount of coal taken from destroyed mountains, and because the industry pumps so much money into impoverished states such as West Virginia, many state politicians and even labor unions embrace the industry, no matter what the environmental cost. But opposition to the practices is wide, with a disapproval rating of over 67% among West Virginians. "I've been coming up through these mountains since I was 5 years old. Now the place looks like an asteroid hit," says Vietnam veteran and retired businessman Bo Webb. "A lot of us up here have fought for our country. To see what is happening now to our homes makes me so mad." Industry officials describe themselves as "careful stewards" of the land, and even claim that the newly flattened mountaintops offer "unique" opportunities for development: "People have used these sites to build high schools and golf courses -- they see it as an opportunity to stimulate the economy and create jobs," says Gerard, ignoring the devastating impact on the environment. But Judy Bonds of Whitesville, West Virginia says, "I look at what they're doing and I can see the moonscape that they've created. And it's total devastation, total devastation. Nothing will ever grow back. ...We've watched our communities become ghost towns."
Michael McCabe, a deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the late 1990s, recalls feeling astonished during a 1998 plane flight in which he passed over several of the largest mines in the middle of the lush West Virginia highlands. The denuded, flattened hills were a jarring sight, "like landing decks for alien spacecraft." Of the expanded mining operations, McCabe says, "The acreage affected by these mines went through the roof -- from the hundreds to the thousands of acres. It was the difference between a hand saw and a chain saw." But by May 2002, the Bush administration, led by the Secretary of the Interior's Stephen Griles, a coal industry magnate, had twisted and rewritten decades' worth of laws almost word-for-word from industry recommendations. Environmentalists and citizens' organizations were shut out of the discussion entirely. Legislation to curb the mining industry's excesses, proposed by both Republicans and Democrats, was hammered down by the Republican leadership in Congress. And the administration has taken steps to shut down court challenges to the new regulations. Kennedy writes, "King Coal sends more greenhouse gases into the air and more mercury and acid rain onto our earth and produces more lung-searing ozone and particulates than any other industry. As the nation's largest energy provider -- more than half of our electricity is coal-fired -- big coal is the No. 1 polluter. It's also the No. 1 Bush donor. Big coal and the coal-burning utilities donated $20 million to President Bush and other Republicans in 2000, and have since sweetened the pot with another $21 million. Their generosity has not gone unnoticed. No industry had more highly placed sympathizers in the Bush camp than King Coal. Lobbyists and executives of coal companies had unparalleled access to Vice President Dick Cheney's task force while it was creating its new energy bill. Industry lobbyist Quin Shea, who took part in Cheney's task force, calls the Republicans "our parties" and the administration as "we." He warns his cronies against complacency, however, telling them that in the future they should not assume that they'll have a president willing to plunder like "Bush or Attila the Hun."
Hugely unpopular among most of Appalachia's citizenry, the mining and coal industries has moved to shore up public support, not by curbing their excesses, but by mounting a slick PR campaign to win over hearts and minds. The focus is "[t]he role of coal in economic and homeland security" -- in other words, destroying the Appalachian mountains is helping win the war against terrorism. "It makes me furious," says Janice Nease, a retired teacher who became an anti-mining activist after her village, a settlement of about 30 homes, was bought and destroyed to make room for a mine. "We keep on plugging away, but it's harder." Maria Gunnoe, whose home is directly in the path of a new mine, says, "I sit here in the evening and listen to the equipment ripping and tearing at the mountain. It's the same as if they were ripping and tearing at the siding of my house." Gunnoe's family has lived in the same house for four generations; her children will not be able to live there for much longer. She observes, "The true cost of coal is here," looking out at what is left of the mountain vista that formed the backdrop for generations of her family's lives. "We pay for it with our lives and our future. And also our past." Bonds says, "I believe that the coal industry has found the best friend they've ever had in the Bush administration. Definitely the Bush administration and the coal industry have teamed up to completely wipe Appalachia off the map. This is Appalachia's last stand...it absolutely is. When the mountains go, so goes our culture and our people. The problem is that I think it'll be the Bush administration that pushes the stake through our heart." (Washington Post, New York Times/Mindfully, Seattle Post-Intelligencer/Truthout)
August 17: With widespread proof of vote-rigging schemes at work in Afghanistan's upcoming elections, many observers feel that the backlash might affect Bush's own election plans. So far, voter registration widely exceeds the number of voters in Afghanistan, leading many to believe that multiple voting registrations are a common practice. "An Afghan election marred by allegations of fraud would be bad for President Bush's overall claim of promoting democracy in the Muslim world," says Husain Haqqani, an Afghanistan expert at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "In the absence of good news from Iraq, the Bush administration needs Afghanistan as its success story." Few measures for vote security are in place throughout Afghanistan. Many believe the US pushed Afghanistan towards a national vote before the country was ready. "The United States wants, before the November elections, to showcase a victory of the Bush administration by proving it is possible to bring democracy to an Islamic Third World country," says Assem Akram, an Afghan historian and author. "And if American voters grant George Bush a new mandate, his administration will reproduce the same successful model in Iraq. That is why there is so much hurry." The blatant violation of election rules has prompted two presidential candidates, Latif Pedram, leader of the Congress Mili Afghanistan Party and independent candidate Ahmad Shah Amadzai, to call for an investigation. Representatives of president Hamid Karzai, the US-backed candidate, insist that their campaign has not participated in any election fraud, but Afghani political observers warn that if Karzai, who is expected to win re-election, wins in an atmosphere of fraud and controversy, new violence could erupt throughout the country. (Toronto Star/CommonDreams)
August 17: Three American mercenaries accused of torturing Afghani civilians as part of their "private war on terror" testify in an Afghani courtroom that the US military is covering up its participation and authorization of their activities in Afghanistan. Johnathan Idema, the leader of the group, says that the US disowned them after the stories from Abu Ghraib became a worldwide scandal. He says that the FBI and the Defense Department have illegally withheld evidence from the court that would, if presented, show the group had worked with Afghan and US authorities as well as the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) peacekeeping mission. "I have this document between the Department of Defense and me," Idema testifies. "It clearly proves the ISAF is lying...the army is lying when it says we were not working for them, and the Department of Defense is lying when they say they didn't know we were here." His co-accused are Edward Caraballo, a cameraman who was making a documentary, and Brett Bennett, another former soldier. Four Afghans employed by Idema are also on trial. Their lawyer has confirmed Idema's allegations. "If I had those documents given back to me, I could show every bit of this -- I have documents from the Pentagon, back and forth with senior officials at the Pentagon, the CIA, FBI -- and of everything else this court would need to know," says Idema. He maintains that after the group was arrested it had been disowned because an Afghan radio station aired accusations that it had tortured prisoners: "As soon as the word 'torture' hit the Afghan airwaves, the American government said: 'Whoa, don't have anything to do with these guys.'" While officially disowning Idema and his colleagues, the US military in Kabul admitted last month that they held and questioned an alleged Taliban official handed to them by the vigilante group. The detainee was later released. Idema and his colleagues were arrested on July 5 after a brief shootout in Kabul. The three face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty of illegally taking people hostage, detaining and torturing them. (Sydney Morning Herald)
August 17: The first comprehensive national comparisons of school test results between public schools and charter schools show that charter school students score significantly lower on standardized tests than do public school students. The finding is a repudiation of the Bush policies deliniated in the "No Child Left Behind" legislation, and of its support of privatization of America's education of its children. Charter school students did far worse in reading and math than their counterparts in both urban and rural settings. "The scores are low, dismayingly low," says Chester Finn, a supporter of charters and president of the Fordham Foundation, who was among those who asked the administration to do the comparison. The results, based on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the nation's report card, were unearthed from online data by researchers at the American Federation of Teachers, a national teachers' organization that has historically supported charter schools but has produced research in recent years raising doubts about the expansion of charter schools. Charters are self-governing public schools, often run by private companies, which operate outside the authority of local school boards, and have greater flexibility than traditional public schools in areas of policy, hiring and teaching techniques. Federal officials say they did not intend to hide the performance of charter schools, and deny any political motivation for failing to publicly disclose that the data were available. "I guess that was poor publicity on our part," shrugs Robert Lerner, the federal commissioner for education statistics. "There's just a huge distance between the sunny claims of the charter school advocates and the reality," says the AFT's Bella Rosenberg. "There's a very strong accountability issue here." Once hailed as a kind of free-market solution offering parents an escape from moribund public schools, elements of the charter school movement have prompted growing concern in recent years. Over 80 charter schools have had to close in recent years, mostly because of questionable finances and poor student performances; California has just announced the closing of 60 more. Sociology professor Amy Stuart Wells of the Columbia University Teachers College says, "It confirms what a lot of people who study charter schools have been worried about. There is a lack of accountability. They're really uneven in terms of quality." (New York Times/Arizona State University [cached Google copy])
