THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

Written and Compiled by Black Max

January 2004, Week Three

Page Two

 

• January 17: The Pentagon's inspector general has launched an investigation into possible criminal violations involving fuel shipped to Iraq by Halliburton, the company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. The information about a criminal investigation was released in a letter by Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman and Democratic representatives Henry Waxman and John Dingell. (New York Times)
• January 17: General Wesley Clark suggests that unanswered questions remain about Bush's military service record, though he stops short of calling Bush a "deserter" as Clark's supporter Michael Moore terms the president. Moore, introducing Clark at a campaign rally, tells the crowd, "I want to see that debate: the general versus the deserter." Clark later tells reporters, "I've heard those charges. I don't know whether they're established or not. He was never prosecuted for it. The question in this election is can we bring a higher standard of leadership to America." He says, "I'm not going to get into the issues of what George W. Bush did or didn't do in the past," but refuses to repudiate Moore's description of Bush as a deserter: "I'm delighted with Michael Moore, I really appreciate his support, he's a fantastic leader. I thank him tremendously for being here." (San Francisco Chronicle)
• January 17: Many media observers are noting with astonishment and cynicism the photos of George W. Bush being released by the White House, posed to subliminally portray Bush as a holy figure. In two of the three photos reprinted on the Web site below, Bush's head is surrounded by gold halo-like orbs, while the third places a lighted cross, a crown, and the word ":LORD" over his head. Writers Renee Louise and Ruth Sprague observe, "Every day we are shown pictures that the White House Republicans uses to influence our vote. A carefully constructed news item is released to the media knowing full well the pictures the TV outlets will run with it." These three pictures, and many more like them, have run in thousands of media outlets, often without comment from editors and reporters. But the subliminal message is clear. (James Donahue)
• January 17: A Howard Dean political rally in Des Moines, Iowa, turns ugly after a squad of Bush supporters physically attack the speakers. Guests include comedian Janeane Garofolo and rock musician Joan Jett. Jett is shoved backwards by several of the uninvited attackers, a group of seven Young Republicans who decided to go to the rally and cause whatever disruption they could. Jett, visibly angry, shoves her assailants back. Campus security restored order and the rally, including a concert by Jett, continued undisturbed. A Free Republic poster criticizes the assailants as "Amateurs! Rank amateurs! If one wishes to sabotage such an endeavor they should enter it incognito with air horns and laser dots." (WOI-TV/Free Republic, Buzzflash)

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• January 18: 24 people are killed and at least 120 wounded when a massive bomb goes off in front of the US-led coalition's headquarters outside Baghdad, a further reminder that the capture of Saddam Hussein has done little to bring stability to Iraq. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• January 18: An eminent panel of legal experts will charge British prime minister Tony Blair of committing war crimes in Iraq in a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The panel, which includes law professors from universities in Britain, Ireland, France and Canada, will claim on January 20 that there is compelling evidence that Blair broke international law and UN treaties by invading Iraq last year. The eight experts will recommend that the ICC launches a formal investigation into the Government's conduct -- the first step towards indicting ministers for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report will come a week before Lord Hutton issues his report into the death of weapons expert David Kelly, which examines the Prime Minister's role in the decision to name him as a media leaker. (Independent)
• January 18: Britain's Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon will be censured by the House of Commons for his part in the military's failure to provide adequate body armor for all of its troops. It is also revealed that Hoon participated in the delay of key military procurements because of their political sensitivity. Last year, Hoon dismissed reports of logistical difficulties, telling Parliament: "There may have been the odd soldier who did not like his ready-to-eat meal." He was later contradicted by some of Britain's most senior military officials. Lieutenant-General John Reith, Chief of Joint Operations, admitted that the shortage of body armour led to gunners and drivers of armoured vehicles in the frontline being stripped of their flak jackets. The committee's report, Lessons of Iraq, will reportedly be unsparing in its criticism of Hoon. "It is going to give him a kicking. He tried to tell us the system worked very well, when his own officials and people on the ground contradicted that," one MP says. It is a strong possibility that Hoon will be forced to resign. In a related matter, military sources blame some critical shortages on delays caused by political prevarication. They blame Prime Minister Tony Blair for not giving the green light for the procurement of military equipment because it would have alarmed his own backbenchers ahead of a crucial Commons vote on the war in November. In particular, efforts to obtain supplies of a material needed to protect troops against nuclear, chemical and biological (NBC) warfare were frustrated because Downing Street failed to give the go-ahead to the Ministry of Defence to place the order. Approval was given only after UN Resolution 1441, which paved the way to war, was passed that November. British troops also complained about the shortage of adequate NBC suits. Nicholas Soames, the shadow Defence Secretary, says: "The Government were doing all they could to prevent their own party getting a hint that it was planning for a war. Orders were not placed on time and that caused huge difficulties." The Chiefs of Staff rejected a proposal to appoint a senior officer to oversee distribution of kit to the front line. (Independent)
• January 18: Former senator, presidential candidate, and decorated World War II veteran George McGovern endorses Wesley Clark for president. Clark, a retired general and former NATO commander, is running primarily on his military record and foreign policy expertise. (CNN)
• January 18: Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy writes a thoughtful column for the Washington Post that exposes the fundamental dishonesty of the Bush administration's push for war in Iraq. He begins by noting that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has confirmed that the administration was determined to go to war from the first days of its reign. It ignored the findings of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said in early 2001, "We have kept him contained, kept him in his box" and followed it with a statement that confirmed Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction." He moves to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, noting that instead of moving to ensure US security and the location of the perpetrators, the administration callously used the attacks as justification for its plans to invade Iraq. He notes that the war in Afghanistan, which is considered at least somewhat justified by most, was merely a prelude to the invasion of Iraq. He writes, "But the focus on Iraq continued behind the scenes, and President Bush went along. In the Rose Garden on Nov. 26 [2001], he said: 'Afghanistan is still just the beginning.' Three days later, Cheney publicly began to send signals about attacking Iraq. On Nov. 29 he said: 'I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that this guy [Hussein] is clearly...a significant potential problem for the region, for the United States, for everybody with interests in the area.' On Dec. 12 he raised the temperature: 'If I were Saddam Hussein, I'd be thinking very carefully about the future, and I'd be looking very closely to see what happened to the Taliban in Afghanistan.' Next, Karl Rove, in a rare public stumble, made his own role clear, telling the Republican National Committee on Jan. 19, 2002, that the war on terrorism could be used politically. Republicans could 'go to the country on this issue,' he said. Ten days later, in his State of the Union address, President Bush invoked the 'axis of evil' -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- and we lost our clear focus on al Qaeda. The address contained 12 paragraphs on Afghanistan and 29 on the war on terrorism, but only one fleeting mention of al Qaeda. It said nothing about the Taliban or Osama bin Laden."
• Kennedy's analysis of the events to follow is chilling in its understanding of the Machiavellian depths plumbed by the Bush administration to sell its war in Iraq. "In the following months, although bin Laden was still at large, the drumbeat on Iraq gradually drowned out those who felt Hussein was no imminent threat. On Sept. 12 the president told the United Nations: 'Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents and has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.' He said Iraq could build a nuclear weapon 'within a year' if Hussein obtained such material. War on Iraq was clearly coming, but why make this statement in September? As White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said, 'From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.' The 2002 election campaigns were then entering the home stretch. Election politics prevailed over foreign policy and national security. The administration insisted on a vote in Congress to authorize the war before Congress adjourned for the elections. Why? Because the debate would distract attention from the troubled economy and the failed effort to capture bin Laden. The shift in focus to Iraq could help Republicans and divide Democrats. The tactic worked. Republicans voted almost unanimously for war and kept control of the House in the elections. Democrats were deeply divided and lost their majority in the Senate. The White House could use its control of Congress to get its way on key domestic priorities. The final step in the march to war was a feint to the United Nations. But Cheney, Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz had convinced the president that war would be a cakewalk, with or without the United Nations, and that our forces would be welcomed as liberators. In March the war began."
