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Second Quarter of 2003 April 2003 ... May 2003 ... June 2003 |
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4/03/03a The Neocon Con: Deception and the Drive to WWIII by Maureen Farrell "Nothing Saddam does can save him, says Powell" "Even if Baghdad readmits United Nations arms inspectors, the United States will still pursue a 'regime change' policy, with or without the support of its allies." - The Sydney Morning Herald, February 8, 2002 (nine months before U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq) http://old.smh.com.au/news/ Anyone who's been paying attention recognizes the prescient futility expressed in the article above. Serving as a marker of sorts, it's but a sliver in a body of evidence regarding the duplicitous nature of Bush's United Nations "diplomacy." Yet many Americans, equating blindness with patriotism, are convinced the president acted in good faith and went the "extra mile" to reach a diplomatic solution. And sadly, in confusing our allies' disarmament intentions with Bush's regime change imperative, they've funneled angst and anger towards the French, while missing vital subplots to this saga. In short, "patriotic Americans" have failed to notice that: 1) The Bush administration relied on a series of fabrications and forgeries to make its case 2) This war was planned before Sept. 11 and 3) The neocons are deliberating driving us towards World War III. There is a startling amount of deception in all this -- of hawks deceiving the American people, and perhaps in some cases even themselves." http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ Military Matters A more troubling deception lies in the ways neocons have misled American troops. Though the CIA warned the Bush administration about possible Iraqi tactics, Ken Adelman, Dick Cheney and Richard Perle brayed about quick and certain success. "I believe demolishing (Iraqi President Saddam) Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk," Adelman wrote in the Washington Post last year, making Sgt. Mark N. Redford's comments all the more poignant. Serving with the Third Infantry Division in central Iraq, Redford said, "I expected a lot more people to surrender. From all the reports we got, I thought they would all capitulate." Though some stories, like those about Marines living on one daily meal ration or soldiers "war-gaming" against the wrong enemy sound more like byproducts of incompetence and hubris than deception, one overriding question arises: How do the neocons propose to wage "multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars"? With half of the U.S. armed forces deployed in Iraq and others stationed in various global hot spots, PNAC's "cavalry on the new American frontier" will need to be replenished. And as one reporter recently observed, "If the presence of 10,000 American soldiers is generating a resistance movement in Afghanistan, one can conjecture what the presence of more than 250,000 soldiers will do in Iraq?" Article Link In 2000, (when PNAC's plan was published), Delaware became the first state to link drivers' license applications to Selective Service registration. Since then, 28 states, 2 territories, and the District of Columbia have enacted similar legislation. http://www.sss.gov/FSdrivers.htm. In January, the Universal Service Act 2003 (H.R. 163) was introduced, and if passed, the bill would reinstate the draft, while insuring, according to Rep. Pete Stark, that "the well-off or the well connected" won't be able to "dodge military service for their country, as did our President." http://www.house.gov/stark/ Unanswered Questions: Following Sept. 11, the media lobbed fluffballs at the Bush administration. When Donald Rumsfeld appeared on Larry King in Dec. 2001, for example, he admitted that at 8:00 a.m.on Sept. 11, he told a congressional delegation that "sometime in the next two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve months there would be an event that would occur in the world that would be sufficiently shocking that it would remind people again how important it is to have a strong healthy defense department." Did that raise an eyeball? Or inspire follow-up questions? No. King responded, "You were pretty prophetic that morning." http://www.defenselink.mil/news As the president's recent visit to Andrews Air Force base reminded, we're still paying for the media's ineptitude and complicity. Why, once again, weren't jets scrambled from Andrews to at least save people in the Pentagon? And why, 19 months later, do we still not know the answer to that and other disturbing questions? Though the PNAC neocons suspiciously admitted that it would take "some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor" to set their WWIII plans in motion, shouldn't the press and American citizens be demanding accountability? Although the alternative media and various organizations have researched 911 oddities, and Greg Palast http://www.gregpalast.com/ Gore Vidal http://www.observer.co.uk/l and Michael Moore http://www.observer.co.uk have expressed misgivings about the official story, mainstream sources are finally questioning the Bush administration's reluctance to investigate 911. In March, Newsweek reported on Florida Sen. Bob Graham's "911 outrage" over FBI and CIA failures, as well as "facilitation" of the hijackers by a "sovereign nation" (reportedly Saudi Arabia). He also accused the Bush administration of suppressing information. "There's been a cover-up of this," he said. Later, Time asked "Is the Bush White House trying to put the brakes on the congressional panel created last fall to investigate 9-11 attacks?" http://www.time.com/time/, while the New York Times reported that while an estimated $14 million is needed to fund the 9-11 independent commission, and find out how terrorists were able to conspire to kill 3000 Americans, only $3 million has been made available. "In comparison," the Times said, "the inquiry into the shuttle disaster's loss of seven lives may cost an estimated $40 million, and the inquiry into the Whitewater controversy ate up more than $30 million." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/opinion/31MON2.htm Nonetheless, with the first public hearings on 9/11 underway, hopefully some answers will be forthcoming. http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/index.htm
4/14/03a http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0412-01.htm Published on Saturday, April 12, 2003 by the International Herald Tribune Global Domination Carries Grave Risks by William Pfaff PARIS -- Statements by both President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell at the start of last week made it clear that the United States does not intend to give the United Nations a political role of any consequence in postwar Iraq. Washington says that as the United States and Britain waged and won the war they will also manage the peace. The United Nations, a Pentagon official says, will have no role ŒŒin constructing a democratic Iraq.‚‚ The intellectual and political position of the administration and its supporters is that the United States, as sole superpower, legitimately defends international order because the United Nations has defaulted on this responsibility, having never enforced its resolutions demanding Saddam Hussein‚s disarmament. Unilateralism and preemptive war are said to be necessary to defend the United States, and to establish and maintain a democratic international order, which the United Nations cannot or will not do. However, Iraq is not that simple. The Fourth Geneva Convention imposes on the military occupier full responsibility for the well-being of the civil population. It severely restricts the occupier‚s right to make use of the occupied country‚s resources. No one is going to stop Washington from doing what it pleases in Iraq, but if it goes against international law it will have to pay and stay. The Bush administration would prefer to have the international community pay for reconstruction and have other countries‚ forces do the peacekeeping. Otherwise some kind of deal will have to be struck with the members of the self-proclaimed ŒŒpeace camp‚‚ in the Security Council, and with the European Union, the principal potential international source of reconstruction aid. This confronts the United States with a problem the Bush administration is unwilling to acknowledge. The Iraq intervention destroyed ŒŒthe reputation the United States has enjoyed for so long as a benevolent power,‚‚ to quote Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, writing in The Boston Globe. Pape says that the United States broke the rule "that democracies do not wage preventive wars" by doing what no other democratic state has done in the more than 200 years of the American nation‚s existence.