August 17-20: Every one of Fox's flagship talk shows and analysis programs -- hosted by John Gibson, Brit Hume, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity, respectively -- focuses on the allegations made by the SBVT against John Kerry. Without exception, the shows focus entirely on the allegations and their potential destructive effect on Kerry, without devoting any time to the proof already given that shows the allegations are the worst form of slander. O'Reilly actually goes one better, accusing Kerry of participating in what he terms the "slander" of George W. Bush via the ads aired by liberal 527 organizations such as MoveOn.org, which focus on the questions surrounding Bush's failure to serve in the Air National Guard and his failed policies at home and abroad. "Kerry's got to know what's going on," O'Reilly thunders. "He's got to know MoveOn.org and all those people are assassinating characters all over the place.... I don't think the Republicans have done that.... Do you know of any conservative right-wing websites that do what MoveOn.org does?" The short answer, of course, is no, because for all of their sometimes overheated rhetoric, MoveOn and other groups focus on the truth, not on scurrilous allegations disproven over and over again only to be repeated and disproven again without end. Meanwhile, the shows' headlines include, "Why is John Kerry Lying?", "Will John Kerry's Lies Hurt Him?", and "John Kerry: The Man and His Lies." It is obvious what Fox is doing. (Fox/Al Franken)
August 17: 55-year old social studies teacher Kathyrn Mead tries to join the audience of a Bush campaign rally in Traverse City, Michigan, but instead her ticket is taken from her and ripped up, and she is denied entrance, because of the small Kerry/Edwards sticker on her blouse. "I had my ticket and photo identification, but they would not let me in because of this sticker," says Mead, a teacher at Traverse City West Senior High. "I have never found this kind of screening anywhere in my travels around the world. I can't imagine being denied access to hearing the president of the United States speak. ...I really, truly wanted to have the experience of having seen the president and hear him speak, which is very important to me as a social studies teacher. How can anyone in the United States deny someone entry? Isn't this a democracy?" While the chair of the Grand Traverse Republican Party, Kate Stephen, refuses to comment, city commissioner Ralph Soffredine, who works security at the event, says it is all part of the Bush campaign policy. "We were told that anyone with stickers or shirts would not be let in if they would not take them off," he says. She "came to me after her ticket was torn up, but I told her there was nothing I could do. I know her and it was really too bad, but I would say that we had very few instances of that. I thought it went very well." Lynn Larson, chair of the Grand Traverse Democratic Party, says the move is typical of other Bush rallies that only allow Republican supporters to see the president. "The very reason that we are here protesting is to protect our First Amendment rights," she says. "When the Secret Service rips somebody's sticker off and takes their ticket away, it makes me even more determined to march to protect our rights." (Traverse City Record-Eagle)
August 17: Buzzflash commentator Maureen Farrell warns us not to expect any of the real Republican movers and shakers to take prominent, public places at their upcoming convention, especially not the extreme Christian conservatives that are driving much of Bush's domestic and foreign policies. Farrell writes caustically, "With undecided battleground states carrying substantial clout, it seems that God's Own Party is conjuring up a special made-for-TV GOP fantasy world wherein John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger rule the roost and GOP Grendels -- the folks Lee Atwater once referred to as the 'extra chromosome' conservatives -- remain hidden beneath the convention floorboards. ...So, though conservative figureheads like Rick Santorum, Sen. Sam Brownback and House Speaker Dennis Hastert have been recently added as speakers to quell unrest within the base ('If the president is embarrassed to be seen with conservatives at the convention, maybe conservatives will be embarrassed to be seen with the president on Election Day,' Religious Right activist Paul Weyrich recently wrote), there will be little evidence of the greased-up, Bible-thumping turbo engine currently driving the party." Instead of the GOP congressmen pushing for a Christian theocracy, the convention will feature Democrat-turned-Republican Zell Miller. Instead of party honcho Tom DeLay and religious zealot John Ashcroft, the convention will feature 9/11 hero Rudy Giuliani and Vietnam vet John McCain -- Republicans who hardly represent the Bush administration. Farrell observes, "What the Republican party is 'really going towards,' you see, isn't what most Americans want. For the most part, Jane and John Q. Public aren't praying for Armageddon or a star-spangled theocracy, and chances are, most don't even realize how diligently some GOP activists have been laying the groundwork for both." Recently, religious maven James Dobson appeared on Fox's Hannity and Colmes; when putative "liberal" co-host Alan Colmes asked Dobson, "The Republican convention has in prime time a bunch of moderates: George Pataki, Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Where are the social conservatives? And are you disturbed that more people on your side of the Republican Party are not being represented in prime time speeches at the Republican convention?" Dobson replied, "Well, Alan, we haven't yet seen the entire list. ...Of course, the president will be speaking. And he's a conservative." Farrell concludes, "Though they'll be mostly tucked away during the Republican convention, the 'ground troops' will be working behind the scenes to make sure that George W. Bush wins the White House. All the while praying for God to deliver us from God knows what." (Buzzflash)
August 17: National surveys reveal that 1 in 3 Americans no longer believe in the hallowed concept of the "American Dream," described by commentator Jeremy Rifkin as "the idea that anyone, regardless of the circumstances to which they're born, can make of their lives as they choose, by dint of diligence, determination and hard work. The American Dream unites Americans across ethnic and class divides and gives shared purpose and direction to the American way of life." Rifkin counters with a new dream, one growing among members and citizens of the European Union: "A new European Dream, meanwhile, is beginning to capture the world's imagination," he writes. "Europe's vision of the future may have greater resonance -- a kind of grand reversal, if you will, of what occurred 200 years ago when millions of Europeans looked to America in search of a new vision. Twenty-five nations, representing 455 million people, have joined together to create a 'United States' of Europe. Like the United States of America, this vast political entity has its own empowering myth. Although still in its adolescence, the European Dream is the first transnational vision, one far better suited to the next stage in the human journey. Europeans are beginning to adopt a new global consciousness that extends beyond, and below, the borders of their nation-states, deeply embedding them in an increasingly interconnected world. Americans are used to thinking of their country as the most successful on Earth. That's no longer the case: The European Union has grown to become the third-largest governing institution in the world. Though its land mass is half the size of the continental United States, its $10.5-trillion (U.S.) gross domestic product now eclipses the US GDP, making it the world's largest economy. The EU is already the world's leading exporter and largest internal trading market. Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European; only 50 are U.S. companies."
The quality of life for EU citizens, on average, surpasses that of the average American in many categories: EU citizens have better health care, the wealth of the EU is more fairly distributed, there is less crime, particularly violent crime, in most EU countries, and while the US grows increasingly more divided, jingoistic, and militaristic, as Rifkin writes, "Europeans favor diplomacy, economic assistance to avert conflict, and peacekeeping operations to maintain order. The American Dream is deeply personal and little concerned with the rest of humanity. The European Dream is more systemic in nature and, therefore, more bound to the welfare of the planet." While Rifkin warns that life as an EU citizen is by no means idyllic -- anti-ethnic sentiments are growing in many areas, many EU countries aid and abet American imperialistic ambitions, and profit from them, and the EU governing body is a maze of bureuacracy -- "...a new generation of Europeans is creating a radical new vision for the future[,] one better suited to meet the challenges of an increasingly globalizing world in the 21st century." (Globe and Mail/CommonDreams)