• Kennedy concludes, "The most fundamental decision a president ever makes is the decision to go to war. President Bush violated the trust that must exist between government and the people. If Congress and the American people had known the truth, America would never have gone to war in Iraq. No president who does that to our country deserves to be reelected." (Washington Post)
• January 18: Democratic congressman Jerry Costello calls for impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney, to begin during this session of Congress. Costello questions the award of billions of dollars of contracts to Cheney's former corporation Haliburton to extinguish fires and rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure after the war. "Can you imagine what the Republicans would be doing to a Democratic president who was a CEO of a company that now has gotten billions of dollars worth of contracts -- no-bid contracts -- without competition?" he says. "There would be hearings day after day. And my prediction to you is that you will see in this session of Congress...there will not only be hearings, but I think there ought to be impeachment hearings." So far, Haliburton has earned more than $2 billion from the war contracts. Cheney headed Haliburton from 1995 to 2000, when he quit to become George W. Bush's running mate. The General Accounting Agency sued Cheney after he refused to release documents about who and when he met with before formulating the country's energy policy. The US Supreme Court recently decided to hear Cheney's appeal. Cheney spent last week duck hunting in Louisiana with one of the Supreme Court justices who may decide the case, conservative Antonin Scalia, in what is seen by some as a potential transgression of judicial ethics. (Belleville News-Democrat)
• January 18: Hundreds of Air France pilots and crew are angrily protesting their treatment at the hands of US security forces at a number of American airports. The pilots and crew, who are largely Muslims with French citizenship, complain that they were treated like "terrorist suspects" after being separated from fellow cabin crew and grilled for up to four hours by security agents on arrival at American airports. The treatment, they say, was "discriminatory and insulting." The security measures are outlined in a directive from the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), one of a welter of new protocols created by President Bush in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks. It targets crew born in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia and Egypt, countries which the American authorities regard as particularly dangerous sources of terrorists. The directive stated that the targeted crew would be required to undergo a one-to-one interview with an agent from the TSA. If necessary, it continued, they would be forced to return to France. One Moroccan-born stewardess who flew into the city was prevented from leaving when officials could not conduct her interview. Instead, she was driven for eight hours to Atlanta, nearly 500 miles away, and forced to fly back to France as an ordinary passenger.
• Guillaume Pollard, an Air France pilot, says that even crew unaffected by the tightened security measures were considering boycotting flights to America in protest at the measures. He says, "We all condemn this action against our colleagues. I am outraged by the measure. All the personnel concerned are French, even if they were born elsewhere. Some of them are from French parents but were born abroad. This is racial discrimination." Although the directive has been issued to all European airlines, including British Airways, it has caused particular fury among crew in France where it is seen as the latest blow to US-French relations since Paris opposed military action in Iraq. Marc Allot, an Air France union representative, says, "When I heard about this directive I couldn't believe it, but the company is doing nothing. Perhaps there are strategic, political and commercial concerns, but we shouldn't accept such shameful discrimination." Philippe Decrulle, deputy secretary general of the CFDT-Air France union, said that strong action was needed. "The crew affected by these measures have flown regularly to the United States for years. All of them have a Type B professional visa which means that they have already undergone detailed checks. Why make them go through it all again?" A spokesman for Air France said that it had lodged an official complaint over the measures, but recognizes that "the American authorities have sovereignty over their own territory." (Daily Telegraph)
• January 18: As the celebration of Martin Luther King's birthday approaches, it is illuminating to wonder what King's reaction to the current war on terrorism might be. In his time, King was a vocal critic of US foreign policy, denouncing America's "giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism," and calling the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." Across the globe, from Vietnam to Asia to Latin America, King wrote that the United States was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." One can guess from King's reaction to the US's "war against communism" what he might think of today's actions; as a man who told his followers to "love your enemies," it is doubtful that he would embrace the war fever that has recently consumed large sections of American society. It is difficult to reconcile King's belief in "turning the other cheek" with the Bush doctrine of preemptive strikes. It is just as unlikely that King, who warned that "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death," would support the huge price tag of our war with Iraq, especially when Iraq's link to the events of 9/11 have been conclusively debunked, and when there are serious economic concerns at home. In his time, such positions by King were called "demagogic slander" by Time magazine. The Washington Post editorialized that "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people." The FBI dubbed him the "most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country." In light of current events, King would remind us that people everywhere, regardless of religion, nationality, or creed, are united in "a single garment of destiny" and that no nation should act unilaterally. He would assert, and, in turn, garner great criticism, that it is only through treating our enemies as children of God that we will ever create true global security. It is easy to imagine how disappointed he would be in the events of today. (Christian Science Monitor/TomPaine.com)

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• January 19: The US Army launches a formal, secret inquiry into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison on the orders of Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. The leader of the investigation, Major General Antonio Taguba, will produce a scathing report in February about systematic prisoner torture and abuse; the report will not be made public until May. (MSNBC/Slate, Seymour Hersh)
• January 19: Israeli authorities indict businessman and Likud kingpin David Appel for bribing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his son and Labor Trade and Industry Minister Olmert, in the first indictment to be filed in one of two political scandals involving the Sharon family. According to the law, if Sharon were to be indicted himself, he would be obliged to suspend himself from office pending the outcome of the trial. In the case, dubbed "the Greek Island Affair," Appel is alleged to have paid Sharon's son Gilad hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1999 and 2000 for his work as part of a consulting team in developing a vast tourism project in the Greek islands at a time when his father was foreign minister. The indictment states that Appel's real aim in employing the premier's son was to gain influence with his father to lobby Greece to approve the project. "The accused and Gilad agreed to this arrangement Sharon even though the accused knew that Gilad did not have any relevant professional skills...paying vast sums of money to Ariel Sharon's son in order to attain the support of Ariel Sharon, in his public role, to advance his business and land deals," the charge sheet reads. According to the charge sheet, issued in the Tel Aviv Magistrate's court, Appel paid Gilad Sharon $100,000 in US currency, and then transferred an additional NIS 2,582,634 to his family's Negev farm. In what was considered to be the most potentially damning revelation in the charge sheet, the indictment states that Appel told Ariel Sharon that his son was expected to earn a great deal of money. In the end, the Greek tourism project -- and a separate plan the businessman had to rezone urban land near Tel Aviv -- never came to fruition. Like in the separate campaign financing investigation underway involving the Sharon family's repayment of a $1 million improper loan, the premier has repeatedly denied all connection to the case, saying it was handled by his son alone. (Jerusalem Post)
• January 19: British political columnist Jonathan Steele exposes the real reasons why the US won't allow fully democratic elections in Iraq any time soon. He points out that Bush's plans to minimize Iraq for the upcoming elections hinge on three things: the capture of Saddam Hussein, a measurable drop in US casualties in Iraq, and a plan in place to transfer governmental power to Iraq. While the first objective was completed in mid-December, the other two are farther away than ever. US casualties have risen in frequency since the capture of Hussein, not dropped. Steele writes, "[I]nstead of [the capture of Hussein] leading to a collapse of resistance, US casualties have gone on growing. Bush's always dubious argument that Saddam was running the insurgency from various well-hidden quarters has fallen apart. Ba'athists who did not want to be seen as defending a hated leader were freed from that image. Other branches of the resistance were never Saddam supporters. It also transpires that Saddam rejected part of the resistance. Although he called for jihad against the occupiers in the tapes slipped out to al-Jazeera and other Arab media, he was writing more careful private notes to his friends. He urged them to beware of the fundamentalists -- an ironic sign that even in his months of beleaguered clandestinity, he remained faithful to the secular principles which had made him attractive to western governments in the 1980s, when the main enemy was seen as Iran."
• And problems continue to plague the US's plan for a power transfer. The US brought much of the problems upon itself by working for, then ignoring, the October 2003 UN resolution that mandated a more international presence involved in Iraq's transition towards democracy. Also, the US's plans for elections are stirring tremendous resistance among the Shi'a and other formerly disenfranchised Iraqi citizens. Steele writes, "At least in Iowa, the Democratic party caucuses involve elections. Not in the US plan for Iraq. The US is proposing that 'notables' in each province attend these caucuses to appoint an assembly which would select a government. Not surprisingly, the Shia leadership smells a rat. After generations of being excluded from power, first by the British occupiers in 1920, and then by successive Sunni governments up to the one led by Saddam, they are angry. Their spiritual head, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has repeatedly denounced the plan. He wants direct elections. His legitimate fear is that the US wants to control the selection of a government because it thinks the wrong people will win, in particular the Shi'a. Washington is also worried that Sunni fundamentalists and even some Ba'athists might do well in the poll."