4/17/03a Syria could be next, warns Washington Ed Vulliamy in Washington Sunday April 13, 200 The Observer The United States has pledged to tackle the Syrian-backed Hizbollah group in the next phase of its 'war on terror' in a move which could threaten military action against President Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus. The move is part of Washington's efforts to persuade Israel to support a new peace settlement with the Palestinians. Washington has promised Israel that it will take 'all effective action' to cut off Syria's support for Hizbollah - implying a military strike if necessary, sources in the Bush administration have told The Observer . Hizbollah is a Shia Muslim organisation based in Lebanon, whose fighters have attacked northern Israeli settlements and harassed occupying Israeli troops to the point of forcing an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon three years ago. 4/17/03b Washington is trying to portray its battle as one of liberation, not conquest, but Iraq is about to be invaded by thousands of U.S. evangelical missionaries who say they are bent on a "spiritual warfare" campaign to convert the country's Muslims to Christianity. Among the largest aid groups preparing to provide humanitarian assistance to Iraqis ravaged by the war are a number of Christian charities based in the southern United States that make no secret of their desire to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and win over Muslim souls. The largest of these is the Southern Baptist Convention, an ardent supporter of the war as an opportunity to bring Christianity to the Middle East. It says it has 25,000 trained evangelists ready to enter Iraq. "That would [mean] a heart change would go on in that part of the world," Mark Liederbach of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary explained in a recent speech to the SBC. "That's what we need to be praying for. That's how a Christian wages spiritual warfare." Such words have caused deep alarm among military and diplomatic authorities. Although Christian aid organizations have worked comfortably alongside secular groups in other conflicts, Muslims around the world are already suspicious of U.S. motives in Iraq, and the worry is that missionaries could reinforce the widespread popular belief that the war is really a "clash of civilizations" between Christians and Muslims. 4/17/03c Analysis / Washington turns its sights on Damascus By Ze'ev Schiff Why is the volume of rebuke leveled by the U.S. administration against Damascus getting higher while the war in Iraq is actually coming to a close? Two reasons seem to underly America's rage, which was quite evident first in the statements of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then of President George W. Bush. One is that Washington has learned that Damascus has decided to "turn Iraq into a new Lebanon," and the second is the suspicion, which is probably based on reliable intelligence, that Damascus is ready to shelter fleeing Iraqi leaders and let them pass through to other hiding places worldwide. Hardly a day has gone by recently without Washington lashing out against Syria. The headquarters of U.S. forces in Qatar concured, saying that during the fighting in Iraq, volunteer Syrian soldiers opened fired on American troops; the Syrians also fired anti-tank missiles and old Strela missiles against U.S. aircraft. Since these are weapons that individuals usually do not own, the Syrian volunteers must have received them before crossing into Iraq. In his comments yesterday, Rumsfeld distinguished between the Syrian people on the one hand and its leadership, which supports terror, on the other. He stressed the link between Syria and Hezbollah, which the U.S. has recognized as a terror organization. Rumsfeld did not threaten military retaliation, but wondered who would invest in a country like Syria. And for the first time, Bush yesterday demanded that Syria dispose of its chemical weapons. 4/17/03d Published on Tuesday, April 15, 2003 by Agence France Presse Large Protests Greet US-Backed Talks on Post-Saddam Iraq Around 20,000 demonstrators converged on the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah to protest US-brokered talks aimed at sketching out a post-Saddam Hussein administration. The Pentagon said it was not yet prepared to declare victory after 26 days of war, but US commanders expressed hope Tuesday the main stage of hostilities was over with the fall of Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. And a drawdown of the 300,000 US force deployed in the region was already underway. Two US aircraft carriers -- the USS Kitty Hawk and the USS Constellation -- are due to head home from the Gulf as early as this week. US troops have worked alongside Iraqi police in joint patrols to try to restore order. But life in Baghdad remained far from normal six days after US troops entered. Most shops remained closed, and many parts of the city still lacked water or electricity. And US forces tried Tuesday to prevent the media from covering a third day of anti-US protests by Iraqis outside the hotel housing a US operations base in central Baghdad. Some 200-300 Iraqis gathered outside the Palestine Hotel to express their rage at what they said was the US failure to restore order after the fall of Saddam's regime. For the first time, visibly-angered US military officials sought to distance the media from the protest.
4/25/03a http://pfaff.tcc.virginia.edu/ Iraq's scavengers have thieved and destroyed what they have been allowed to loot and burn by the Americans ? and a two-hour drive around Baghdad shows clearly what the US intends to protect. After days of arson and pillage, here's a short but revealing scorecard. US troops have sat back and allowed mobs to wreck and then burn the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information. They did nothing to prevent looters from destroying priceless treasures of Iraq's history in the Baghdad Archaeological Museum and in the museum in the northern city of Mosul, or from looting three hospitals. The Americans have, though, put hundreds of troops inside two Iraqi ministries that remain untouched -- and untouchable -- because tanks and armoured personnel carriers and Humvees have been placed inside and outside both institutions.And which ministries proved to be so important for the Americans? Why, the Ministry of Interior, of course -- with its vast wealth of intelligence information on Iraq -- and the Ministry of Oil. The archives and files of Iraq's most valuable asset -- its oilfields and, even more important, its massive reserves -- are safe and sound, sealed off from the mobs and looters, and safe to be shared, as Washington almost certainly intends, with American oil companies. 4/25/03b http://baltimore.indymedia.org/ CHERYL SEAL REPORTS: Peabody Coal Co. Barons Top Cheney's Secret Energy Task Force List by Cheryl Seal 18 Apr 2003 The list of "task force" members has been jealously guarded by Cheney because it is, in essence, a list of top contributors to the Bush campaign. These contributors were not just rewarded with slots on the task force list, but showered with favors that came at a devastating cost to America. At least one of the names on the list, a little bird reports, are top execs at the Peabody Coal Company, the largest, most ruthless barons in the world, infamous for originating the practice of ripping off the tops of mountains to get cheaply and easily at coal. Where Peabody has gone in, environmental devastation has followed. Many a coal miner's life has been lost, either catastrophically through accidents, or slowly and painfully through black lung, through Peabody's routine practice of failing to comply with safety standards, then covering up the evidence. Go up to this google.com page and look at the list of cases against Peabody just on this one page: Until Bush was elected, progress was being made toward putting a leash on the coal companies wanton excesses against humankind and the ecosystem. A push was even being made to phase out coal-powered power plants, the chief sources of major greenhouse gases today. American coal-powered plants pump 2.3 billion tons of CO2 into the air each year. That is twice as much as the amount of C02 emitted by vehicles. 4/25/03c http://www.consortiumnews.com/2003/040803a.html In the latest sign of a troubled American democracy, a large majority of U.S. citizens now say they wouldn't mind if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq, though it was George W. Bush's chief rationale for war. Americans also don't seem to mind that Bush appears to have deceived them for months when he claimed he hadn't made up his mind about invading Iraq. As he marched the nation to war, Bush presented himself as a Christian man of peace who saw war only as a last resort. But in a remarkable though little noted disclosure, Time magazine reported that in March 2002 &endash; a full year before the invasion &endash; Bush outlined his real thinking to three U.S. senators, "Fuck Saddam," Bush said. "We're taking him out." Time actually didn't report the quote exactly that way. Apparently not to offend readers who admire Bush's moral clarity, Time printed the quote as "F--- Saddam. We're taking him out." Bush offered his pithy judgment after sticking his head in the door of a White House meeting between National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and three senators who had been discussing strategies for dealing with Iraq through the United Nations. The senators laughed uncomfortably at Bush's remark, Time reported. [Time story posted March 23, 2003] It now is clear that Bush never intended to avoid a war in Iraq, a conflict which has so far claimed the lives of at least 85 American soldiers and possibly thousands of Iraqis. As of Monday, April 7, the U.S. military had located two suspicious caches of chemicals that were undergoing tests, but still had not confirmed any chemical or biological weapons. Whatever those ultimate findings, however, there's little doubt that the long-running drama over United Nations inspections to ensure that Iraq had rid itself of weapons of mass destruction was a charade designed to mask Bush's predetermined course of action -- to test out his new doctrine of preemptive war.
4/27/03a http://www.9-11commission.gov/ (This is just the start of the article, she goes on at legnth about everyone from the DOD to Mr. Bush, it is really quite something, see the link for the whole shebang!) First public hearing of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Statement of Mindy Kleinberg to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States March 31, 2003 My name is Mindy Kleinberg. My husband Alan Kleinberg, 39 yrs old, was killed in the WTC on September 11, 2001. As I testify here today about the 9/11 attacks, I will begin by saying that my thoughts are very much with the men and women who are involved in armed conflict overseas and their families who wait patiently for them to return. This war is being fought on two fronts, overseas as well as here on our shores; this means that we are all soldiers in this fight against terrorism. As the threat of terrorism mounts here in the United States, the need to address the failures of September 11 is more important than ever. It is an essential part of "lessons learned". As such, this commission has an extremely important task before it. I am here today to ask you, the commissioners, to help us understand how this could have happened; help us understand where the breakdown was in our nation's defense capabilities. Where were we on the morning of September 11th? On the morning of September 11th my three-year-old son, Sam, and I walked Jacob 10, and Lauren, 7 to the bus stop at about 8:40 a.m. It was the fourth day of a new school year and you could still feel everyone's excitement. It was such a beautiful day that Sam and I literally skipped home oblivious to what was happening in NYC. At around 8:55 I was confirming play date plans for Sam with a friend when she said, "I can't believe what I am watching on TV, a plane has just hit the World Trade Center." For some reason it did not register with me until a few minutes later when I calmly asked, "what building did you say?" "Oh that's Alan's building I have to call you back." There was no answer when I tried to reach him at the office. By now my house started filling with people--his mother, my parents, our sisters and friends. The seriousness of the situation was beginning to register. We spent the rest of the day calling hospitals, and the Red Cross and any place else we could think of to see if we could find him. I'll never forget thinking all day long, "how am I going to tell Jacob and Lauren that their father was missing?" They came home to a house filled with people but no Daddy. How were they going to be able to wait calmly for his return? What if he was really hurt? This was their hero, their king their best friend, their father. The thoughts of that day replay over and over in our heads always wishing for a different outcome. We are trying to learn to live with the pain. We will never forget where we were or how we felt on September 11th. But where was our government, its agencies, and institutions prior to and on the morning of September 11th? The Theory of Luck : With regard to the 9/11 attacks, it has been said that the intelligence agencies have to be right 100% of the time and the terrorists only have to get lucky once. This explanation for the devastating attacks of September 11th, simple on its face, is wrong in its value. Because the 9/11 terrorists were not just lucky once: they were lucky over and over again. Allow me to illustrate. The SEC: The terrorist's lucky streak began the week before September 11th with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. The SEC, in concert with the United States intelligence agencies, has sophisticated software programs that are used in "real-time" to watch both domestic and overseas markets to seek out trends that may indicate a present or future crime. In the week prior to September 11th both the SEC and U.S. intelligence agencies ignored one major stock market indicator, one that could have yielded valuable information with regard to the September 11th attacks. On the Chicago Board Options Exchange during the week before September 11th, put options were purchased on American and United Airlines, the two airlines involved in the attacks. The investors who placed these orders were gambling that in the short term the stock prices of both Airlines would plummet. Never before on the Chicago Exchange were such large amounts of United and American Airlines options traded. These investors netted a profit of at least $5 million after the September 11th attacks. Interestingly, the names of the investors remain undisclosed and the $5 million remains unclaimed in the Chicago Exchange account. Why these aberrant trades were not discovered prior to 9/11? Who were the individuals who placed these trades? Have they been investigated? Who was responsible for monitoring these activities? Have those individuals been held responsible for their inaction?