Kay blasts NSC for prewar intelligence failures

August 18: David Kay, the US arms inspector who fruitlessly combed Iraq for WMDs, tells Congress that the National Security Council led by Condoleezza Rice had botched intelligence information before the war and was "the dog that did not bark" over Iraq's weapons program. Kay says the NSC had failed to protect Bush from faulty prewar intelligence, and left Secretary of State Colin Powell "hanging out in the wind" when he tried to gather intelligence before the war about Iraq's weapons programs. "Where was the NSC?" Kay asks, suggesting that the president had come to depend too heavily on information supplied by Rice, Bush's national security adviser, and that the president needed to reach out to others for national security information. "Every president who has been successful, at least that I know of, in the history of this republic, has developed both informal and formal means of getting checks on whether people who tell him things are in fact telling him the whole truth," Kay testifies to the Senate Intelligence Committee at a hearing called to discuss the findings of the 9/11 commission. "I think this is particularly crucial and difficult to do in the intelligence area," he continues. "The recent history has been a reliance on the NSC system to do it. I quite frankly think that has not served this president very well." He adds, "The dog that did not bark in the case of Iraq's WMD weapons program, quite frankly, in my view, is the National Security Council." About the Iraq invasion, he says, "Iraq was an overwhelming systemic failure of the Central Intelligence Agency. Until this is taken on board and people and organizations are held responsible for this failure, I have a real difficulty in seeking how a national intelligence director can correct these failures." Kay is referring to a proposal by the 9/11 commission for the appointment of a national intelligence director to oversee the work of the government's 15 spy agencies, including the CIA and several within the Defense Department. "Where was the National Security Council when, apparently, the president expressed his own doubt about the adequacy of the case concerning Iraq's WMD weapons that was made before him?" Kay asks. "Why was the secretary of state sent to the CIA to personally vet the data that he was to take the Security Council in New York, and ultimately left to hang in the wind for data that was misleading and, in some cases, absolutely false and known by parts of the intelligence community to be false? Where was the NSC then?"
The next day, Kay gets a phone call from Robert Joseph, the NSC staffer in charge of weapons proliferation. "This conversation never took place," Joseph says, then lights into Kay. How could he level such accusations against Rice, the best national security advisor in the history of the United States? "Well, she could have stopped trying to be the best friend of the president and be the best advisor and realize she's got this screening function," Kay replies. When Tenet insisted that the WMD case was a "slam dunk," Kay says, Rice should have followed up, pushing for a full re-examination of every piece of evidence behind the claim. She didn't do that. Joseph is unbending. Rice was befuddled by the CIA and the intelligence community, he claims. She did the best she could. Kay figures Joseph is calling at the behest of Rice, and sees no need to "shoot the messenger," but he is amazed at how sensitive she is. He later recalls, "She was probably the worst national security advisor in modern times since the office was created." (New York Times/ULAW, Bob Woodward)
August 18: 8 out of 20 men in one US unit in Iraq are suffering from cancerous malignancies caused by exposure to depleted uranium (DU), according to a report by the American Free Press. Along with studies of "Gulf War syndrome" among veterans of the 1991 invasion of Iraq, it is becoming clear that DU exposure is a root cause of Gulf War syndrome. Evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on biological systems -- radiation, chemical and particulate -– the particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately after exposure and targets DNA coding, explaining why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are difficult to define. When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, says, "I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people." Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the US military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure. Hundreds of soldiers who returned from Iraq in 1991 passed the problem along to their wives and girlfriends, many of whom were forced to terminate pregnancies and have hysterectomies because of a sudden onset of endometriosis.
In a study group of 251 soldiers, 67% of their children were born with birth defects, including missing legs, arms, organs or eyes, or with immune system and blood diseases. Military sites in 42 states which had training with DU weapons are now contaminated, with residents suffering increases in endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is the likely cause of the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the US over the past decade. The military denies that DU is the cause. Military medical personnel have been of little help -- a medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only. Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail. (SF Bay View/Truthout)
August 18: New York Daily News columnist Albor Ruiz reports that at least 200 detainees are being held at New York's Wackenhut Detention Center, a privately run prison, most without any criminal charges being brought against them. Almost all of the detainees are immigrants. Conditions at the prison are so inhumane that the prisoners have gone on a collaborative hunger strike. "Nobody is eating," says Makham Singh, a detainee from India whose wife and two children are American citizens. "They bring us food and we send it back. We need people to know about our situation. We must be heard, and we will starve if we have to." The detainees are asking for the right to be treated humanely, the right to due process and appropriate medical care, the review of their cases and the immediate release of all noncriminal prisoners so they can be reunited with their families. "[T]hey are locked up 23 hours per day, and several have been there a year or more," says Bobby Khan, a member of the Coney Island Avenue Project, a prison advocacy organization. "Most of them were picked up in the aftermath of 9/11 and have been held without criminal charges or due process and, in some cases, without access to a lawyer," Khan adds. "The food is insufficient and inadequate, and even though some of the detainees have heart conditions or suffer from diabetes and ulcers, medical care is practically nonexistent." Ruiz calls the Wackenhut prison "a little gulag in New York City." (New York Daily News)
August 18: Republican House member Doug Bereuter, who is not running for re-election, says he now believes the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a mistake, and regrets voting to authorize Bush to use military force in 2002. "I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action," Bereuter wrote in a recent letter to constituents. "Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified," he continued. As a result of the war, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened. ...Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action. ...The cost in casualties is already large and growing, and the immediate and long-term financial costs are incredible. From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force. Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world. ...The toll in American military casualties and those of civilians, physical damages caused, financial resources spent, and the damage to the support and image of America abroad all demand...an assessment and accounting." Bereuter was a 26-year veteran of the House, a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. (Lincoln Journal-Star)