• And finally, the Bush administration desperately wants some sort of transfer of governance by June, so it can say "mission accomplished" to the US voters. "[T]he whole thing is in ruins," writes Steele. "Ayatollah Sistani refuses to drop his opposition, and people were out on the street in Basra last week to support his line. Protests may spread to other Shia cities. The latest allegations of US and British torture of detainees will only inflame passions. Worst of all for Washington, Sistani has made it clear that no government which is undemocratically appointed will have the right to ask American troops to stay. Washington is trying to argue that if there are to be direct elections, the transfer of power will have to be delayed. Sistani rejects that. His supporters say the oil-for-food ration-card lists which covered the whole Iraqi population can easily be used in place of the poll cards which Washington says would take at least a year to prepare. Unlike Afghanistan, with its remote villages and months of snow which make polling stations hard to deploy and staff, Iraq's geography is no obstacle to quick elections." Of the Bush administration's efforts to cajole the UN into pressuring Sistani and other Shi'ites into supporting the US plan, Steele says, "Washington's plan for a transfer of power is a facade. The real intent is to get Bush re-elected and continue the occupation by indirect means. The UN should have no part of it." (Guardian)
• January 19: Vice President Cheney still maintains that WMDs may be found in Iraq, saying that "the jury's still out" on whether any will ever be found. "I am a long way at this stage from concluding that somehow there was some fundamental flaw in our intelligence," he says. He does admit that intelligence is "never perfect. It's rarely 100% complete." Cheney says that the US occupation of Iraq is helping the administration deal with other foreign policy hot spots: "If you do, in fact, use military force, as we did in Iraq, it makes your diplomacy more effective going forward, dealing with other problems." He says he's effective working behind the scenes and doesn't believe voters will choose the next president based on running mates. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" he says. "It's a nice way to operate, actually." (USA Today)

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• January 20: This is a list of the figures and statistics that Bush leaves out of his State of the Union address.
  
  • 232: Number of American combat deaths in Iraq between May 2003 and January 2004
  • 501: Number of American servicemen to die in Iraq from the beginning of the war -- so far
  • 0: Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender to the Allies in May 1945
  • 0: Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home from Iraq that the Bush administration has allowed to be photographed
  • 0: Number of funerals or memorials that Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq
  • 100: Number of fund-raisers attended by Bush or Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2003
  • 10 million: Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, setting an all-time record for simultaneous protest
  • 2: Number of nations that Bush has attacked and taken over since coming into the White House
  • 9.2: Average number of American soldiers wounded in Iraq each day since the invasion in March last year
  • 1.6: Average number of American soldiers killed in Iraq per day since hostilities began
  • 16,000: Approximate number of Iraqis killed since the start of war
  • 10,000: Approximate number of Iraqi civilians killed since the beginning of the conflict
  • $100 billion: Estimated cost of the war in Iraq to American citizens by the end of 2003
  • $13 billion: Amount other countries have committed towards rebuilding Iraq (much of it in loans) as of 24 October
  • 36%: Increase in the number of desertions from the US army since 1999
  • 92%: Percentage of Iraq's urban areas that had access to drinkable water a year ago
  • 60%: Percentage of Iraq's urban areas that have access to drinkable water today
  • 32%: Percentage of the bombs dropped on Iraq this year that were not precision-guided
  • 1983: The year in which Donald Rumsfeld gave Saddam Hussein a pair of golden spurs
  • 45%: Percentage of Americans who believed in early March 2003 that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 11 September attacks on the US
  • $127 billion: Amount of US budget surplus in the year that Bush became President in 2001
  • $374 billion: Amount of US budget deficit in the fiscal year for 2003
  • 1st: This year's deficit is on course to be the biggest in United States history
  • $1.58 billion: Average amount by which the US national debt increases each day
  • $23,920: Amount of each US citizen's share of the national debt as of 19 January 2004
  • 1st: The record for the most bankruptcies filed in a single year (1.57 million) was set in 2002
  • 10: Number of solo press conferences that Bush has held since beginning his term. His father had managed 61 at this point in his administration, and Bill Clinton 33
  • 1st: Rank of the US worldwide in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per capita
  • $113 million: Total sum raised by the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, setting a record in American electoral history
  • $130 million: Amount raised for Bush's re-election campaign so far
  • $200m: Amount that the Bush-Cheney campaign is expected to raise in 2004
  • $40m: Amount that Howard Dean, the top fund-raiser among the nine Democratic presidential hopefuls, amassed in 2003
  • 28: Number of days holiday that Bush took last August, the second longest holiday of any president in US history (Recordholder: Richard Nixon)
  • 13: Number of vacation days the average American worker receives each year
  • 3: Number of children convicted of capital offenses executed in the US in 2002. America is the only country openly to acknowledge executing children
  • 1st: As Governor of Texas, George Bush executed more prisoners (152) than any governor in modern US history
  • 2.4 million: Number of Americans who have lost their jobs during the three years of the Bush administration
  • 221,000: Number of jobs per month created since Bush's tax cuts took effect. He promised the measure would add 306,000
  • 1,000: Number of new jobs created in the entire country in December. Analysts had expected a gain of 130,000
  • 1st: This administration is on its way to becoming the first since 1929 (Herbert Hoover) to preside over an overall loss of jobs during its complete term in office
  • 9 million: Number of US workers unemployed in September 2003
  • 80%: Percentage of the Iraqi workforce now unemployed
  • 55%: Percentage of the Iraqi workforce unemployed before the war
  • 43.6 million: Number of Americans without health insurance in 2002
  • 130: Number of countries (out of total of 191 recognized by the United Nations) with an American military presence
  • 40%: Percentage of the world's military spending for which the US is responsible
  • $10.9 million: Average wealth of the members of Bush's original 16-person cabinet
  • 88%: Percentage of American citizens who will save less than $100 on their 2006 federal taxes as a result of 2003 cut in capital gains and dividends taxes
  • $42,000: Average savings members of Bush's cabinet are expected to enjoy this year as a result in the cuts in capital gains and dividends taxes
  • $42,228: Median household income in the US in 2001
  • $116,000: Amount Vice-President Cheney is expected to save each year in taxes
  • 44%: Percentage of Americans who believe the President's economic growth plan will mostly benefit the wealthy
  • 700: Number of people from around the world the US has incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
  • 1st: George W. Bush became the first American president to ignore the Geneva Conventions by refusing to allow inspectors access to US-held prisoners of war
  • +6%: Percentage change since 2001 in the number of US families in poverty
  • 1951: Last year in which a quarterly rise in US military spending was greater than the one the previous spring
  • 54%: Percentage of US citizens who believe Bush was legitimately elected to his post
  • 1st: First president to execute a federal prisoner in the past 40 years. Executions are typically ordered by separate states and not at federal level