4/27/03b BBC Chief Attacks U.S. Media War Coverage Thu April 24, 2003 03:22 PM ET By Merissa Marr LONDON (Reuters) - The head of the BBC launched a broadside against American broadcasters on Thursday, accusing them of "unquestioning" coverage of the Iraq war and blatant patriotism. BBC Director General Greg Dyke said many U.S. television networks had lacked impartiality during the conflict and risked losing credibility if they persisted with their stance. "Personally I was shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during this war," Dyke said in a speech at a University of London conference. "If Iraq proved anything, it was that the BBC cannot afford to mix patriotism and journalism. This is happening in the United States and if it continues, will undermine the credibility of the U.S. electronic news media." U.S. broadcasters came under attack for "cheerleading" during the Iraq conflict, with what some critics saw as gung-ho reporting and flag-waving patriotism. In one example, a U.S. network described U.S. soldiers as "heroes" and "liberators." Dyke singled out Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, the most popular U.S. cable news network during the conflict, for its "gung-ho patriotism." "We are still surprised when we see Fox News with such a committed political position," said Dyke. "For the health of our democracy, it's vital we don't follow the path of many American networks."
4/28/03a Case of the Homeland Whodunnit By Randy Schultz, Palm Beach Post Editor of the Editorial Page Sunday, April 20, 2003 What is the biggest terrorism-related mystery the United States is trying to solve? Is it the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein? No, because we know he's guilty. The lingering question is how many counts the indictment contains. Is it the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden? No, because we know he's guilty, too, and we know what he did. The biggest terrorism-related mystery is who sent anthrax around the country and where he or she got the anthrax. Because "only" five people died, compared with 3,000 on Sept. 11, 2001, the hunt for the anthrax killer has received less attention. Because of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the search has receded more in the public mind. Around the Stevens house, however, it's still the big story. Robert Stevens, a photo editor who lived in Lantana and worked at American Media in Boca Raton, was the first person to die from the anthrax that came through the mail just after the Twin Towers fell. News reports suggest that the anthrax may have come from the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (AMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md. In January 2002, it was reported that anthrax spores were among the pathogens that disappeared from Fort Detrick. The Ames strain of anthrax, according to news stories, is believed to have come from Fort Detrick. When a new commander took over at Fort Detrick in February 1992, he said there had been "little or no accountability" at the facility." A former employee said, "7-Eleven had better inventory control." 4/27/03b Published on Friday, April 25, 2003 by Ex-CIA Professionals: Weapons of Mass Distraction: Where? Find? Plant? by David MacMichael and Ray McGovern (Check out the link for a set of the "lies" we've been led to believe and the nations we've attacked based on those lies, then ask yourself, could we be "doing it again"? Below is just one of the stories, from Bush the elder's days as commander and chief.) 5. Fabricated evidence also played an important role in the first President Bush's attempt to secure congressional and UN approval for the 1991 Gulf War. (a) Few will forget the heart-rending testimony before a congressional committee by the sobbing 15 year-old Kuwaiti girl called Nayirah on October 10, 1990: "I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die. " No congressperson, no journalist took the trouble to probe the identity of "Nayirah," who was said to be an escapee from Kuwait but was later revealed to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington. With consummate skill, the story had been manufactured out of whole cloth and the 15 year-old coached by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton, which has a rich history of being "imbedded" in Republican administrations. Similar unsubstantiated yarns made their debut several weeks later at the UN, where a team of seven "witnesses," also coached by Hill & Knowlton, testified about atrocities in Iraq. (It was later learned that the seven had used false names.) And in an unprecedented move, the UN Security Council allowed the US to show a video created by Hill & Knowlton. All to good effect. The PR campaign had the desired impact, and Congress voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq on January 12, 1991. (The UN did so on November 29, 1990.) "Nayirah's" true identity did not become known until two years later. And Hill & Knowlton's coffers bulged when the proceeds arrived from its billing of Kuwait. Interestingly, the General Manager of Hill & Knowlton's Washington, DC office at the time was a woman named Victoria Clarke. She turned out to be less successful in her next job, as Press Secretary for the re-election campaign of President George Bush in 1992. But she is now back in her element as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. (b) There was a corollary fabrication that proved equally effective in garnering support in Congress for the war resolution in 1991. The White House claimed there were satellite photos showing Iraqi tanks and troops massing on the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, threatening to invade Saudi Arabia. This fueled the campaign for war and frightened the Saudis into agreeing to cooperate fully with US military forces. On September 11, 1990, President George H. W. Bush, addressing a joint session of Congress, claimed "120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks have poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia." But an enterprising journalist, Jean Heller, reported in the St. Petersburg Times on January 6, 1991 (a bare ten days before the Gulf War began) that commercial satellite photos taken on September 11, the day the president spoke, showed no sign of a massive buildup of Iraqi forces in Kuwait. When the Pentagon was asked to provide evidence to support the president's claim, it refused to do so˜and continues to refuse to this day. Interestingly, the national media in the US chose to ignore Heller's story. Heller's explanation: "I think part of the reason the story was ignored was that it was published too close to the start of the war. Second, and more importantly, I do not think that people wanted to hear that we might have been deceived. A lot of the reporters who have seen the story thinks it is dynamite, but the editors seem to have the attitude, "At this point, who cares?‚ "
4/27/03c Published on Wednesday, April 23, 2003 by Ted Rall Bush Comes Clean: It Was About the Oil Corporate Vultures Swoop Into the Killing by Ted Rall But let's forget this penny ante stuff. Let the real looting begin! George W. Bush's bestest buddies, corporate executives at companies which donate money in exchange for a few rounds of golf and a few million-dollar favors, are being handed the keys to Iraq's oil fields. Bush's brazen Genghis Khan act seems carefully calculated to confirm our worst suspicions. First he appoints retired general Jay Garner, president of a GOP-connected defense contractor, SYColeman Corp., as viceroy of occupied Iraq. "The idea is we are in Iraq not as occupiers but as liberators, and here comes a guy who has attachments to companies that provided the wherewithal for the military assault on that country," marvels David Armstrong, a defense analyst at the National Security News Service. A smart and/or decent president would have picked a civilian for a civil administration post. Then Bush slips a $680 million contract to the Bechtel Group, whose Republican-oriented board includes such Reagan-era GOP luminaries as secretary of state George Schulz and defense secretary Caspar Weinberger (the late William Casey, Reagan's CIA director, was a Bechtel executive). The deal puts the company in position to receive a big part of the $100 billion estimated total cost of Iraqi reconstruction. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel gave Republican candidates, including Bush, about $765,000 in PAC, soft money and individual campaign contributions between 1999 and 2002. Finally, refusing to accept bids from potential competitors, Bush grants a two-year, $490 million contract for Iraqi oil field repairs to Halliburton Co., the Houston-based company where Dick Cheney worked as CEO from 1995 to 2000. "It will look a lot worse if Halliburton gets the USAID [Agency for International Development] contract, too," Bathsheba Crocker, an Iraq specialist for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned in March. "Then it really starts looking bad." Guess what! Halliburton has since scored a piece of that $600 million USAID contract. |
5/05/03 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ Media AWOL in noting irony of Bush's flight Eric Zorn
May 6, 2003 So much for that myth--the cynical distortion that has
become conventional wisdom in many circles. During the
presidential campaign of 2000, it started going around that
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, then the leading Republican
candidate, had significant gaps in his military
record. Specifically, that Bush failed to report for duty for
an entire year toward the end of his hitch with the Texas
Air National Guard. The short version: In May 1968 the silver-spoon son of
a U.S. congressman jumped to the top of a long waiting list
despite mediocre scores on his pilot-aptitude test and was
allowed to enlist in the Guard, a common way to avoid being
drafted into combat in Vietnam. In May 1972 he sought a transfer from Houston, where
he flew F-102s on weekends, to a unit in Montgomery, Ala.