August 18: The family of journalist Daniel Pearl, murdered by Islamist extremists in Pakistan in January 2002, has asked the Bush campaign to stop using their son's name as part of their campaigning. Vice President Dick Cheney used Pearl's name during a campaign speech as a prelude to an attack on John Kerry. Cheney mentioned both Pearl and Paul Johnson, an American citizen beheaded by militants in Saudi Arabia in June, in a speech aimed at discrediting Kerry's views on the war on terror. "A sensitive war will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans," Cheney said. "The men who beheaded Daniel Pearl and Paul Johnson will not be impressed by our sensitivity." Cheney has repeatedly mocked Kerry's use of the phrase "more sensitive" war on terror, though he has used the phrase himself. In a statement, Pearl's family says: "We would like him to be remembered for what he was in his life, a passionate American and humanist who rose above political, religious and cultural divisions, and used his pen and fiddle to connect people of all backgrounds." (Buzzle)
August 18: A member of the Army National Guard is suing the government, claiming that it cannot compel him or others to serve further tours in Iraq once their initial period of enlistment is up. The guardsman, only identified in the lawsuit as "John Doe," names Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other military officials as co-defendents. "This lawsuit seeks to stop the forced retention of men and women who have fulfilled their service obligations," says attorney Michael Sorgen. "When their period of enlistment ends, they should be entitled to return to their families." The Army has issued "stop-loss" orders preventing tens of thousands of soldiers designated to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan from leaving the military if their volunteer service commitment ends during their deployment. The Pentagon has relied heavily on reservists to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The order violates Doe's right to due process and the terms of his enlistment contract, and is contrary to law," the lawsuit reads. "The involuntary extension of Doe's military enlistment constitutes a serious infringement on his liberty protected by the Constitution." Doe, a San Francisco-area reservist, has a wife and two young children. He is seeking a release from service when his term ends in December. (Reuters/Washington Post)
August 18: Dr. Kenneth Berry, a suspect in the unsolved 2001 anthrax attacks, has lost his job at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center over the allegations of his involvement. Berry is not a prime suspect in the crimes, and recent FBI searches of his home and office have turned up no real evidence connecting him to the mailings of anthrax to a number of media outlets and to Democratic lawmakers. (AP/WGRZ-TV)
August 18: Conservatives are gleefully piling on to an admission of error by Kerry's campaign over a misstatement he has made in the past about his missions to Cambodia during his tour in Vietnam. Kerry said a decade ago that his Swift Boat crossed into Cambodia during Christmas of 1968. He has also said that he took his boat across the Cambodian border several times. Records show, and Kerry admits, that it's likely he only crossed into Cambodia once, and that was in January 1969 during the Tet offensive; other incursions into Cambodian territory cannot be documented. Of course, the Bush campaign, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and others are using the error as "proof" of all of the allegations about Kerry's Vietnam service. Days later, CNN's Joe Johns and Aaron Brown prove SBVT founder John O'Neill is lying about his own denunciation of Kerry's Cambodia missions. Johns reports, "O'Neill said Kerry made up a story about being in Cambodia beyond the legal borders of the Vietnam War in 1968. O'Neill said no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape his publicist played to CNN that he himself had never been to Cambodia either. But in 1971 O'Neill said precisely the opposite to then-President Richard Nixon." Johns then plays an audiotape of O'Neill talking to Nixon: "O'Neill: I was in Cambodia, sir, I worked along the border on the water. Nixon: In a Swift Boat? O'Neill: Yes, sir." Johns then adds, "He says in the tape [provided by his publicist] that he did not go to Cambodia, plain and simple. He says that a couple of times, in fact, in this short interview that was played for me on the phone. Now, of course, as you listen to this conversation with Richard Nixon, he says something completely different." (Washington Monthly, CNN/Democratic Underground)
August 18: In one of the few mainstream media reports about the Bush campaign's "pep rally" campaign appearances, the Washington Post reports on the one-sided questioning Bush is "exposed" to during his campaign stops, using a rally in Hudson, Wisconsin, as an example. "Mr. President," says a young man in a baseball hat, "I just want to say I'm praying for you and God bless you." The next questioner: "I would just like to say that I agree with this gentleman, that we should all pray for you." While all campaigns massage the message in some form or fashion, the Bush campaign has taken orchestration to a new level. Plants and shills in the audience regularly steer the questioning back if anyone asks anything uncomfortable; on the rare occasion where a questioner asks anything challenging of Bush, handlers lead the well-prepared crowd in chants of "Four more years!" while security hustles the offending questioner away. This is a more typical approach, from a citizen asking about Bush's military service: "Mr. President, you were a fighter pilot and you were with the 147th Fighter Wing?" "Yes," answers Bush. "And flew a very dangerous aircraft, the Delta F-102?" "Right, and I'm still standing." I want to thank you for serving our country." "Thank you." "Thank you for serving." The Bush campaign partly denies reports that it screens audience members and refuses entrance to possible protesters. "We have an obligation that people can come and have a level of comfort that the event won't be disrupted," says campaign spokesman Terry Holt. "A few people can ruin the experience for everyone. This will be the first or only time some of our supporters will have a chance to see the president, and we feel strongly that people should have good manners and not work to disrupt the events."
At the Hudson appearance, local protesters are herded into a "free speech zone" several blocks from the venue, out of sight and out of mind. Half of the 1500 people in attendance are Republican Party honchos, or family members, or friends. One of the few pro-Kerry people in attendance got in because she is the wife of the chief of police; Char Trende says, "I think he should be defeated. He really bungled the war." But inside the venue, Trende remains silent. The Post writes, "Each session is like a 90-minute support group dedicated to him. In them he is 'bold,' a 'fighter,' 'the man for this job at this time,' in the words of various questioners, someone whose 'candle is burning brightly.' He is a 'man of faith' or a 'man who lives by his faith' or who's 'answered a calling.' Meanwhile, Kerry is 'Jane Fonda's poster boy,' from one questioner in Pennsylvania, or 'a candidate with two self-inflicted scratches,' from one in Oregon. 'Lord, we're asking for four more years for President Bush to lead this country,' Pastor Randy Simonson prays at the Wisconsin event. For most of the question-and-answer sessions, the president is endlessly being thanked, for 'serving our country,' for 'everything you did after September 11th.' He is prayed for, by mothers and twins and homeschoolers and grandparents and a blind man. He is asked to pray for the unchurched in the state he happens to be in, a request he gently declines, explaining to his audience that people who don't go to church are 'equally American.'" And when the audience microphone inexplicably cuts off during a potentially uncomfortable question, Bush tells the audience, "Don't worry, I'll be the interpreter. And if I don't like the question I'll just change it." (Washington Post, my own sources)