  • 9: Number of members of Bush's defense policy board who also sit on the corporate board of, or advise, at least one defense contractor
  • 35: Number of countries to which US has suspended military assistance after they failed to sign agreements giving Americans immunity from prosecution before the International Criminal Court
  • $300 million: Amount cut from the federal program that provides subsidies to poor families so they can heat their homes
  • $1 billion: Amount of new US military aid promised Israel in April 2003 to offset the "burdens" of the US war on Iraq
  • 58 million: Number of acres of public lands Bush has opened to road building, logging and drilling
  • 200: Number of public-health and environmental laws Bush has attempted to downgrade or weaken
  • 29,000: Number of American troops -- which is close to the total of a whole army division -- to have either been killed, wounded, injured or become so ill as to require evacuation from Iraq, according to the Pentagon
  I find it interesting that it took a British newspaper to make this report. (Independent)
• January 20: President Bush plans on asking Congress for another $50 billion for Iraq as soon as the November presidential elections are concluded. Bush officials have constantly told the public that little more funding will be required to handle the Iraqi occupation, and refuse to admit to the upcoming spending request. (Defense News/Daily Misleader)
• January 20: Former Iraqi UN envoy Mohammed al-Douri adds to the calls for free and open elections in Iraq, and denouces the US plan to create an appointed legislative body. Al-Douri, who lives in the UAE, also accuses the US of deliberately creating chaos in occupied Iraq as an excuse to avoid direct elections of a new government; he says the US fears that vote could lead to the United States losing control of Iraq's oil wealth and strategic location. "For me what is important is Iraq, not the majority or minority," says the Sunni Muslim who was UN ambassador during Hussein's reign. "I'll accept anyone who is elected -- a Shiite or even a Kurd, if that is the people's choice. The important thing is that the [Iraqi] people elect, and not have individuals appointed by foreign entities like the United States." The US insists it wants elections in Iraq, but says they are too complicated to organize immediately. Al-Douri disputes that claim. "Elections pose a big threat to the future of America's presence in Iraq, and the Americans sense this," he says. "The United States fears that Iraqis would elect people who are against the American presence in Iraq. Free elections should be held now," he continues, "because the Iraqi people are really thirsty for democracy." He says Iraqi resistance to the US-led occupation is "only normal" and will continue until America pulls out; he believes it is based on feelings of nationalism, not any ties to Hussein's Ba'ath Party. "I do not think there is anyone now who defends Saddam as a former leader," he says. "I am not convinced that there are such Saddam loyalists. Saddam has ended." (AP/Palm Beach Post)
• January 20: Iraqi nuclear expert Imad Khadduri, who for 30 years collected and processed the information that fueled Saddam Hussein's controversial nuclear program, says that he knows first-hand that all of Hussein's WMD programs were destroyed in 1991. He calls reports of Iraq's nuclear program, used to fuel the Bush administration's call for the overthrow of the Hussein regime, a "mirage." Khadduri says that during the 1991 Gulf War, "American bombs destroyed not only the infrastructure of weapons, but they destroyed power stations, oil refineries, water treatment plants and sewage plants." He maintains that Iraq's nuclear program never got past the planning stages, and that the 1991 bombings obliterated any hope of Hussein ever developing a nuclear weapon. Khaddouri found it very difficult to make his knowledge available to either the US government or the American media, who were not interested in his information. Finally, Khadduri was forced to publish his information on an "alternative media" Web site, Yellow Times. YT publisher Erich Marquardt says of Khadduri, "My first impression of Imad was that of skepticism. After verifying his credentials, his description of Iraq's nuclear weapons program seemed much more accurate than the claims coming out of the White House." Saddam's capture, Khadduri says, was the sole benefit of the US invasion of Iraq. Beyond that feat, he criticizes US policy and soldiers for the further decimation of Iraqi culture and society. "We are in a dilemma," he says. "We are glad he is removed, but we are completely against the occupation by the Americans. Except for getting rid of Saddam -- everything else, get out. Thank you, but goodbye." He adds, regarding the current occupation and the Bush administration's justifications of the occupation, "I have a lot of respect for the American people. I don't want to insult them. I just want them to wake up and see what is happening in their name." (Michigan State News)
• January 20: Democratic candidate John Kerry revives his flagging campaign with an unexpected win in the Iowa caucuses. His fellow senator John Edwards comes in a surprising second; front-runner Howard Dean came in a disappointing third. Congressman Richard Gephardt, who said he needed to win Iowa to keep his campaign going, came in fourth and drops out of the race later in the day. Fellow congressman Dennis Kucinich, who took fifth place, vows to keep running. Candidates Wesley Clark and Joseph Lieberman skipped the Iowa race to focus on the New Hampshire primaries. Clark echoes the sentiments of many observers when he says Dean's finish is because of his failure to emphasize a positive message. Kerry, flushed with jubilation, attacks Bush's foreign policy as "arrogant, inept and reckless." (AP/USA Today, CNN)
• January 20: Thousands of Shi'ite Muslims march through Baghdad demanding the execution of Saddam Hussein. Thousands more march in the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala to demand elections and to denounce the US presence in Iraq. The Hussein regime executed thousands of Shi'ites, burying many in mass graves around the country. "We call for the execution of Saddam the infidel, who killed our sons and kept them in mass graves," says one demonstrator. Another says, "Every good Muslim woman and every honest human being wants Saddam to be executed. How can America make him a POW?" (USA Today)
• January 20: While most Iraqis are continuing to call for the execution of Saddam Hussein, many want his "former" American allies to be punished right along with him. "Saddam should not be the only one who is put on trial. The Americans backed him when he was killing Iraqis so they should be prosecuted," says one Iraqi citizen, a builder. "If the Americans escape justice they will face God's justice. They must be stoned in hell." "Saddam was a top graduate of the American school of politics," says another Iraqi. "My brother was an army officer who was executed. Saddam is a criminal and the Americans were his friends. We need justice so that we can forget the past." A US-trained policeman adds, "The Americans and Saddam should face justice. Do you really think the Americans are going to put themselves on trial? Of course we hope the Americans and Saddam will face trial. But will it ever happen? I doubt it." (Reuters)
• January 20: The US's plan for an "appointocracy" in Iraq is about the farthest thing from a truly representative democracy that can be imagined, and still fall under the technical term "democracy." This is the prime sticking point for Shi'ite supporters of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who are demanding real representational democracy. (Robert Scheer writes, "[T]he protests have strongly raised this question: What right does the United States have to tell people that they cannot be allowed to rule themselves?") Without going into what CPA head Paul Bremer calls "technical details," the current system mandates the CPA's appointment of members of 18 regional organizing committees. These will then choose delegates to form 18 selection caucuses. These will then select representatives to a transitional national assembly. The assembly will have an internal vote to select an executive and ministers, who will form the new government. This, said Bush in his latest State of the Union address, constitutes "a transition to full Iraqi sovereignty." (The US explains that a fully democratic vote can't be held because an adequate census has yet to be completed.)