There, he worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of a friend of
his father's and, records indicate, blew off his military
obligations. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/5792329.htm Posted on Mon, May. 05, 2003 White House refuses to release Sept. 11 info By FRANK
DAVIES Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - The Bush administration and the nation's
intelligence agencies are blocking the release of sensitive
information about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, delaying publication of
a 900-page congressional report on how the terrorist assault
happened. Intelligence officials insist the information must be
kept secret for national security reasons. But some of the
information is already broadly available on the Internet or
has been revealed in interim reports on the investigation,
leading to charges that the administration is simply trying
to avoid enshrining embarrassing details in the
report. Disputed information includes a well publicized
warning from an FBI agent that al-Qaida supporters might be
training in U.S. flight schools and the names of the
president and his national security adviser as people who
may have received warnings that a terrorist attack was
possible before Sept. 11, one official said http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0506-03.htm Published on Tuesday, May 6, 2003 by the Times/UK
Envoy Dubs US a Police State by Roger Boyes in Berlin
THE strained relations between Germany and the United
States took a turn for the worse yesterday after a senior
Berlin diplomat was reported to have told Foreign Ministry
colleagues that America was turning into a "police state".
The comments of Jürgen Chrobog, the State
Secretary, reported in the German Focus magazine, threatened
to disrupt intense diplomatic efforts to repair the
relationship between Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor,
and President Bush. Herr Chrobog is said to have given a blistering
critique of the US-German relationship during the annual
meeting of German ambassadors, complaining that America was
"restricting more and more its civic liberties at
home".
5/09/03 This next link is for a set of stories, only some of
which are described below. It is a good primer for
mainstream sources of glitches in team Bush's programed
information of what went on with 9/11. http://www.buzzflash.com/perspectives/911bush.html 9/11: Bush knew The Secrets of September 11 April 30,
2003 "One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly
chilling and prophetic. It predicted that Osama bin Laden
was about to launch a terrorist strike 'in the coming
weeks,' the congressional investigators found. The
intelligence briefing went on to say: 'The attack will be
spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against
U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been
made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.'"
http://www.msnbc.com/news/907379.asp?0cv=CB10 Is Bush A Liar - or is memory serving him badly?
Posted October 10, 2002 http://www.visualjournalism.com/Files/reviews/bush911/pageBig.shtml FBI Warned D.C. It Was A Target September 25,
2002 "A Minnesota FBI agent investigating Zacarias
Moussaoui testified yesterday that he notified the Secret
Service weeks before Sept. 11 that a terror team might
hijack a plane and 'hit the nation's capital.'"
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/57848.htm
Moussaoui Warnings Ignored September 24, 2002 "An FBI supervisor, sounding a prophetic pre-Sept. 11
alarm, warned FBI headquarters that student pilot Zacarias
Moussaoui was so dangerous he might 'take control of a plane
and fly it into the World Trade Center,' a congressional
investigator said in a report Tuesday." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? America had 12 warnings of aircraft attack September
19, 2002 "American intelligence received many more clues before
the 11 September attacks than previously disclosed, that
terrorists might hijack planes and turn them into weapons, a
joint congressional committee was told yesterday."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/
story.jsp?story=334633 U.S. Was Aware on bin Laden Threat September 19,
2002 "Basically, we know that bin Laden had the means and
the intent to attack Americans, both at home and abroad."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? 9/11 Probers Say Agencies Failed to Heed Attack
SignsSeptember 19, 2002 "U.S. intelligence agencies received many more
indications than previously disclosed that Osama bin Laden's
terrorist network was planning imminent "spectacular"
attacks in the summer of 2001 aimed at inflicting mass
casualties."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36754-2002Sep18.html 9/11 report documents credible clues September 18,
2002 "The U.S. intelligence community received a surprising
number of credible reports of a likely terrorist attack
prior to Sept. 11, including some threats to domestic
targets, according to a congressional report to be unveiled
today." http://www.msnbc.com/news/809370.asp?pne=msntv
U.S. knew of 12 plots for jet attacks September 18,
2002 "Plan to attack WTC was among warnings that preceded
9/11, panel told." http://www.msnbc.com/news/809484.asp
Panel Presents 9/11 Intelligence September 18,
2002 "An intelligence briefing two months before the Sept.
11 attack warned that Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites)
would launch a spectacular terrorist attack against U.S. or
Israeli interests, congressional investigators said
Wednesday." http://news.yahoo.com/news? Spy Agencies Had Pre-9/11 Threats on U.S. Soil
September 17, 2002 "U.S. intelligence agencies picked up threats of
attacks inside the United States and of using airplanes as
weapons during the spring and summer before last year's
Sept. 11 attacks, but were more focused on the possibility
of an assault overseas, a congressional source said on
Tuesday." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? Ashcroft Flying High July 26, 2001 "In response to inquiries from CBS News over why
Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft
instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited
what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said
Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for
the remainder of his term." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/printable303601.shtml
Al-Qaida monitored U.S. negotiations with Taliban over
oil pipeline June 5, 2002 "A memo by military chief Mohammed Atef raises new
questions about whether failed U.S. efforts to reform
Afghanistan's radical regime -- and build the pipeline-- set
the stage for Sept. 11." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0506-03.htm Published on Tuesday, May 6, 2003 by the Times/UK
Envoy Dubs US a Police State by Roger Boyes in Berlin
THE strained relations between Germany and the United
States took a turn for the worse yesterday after a senior
Berlin diplomat was reported to have told Foreign Ministry
colleagues that America was turning into a "police state".
The comments of Jürgen Chrobog, the State
Secretary, reported in the German Focus magazine, threatened
to disrupt intense diplomatic efforts to repair the
relationship between Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor,
and President Bush. 5/09/03b http://www.eians.com/
(You have to get a password to access the stories on this
site) WEDNESDAY, MAY 07, 2003 01:34:20 PM PARIS: A renowned French thinker and writer has
challenged Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's claims of
being in total control of his country's nuclear arsenal and
says there is a real risk that such weapons may find their
way to terrorist organisations like the al-Qaeda. Bernard Henri Levy, also known by his initials BHL,
has said that terrorists could lay their hands on the
nuclear weapons in Pakistan since the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) was continuing its collaboration with the
al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic terrorist groups. In his latest book, Levy -- who has also served as a
special envoy to President Jacques Chirac -- has stirred a
hornet's nest with a string of serious accusations against
not just the ISI, but the entire administration of
Musharraf. Entitled Qui a tue Daniel Pearl (Who killed Daniel
Pearl), the book has been right at the top of best selling
books in France since it was released three weeks ago. Levy
said that he had spent over a year researching the latest
book, with long sojourns in Karachi, Kandahar, Islamabad,
New Delhi, London and Washington. In the book, Levy said that Pearl was kidnapped and
killed because he was on the verge of establishing the
existence of an extensive network linking the ISI and
al-Qaeda. 5/05/03c Published on Sunday, April 27, 2003 by the
lndependent/UK Revealed: How the Road to War was Paved with Lies
Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting
and fabricating evidence in rush to war by Raymond Whitaker
The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of
mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence,
exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and
outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
A high-level UK source said last night that
intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were
furious that briefings they gave political leaders were
distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. "They ignored
intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat,"
the source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East
newspaper which said, "Washington has to prove its case. If
it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved
the road to war with lies", he added: "You can draw your own
conclusions." 5/05/03d Published on Monday, April 28, 2003 by the
Guardian/UK Fury at Agriculture Post for US Businessman by Heather
Stewart Oxfam last night launched a scathing attack on the man
the US has put in charge of agricultural reconstruction in
Iraq. Dan Amstutz is a former senior executive of Cargill,
the biggest grain exporter in the world, and served in the
Reagan administration as a trade negotiator in the Uruguay
round of world trade talks. Oxfam is concerned that his involvement is an example
of the potentially damaging commercialization of the
reconstruction effort in Iraq, which it would prefer to see
conducted under the auspices of the United Nations. Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director, said Mr
Amstutz would "arrive with a suitcase full of open-market
rhetoric", and was more likely to try to dump cheap US grain
on the potentially lucrative Iraqi market than encourage the
country to rebuild its once-successful agricultural sector.
"Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural
reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the
chair of a human rights commission," Mr Watkins said.