August 19: At least $8.8 billion in funds earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction are missing, and some US senators want to know where the money went. An audit by the Coalition Provisional Authority's own Inspector General blasts the CPA for "not providing adequate stewardship" of at least $8.8 billion from the Development Fund for Iraq that was given to Iraqi ministries. The audit was first reported on a Web site earlier this month by journalist and retired colonel David Hackworth. A US official confirmed the contents of the leaked audit cited by Hackworth were accurate. The development fund is made up of proceeds from Iraqi oil sales, frozen assets from foreign governments and surplus from the UN Oil for Food Program. Its handling has already come under fire in a UN-mandated audit released last month. Among the draft audit's findings were that payrolls in Iraqi ministries under Coalition Provisional Authority control were padded with thousands of ghost employees. In one example, the audit said the CPA paid for 74,000 guards even though the actual number could not be validated. In another, 8,206 guards were listed on a payroll but only 603 people doing the work could be counted. Three Democratic senators, Ron Wyden, Tom Harkin, and Byron Dorgan, have demanded an explanation from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the use of the funds by the CPA, which handed over authority to the Iraqis in June. "The CPA apparently transferred this staggering sum of money with no written rules or guidelines for ensuring adequate managerial, financial or contractual controls over the funds," says the letter sent by the senators today. "such enormous discrepancies raise very serious questions about potential fraud, waste and abuse." One of the main benefactors of the Iraq funds was Halliburton Co., which was paid more than a billion dollars out of those funds to bring in fuel for Iraqi civilians. The monitoring board said despite repeated requests it had not been given access to US audits of contracts held by Halliburton, which was once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, and other firms that used the development funds. (Reuters/Information Clearinghouse)
August 19: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says he is waiting for final assessment data before he officially deploys the nation's missile defense system, commonly known as "star Wars." The system has cost the nation billions of dollars and has never yet performed well in a single test that was not rigged. The first interceptor missile was loaded into a silo in Alaska last month, and five more are due for installation by mid-October; Bush has used the program to attack opponent John Kerry, who wants reduced spending on the program, as weak on national defense. Even recent postponements of flight tests due to problems in the program computers haven't slowed the system's deployment. Administration officials have said the initial system will serve a dual purpose, to provide a rudimentary defense against a potential North Korean missile attack, and to enable the Pentagon to conduct more rigorous, diverse, and expensive testing. (Washington Post)
August 19: US detainee Abdurahman Khadr, a Canadian citizen and al-Qaeda member turned US informant, said in recent testimony that while he was detained in an Afghan prison, he was stripped naked, mocked by having his genitals photographed, anally violated, and, during a flight from Afghanistan to Guantanamo, shacked to the floor of the plane in such a painful position that he wanted his guards to just shoot him dead. While at Guantanamo, he saw other detainees compelled to talk through sleep deprivation and having their faces smothered in feces and blood. Khadr's testimony in a federal court hearing last month reveals, in detail, the conditions that he and other prisoners faced after their capture in Afghanistan and upon transfer to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. He also spoke of the close contact he had with Canadians who had been at the al-Qaeda training camps where Khadr, 21, had spent part of his teenage years before he was captured and turned over to US intelligence officials. "I had a lot of friends that were Canadians and that came to Afghanistan and went into training," Khadr said, according to transcripts of his testimony obtained this week. "some of them are dead now and some of them are back in Canada and some of them are under arrest." Khadr testified on July 13 in the defense of Adil Charkaoui, another Canadian citizen appealing his own detention as a security threat. Charkaoui's appeal was denied.
In March 2003, when Khadr called his family in Canada from Kabul, US intelligence agents decided he must be trying to "get away or, you know, divulge information to my family." The agents decided to send him to Guantanamo to continue as an informant within the prison. He was taken prisoner at Bagram Air Force Base. "They got me naked and they were taking pictures of my face and then my private parts, just constantly taking pictures of my private parts," he said. They dressed him in an orange suit, he said, and forced him to lie on a cold concrete slab for two days. Soldiers stepped on his shackles, which cut through his skin "to the bone," he said. They checked his anus, he testified, "three times in eight days." He saw other prisoners hung from a wall by their shackles for as long as four days, he testified. When he asked why he, as an informant, had to suffer, soldiers told him it was to make the prisoners think he was one of them, he said. And then he was bound at the hands, legs and stomach and loaded on the flight to Cuba, with his head covered, he testified. The fresh paint on the blackout goggles he was forced to wear mixed with his tears, burning his eyes. The flight was a "whole torture on its own," he recalls. "There were people screaming around me and there was people begging for water and nobody was getting anything. And at that point I just wished in my heart that one of these [military police] would just go crazy and come in and shoot me because I was in so much pain." At Guantanamo, he was placed on an isolation block for 30 days, in a dark cell with just a hole for food and was allowed out for just 15 minutes every three days. "They use this room to torture us," he testified. "They put the heat up or they put it too low so we are freezing or we are suffering because there is no air. They put the music on so you can't sleep. They throw rocks at the block so you can't sleep." Later, in the general population, prisoners were interrogated at all hours. And when they returned, they told Khadr stories of being locked in a room that was filled with smoke or having a mixture of feces and blood wiped on their faces, Khadr said.
As an informant, Khadr said he would tap fellow inmates for information and then report to CIA agents at the prison once a week. This, he said, was key to his release. In October 2003, Khadr was flown back to Afghanistan and released, eventually making his way back to Canada. But his younger brother, Omar, remains in Guantanamo. In 1996, Khadr's Egyptian-born father, Ahmed Said Khadr, moved the family from Pakistan to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where they lived part of the time in a nearby al-Qaeda compound along with Osama bin Laden and 250 or so of his supporters. "This is where my father went and I went with him," he said. His father was an al-Qaeda financier and is believed to have been killed in a battle with security forces last fall, according to US intelligence officials. From the age of 11, Khadr would spend two to four months each summer in the Khost Mountains along the Afghan-Pakistan border at the Khaldan camp, which he described as a military basic training camp where he learned how to use a weapon and defend himself. "I know a lot of people that are living in the West and are living in Canada and that live their everyday life now and are not under arrest or anything that have been to Khaldan," he said, adding that the only person from Khaldan who attempted to attack the United States was Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested before he could act. Khadr attended Khaldan each summer until 1998, when he said he started training at the more dogmatic al-Qaeda camp called Jihad Wel. "They insisted that a person do something with his training, so kill an American or trying to go into suicide bombing," he testified, describing the distinction between al-Qaeda camps and the Khaldan camp. (Toronto Star/Truthout)
August 19: Former defense secretary William Perry, a moderate Republican who served under Bill Clinton from 1994 through 1997, comes out in support of John Kerry's candidacy and against the war in Iraq. Perry has largely stayed out of the public eye since he departed the Clinton cabinet, and now serves as a professor of management studies at Stanford University. He says he is "seriously, seriously concerned about the direction that George Bush is taking our country." In March, he told an audience at Stanford, "We cannot rebuild Iraq alone. We cannot prevent nuclear proliferation alone. We cannot stop terrorism alone. We must isolate the terrorists -- not the United States." (Stanford Daily)
August 19: History professor Juan Cole, a Middle East expert, says it is specious for administration officials and media pundits to continue their speculation as to the desires and requirements of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Cole says that, if you read al-Sadr's writings, his requirements are clear. First and foremost, al-Sadr wants US troops out of Iraq immediately -- an end to the US occupation of his country. If troops are needed to keep the peace, al-Sadr is willing to work with a UN-based peacekeeping force. Secondly, he refuses to cooperate, or as he would say, collaborate, with the caretaker government of Iyad Allawi, which he sees as a puppet regime installed by the United States. He insists that no legitimate Iraqi governmental process can begin until the US is out. He wants the reestablishment of a strong central Iraqi government with a strong military, but which has cut all ties with the Baathist past. He wants Iraq to stay together rather than being partitioned, and has denounced Kurdish demands for loose federalism. He wants Iraqi Shiism to emerge from Iran's shadow and to establish its independence from Iran. His movement is native Iraqi and quite nationalist; it is evident that al-Sadr is pursuing his own goals and not working for Iran. While al-Sadr sometimes speaks of democracy in post-occupation Iraq, it is doubtful he wants anything like an American-style government. He prefers a theocratic Islamic regime similar to that of Iran, with Islamic law enforced and clerics running the government. (Juan Cole/Information Clearinghouse)