• Writer Naomi Klein explains: "Got that? Iraqi sovereignty will be established by appointees appointing appointees to select appointees to select appointees. Add the fact that Bremer was appointed to his post by President Bush and Bush to his by the US Supreme Court, and you have the glorious new democratic tradition of the appointocracy: rule by an appointee's appointee's appointees' appointees' appointees' selectees." The question "why?" is also addressed by Klein. "The White House," she writes, "insists its aversion to elections is purely practical; there just isn't time to pull them off before the June 30 deadline. So why have the deadline? The favorite explanation is that Bush needs a 'braggable' on the campaign trail: when his Democratic rival raises the spectre of Vietnam, Bush will reply that the occupation is over, we're on our way out. Except that the US has no intention of actually getting out of Iraq: it wants its troops to remain, and it wants Bechtel, MCI and Halliburton to stay behind and run the water system, the phones and the oilfields. It was with this goal in mind that, on September 19, Bremer pushed through a package of economic reforms that the Economist described as a 'capitalist dream.'" So, a true Iraqi representative democracy actually threatens the administration's plans to systematically loot Iraq: "Given the widespread perception that the US is not out to rebuild Iraq but to loot it, if Iraqis were given the chance to vote tomorrow, they could well decide to expel US troops immediately and to reverse Bremer's privatization project, opting instead to protect local jobs. And that frightening prospect -- far more than the absence of a census -- explains why the White House is fighting so hard for its appointocracy." A Sistani aide believes that the Bush administration is resisting representative democracy because it would harm Bush's re-election efforts if another Middle Eastern country wound up with a government where ayatollahs played a major part. Scheer concludes, "There is, of course, no guarantee that a freely elected Iraqi government would prove efficient or enlightened. But at least under a representative government, decisions would be made by the people who have to live with the consequences, rather than by self-interested foreigners. After all, isn't that the radical idea upon which our own country was founded?" (Guardian, Working for Change)
• January 20: Several former senior Justice Department officials say that Attorney General John Ashcroft is undermining a long-standing department policy of taking minimal action in federal investigations of elected officials during a campaign. "The Department of Justice has had a long-standing policy of not undertaking public corruption cases in the immediate election cycle," says Nicholas Gess, associate deputy attorney general in the last two years of the Clinton administration. "There's no question that that happened here and it, at least, created the perception that it was politically motivated." Gess is referring to the Justice Department's investigation of Democratic mayor John Street of Philadelphia. Street was found to have surveillance equipment in his office a month before he came up for re-election. Many believe that the Bush administration encouraged the investigation of Street; Pennsylvania is one of a number of key states for the 2004 election, and neutralizing the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia is critical for Bush's hopes to take the state. "I think there is a policy to be careful about the impact on elections, which doesn't always tell you what to do because there is always sensitivity about hiding things until after elections," says Bob Litt, who served as deputy assistant attorney general and principal associate deputy attorney general from 1994 to 1999. "The general proposition is not to go public with things." He added, "My recollection is you let things take their normal course, but you don't take any extraordinary steps." Litt says he didn't see "anything wrong if you meet the legal requirement and think you're going to collect evidence with...electronic surveillance" but emphasized, "The key word is 'overt.'" He adds, "I have a lot more problem with the comments of unnamed government officials" during the course of the probe. (The Hill/US Newswire)
• January 20: The Center for Public Integrity's Charles Lewis writes an extensive examination of the corporations, organizations, and individuals bankrolling this year's president and his challengers. In mid-2002, populist Democrats managed to work a bill through Congress sharply limiting the ability of US companies to move their headquarters overseas in order to dodge US taxes; the Bush administration finessed that bill, ultimately resulting in the failure of it to be implemented. While Bush publicly claimed to be opposed to corporations dodging their tax responsibilities, in practice his administration blamed the US tax code, not corporations, for the problem, and worked to ensure that the bill never had any real effect. In return, a plethora of American companies have "stamped[ed]" overseas, avoiding tax liabilities and pocketing the savings. Lewis writes, "The roll call includes Halliburton, which under the leadership of Dick Cheney dramatically increased its subsidiaries located in offshore tax havens (the firm, which has defended such behavior as both legal and ethical, claimed at least twenty subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands alone). The private banking divisions of Citibank, Merrill Lynch, and other financial titans, which profit handsomely by managing hundreds of billions of dollars for so-called high-net-worth individuals, stash much of this client wealth offshore. And others taking advantage of lax offshore regulations and favorable tax rates include more obscure companies like The Carlyle Group, a private global investment firm based in Washington, DC. Carlyle, which oversees $16 billion in investments for more than 550 individuals and institutions from fifty-five countries. ...So far, the Bush Administration has been loath to spoil the party for those venturing offshore as a means to avoid taxes." And in return, many of these corporations have been generous to the Bush re-election campaign in return. The GOP leadership in conjunction with the Bush administration introduced a revised homeland security bill that "effectively gutted the offshore-contracting prohibition via a generous list of waivers. Republicans argued that a few 'extraneous' provisions shouldn't stand in the way of defeating terrorism, and on November 25, 2002, Bush signed the bill into law." Quid pro quo. (Working for Change)
• January 20: The US has created a list of over five million people whom it suspects of terrorist activities. Any name on that list will be challenged, and possibly stopped, from entering or leaving the country. Canadian officials, who obtained the list, say that the list is prone to have numerous false entries, as real terrorists know how to obtain and use false identification, and Canadian visa officers use profiles and experience to identify potential threats. (Toronto Sun)
• January 20: In a column written to coincide with his book The Buying of the President, Charles Lewis notes that in every single election in recent memory, it has been the candidates with the most money who won the primaries and then the presidential elections: "Our electoral process is broken, with about half or more of America's eligible voters not voting in every federal election cycle. After the Florida recount debacle, in which the likes of Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe lectured us on how to conduct democratic elections, we still do not have a single, standardized system of voting throughout the nation. The campaign process has become so expensive that it limits the talent pool available today to only millionaires or those willing and able to raise substantial sums of cash from wealthy and powerful interests with business before the government. Forty members of the current U.S. Senate are millionaires; less than one percent of the American people are millionaires. And big money mixed with irregular and high-tech redistricting help explain why the incumbent reelection rate in the House of Representatives the past three elections has been more than 98 percent. These are the kind of numbers we expect to see in countries like North Korea or China, not the United States. Despite campaign finance reform, 2004 already is and will ultimately be the most expensive election in US history. President George W. Bush has shattered his own astounding 1999 fundraising record and collected $130 million in 2003 -- that's more than half a million dollars a day -- and his campaign has $99 million in cash on hand with no major Republican primary challenger. Bush's official third quarter cash on hand number of $73 million was more than all of the major Democratic candidates and all of the Democratic national party committees combined ($54 million) through September! There is an especially compelling reason for candidates to make this headlong rush for cash. ...[T]he central, most salient, single fact about the White House selection process -- a discovery first made by Republican political fundraising consultant Stan Huckaby -- is that in every presidential election since 1976, the candidate who has raised the most money at the end of the year preceding the election, and been eligible for federal matching funds, has become his party's nominee for the general election. At midnight on December 31st, it was Carter and Ford who had amassed the most campaign cash in 1975, Carter and Reagan in 1979, Mondale and Reagan in 1983, Dukakis and GHW Bush in 1987, Clinton and Bush in 1991, Clinton and Dole in 1995 and Gore and GW Bush in 1999.
• "...But all of that campaign money, of course, comes at a very steep price. Call it 'the price of power' in our commercial, pay-to-play democracy, but each of the leading presidential candidates for the 2004 election has done public policy favors for his major campaign contributors. They don't exactly put it that way, or want to acknowledge at all how they service their major donors. ...Enron Corp., the Houston-based energy firm that touched off a financial, legal and political scandal when it declared bankruptcy in December 2001, remains George Bush's top career patron. Enron's employees and political action committee have given more than $600,000 to Bush over the course of his political career. By the way, in 2003, executives of the reorganized, bankrupt, disgraced Enron -- including Joseph W. Sutton, the company's chairman -- continued to contribute to the Bush campaign. In 1997, while he was CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney wrote a letter to Vice President Al Gore, opposing more stringent air standards. 'Implementation of these standards,' he wrote to Gore, 'would cause great harm to consumers, my own industry, and the US economy and will still not deliver the promised significant enhancement of health protection to the American public.' As Vice President, Cheney has played a lead role in shaping the administration's energy policies, which critics charge will lead to greater pollution and lower air quality."