5/05/03e The Secrets of September 11: The White House is
battling to keep a report on the terror attacks secret. Does
the 2004 election have anything to do with it? April 30 ˜ Even as White House political aides
plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the
emotions and issues raised by the September 11 terror
attacks, administration officials are waging a
behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of
key events relating to the attacks. AT THE CENTER of the dispute is a more-than-800-page
secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry
detailing the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that
preceded the attacks˜including provocative, if unheeded
warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during
the summer of 2001. The report was completed last December; only a
bare-bones list of "findings" with virtually no details was
made public. But nearly six months later, a "working group"
of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to
review the document has taken a hard line against further
public disclosure. By refusing to declassify many of its
most significant conclusions, the administration has
essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the
report by the end of this month, congressional and
administration sources tell NEWSWEEK. In some cases, these
sources say, the administration has even sought to
"reclassify" some material that was already discussed in
public testimony˜a move one Senate staffer described as
"ludicrous." The administration's stand has infuriated the
two members of Congress who oversaw the
report˜Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep.
Porter Goss. The two are now preparing a letter of complaint
to Vice President Dick Cheney. 5/05/03f April 29, 2003 Matters of Emphasis By PAUL
KRUGMAN 'We were not lying," a Bush administration official
told ABC News. "But it was just a matter of emphasis." The
official was referring to the way the administration hyped
the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States.
According to the ABC report, the real reason for the war was
that the administration "wanted to make a statement." And
why Iraq? "Officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the
requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect
target." A British newspaper, The Independent, reports that
"intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were
furious that briefings they gave political leaders were
distorted in the rush to war." One "high-level source" told
the paper that "they ignored intelligence assessments which
said Iraq was not a threat." Sure enough, we have yet to find any weapons of mass
destruction. It's hard to believe that we won't eventually
find some poison gas or crude biological weapons. But those
aren't true W.M.D.'s, the sort of weapons that can make a
small, poor country a threat to the greatest power the world
has ever known. Remember that President Bush made his case
for war by warning of a "mushroom cloud." Clearly, Iraq
didn't have anything like that ˜ and Mr. Bush must have
known that it didn't. Does it matter that we were misled into war? Some
people say that it doesn't: we won, and the Iraqi people
have been freed. But we ought to ask some hard questions
˜ not just about Iraq, but about ourselves. 5/05/03g Accuses Media of Aiding U.S. War Propaganda By David
Morgan Reuters Friday 2 May 2003 PHILADELPHIA - It is one of the most famous images of
the war in Iraq: a U.S. soldier scaling a statue of Saddam
Hussein in Baghdad and draping the Stars and Stripes over
the black metal visage of the ousted despot. But for Harper's magazine publisher John MacArthur,
that same image of U.S. military victory is also indicative
of a propaganda campaign being waged by the Bush
administration. "It was absolutely a photo-op created for
(U.S. President George W.) Bush's re-election campaign
commercials," MacArthur, a self-appointed authority on U.S.
government propaganda, said in an interview. "CNN, MSNBC and
Fox swallowed it whole." In 1992, MacArthur wrote "Second Front: Censorship and
Propaganda in the Gulf War," a withering critique of
government and media actions that he says misled the public
after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. In MacArthur's opinion, little has changed during the
latest Iraq war, prompting him to begin work on an updated
edition of "Second Front." U.S. government public relations
specialists are still concocting bogus stories to serve
government interests, he says, and credulous journalists
stand ready to scarf up the baloney. "The concept of a self-governing American republic has
been crippled by this propaganda," MacArthur said. "The
whole idea that we can govern ourselves and have an
intelligent debate, free of cant, free of disinformation, I
think it's dead." White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied the
existence of any administration propaganda campaign and
predicted the American public would reject such notions as
ridiculous. A Pentagon spokesman also denied high-level planning
in the appearance of the American flag in Baghdad. "It sure
looked spontaneous to me," said Marine Lt. Col. Mike Humm.
In fact, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center
for the People and the Press found that Americans were happy
with Iraq war coverage, though many wanted less news
coverage of anti-war activism and fewer TV appearances by
former military officers. But MacArthur insists that both Gulf wars have been
marked by phony tales calculated to deceive public opinion
at crucial junctures. 5/05/03g BABIES AND BOMBS On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, Americans were asked
to believe that Iraqi soldiers tossed Kuwaiti infants from
hospital incubators, leaving them to die. Not true, he says.
This time, MacArthur says the Bush administration made
false claims about Iraqi nuclear weapons, charging Baghdad
was trying to import aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium
and that the country was six months from building a
warhead. The International Atomic Energy Agency found those
tubes were for artillery rockets, not nuclear weapons. And
MacArthur says a supposed IAEA report, on which the White
House based claims about Iraqi weapons-making ability, did
not exist.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 07, 2003 01:34:20 PM (You have to get a password to access the stories on
this site) PARIS: A renowned French thinker and writer has
challenged Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's claims of
being in total control of his country's nuclear arsenal and
says there is a real risk that such weapons may find their
way to terrorist organisations like the al-Qaeda. Bernard Henri Levy, also known by his initials BHL,
has said that terrorists could lay their hands on the
nuclear weapons in Pakistan since the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) was continuing its collaboration with the
al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic terrorist groups. In his latest book, Levy -- who has also served as a
special envoy to President Jacques Chirac -- has stirred a
hornet's nest with a string of serious accusations against
not just the ISI, but the entire administration of
Musharraf. Entitled Qui a tue Daniel Pearl (Who killed Daniel
Pearl), the book has been right at the top of best selling
books in France since it was released three weeks ago. Levy
said that he had spent over a year researching the latest
book, with long sojourns in Karachi, Kandahar, Islamabad,
New Delhi, London and Washington. In the book, Levy said that Pearl was kidnapped and
killed because he was on the verge of establishing the
existence of an extensive network linking the ISI and
al-Qaeda. He said that Pearl had been working on a report
that showed that ISI was actually sharing the nuclear
capability of Pakistan with al-Qaeda and other rogue
groups. "They knew that he was close to finishing the report
and that he was on to something so big that threatened to
unravel the whole structure of terrorism in Pakistan. That
is why Pearl was kidnapped and later killed in such a
barbarous manner," said Levy. He further said that in his investigation, during
which he met hundreds of people in various cities, he found
that several top nuclear scientists of Pakistan had been in
close contact with terror groups. He added that though the General kept on claiming to
be in total control of the situation in Pakistan, it was far
from true "The Western intelligence agencies are getting so
desperate that they are actually willing to believe that
Musharraf has much more influence on events in Pakistan than
he actually wields," said Levy, adding even Musharraf's
claim of being in total control of the nuclear weapons of
his country was highly dubious since ISI had consistently
misinformed the General. 5/12/03b Published on Sunday, April 27, 2003 by the
lndependent/UK Revealed: How the Road to War was Paved with
Lies Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of
distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war by
Raymond Whitaker The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of
mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence,
exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and
outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
A high-level UK source said last night that
intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were
furious that briefings they gave political leaders were
distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. "They ignored
intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat,"
the source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East
newspaper which said, "Washington has to prove its case. If
it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved
the road to war with lies", he added: "You can draw your own
conclusions." UN inspectors who left Iraq just before the war
started were searching for four categories of weapons:
nuclear, chemical, biological and missiles capable of flying
beyond a range of 93 miles. They found ample evidence that
Iraq was not co-operating, but none to support British and
American assertions that Saddam Hussein's regime posed an
imminent threat to the world. On nuclear weapons, the British Government claimed
that the former regime sought uranium feed material from the
government of Niger in west Africa. This was based on
letters later described by the International Atomic Energy
Agency as crude forgeries. 5/12/03c Published on Monday, April 28, 2003 by the
Guardian/UK Fury at Agriculture Post for US Businessman by Heather
Stewart Oxfam last night launched a scathing attack on the man
the US has put in charge of agricultural reconstruction in
Iraq. Dan Amstutz is a former senior executive of Cargill,
the biggest grain exporter in the world, and served in the
Reagan administration as a trade negotiator in the Uruguay
round of world trade talks. Oxfam is concerned that his involvement is an example
of the potentially damaging commercialization of the
reconstruction effort in Iraq, which it would prefer to see
conducted under the auspices of the United Nations. Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director, said Mr
Amstutz would "arrive with a suitcase full of open-market
rhetoric", and was more likely to try to dump cheap US grain
on the potentially lucrative Iraqi market than encourage the
country to rebuild its successful agricultural sector.
"Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural
reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the
chair of a human rights commission," Mr Watkins said.