August 19: Another tie between the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is unearthed when watchful Web surfers find Swift Boat steering committee member Ken Cordier's name listed as an aide on the Bush campaign Web site. Cordier's name promptly disappears from the site, but cached copies of the Web site prove Cordier's connection to the campaign. Cordier will resign from the Bush campaign on August 21, with the campaign denying any knowledge of Cordier's connection to the SBVT. "There seems to be an increasing amount of evidence that the Bush campaign is behind this," Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer says. "so it's no surprise that the president refuses to condemn these scurrilous ads." Bush campaign workers in Florida have also been caught handing out flyers promoting the SBVT at Bush campaign headquarters. Bush campaign officials have denied any connections between themselves and the SBVT; such a connection would be a violation of campaign law.
Author William Rivers Pitt writes, "If Kerry's people do indeed have 'overwhelming evidence' of collusion between the Swifties and Bush, they have proof of a criminal conspiracy. Tie this in with the fact that none of the accusations leveled by the Swifties are borne out by any evidence whatsoever, and that many of the accusers are contradicted by their own words. The ugliest aspect of this episode is two-fold. You have a sitting President of the United States allowing a decorated veteran to be slandered in public in order to advance his political aspirations. While Bush may denounce the spending rules that allow 527s to operate this way, he did nothing to stop them, and if the evidence bears out, he in fact went out of his way to promote them. Worse, you have an entire administration filled with men who had 'other priorities' and important family connections when the call to service in Vietnam came. These are the same men, now, who have sent almost 1,000 American soldiers home in steel coffins in the name of lies and profiteering. If ever one needed evidence of the ruthless and utterly shameless nature of the Bush crew, they have it here before them."
As a side note, here's what Bush said about his own use of 527 ads in 2000, when his campaign was involved in smearing John McCain through third-party organizations: "That's part of the American -- let me finish. That's part of the American process. There have been ads, independent expenditures, that are saying bad things about me. I don't particularly care when they do, but that's what freedom of speech is all about.... You know, let me -- let me say something to you. People have the right to run ads. They have the right to do what they want to do, under the -- under the First Amendment in America."
A juxtaposed graphic of Cordier's appearance in the SBVT television ad and his former appearance on the Bush campaign Web site can be found here. Cordier is also a member of the Bush administration's Department of Veterans Affairs, as a member of a panel advising Veterans Affairs director Anthony Principi. He and a fellow panelist, veteran Paul Galanti, appear in the SBVT ad accusing Kerry of facilitating Viet Cong propaganda efforts. VA spokesman Phil Budahn says Principi did not know about or encourage the veterans' appearance in the anti-Kerry ad; federal regulations bar advisory committee members from engaging in political activity while performing their committee duties. (Truthout [cached Google copy], Reuters/Truthout, Daily Beast, Act for Victory/Democratic Underground)
August 19: The New York Times publishes a fascinating chart detailing the myriad connections between the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The chart can be viewed by clicking the link: (New York Times [graphics file])
August 19: The Kerry campaign has asked conservative publishing house Regnery to stop printing and distributing Unfit for Command, the book by Swift Boat Veterans founders John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi, after many of the so-called eyewitnesses featured in the book disparaging Kerry's Vietnam service have been proven to be liars. "No publisher should want to be selling books with proven falsehoods in them, especially falsehoods that are meant to smear the military service of an American veteran," says Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton. "If I were them, I'd be ducking under my desk wondering what to do. This is a serious problem." Regnery refuses to pull the book. Last month Random House yanked a book, Forbidden Love, which purported to tell the story of the life and death of a Jordanian woman murdered by her Muslim father after he discovered she was seeing a Christian man. After questions were raised, an internal investigation by Random House concluded the book was a fraud. As for Unfit for Command, one of the key witnesses in the story, SBVT member Larry Thurlow, has been shown to have lied in the book when he stated in detail that Kerry had fraudulently portrayed the actions of a mission in which Kerry saved a comrade's life and earned the Bronze Star. Thurlow, a crew member on a nearby swift boat, says he never heard any firing or saw any action during that mission, but military records and Thurlow's own report from that day confirm Kerry's story and disprove Thurlow's. SBVT co-founder Roy Hoffman, a retired admiral, says now that he knew Kerry well during Vietnam and knew Kerry's stories were false; in May, Hoffman admitted to hardly knowing Kerry at all and said he had no first-hand knowledge to challenge Kerry's veracity. Hoffman is also a key character in the book. And two service members, Grant Hibbard and George Elliot, contradict their previous statements and military records praising Kerry's valor by now saying that Kerry misrepresented his record. Reporter Eric Boehlert writes, "But if Regnery doesn't withdraw the book, perhaps bookstore retailers will at least consider moving the title over to the fiction section." (Salon)
August 19: Vietnam veteran August Kelso writes of the lasting damage the Swift Boat Veterans have inflicted on veterans across the board. "Whether you support and believe the Swift Boat people or not, one thing is for certain: from now on, we veterans and our service to country will forever be in doubt," he writes. "From this day forward, no matter what is in your military record or mine can no longer be viewed as the definitive description of our time in service. The relatively insane notion that the Swift Boat people have put forward concerning Kerry's service, that what is in his records is all false and cannot be trusted will now apply to one and all veterans. All that will be required to wipe out the honor, integrity and value of your service is for one, ten or two hundred people with an agenda to step forward and proclaim they, and not the military know the truth. In the doing, everything you did that was documented will be null and void. What the Swift Boat people would ask us to believe is this: The glowing fitness reports, written by Elliott, of Kerry thirty years ago are false. That Elliott had no idea what he was writing when he penned, 'In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action LTJG Kerry was unsurpassed.... LTJG Kerry emerges as the acknowledged leader in his peer group.' According to O'Neill and his Swift Boat buddies, Elliott was such an incompetent Commanding Officer that he in essence allowed Kerry to write his own Fitness Reports. What is more, according to O'Neill and the Swift Boat people, the Navy and Elliott were so inept and devoid of honor that they allowed Kerry to write his own commendations. That is right, there was no independent verification required when it came to Kerry. He simply told Elliott what he wanted -- Silver Star this time, Purple Heart next and of course a Bronze Star for good measure -- and the Commanding Officer went about busying himself writing the commendations on Kerry's behalf. Apparently as it pertained to Kerry, the Navy and Elliott held so little regard for the services proud traditions of honor, courage and valor that they gave out the commendations like so much penny bubble-gum. That is how the United States military works, isn't it? That was every military person's experience, wasn't it?"
Kelso continues, "Truth be told, of the five commendations that I received during my service, I wasn't even aware of having been put in for them until after they were submitted. One time, I was called out of formation without a clue as to why. I marched forward and placed myself at attention. The citation was read out loud and someone pinned a medal to my left breast pocket. Nobody ever asked me whether I deserved or wanted the medal, or any commendation ever given to me. I certainly didn't and can say with the utmost confidence that nobody in my unit ever put themselves in for recognition. I can say too with even greater confidence that had any person put themselves in for any recognition they would have been laughed out of the Marine Corps. The same goes for my reviews. Not once did anybody in my chain of command ask me what they should write, or if I wanted to write it for myself. Had I or anybody else tried to tell our CO what our review should be, or what it should include our standing would have forever been diminished. I am sure too that the review would have reflected our arrogance and poor judgment. The questions concerning the Swift Boat people are these: How many veterans out there today, can make the Swift Boat accusations concerning Kerry's Fitness Reports and Medals fit their experience? How many veterans out there wrote their own citations? How many wrote their own reviews? How many believe that their branch of service, or Commanding Officer would have even considered allowing them to put themselves in for medals of valor? How about writing their own Fitness Reports or telling their CO what to write in the Fitness Report?"
Kelso concludes, "The Swift Boat people have cheapened all our service. What our Commanding Officers and branch of service thought of our performance twenty, thirty, forty and fifty years ago means nothing today. If Kerry's military records cannot be trusted, neither can mine, nor can yours! Thanks to the Swift Boat people our honorable service has been denigrated -– and when the folks get back from Iraq and Afghanistan, what will their service be worth? They had all better hope that they don't offend anybody while serving because if they do, nothing their official military records contain will amount to anything." (Washington Dispatch)
August 19: Former Democratic senator Gary Hary calls the Bush administration "the new Caesars," and warns of the imperialist and empire-building foreign policies the administration is pursuing. Hart writes, "Those who applaud this strategy include eminent British historian Niall Ferguson, who basically argues that America is an empire and ought just to get on with it, and writers such as Robert Kaplan, who, as an American, understands the difficulties of selling imperialism to a republican polity and therefore urges empire by 'stealth.' Why should we care one way or the other? The answer is simple. The United States cannot be simultaneously republic and empire. For evidence, see Rome (circa 65 B.C.). We salute the flag of the United States of America 'and the Republic for which it stands.' Since the time of the Greek city-states, republics have shared certain immutable qualities: civic virtue or citizen participation, popular sovereignty, resistance to corruption (by special interests) and a sense of the common good. Empires consolidate power in the hands of the few; seek expanded influence, by force if necessary; export centralized administrations to foreign lands; dictate terms to lesser powers, and manage foreign occupied peoples for their own political and commercial advantage. The Bush administration neocons claim none of these characteristics for their imperial actions in Iraq. They claim to want only what is best for the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people seem to be resisting, sometimes in murderous ways, these benign boons. Even more to the point, even if one were to concede the best motives to the neocons (and that represents a real struggle), the imperial project is not who we are or who we should wish to become. Woodrow Wilson cannot be claimed as prophet here, even cynically, for his internationalism was benign, not militaristic, and internationalist, not unilateralist. These are huge differences. The imperial project is in direct contradiction to America's constitutional principles. We are a republic, not an empire, and we are a republic much in need of restoration, as the erosion of the quality of resistance to corruption and the erosion of the exercise of civic virtue testify. America's 21st century project should be restoring our republic, not projecting imperial power into venues we are, by our very nature, unequipped to dominate." (Salon)