• Howard Dean, the Democratic front-runner, is beholden to Vermont utility companies; Joseph Lieberman, to Connecticut biotechnology firms. Wesley Clark is a registered lobbyist for Axciom, a software company seeking Homeland Security contracts. Richard Gephardt's biggest patron over the years has been Anheuser Busch; Gephardt has repaid them by trying five times to lower taxes on alcohol. John Kerry's brother's law firm represents the telecommunications industry; Kerry asked the FCC to delay its spectrum auction. 22 of the 25 top donors to lawyer John Edwards are law firms. Lewis concludes, "The real powers that be in this country are not on any ballot. And they are accountable to no one. ...The bottom line is that the American people have a right to know who is underwriting their presidential candidates, and their democracy." (Charles Lewis/Greg Palast)
• January 20: Texas columnist Molly Ivins points out just how disastrous Bush's economic policies have been for the American economy: "When Bush took office, the national debt was $5.7 trillion and his first budget proposed to reduce it by $2 trillion over the next decade. Today, the debt is $7 trillion. Last year, Bush predicted a deficit of $262 billion. According to the CBO, the deficit is currently $480 billion. Bush plans to cut biomedical research, health care, job training and veterans funding, and that still leaves a projected deficit of $450 billion. It is unclear to me why anyone would believe anything the president says about our fiscal situation. Keep in mind, this is a man who took three Texas oil companies into bankruptcy. ...Under Bill Clinton, the economy gained an average of 236,000 jobs every month. Under George W. Bush, the economy has lost an average of 66,000 jobs a month. Nor is the news getting better. Last month, the economy, supposedly in full recovery, added 1,000 jobs. The economy needs to generate 150,000 jobs a month just to absorb new workers. Not only are the 2 million jobs we have already lost not coming back, but the trend will continue." Meanwhile, the administration promises to handle the situation by making it easier for unskilled Mexican workers to come into the country to take low-end jobs and ending overtime pay provisions for millions of middle-class workers. Ivins quotes Salon's Jamie Galbraith as saying, "There is no reason to believe the Bush administration's hand-wringing over its pathetic record on employment. The president's backers want a stagnant job market -- it keeps the help from getting uppity." Why all of these maneuvers? Maybe the question can best be answered with an examination of a provision in Bush's recently passed Medicare legislation: "Bush said late last year, 'If there's a Medicare reform bill signed by me, corporations have no intention to dump retirees [from existing drug coverage]. ...What we're talking about is trust.' The bill includes a special tax subsidy to encourage employers to retain prescription drug coverage for their retirees. But, oops, the [Wall Street] Journal reports the White House quietly added 'a little-noticed provision' to the bill that allows companies to severely reduce or almost completely terminate their retirees' drug coverage without losing out on the new subsidy. And guess what? The major backers of that 'little-noted provision' are all major donors to Bush and the Republican Party. It's not about trust, it's about money." (Working for Change)
• January 20: Bush announces a $1.5 billion drive for the "promotion of marriage" after working in private with religious and conservative groups to develop programs that would, in the words of the New York Times, provide "training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain 'healthy marriages.'" Pat Buchanan wonders "Why would a Republican White House, coping with a $500 billion deficit, fund such a scheme?" Buchanan notes that many conservative and religious figures are "very pleased with the healthy marriage initiative," and recognizes that most of that $1.5 billion will go straight into the pockets of Bush supporters: "That was $1.5 billion of faith-based pork cooked up in the kitchen of Karl Rove to bribe the Religious Right not to howl too loudly should the White House decide not to support a constitutional amendment restricting marriage to a man and a woman. ...Bush plans to fund God's Pork for 'faith-based' groups to enable Republicans to get a foot in the church door by making the pastor dependent on federal dollars." (Pat Buchanan)
• January 20: 17-year old California high school student Tim Bueler is the new toast of conservative talk radio. In December, Bueler gained prominence when he formed a "Conservative Club" at his high school, and encouraged members to report "unAmerican comments" by faculty members. "Let's take a stand against the liberal traitors who call themselves teachers," proclaimed a flier issued by the club, which had not been approved by the club's faculty advisor as required under school rules. Bueler inflamed matters by distributing a Conservative Club newsletter in which he wrote that "Liberals welcome every Muhammad, Jamul and Jose who wishes to leave his Third World state and come to America —- mostly illegally —- to rip off our health-care system, balkanize our language and destroy our political system." The statement was borrowed directly from the sayings and writings of nationally syndicated San Francisco radio host Michael Savage, whom Bueler credits for inspiration. The club's motto, "Protecting our Borders, Language and Culture," is also a Savage slogan. The resulting political turmoil angered some of the school's Latino students and provoked a letter of protest from 40 school officials, including the nurse and the school's principal.
• Bueler has received support from conservative groups across the nation. "Outside conservative groups are using this as an opportunity to advance their agenda and to criticize public education," says a faculty member, a coach and science teacher who played on softball teams with Bueler's father. No one at the school denies the Conservative Club's right to exist: "From the beginning," says the coach, "most of us have defended the right of the club to exist. No one has denied Tim Bueler's right to his opinions." The principal has received "thousands" of e-mails, including some that have compared him to Osama bin Laden and other villains. Meanwhile, Bueler has appeared on talk shows around the country, including Rush Limbaugh's and Laura Schlessinger's broadcasts, and is scheduled in February to speak at the annual state convention of the Eagle Forum, a national organization founded by conservative Phyllis Schlafly that crusades against "liberal bias" in public schools. Bueler is a self-proclaimed follower of Savage. "It's almost like a drug to me. I have to listen to him." While Bueler does not agree with everything Savage says -- he does not condone, for example, Savage calling a gay caller a "sodomite" and telling him to "get AIDS and die," a statement that caused the cancellation of his short-lived Saturday afternoon talk show on MSNBC, but calls Savage "the voice of reason. He's my hero," he opines. Learning that a reporter had met Savage, a former homeopathic medicine and folk-remedy expert whose real name is Michael Weiner, Bueler asks excitedly: "Is he the most intelligent man you've ever met?" Conservatives are calling for the creation of Conservative Clubs in other schools. ""These are all clean-cut, courteous, well-informed students," says schoolteacher Orlean Koehle, who heads the California chapter of Eagle Forum. "I hope every school gets a conservative club. Then maybe we would get some true American history and civics being discussed." (Los Angeles Times/Youth Lacrosse)

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State of the Union Address

• January 21: President Bush begins his re-election campaign in his third State of the Union address. The speech is carefully crafted to emphasize the "achievements" of his administration and defend, or ignore, its mistakes and failures; as the Washington Post notes, "[b]illed as a State of the Union, Bush's speech was more like the raw stone from which a campaign stump speech will be chiseled. Officials at the Bush reelection campaign and inside the Republican Party were frank about their desire to confine the speech, as much as possible, to topics where Bush is either broadly popular or believes he can win support." Bush insists his foreign policy has been a success in making the US a safer place, defends his decision to invade Iraq and claims that Iraq is more peaceful and stable now than ever before, claims to have routed al-Qaeda, and says that the US economy is strengthening as a result of his tax cuts and other economic maneuvers. He says Libya agreed to dismantle its nuclear program as a direct result of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and indirectly continues to insist that Iraqi WMD programs were the reason why the US invaded Iraq: "Let us be candid about the consequences of leaving Saddam Hussein in power. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day," he says.
• Interestingly, though Bush and his senior officials are displeased with chief WMD hunter David Kay's failure to find WMDs in Iraq, Bush carefully parrots the language Kay used in testifying to Congress in October, backing off from the allegations he had made in the previous State of the Union address. He no longer uses the term WMD, instead using the term "weapons of mass destruction related program activities." (He uses this at the behest of the NSC, which refuses to countenance an earlier speech claim that Hussein had WMDs -- true enough, if you go back to before 1991. The Kay-sourced line is found acceptable.)
• Perhaps as a sign of support, Iraqi power broker Ahmad Chalabi sits prominently next to First Lady Laura Bush during the speech.
• In other areas of his speech, he comes out against gay marriage (as a sop to social conservatives), insists that his No Child Left Behind education act is reaping rewards, urges the re-enactment and expansion of the USA Patriot Act, and urges sexual abstinence among young people to cut down on sexually transmitted diseases. One of the thrusts of the speech is the unspoken message to the American voter that it would be foolhardy to change leaders during a time of war; he uses the word "war" ten times to emphasize his belief that the country is, indeed, at war. After the speech, a senior Bush adviser says of the speech's message, "The country is closely divided. That's a reality. It's not something to worry about. It's something to deal with. Ultimately, you talk about your policies and project a positive optimism for the country." A White House aide notes, "To an extent rare for him in a speech, he took the arguments of the critics and dealt with them. Most of the time, a president makes assertions, not arguments. But this speech, more than most, takes on the arguments of the critics." Bush officials chose not to have the president discuss the proposed mission to Mars, as it hasn't played well either in Congress or with the public.
• Unsurprisingly, Democratic reaction is largely negative. In the Democratic response, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi agrees that the country is strong, but says it's not due to the president's policies, but rather the "spirit of the American people." Pelosi is joined by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle; together they criticize Bush's "go-it-alone" approach to foreign policy, with Daschle saying, "[Only] when America is secure at home and our strength abroad is respected and not resented, only then will we have a union as strong as the American people." Pelosi adds, "As a nation, we must show our greatness, not just our strength. America must be a light to the world, not just a missile. ...Never before have we been more powerful militarily, but even the most powerful nation in history must bring other nations to our side to meet common dangers. The president's policies do not reflect that. He has pursued a go-it-alone foreign policy that leaves us isolated abroad and that steals the resources we need for education and health care here at home." She notes that veterans, who have sacrificed their all for their country, are not being well-treated in return by this administration: "Our men and women in uniform show their valor every day. On the battlefield, our troops pledge to leave no soldier behind. Here at home, we must leave no veteran behind. We must ensure their health care, their pensions and their survivors' benefits."