"This guy is uniquely well-placed to advance the
commercial interests of American grain companies and bust
open the Iraqi market - but singularly ill-equipped to lead
a reconstruction effort in a developing country." With President Bush on record as saying he wants
American farmers to feed the world, Oxfam is worried that
the Iraqi agricultural sector will be left unprotected from
cut-price US competition at the crucial early stages of its
reconstruction. In a statement on Mr Amstutz's appointment, the US
agriculture secretary, Ann Veneman, said the head of
reconstruction would "help us achieve our national objective
of creating a democratic and prosperous Iraq while at the
same time best utilize resources of our farmers and good
industry in the effort, both for the interim and the long
term". The US government has been repeatedly criticized for
giving preferential treatment to US firms in contracts to
reconstruct Iraq. 5/12/03d The Secrets of September 11 The White House is battling to keep a report on the
terror attacks secret. Does the 2004 election have anything
to do with it? NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE April 30 ˜ Even as White House political aides
plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the
emotions and issues raised by the September 11 terror
attacks, administration officials are waging a
behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of
key events relating to the attacks. AT THE CENTER of the dispute is a more-than-800-page
secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry
detailing the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that
preceded the attacks˜including provocative, if unheeded
warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during
the summer of 2001. The report was completed last December; only a
bare-bones list of "findings" with virtually no details was
made public. But nearly six months later, a "working group"
of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to
review the document has taken a hard line against further
public disclosure. By refusing to declassify many of its
most significant conclusions, the administration has essentially
thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the
end of this month, congressional and administration sources
tell NEWSWEEK. In some cases, these sources say, the
administration has even sought to "reclassify" some material
that was already discussed in public testimony˜a move
one Senate staffer described as "ludicrous." The
administration's stand has infuriated the two members of
Congress who oversaw the report˜Democratic Sen. Bob
Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss. The two are now
preparing a letter of complaint to Vice President Dick
Cheney. Graham is "increasingly frustrated" by the
Administration's "unwillingness to release what he regards
as important information the public should have about 9-11,"
a spokesman said. In Graham's view, the Bush administration
isn't protecting legitimate issues of national security but
information that could be a political "embarrassment," the
aide said. Graham, who last year served as Senate
Intelligence Committee chairman, recently told NEWSWEEK:
"There has been a cover-up of this." Graham's stand may not be terribly surprising, given
that the Florida Democrat is running for president and is
seeking to use the issue himself politically. But he has
found a strong ally in House Intelligence Committee Chairman
Goss, a staunch Republican (and former CIA officer) who in
the past has consistently defended the administration's
handling of 9-11 issues and is considered especially close
to Cheney. "I find this process horrendously frustrating," Goss
said in an interview. He was particularly piqued that the
administration was refusing to declassify material that top
intelligence officials had already testified about. "Senior
intelligence officials said things in public hearings that
they [administration officials] don't want us to put
in the report," said Goss. "That's not something I can
rationally accept without further public
explanation." 5/12/03e April 29, 2003 Matters of Emphasis By PAUL
KRUGMAN 'We were not lying," a Bush administration official
told ABC News. "But it was just a matter of emphasis." The
official was referring to the way the administration hyped
the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States.
According to the ABC report, the real reason for the war was
that the administration "wanted to make a statement." And
why Iraq? "Officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the
requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect
target." A British newspaper, The Independent, reports that
"intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were
furious that briefings they gave political leaders were
distorted in the rush to war." One "high-level source" told
the paper that "they ignored intelligence assessments which
said Iraq was not a threat." Sure enough, we have yet to find any weapons of mass
destruction. It's hard to believe that we won't eventually
find some poison gas or crude biological weapons. But those
aren't true W.M.D.'s, the sort of weapons that can make a
small, poor country a threat to the greatest power the world
has ever known. Remember that President Bush made his case
for war by warning of a "mushroom cloud." Clearly, Iraq
didn't have anything like that ˜ and Mr. Bush must have
known that it didn't. Does it matter that we were misled into war? Some
people say that it doesn't: we won, and the Iraqi people
have been freed. But we ought to ask some hard questions
˜ not just about Iraq, but about ourselves. 5/12/03f Accuses Media of Aiding U.S. War Propaganda By David
Morgan Reuters Friday 2 May 2003 PHILADELPHIA - It is one of the most famous images of
the war in Iraq: a U.S. soldier scaling a statue of Saddam
Hussein in Baghdad and draping the Stars and Stripes over
the black metal visage of the ousted despot. But for Harper's magazine publisher John MacArthur,
that same image of U.S. military victory is also indicative
of a propaganda campaign being waged by the Bush
administration. "It was absolutely a photo-op created for (U.S.
President George W.) Bush's re-election campaign
commercials," MacArthur, a self-appointed authority on U.S.
government propaganda, said in an interview. "CNN, MSNBC and
Fox swallowed it whole." In 1992, MacArthur wrote "Second Front: Censorship and
Propaganda in the Gulf War," a withering critique of
government and media actions that he says misled the public
after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. In MacArthur's opinion, little has changed during the
latest Iraq war, prompting him to begin work on an updated
edition of "Second Front." U.S. government public relations
specialists are still concocting bogus stories to serve
government interests, he says, and credulous journalists
stand ready to scarf up the baloney. "The concept of a self-governing American republic has
been crippled by this propaganda," MacArthur said. "The
whole idea that we can govern ourselves and have an
intelligent debate, free of cant, free of disinformation, I
think it's dead." White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied the
existence of any administration propaganda campaign and
predicted the American public would reject such notions as
ridiculous. A Pentagon spokesman also denied high-level planning
in the appearance of the American flag in Baghdad. "It sure
looked spontaneous to me," said Marine Lt. Col. Mike Humm.
In fact, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center
for the People and the Press found that Americans were happy
with Iraq war coverage, though many wanted less news
coverage of anti-war activism and fewer TV appearances by
former military officers. But MacArthur insists that both Gulf wars have been
marked by phony tales calculated to deceive public opinion
at crucial junctures. BABIES AND BOMBS On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, Americans were asked
to believe that Iraqi soldiers tossed Kuwaiti infants from
hospital incubators, leaving them to die. Not true, he says.
This time, MacArthur says the Bush administration made
false claims about Iraqi nuclear weapons, charging Baghdad
was trying to import aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium
and that the country was six months from building a
warhead. The International Atomic Energy Agency found those
tubes were for artillery rockets, not nuclear weapons. And
MacArthur says a supposed IAEA report, on which the White
House based claims about Iraqi weapons-making ability, did
not exist. 5/12/03g Published on Wednesday, May 7, 2003 by Agence France
Presse Contract Much Larger Than Previously Known US says
Halliburton Deal Includes Operating Iraq Oil Fields WASHINGTON - The US Army has revealed for the first
time that a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. has a contract
encompassing the operation of Iraqi oil fields, a senior US
lawmaker said. It's extremely troubling that our government is using
taxpayer money to deliver lucrative contracts to companies
like Halliburton that have used offshore subsidiaries to
maneuver around restrictions on doing business with state
sponsors of terrorism. Charlie Cray Citizen Works Previously, the US Army Corps of Engineers had
described the contract given to Halliburton -- run by US
Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000 -- as involving
oil well firefighting. But in a May 2 letter replying to questions from a
senior Democratic lawmaker, Henry Waxman, the army said the
contract also included "operation of facilities and
distribution of products." Waxman, the top-ranking Democrat
in the House of Representatives' committee on government
reform, asked for an explanation Tuesday. "Your May 2 letter indicates that the contract is
considerably broader in scope than previously known," Waxman
told Army Corps of Engineers military programs chief
Lieutenant General Robert Flowers. "Prior descriptions of the Halliburton contract had
indicated that the contract was for extinguishing fires at
oil wells and for related repair activities," the lawmaker
said, according to a copy of the letter. "These new disclosures are significant and they seem
at odds with the administration's repeated assurances that
the Iraqi oil belongs to the Iraqi people." 5/12/03h http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/ Real American agenda now becoming clear by HAROON
SIDDIQUI A superpower like the United States does not invade a
pipsqueak power like Iraq ˜ outside the framework of
international law and against worldwide opposition ˜
only for its publicly stated reasons, in this case, fighting
terrorism, liberating Iraq and triggering a domino effect
for the democratization of the Middle East. The real American agenda is only now becoming
clearer. The conquest of Iraq is enabling a new Pax Americana
that goes well beyond the much-discussed control of oil, as
central as that is to the enterprise. America is redrawing the military map of the region
with amazing alacrity. It has pulled its bases out of Saudi
Arabia and Turkey in favour of less-demanding hosts.