August 19: Consortium News's Sam Parry writes bluntly, "This year's general election campaign is taking on the trademark stamp of every Bush national campaign since 1988: attack politics that tear down the Bush opponent while a compliant Washington press corps can't believe the Bush family would play dirty." In 1988, Michael Dukakis faced Republican attacks suggesting he had undergone psychiatric care, favored dangerous criminals and lacked patriotism. In 1992, the Republicans went on a search for a "silver bullet" against Bill Clinton, which included illegally searching his passport file and leaking false rumors that he had tried to renounce his US citizenship. In 2000, John McCain confronted whispers about his sanity after five years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp and telephone push polls about his "black" baby (a child he had adopted from Bangladesh). Al Gore saw his words so twisted that they were used to justify Republican claims that he was "delusional" and thus unfit to serve as President.
Now the same slime and smear techniques are being used against John Kerry. The Bush campaign itself is trying to paint Kerry as a "flip-flopper," confused and inconsistent about his ability to make decisions on war and other issues. Taking the low road, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accuses Kerry of lying about his war record as the Bush campaign neither condemns nor discourages the smears. The strategy is similar to the successful 1988 two-pronged attack on Dukakis, when a group "unaffiliated" with the Bush campaign produced the infamous, racially vituperative "Willie Horton" attack ad that blamed Dukakis for a furloughed black inmate who had raped a white woman. At the same time, George H.W. Bush's campaign stressed similar themes but kept its fingerprints off the more racially provocative ad. Parry writes, "Though this historical pattern is both obvious and well-documented, the Washington press corps acts as if every day is a new day for the Bush family. At best, the voters are confused by the charges and counter-charges, which leave a residue of doubt and disdain for whatever politician got in the way of the Bush family political machine."
Parry continues, "This pattern also goes beyond political campaigns explaining, in part, why the national news media found itself so thoroughly bamboozled on the Iraq War. If there's one overriding principle in today's American politics, it appears to be that the Bushes always get the benefit of the doubt. A growing number of major news organizations -– now including the Washington Post -– have admitted to an overly credulous acceptance of George W. Bush's case for war. Their recurring explanations often boil down to the fact that challenging the Bushes is just too career threatening for mainstream journalists to risk. What would have happened, for instance, if the Post or some other major newspaper had prominently contested Bush's pre-war assertions and Iraqi WMD was found? The reporter, editor and news organization would have been demonized by the Bush administration and its allies. There would have been angry recriminations about the news outlet's lack of patriotism. Heads would have rolled. Careers would have ended. By contrast, letting Bush and his administration off the hook before the Iraq War was a win-win for the Washington press corps. First, the journalists avoided the hard work of digging deeply into the administration's dubious claims. Second, there was no downside risk. Even the journalists who actively promoted the administration's false assertions escaped any serious harm to their careers. Except for some finger-waving by professional media critics, there have been few repercussions for those in the Washington press corps who engaged in the pro-war 'groupthink.' So far, no one has lost a job in a major news organization for accepting Bush's claims. No careers have ended in humiliation. ...The truth is that the Post, like much of the national news media, has been trending neo-conservative for the past couple of decades. Bush's case for war was not seriously vetted in large part because many of the senior editors and news executives agreed with his neo-conservative policies. Others may have simply feared the career consequences of challenging Bush, especially if some of his claims proved true."
The media mockery of Kerry for standing by his vote to authorize Bush's invasion of Iraq is straight out of the Bush campaign's playbook. Parry notes, "Both the Washington Post and the New York Times treated Kerry's response as a kind of campaign gaffe, in which Bush had succeeded in putting Kerry on the defensive. The New York Times article, entitled 'Bush's Mocking Drowns Out Kerry on Iraq Vote,' gave the Bush campaign nearly a free shot to pound Kerry, including several paragraphs of criticism from Vice President Dick Cheney. The Times article by David Sanger reported that Cheney said 'Kerry "voted for the war" but turned against it "when it was politically expedient" and now has his aides 'saying that his vote to authorize force wasn't really a vote to go to war.' The ugliness of Cheney's attack went largely unchallenged. Only deep in the story did Sanger acknowledge briefly that 'in fact, in interviews since the start of the year, Mr. Kerry has been relatively consistent in explaining his position.'" In contrast, the press has taken a hands-off approach to Bush's amazing assertion that, even had he known Iraq didn't possess the fabled WMDs, he still would have invaded. "Perhaps the admission was so breathtaking -– in a brain-warping sort of way -– that the press corps couldn't find a framework for dealing with it as a story," Parry writes. "How does one write a lead that says, 'The President says the reason he gave for sending the nation to war -– and causing nearly 1,000 U.S. soldiers to lose their lives -– really didn't matter to him'? Using the 'what-if' structure that was applied to Kerry, creative journalists might have asked Bush to explain what rationale he would have given the American people in March 2003 if he knew that his WMD claims were bogus then. Or he could be asked if he would have allowed Colin Powell to make the same false WMD presentation to the UN if Bush knew at the time the evidence was all wrong. ...But the US news media only made John Kerry play the game, not George W. Bush. Indeed, Bush was allowed to use his own admission that he went to war under a false rationale to be somehow flipped against Kerry. A press corps that had truly learned some lessons from its failure to be more critical of Bush's rhetorical tricks before the war might have blown the whistle this time."
Nor has the media been critical of Bush's ever-changing rationales for going to war in the first place. "Within months of the invasion, Bush had began rewriting the war's history to make his actions seem more defensible, all in full view of the Washington press corps which turned a blind eye," Parry writes. "These were obvious lies, but Bush wasn't challenged on them in any serious way by the mainstream press. ...The key question may not be whether Bush knew that his WMD claims were wrong, but whether he cared whether they were right. Perhaps a newly skeptical press corps might ask Bush this question: If you knew the WMD intelligence was bogus in March 2003, would you still have used it to justify the invasion? ...A newly skeptical press also might want to ask Bush what 'bureaucratic' reason for invading Iraq would have replaced weapons of mass destruction if he knew then that no WMD existed."
Like it or not, Kerry has always been consistent about his October 2002 vote to grant Bush the authority to use force in Iraq. As Parry writes, "Kerry's point all along has been that Saddam Hussein was a threat if he did have WMD and that therefore an international threat of force might be needed to compel him to accept meaningful inspections. That position turned out to be accurate. A stern warning by the UN Security Council convinced Iraq to accept the return of inspectors. Nevertheless, harboring doubts about Bush's reliability, Kerry said his yes vote amounted only to conditional permission to use force. 'Let me be clear,' Kerry said in his Senate floor speech, 'the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.' Kerry also said, 'If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent -– and I emphasize imminent -– threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.' ...The irony is that Kerry has continued to say the same thing, almost word for word, today -– holding Saddam Hussein accountable and preventing him from possessing and/or distributing weapons of mass destruction to terrorist entities was an important national security goal. But Kerry set up a series of benchmarks before he felt war would be justified, including exhausting international efforts at inspections. Bush, after giving lip service to a tough regimen of inspections, then forced the inspectors to leave so the invasion could proceed. Now, Bush is rewriting that history to say that Saddam Hussein never let the inspectors in to do their work. But it is Kerry who is called on the carpet for deception. Vice President Cheney accused Kerry of being 'caught in a tangled web of all his shifts and changes,' a charge that also has been reflected in the treatment of the Iraq War issue by some of the most prestigious newspapers in the United States. A legitimate complaint against Kerry could be that he was foolish to think that Bush was ever sincere about reaching a peaceful solution with Iraq over its alleged WMD. Perhaps Kerry should have recognized that Bush had made up his mind to invade Iraq and was just throwing excuses against the wall hoping that one of them would stick. It's also possible that Kerry did conclude that Bush was lying and still voted to give Bush war authority because of the political risk in opposing Bush. But whatever one makes of Kerry's calculations, there can be no doubt that the bigger problem -– and the bigger story -– is the President of the United States can't be trusted by members of the US Congress, the American people or the world community." (Consortium News)