• On the economy, Daschle says, "America can't afford to keep rewarding the accumulation of0 wealth over the dignity of work. Instead of borrowing even more money to give more tax breaks to companies so that they can export even more jobs, we propose tax cuts and policies that will strengthen our manufacturing sector and create good jobs at good wages here at home." Congressman Chris Van Hollen characterizes the address as little more than another campaign speech. "He was saying one thing to the public in an election year while he is doing something else in his policies," says Van Hollen. Fellow representative Jan Schakowsky was more direct: "President Bush is describing a very different world and a very different America than the one I see and that most people live in." She goes on to say that, "[i]n contrast to the rosy picture the President paints is the reality that, under his administration, American families have experienced job losses, rising health care costs, increased poverty and homelessness. Huge surpluses have become record deficits. And because of his policies, America's standing in the world has greatly diminished, and, as a nation, we are less safe today than we could and should be. President Bush, nonetheless, is convinced that we are making real progress." Schakowsky compares Bush's picture of a growing economy to the reality of 9 million unemployed, a loss of 2.4 million jobs under Bush, a tax plan that benefits the wealthy with most Americans receiving little or no tax relief. Schakowsky compares Bush's belief that Iraq is approaching peace and stability with the reality of 500+ dead US soldiers, thousands of American wounded, $120 billion squandered or doled out to US corporations, and the resulting chaos and near-anarchy. Bush's "victory" for senior citizens because of his prescription drug bill is really a $400 billion giveaway to HMOs and drug companies ultimately resulting in the dismantling of Medicare altogether. Bush has no plans to help the 44 million without health insurance, Schakowsky notes. She concludes, "Democrats are prepared to lead and we have offered a plan to create jobs, get the economy moving again, protect the homeland, provide real drug coverage to our seniors and help the uninsured. The President and the Republican congress have squandered our nation's wealth and security for far too long."
• The New York Times says of the address, "The impulse [when analyzing such an address] is always to split the difference -- to decry the ideas we disagree with and then note the ones we like. This time, such evenhandedness seems impossible. The president's domestic policy comes down to one disastrous fact: his insistence on huge tax cuts for the wealthy has robbed the country of the money it needs to address its problems and has threatened its long-term economic security. Everything else is beside the point." As for Bush's foreign policy claims, it notes that "[i]n last year's speech, Mr. Bush made frightening allusions to Iraqi unconventional weapons presumably available for immediate use, almost all of them subsequently discredited. A pale echo of those inflated claims appeared last night as cryptic references to Iraqi 'weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.'" Other observers note that such a reference could mean anything, including drawings on paper.
• Journalist David Corn notes the weaselly wordplay used to address the concerns about the missing Iraqi WMDs: "Bush chose not to directly address the issue of MIA WMDs in the speech. Instead, he offered a weak argument, noting that David Kay, the chief weapons hunter, 'identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.' Programs are not weapons. And Kay's report contradicted key assertions Bush and his aides issued before the war. Bush and Company had claimed Hussein had revived a nuclear weapons program. Kay said, 'to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material.' Bush and his crew had maintained they possessed undeniable evidence Hussein had chemical weapons. Kay reported, 'Our efforts to collect and exploit intelligence on Iraq's chemical weapons program have thus far yielded little reliable information on post-1991 CW stocks and CW agent production.' In his State of the Union address, Bush said, 'Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day.' But it remains unclear how advanced those weapons programs were. And, more importantly, Bush had not argued prior to the war that Iraq had to be invaded and occupied to thwart Hussein's programs. Weapons that could be slipped to al-Qaeda were the raison de guerre. Has he forgotten?"
• Corn joins Schakowsky in comparing Bush's rosy vision to reality in Bush's justification of the No Child Left Behind education act: "...on Planet Bush, there are no problems with his No Child Left Behind Act -- which has been blasted by educators across the country for shackling school systems with arbitrary tests and standards that can cause more harm than good and for shortchanging schools on funds." And Bush's promise to cut the deficit he created in half by 2005 is an outright lie: "Bush claimed that the budget he will soon send to Congress will 'cut the deficit in half over the next five years.' Here was the latest installment in a long run of fuzzy math. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Bush's projections 'show a large decline in the deficit by 2009 only because the [Office of Management and Budget] figures will omit a series of very likely or inevitable costs in taxes, defense spending, and other areas.'" Those missing costs will total $200 billion, including the costs of fighting terrorism internationally after September 30, 2004; the full costs of Bush's "Future Year Defense Plan;" the costs of extending relief from the mushrooming Alternative Minimum Tax after 2005; and the costs of extending a series of very popular tax breaks. In real math, the deficit will balloon under Bush from $374 billion in 2003 to between $440 billion and $500 billion in 2009. The CBPP concluces, "The administration's contention that the deficit will be cut in half in the next five years thus is essentially an accounting fiction, derived in large part by omitting very likely or inevitable costs, including costs for proposals the administration itself hopes and intends to submit in the years ahead."
• Democratic candidate Joseph Lieberman echoes Schakowsky as well: "The America he describes as confident and strong is not the America I've seen as I travel across this country," says Lieberman, adding people are "fearful" about their economic situations, the rising cost of health care and the lack of security they face when it comes to retirement. Fellow candidate John Edwards predicted Bush would say that the state of the union is strong. "The question is: Which union?" he asks. "The union of insiders and special interests is strong." Wesley Clark adds, "Tonight you'll hear the start of his campaign. He's running on broken promises, failed commitments." And candidate Howard Dean says, "I think this president thinks things look terrific from the White House balcony or from the suites of the big corporations or the CEOs that are benefiting from his policies -- those that got all that money from the drug bill...all the HMOs, the insurance companies." (BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Buzzflash, The Nation, CNN, CNN, New York Times, New York Times, Bob Woodward, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
• January 21: Iraqi Kurds, once the strongest supporters of the US presence in Iraq, are turning against the US over its failure to grant them limited autonomy in their portion of the country and its refusal to allow the expulsion of Arabs placed in the Kurdistan region by Saddam Hussein. Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, says the Kurds had been offered less autonomy "than we had agreed in 1974 with the regime of Saddam Hussein." The Kurds, the main Iraqi victors of the war last year, want, in effect, to keep the mini-state in northern Iraq they ruled after Saddam withdrew his army in 1991. They also want the US and the Iraqi Governing Council to recognise the Kurdish identity of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk and other districts from which Kurds were forced to flee by the deposed dictator and his predecessors. The Iraqi Kurds know they were extraordinarily fortunate during the brief war to overthrow Hussein last year. Before the war, Washington intended to invade Iraq from the north using Turkish bases and accompanied by a Turkish army. The Kurds were told by the US to keep quiet, though they protested furiously. When the Turkish parliament rejected the US demand, the Americans were compelled to rely on the Kurds to create a northern front against Hussein. As the regime in Baghdad collapsed, Kurdish forces swept into the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. The Kurds saw that as a first step towards reversing ethnic cleansing which pre-dates Saddam's regime.