Its relations with Egypt have been placed on the back
burner. It is no accident that those three nations are the
region's more populous. And that America's newest partners
˜ Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates
˜ are thinly populated and tightly controlled
monarchies. People are a problem for America in the Arab and
Muslim world. They are bristling with Anti-Americanism,
principally over the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The pullout of 10,000 U.S. troops from a Saudi air
base was long overdue, not just because it was a favourite
target of Osama bin Laden. It so embarrassed the ruling
House of Saud that the Americans had to be kept in purdah,
away from the public at a remote base in the desert. The base is obviously no longer needed since Saddam
Hussein is gone. But its closure, in fact, is America's
answer to Saudi resistance to the war and the fact that 15
of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were bin Laden Saudis. As the two nations begin a new chapter in their
50-year relationship, America will be less dependant on,
though not free of the need for, Saudi oil.
5/15/03a http://www.lowcountrynow.com/stories/050203/LOCrose.shtml Rose: The White House lied By John David Rose Carolina
Morning News "The White House Lied" was the headline on the
ABCNews.com Web site on April 25. They weren't harking back
to the days of Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Nobody died from Clinton's dalliance or his
lies. The ABC News report reveals a White House so depraved
that it makes Clinton seem like a choir boy. Wrote ABC News reporter John Cochran: "To build its
case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some
officials now privately acknowledge the White House had
another reason for war - a global show of American power and
democracy." That poor dupe Colin Powell stood before the United
Nations narrating a slide-show of phony intelligence trying
to convince the world that Hussein was a threat. Was he lying or was he lied to? "We're not lying," said a White House official to ABC
News. "But it was just a matter of emphasis." A matter of emphasis? Good lord, it's a matter of life
and death! Tell that "emphasis" story to the families of Staff
Sgt. Stevon Booker of Apollo, Pa., Pfc. Gregory Huxley of
Forestport, N.Y., 2nd Lt. Jeffrey Kaylor of Clifton, Va.,
and Pfc. Anthony Miller of San Antonio, Texas, all from the
Third Infantry Division of Fort Stewart. And tell the rest
of the 150 American families now grieving over lost sons and
daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers. 5/15/03b Media AWOL in noting irony of Bush's flight Eric Zorn
May 6, 2003 So much for that myth--the cynical distortion that has
become conventional wisdom in many circles. During the
presidential campaign of 2000, it started going around that
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, then the leading Republican
candidate, had significant gaps in his military
record. Specifically, that Bush failed to report for duty for
an entire year toward the end of his hitch with the Texas
Air National Guard. The short version: In May 1968 the silver-spoon son of
a U.S. congressman jumped to the top of a long waiting list
despite mediocre scores on his pilot-aptitude test and was
allowed to enlist in the Guard, a common way to avoid being
drafted into combat in Vietnam. In May 1972 he sought a transfer from Houston, where
he flew F-102s on weekends, to a unit in Montgomery, Ala.
There, he worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of a friend of
his father's and, records indicate, blew off his military
obligations. Bush failed to take his annual flight physical in 1972
so Guard officials grounded him, the story went. He never
flew again and received an early discharge to go to graduate
school. His final officer-efficiency report from May 1973
noted only that supervisors hadn't seen him or heard from
him. 5/15/03C http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/5792329.htm
Posted on Mon, May. 05, 2003 White House refuses to release Sept. 11 info By FRANK
DAVIES Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - The Bush administration and the nation's
intelligence agencies are blocking the release of sensitive
information about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, delaying publication of
a 900-page congressional report on how the terrorist assault
happened. Intelligence officials insist the information must be
kept secret for national security reasons. But some of the
information is already broadly available on the Internet or
has been revealed in interim reports on the investigation,
leading to charges that the administration is simply trying
to avoid enshrining embarrassing details in the
report. Disputed information includes a well publicized
warning from an FBI agent that al-Qaida supporters might be
training in U.S. flight schools and the names of the
president and his national security adviser as people who
may have received warnings that a terrorist attack was
possible before Sept. 11, one official said. "We're trying to keep in this report some matters that
have been talked about in public, discussed in newspapers,
and not to do that, flies in the face of common sense," Rep.
Porter Goss, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,
said Monday. 5/15/03d http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0506-03.htm Published on Tuesday, May 6, 2003 by the Times/UK
Envoy Dubs US a Police State by Roger Boyes in Berlin
THE strained relations between Germany and the United
States took a turn for the worse yesterday after a senior
Berlin diplomat was reported to have told Foreign Ministry
colleagues that America was turning into a "police state".
The comments of Jürgen Chrobog, the State
Secretary, reported in the German Focus magazine, threatened
to disrupt intense diplomatic efforts to repair the
relationship between Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor,
and President Bush. Herr Chrobog is said to have given a blistering
critique of the US-German relationship during the annual
meeting of German ambassadors, complaining that America was
"restricting more and more its civic liberties at
home". http://www.buzzflash.com/perspectives/911bush.html 9/11: Bush knew The Secrets of September 11 April 30,
2003 "One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly
chilling and prophetic. It predicted that Osama bin Laden
was about to launch a terrorist strike 'in the coming
weeks,' the congressional investigators found. The
intelligence briefing went on to say: 'The attack will be
spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against
U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been
made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.'"
http://www.msnbc.com/news/907379.asp?0cv=CB10 Is Bush A Liar - or is memory serving him badly?
Posted October 10, 2002 http://www.visualjournalism.com/Files/reviews/bush911/pageBig.shtml FBI Warned D.C. It Was A Target September 25, 2002
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/57848.htm
Moussaoui Warnings Ignored September 24, 2002 America had 12 warnings of aircraft attack September
19, 2002 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=334633 U.S. Was Aware on bin Laden Threat September 19, 2002
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=512&ncid=716&e=5&u=/ap/20020919/ap_on_go_co/attacks_intelligence 9/11 Probers Say Agencies Failed to Heed Attack Signs
September 19, 2002 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36754-2002Sep18.html 9/11 report documents credible clues September 18,
2002 http://www.msnbc.com/news/809370.asp?pne=msntv
U.S. knew of 12 plots for jet attacks September 18,
2002 http://www.msnbc.com/news/809484.asp
Panel Presents 9/11 Intelligence September 18,
2002 "An intelligence briefing two months before the Sept.
11 attack warned that Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites)
would launch a spectacular terrorist attack against U.S. or
Israeli interests, congressional investigators said
Wednesday." Spy Agencies Had Pre-9/11 Threats on U.S.
SoilSeptember 17, 2002 "U.S. intelligence agencies picked up threats of
attacks inside the United States and of using airplanes as
weapons during the spring and summer before last year's
Sept. 11 attacks, but were more focused on the possibility
of an assault overseas, a congressional source said on
Tuesday." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? Ashcroft Flying High July 26, 2001"http://www.cbsnews.com/ Bush briefed on hijacking threat before September 11
May 16, 2002 "President Bush's daily intelligence briefings in the
weeks leading up to the September 11 terror attacks included
a warning of the possibility that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
network would attempt to hijack a U.S.-based airliner,
senior administration officials said Wednesday."
http://www.cnn.com Revealed: The Taliban minister, the US envoy and the
warning of September 11 that was ignored September 7,
2002 "Weeks before the terrorist attacks on 11 September,
the United States and the United Nations ignored warnings
from a secret Taliban emissary that Osama bin Laden was
planning a huge attack on American soil." http://news.independent.co.uk/ Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his
former business partner? July 3, 2001 "A plot by
Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate
Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders,
was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants
linked to bin Laden's international terror network were
arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April."