August 19: MSNBC political pundit Chris Matthews devotes almost all of his hour-long broadcast to the allegations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry. Matthews, who is usually quite sympathetic to conservatives, has less patience for the SBVT allegations. He catches SBVT member Larry Thurlow, who says he was on the Vietnamese river with Kerry when Kerry "fraudulently" won his Bronze Star (contradicting Navy reports and his own activities of that same day, when he himself won a Bronze Star for his own bravery under fire), in a lie, reminding Thurlow that Thurlow is now saying that even then, Thurlow knew Kerry was lying, when his own records of the day's events contradict his current position. Matthews also corners Thurlow into admitting that if he is correct now, then his own records that led to his Bronze Star citation must have been falsified. Thurlow's theory that Kerry had some sort of "master plan" to falsify his war heroism for future political benefit is shown to be a mishmash of contradictions and plain lies. "Did you have a plan to win the Bronze Star? You won the Bronze Star. Did you have a plan?" Matthews asks, among Thurlow's confused replies, "Why is winning the Bronze Star evidence of having had a plan to win one? I don't get it. ...Can you honestly tell me now, sir, that you could swear in open court that you know that John Kerry, when he was a lieutenant JG in the same theater you were in had some plan for winning medals? Do you know that for a fact?" Thurlow admits that he has no such evidence. "The problem is," Matthews says, "you haven't produced any personal knowledge about this plan you talked about, Mr. Thurlow, and that's the problem tonight." Guest Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post confirms that Thurlow, as the senior officer in the firefight, was more likely to have written the action report than Kerry, though Thurlow now says he believes Kerry wrote the report (which includes the records of Thurlow's own medal-winning bravery) to further his own ambitions.
Former senator Max Cleland, who lost the use of both legs and an arm in Vietnam, and was the victim of slanders against his own service in the 2002 elections, vociferously defends Kerry on the broadcast: "[Y]ou can put up with this stuff only for so long, and then you go out there and say, Look, you know, you want to talk about Vietnam? You want to talk about war? You want to talk about injuries? Come on, George Bush. Let's duke this out right now. I mean, George Bush is hiding behind this swift boat fantasy that is funded out of Texas by multi-millionaires that support George Bush. It's about George Bush. And he has set Vietnam veteran against Vietnam veteran here." Cleland slams the SBVT story that Kerry fraudulently put himself in for five medals during his tour as the commander of his swift boat: "First of all, you don't put yourself in for medals. Anywhere -- Vietnam, World War II, Korea, whatever. You don't put yourself in for medals. And secondly, it was Jim Rassmann who put John Kerry in for the Silver Star, not the Bronze Star.... The award was downgraded by someone else. So John Kerry did not put himself in for a medal when he rescued Jim Rassmann. And secondly, the award was actually less than Jim Rassmann recommended. Third, you don't go to war, at least I didn't, and I don't think John Kerry did or anybody on his crew, saying, Gee, this is a great day to get blown up. This is a terrific plan for my life. I'm going to get blown up once. Then I'll get blown up twice. Then I'll get shot three times, and I'm going to bring that shrapnel home so I can be a war hero. And then, finally, I'm going to risk my life for some special forces officer in the drink that I don't even know. ...I can't believe that anybody would have a plan to get wounded. Why? Especially 1, 2, 3 times. I mean, John Kerry is an authentic American hero, and people in this country know that. And that's why George Bush is losing and he never went and he doesn't know what it is like [to] feel the wound. And we need a commander in chief who does." Matthews notes at this point in the broadcast that "when we requested a representative from the Bush campaign tonight to join us this evening, they did not want to come up against the people on the show."
Columnist Michelle Malkin, who has written a book defending racial profiling and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, comes under fire for suggesting, without a shred of evidence, that Kerry shot himself to win his Purple Hearts. "Why don't people ask him more specific questions about the shrapnel in his leg?" she says. "They are legitimate questions about whether or not it was a self-inflicted wound." "What do you mean by self-inflicted?" Matthews retorts, clearly astonished. "Are you saying he shot himself on purpose? Is that what you're saying? ...I'm asking a simple question. Are you saying that he shot himself on purpose?" Malkin replies, "some of the soldiers have made allegations that these were self-inflicted wounds," to which Matthews says, "No one has ever accused him of shooting himself on purpose. ...No. No one has every accused him of shooting himself on purpose." When she continues to insist that some unnamed veterans have made such charges, Matthews cuts her off: "This is not a show for this kind of talk. Are you accusing him of shooting himself on purpose to avoid combat or to get credit?" Matthew's outrage at Malkin's wild accusations is palpable, and though he doesn't ask her to leave the show, after the exchange (where Malkin does eventually name two soldiers who supposedly made such allegations), he refuses to bring her back into the discussion. This is one of the very few times during the entire span of the debate over the SBVT charges that a member of the mainstream media has demonstrated clear impatience with the charges, and demands facts and support instead of letting people like Malkin make their charges unchallenged. (MSNBC, Democratic Underground [links to video of Matthews's show])
August 19: The Sierra Club's Rob Smith provides a useful guide for what he calls Bush's "environmental doublespeak."
- Healthy forests -- Leave no tree behind. The Bush administration has gutted the Forest Service's funding to control wildfires by thinning brush, but provided plenty of money for logging old-growth forests.
- Clear skies -- Life support for dirty old power plants. The EPA wants to weaken programs that would require power plants built last century meet modern pollution control standards when they expand.
- Clean water -- A truly mercurial policy. The FDA warns pregnant women not to eat tuna fish because of the accumulated mercury in the fish, but EPA wants to delay mercury cleanup at coal-fired power plants, the major source of airborne mercury contamination of water.
- Energy policy -- Drill America first. Although the US has only 3% of the world's oil and imports nearly two-thirds of what we use, the Bush administration has made using up our supply of nonrenewable fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal, the top priority for our public lands, from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to ranch land and forests across the Rocky Mountain West.
- Forest roadless area protection -- Bulldoze roads to nowhere where clean water, trails and wildlife now exist in our national forests. The Bush administration is looking for more ways to remove protections against unneeded new roads into the last remaining wild places on our national forests, such as areas approaching the Grand Canyon and within the Salt River watershed.
- Bald eagles and the Endangered Species list -- A bird off the list is worth two in the Bush administration. Some species of bald eagle, our nation's symbol, are again threatened with extinction; the Bush administration is apparently unconcerned.
- Climate change (global warming) -- A means to import melting ice from the Arctic Sea to new beachfront property in Arizona. The administration has ignored worldwide concern and general scientific agreement that global climate change is real, happening and could be caused by industrial pollution.
(Tucson Citizen)
August 19: In light of the recent attacks on Bush's environmental record, the Bush campaign has responded with a barrage of misstatements and lies about Kerry's own environmental voting record. Environmental issues are key in several battleground states: Nevada voters are concerned about the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility; Arizona voters poll as very strongly worried about their forests and water supplies; and Wisconsin voters are worried about the high levels of mercury in their groundwaters and streams. All three issues, and others, can be laid directly on the backs of the Bush administration, hence the attacks. "[The Bush campaign knows] they can't persuade voters that Bush is good on the environment, so they're trying to create enough confusion about Kerry's record that people decide it can't be the issue that decides their vote," says the Sierra Club's Carl Pope. Kerry strategists agree: "The Bush campaign has got Kerry written all over it," says Roger Ballentine, a senior environmental strategist for the Kerry campaign. "From Day 1, the goal of the Bush campaign has not been to get voters to like their candidate and respect his record, but to get people to dislike John Kerry even though on this issue Kerry is widely thought to be the greenest candidate America has ever seen. They want people to go into the voter booth, hold their nose, and pick the lesser of two evils." Bush's campaign Web site itself is an homage to negative campaigning, featuring a number of "humorous" Flash games portraying Kerry as playing the "Flip-Flop Olympics," and a "Kerry Gas Tax Calculator," which claims to compute how much a 50-cent-per-gallon gas tax would cost individuals, though Kerry has repeatedly said he would not impose such a tax. Not a single image of the president himself can be found on the page. By contrast, Kerry's site is far more positive and low-key, with only the statement "The Bush-Cheney campaign is running one of the most negative and misleading campaigns ever" referring to the Bush campaign's tactics. One of the Bush campaign's favorite smears, only peripherally based in reality, asserts that Kerry is in the pocket of environmental "special interests" such as the Sierra Club. The assertion is laughable considering how packed Bush's campaign, not to mention the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and other government environmental agencies, are packed with industry lobbyists and board members. (Grist/Truthout)

Go to Page Three

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

THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

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

Written and Compiled by Black Max

August 2004: Week Three

Page Two

Subtle regulatory changes lay waste to environment, profit industry

A mining site, formerly a forested mountaintop

Kay blasts NSC for prewar intelligence failures

Quick Navigation Menu

2003 Month by Month

2004 Month by Month

2005 Month by Month

2006 Month by Month

2007 Month by Month

Other Pages On This Site

Copyright © 2002-2007 Max Black