• "Kurds have been very patient, but it is impossible to wait another 10 or 15 years," says Barzani. "This would lead to major problems." He says the Kurdish leaders could have acted opportunistically by sending back Kurdish refugees and expelling Arabs in the immediate aftermath of liberation. Instead they waited. "We are not happy with the process. We are disappointed. Some Arabs who left have now returned. We are not against Arabs who have always lived there but those who came because of Arabization must go back," Barzani says. There are the seeds here for a savage ethnic conflict. The Arabs and Turkomans in Kirkuk are frightened. Many of the Arab settlers have been there for more than a generation and it is not clear where they would go. The last year has seen a number of small-scale but bloody clashes. Barzani emphasizes that the Kurds were giving up control over defence, foreign and fiscal policy to central government. At the moment, that is not a great sacrifice as there is no Iraqi army, the Foreign Minister is the Kurdish leader Hoshyar Zebari and fiscal policy is not a topic on which most Kurds feel strongly. As noted by the Independent, the Kurdish position is, for the moment, very strong since the Kurds are well organized and their peshmerga fighters are the largest Iraqi military force in the country. But they fear that their current superiority may not last and their gains over the past year will be chipped away as the face of the country changes. The US cannot afford to alienate the Kurds, but the Kurds also need to keep their alliance with America. It is US air power that allowed the Iraqi Kurds to achieve de facto independence after 1991. And it is the US that keeps Turkey out of northern Iraq. The problem for the Kurds is that the best guarantee for their autonomy is to play a central role in a new Iraqi government. But Kurdish control of Kirkuk and the reversal of Arabization may lead to constant friction between Kurdish and Iraqi Arab leaders in future. (Independent)
• January 21: Major Michael Mori, a Marine Corps lawyer, blasts the Bush administration's military commissions, set up to try terrorist suspects held in Guantanamo, as a fundamentally unfair system designed to produce guilty verdicts. Mori, who represents Australian detainee David Hicks, said upcoming military trials will not be "full and fair," as Pentagon leaders promised, but were "created and controlled by those with a vested interest only in convictions." Mori says the rules and procedures for military trials "effectively removed any resemblance to any criminal court," and did not meet the standards of either military courts martial or civilian courts. Using the commission process just creates an unfair system that threatens to convict the innocent and provides the guilty a justifiable complaint as to their convictions," says Mori, who has defended or prosecuted about 200 cases in military courts. Bush revived military commissions, not used since World War II, to try terrorists in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the global hunt for terrorists. But the Pentagon has been slow to set up the legal machinery of military trials while some detainees, including Hicks, have been held two years at the US Navy base in Guantanamo, Cuba, without hearings, charges or formal POW status. A spokesman for the military commissions, Air Force Major John Smith, said the commissions are "the right forum to deal with violations of the law of war" by non-US citizens and have a long history in military law. "They're not less fair, just different," says Smith. "They recognize that fighting a war is not the same as law enforcement or police work." But Mori and four other military lawyers assigned to the defense team said the commission system is unfair because one branch, the executive, controls a closed system: Filing charges, setting the rules, appointing officers as judge and jury, and retaining the final say on verdicts and sentences. He said that military judges in courts martial are much more independent than the panels of military officers who will try terrorist suspects. "If there is reliable evidence to convict a detainee, use an established justice system, like the court-martial process," says Mori, who also suggested that some captives could be tried in their home countries. Mori argues that military trials will "lower the standard under which US service members and citizens could be tried by foreign countries, a dangerous precedent. ...The reality is, we wouldn't tolerate these rules if they were applied to US citizens," he says. (Knight Ridder/Miami Herald/Aberdeen News)
• January 21: A federal grand jury begins hearing testimony in the case of the White House leak that outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. Prosecutors are starting with third-party witnesses, people who were not directly involved in the leak of Plame's identity. Soon, witnesses with more direct knowledge will be called to testify, and a decision to subpoena journalists for their testimony will also be made. Grand juries aren't always used in criminal probes, but they are the preferred way to go in cases with potential political fallout, if only to lend credibility to the result, notes the Time report. One conclusion to be drawn from this latest step, says one lawyer familiar with the case, is that investigators clearly have a sense of how the case is shaping up. "They clearly have a sense of what's going on and can ask intelligent questions" to bring the grand jury up to speed. A grand jury is not a trial jury, but is used as an investigative tool and to decide whether to bring indictments in a case. Anyone who's subpoenaed in the inquiry, notes the lawyer, can be almost certain that prosecutors aren't contemplating indicting him or her. Subpoenas are rarely sent to the targets of an investigation, and if they are, the recipients must be told in advance that they are considered targets, at which point they would almost certainly cite the 5th Amendment and refuse to answer questions. The Bush administration continues to be extremely tight-lipped about the investigation, even internally. "No one knows what the hell is going on," says someone who could be a witness, "because the administration people are all terrified and the lawyers aren't sharing anything with each other either." In related news, 10 former intelligence officers have requested a Congressional inquiry into the leak. In a letter to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, the officers write that they don't see enough progress in the Justice Department investigation and feel the naming of Wilson's wife was "an unprecedented and shameful event in American history [that] has damaged US national security." (Time, Media Info)
• January 21: Details of abuse inflicted by Army soldiers on Iraqi prisoners are surfacing from the Army's investigations. Photographs of the alleged abuses are coming to light, and a number of MPs have been suspending pending further developments. According to Army officials, the Army is deeply concerned about possible problems of "poor discipline, poor leadership, and a need for re-training" in the military police community. A Pentagon official confirms that photos of US soldiers inflicting abuse on Iraqi prisoners exist. (CNN)
• January 21: Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was forcibly deported from the US to Syria in 2002, is suing the US government. Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, was detained by American authorities in New York in the fall of 2002 while on his way home from a visit to Tunisia. Because he holds dual citizenship, he was deported to Syria, where he says he was tortured before being released without explanation in October 2003. The US claims he was an al-Qaeda terrorist suspect, although he has never been charged with a crime in any country. He has already filed a multimillion-dollar damage suit against Syria and Jordan. He says he was beaten by Jordanian officials before being handed over to Syria. Canada has expressed its concern over the case, in part because US authorities did not bother to inform Canada that it was deporting one of its citizens. (Toronto Star)
• January 21: Journalist Greg Palast is offended at Bush's State of the Union mention of his No Child Left Behind educational program: "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act," Bush said, "we are regularly testing every child...and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing." Palast responds, "Go ahead, George, and lie to me. Lie to my dog. Lie to my sister. But don't you ever lie to my kids."
• Palast explains, "Here's how No Child Left Behind and your tests work in the classrooms of Houston and Chicago. Millions of 8 year olds are given lists of words and phrases. They try to read. Then they are graded, like USDA beef: some prime, some OK, many failed. Once the kids are stamped and sorted, the parents of the marked children ask for you to fill your tantalizing promise, to 'make sure they have better options when schools are not performing.' But there is no 'better option,' is there, Mr. Bush? Where's the money for the better schools to take in the kids getting crushed in cash-poor districts? Where's the open door to the suburban campuses with the big green lawns for the dark kids with the test-score mark of Cain? And if I bring up the race of the kids with the low score, don't get all snippy with me, telling me your program is color blind. We know the color of the kids left behind; and it's not the color of the kids you went to school with at Philips Andover Academy. You know and I know the testing is a con. There is no 'better option' at the other end. The cash went to end the inheritance tax, that special program to give every millionaire's son another million. ...Here in New York City, your educational Taliban, led by Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has issued an edict to test third-graders. Winnow out the chaff - the kids stamped 'failed' -- and throw them back, exactly where they started, to repeat the same failed program another year. The ugly little irony is this: the core of No Child Left Behind is that failing children will be left behind another year. And another year and another year. You know and I know that this is not an educational opportunity program -- because you offer no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new Republican social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nation's loser-class early on. Trap them, then train them cheap. No Child Left Behind is of one piece with the tax cuts for the rich, the energy laws for the insiders, the oil wars for the well-off. Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners without lots and lots of losers. And so we have No Child Left Behind -- to provide the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale Alumni Club, punch the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and pamper the winner-class on the higher floors of the new economic order." (Greg Palast)
• January 21: A German woman married to a US citizen is plunged into a "Kafkaesque" nightmare when she attempts to return home from a visit to Germany to show off her new baby to family members. Antje Croton, who is not a US citizen, made sure to ask immigration officials about the paperwork she would need to fly to Germany and then return. "I did everything by the rules," Croton insists. But on December 22, when she returned to Kennedy Airport at 9 pm, exhausted after a 10-hour trip alone with her baby daughter, Clara, front-line border security officers barred her way. They said her paperwork was incomplete and that she could not return to the US. Homeland Security officials then rejected her travel documents, confiscated her passport, and detained her and her 3-month-old daughter overnight in a room with shackled drug suspects. They finally released her, but ordered her to leave the country by January 22. While in detention, she asked for some consideration: "I said, 'I need to lie down. I'm shivering, I'm exhausted, I'm nursing.'" An officer retorted, "Stop crying. There were other people here with kids, and it's not going to get you anywhere." The worker who drove her to detention gave her some disposable diapers for her daughter, but other than that, Croton was given no consideration whatsoever. She and her husband have been fighting for her right to remain in the US ever since, and though they have been told that she can stay for "humanitarian reasons," they have seen no paperwork verifying that decision. "I want to believe it," she says. "But they tell me I can stay, and then I stay, and then what if they tell me I'm a real lawbreaker?" (New York Times/Unknown News)

 

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