http://www.onlinejournal.com/ Bin Laden‚s Relatives Evacuated From NYC October
2, 2001 http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0110/S00008.htm Our Pearl Harbor: The latest NSA revelations suggest
the 9-11 plot could have been foiled. June 21, 2002 http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures Al-Qaida monitored U.S. negotiations with Taliban
overoil pipeline June 5, 2002 http://www.salon.com/news/ U.S. had agents inside al-Qaeda June 4, 2002
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2002/06/03/cia-attacks.htm "Don't let them fool you" http://www.sfgate.com/ Egypt Warned U.S. of a Qaeda Plot, Mubarak Asserts
June 3, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/national/04WARN.html U.S. Ignored Warnings From French May 28, 2002
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/ridgeway2.php "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." http://slate.msn.com/?id=2066154 Tracking a Counterterrorism Breakdown Timeline Shows
Failure to Connect Key Clues Before Sept. 11 May 23,
2002 http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/may/timeline/index.html "Who knew what, and when? Could the FBI have prevented
the Sept. 11 attacks?" http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/05/23/warning/index_np.html Poppies for planes: White House hides behind veil of
executive privilege May 22, 2002 http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemId=13365 The U.S. ignored foreign warnings, too May 21, 2002
http://www.iht.com/articles/58269.html Bush knew of terrorist plot to hijack US planes May
20, 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,718312,00.html Britain warned US to expect September 11 al-Qaeda
hijackings May 19, 2002 http://www.sundayherald.com/24822
U.S. planned for attack on al-Qaida May 16, 2002
http://www.msnbc.com/news/753359.asp Bush Was Warned bin Laden Wanted to Hijack Planes May
15, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/16/politics/16INQU.html? US agents told: Back off bin Ladens November 7, 2001
http://www.old.smh.com.au/news/0111/07/world/world100.html On Sept. 12, Woods called the FBI to tell
investigators about his experience. He was interviewed by
agents on Sept. 13, but has had no comment." http://www.gazettenet.com/americantragedy/10112001/7363.htm Bush: We're At War‚September 24th, 2001
http://www.msnbc.com/news/629606.asp
US 'planned attack on Taleban' September 18, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/ Israeli security issued urgent warning to CIA of
large-scale terror attacks September 16, 2001 http://news.telegraph.co.uk/ Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air
travel September 12, 2001 http://www.sfgate.com/ Commission warned Bush September 12, 2001
http://www.salon.com/politics/f Jeb Bush signs Executive Order allowing him to declare
martial law in Florida... September 7, 2001 5/15/03f http://truthout.org/docs_03/051003E.shtml 100th Anti-Patriot Act Resolution Passed In Broward,
Florida t r u t h o u t | Report by Jennifer Van
Bergen Wednesday 07 May 2003 Broward County, Florida, the 14th largest county in
the U.S., yesterday unanimously passed a resolution
affirming the Bill of Rights and registering strong concerns
about the PATRIOT Act. Broward is the 100th community to
pass such a resolution and the largest to have done so,
according to the Northampton Bill of Rights Defense
Committee, which tracks all resolutions. The Resolution was submitted by the Broward Human
Rights Board and supported by the Broward Bill of Rights
Defense Coalition. The Broward Coalition, a non-partisan
coalition formed to raise public awareness of this issue in
south Florida, met with Commissioners in January, and has
been holding area meetings and sponsoring forums on the
PATRIOT Act and civil rights over the past year. Broward is best known nationally as being one of the
counties where the election controversy of 2000 played
out. The Commissioners, some of whom are staunch
Republicans, broke today with that negative image and showed
the nation that they support the important efforts to uphold
the Bill of Rights and repeal or amendment of the USA
PATRIOT Act. 5/15/03g Ed Garvey: Mainstream media still treating Bush with
kid gloves By Ed Garvey May 13, 2003 The New York Times ran a front-page apology Sunday for
a reporter who filed deceptive stories. It is unusual for a
news source to admit a mistake and the Times is to be
commended. But read the opening paragraph and ask if it should be
applied to a much broader group of journalists: "A staff
reporter for the New York Times committed frequent acts of
journalistic fraud while covering significant news events in
recent months, aninvestigation by Times journalists has
found." Wouldn't it be refreshing if Fox News, CNBC, CBS and
others were to make the same apology for the what can only
be described as "journalistic fraud" as they slant the news
to favor President Bush and his factually unsupportable
justification of the invasion of another country? Substitute Bill Clinton for Bush over the past six
months and you will see my point. What would TV talking
heads be saying today? William Kristol, Sean Hannity and the
others would be demanding Clinton's impeachment. They would
be screaming that there were no weapons of mass destruction
and Clinton knew it. He lied to the U.N., to the American
people, and he deliberately and unnecessarily placed
American troops in harm's way. And if that was insufficient to start an impeachment
proceeding, they would be screaming that he did all of this
without a congressional declaration of war. This would be
"Wag the Dog" all over again. A war to divert attention from
a flagging economy. And, to top it off, Clinton did not
secure the Iraqi nuclear sites to prevent looting, did not
protect the national museum, did not capture Saddam or his
sons. He led people to believe that the invasion of Iraq was
about Sept. 11, not oil. They would save the best until last. Do you remember
the famous haircut on Air Force One? Clinton supposedly had
his hair cut while planes were diverted around Los Angeles
International Airport. It didn't happen, but Clinton was
condemned on right-wing talk shows throughout America for
this alleged waste of funds. Imagine if Bill Clinton had slowed down an aircraft
carrier and had landed on the deck in a jet for photo ops
for his campaign. Oh, my goodness! The folks at Fox would be
in cardiac arrest. Rush would froth at the mouth. 5/15/03g Telegraph (London) May 16, 2003 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news Bomber 'moles' in Saudi forces By Robin Gedye and John
R Bradley in Jeddah (Filed: 16/05/2003) Al-Qa'eda has infiltrated Saudi Arabia's military and
security forces at the highest level, including those
entrusted with the protection of western residential
compounds, American intelligence officials believe. They are convinced that Tuesday's suicide bombers
depended on a significant level of "insider" knowledge of
the compounds that were hit and that al-Qa'eda eve
infiltrated the elite National Guard, which is involved in
compound security. Riyadh remained on edge last night, with airlines
reporting a flood of bookings for flights from Saudi Arabia
to Britain and America and bomb scares forcing the
evacuation of a compound near those attacked and the
landmark Faisaliya Tower. Intelligence sources said several bombers were wearing
National Guard uniforms to help them get into the three
bombed complexes. "The only area where there is no evidence of a
significant al-Qa'ed presence is in the Saudi air force,"
one intelligence official said. "The police, army, navy and
National Guard have all been infiltrated." American military and intelligence officers say the
attack on the residential quarters of the Vinnell
corporation, whose ex-US army officers train the National
Guard, must have had detailed insider knowledge.
5/27/03a http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61585-2003May15?language=printer FCC Sees Local Gain to Age of Max Media By Frank
Ahrens Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 16, 2003;
Page E01 Sen. John McCain was pushing hard to find out if media
consolidation has led to control of the news. In his hand,
the feisty Arizona Republican had a list. He wanted
answers. McCain squinted and leaned into the microphone at
Tuesday's hearing before his Commerce, Science and
Transportation Committee. His gaze was fixed on witness
William Dean Singleton, president of both the newspaper
industry's lobbying group and MediaNews Group, which owns 50
newspapers, including the flagship Denver Post. What
followed was a telling moment, largely overlooked in that
day's news coverage of the hearing, that illustrated the
escalating tension on media ownership. When the Federal Communications Commission was
debating whether it should give away or sell $70 billion
worth of digital broadcast spectrum in 1996, newspaper
editorial pages weighed in. McCain's list, a consumer group
survey, found that every paper favoring a giveaway was owned
by a company that also owned television stations that,
naturally, wanted the spectrum for free. Every paper opposing a giveaway was owned by a company
with no substantial interest in television. "Do you think that's an anomaly?" McCain asked,
referring to his list. "I do," Singleton replied. "So, it's a coincidence," McCain finished, with more
than a little sarcasm in his voice. The FCC is preparing to relax or eliminate several key
media ownership rules, letting media companies buy more
newspapers and television stations. The agency is set to
vote on June 2 to drop the 28-year-old ban that prohibits a
newspaper from buying a television or radio station in the
same city, except in the smallest cities. 5/27/03b http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/16/1052885398462.html Fatal attraction: Why everybody now wants the bomb May
17 2003 Nuclear disarmament is dead as the United States
flaunts its weapons superiority and small nations rush to
make their own bombs. The second cold war is here, writes
Christopher Kremmer. For almost half a century nuclear weapons poisoned the
global imagination, a force so devastating it could
literally destroy life on our planet. It's a nightmare that
could return if the Bush Administration gets its way. It
almost did last week, when a US Senate committee voted to
lift a decade-old ban on the research and development of
low-yield nuclear weapons, providing $US15.5 million ($24
million) for research on a "bunker buster" hydrogen bomb
called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. Designed to take out enemy command and control
facilities, the tactical bomb is billed as a "useable" nuke
with a yield as low as 0.3 of a kiloton, much smaller than
strategic nuclear weapons. Yet scientists believe human casualties from radiation
would still be in the order of 10,000 to 15,000 dead if such
a weapon were used in a built-up area. Thousands more would
die in the fires and building collapses caused by the
blast. This week, the Senate committee's vote was overturned
by the House Armed Services Committee, but trench warfare
over the proposal will continue. Already, a string of decisions and pronouncements from
Washington have convinced many experts that the United
States is on an ambitious program to revitalise its nuclear
arsenal and widen the scope of its possible uses. The Doomsday Clock, which is maintained by the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as a measure of global
insecurity, now stands at seven minutes to midnight, 10
minutes closer to Armageddon than it was at the end of the
Cold War in 1991. On May 1, 2001, the US President, George Bush,
declared: "Nuclear weapons still have a vital role to play
in our security and that of our allies." 5/27/03c
5/12/03a