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First Quarter of 2003 January 2003 ... February 2003... March 2003 |
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1/01/03a 9 States Sue Bush Administration on Clean-Air Rules Tue Dec 31, 4:40 PM ET Add Politics - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Chris Baltimore WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nine Northeastern U.S. states sued the Bush administration on Tuesday over its decision to relax clean-air rules to help coal-fired power plants and other industrial facilities avoid costly pollution controls. The consortium of states -- Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont -- filed the lawsuit with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, according to a news release. Existing rules require U.S. utilities and refineries to invest in state-of-the-art pollution controls if a plant undergoes a major expansion or modification. In November, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) proposed rules to change the definition of "routine maintenance," to give utilities more leeway to modify plants without triggering extra pollution-reduction requirements. On Tuesday the EPA published the so-called "new source review" rules in the Federal Register, formalizing some rules and starting a time clock toward finalizing others. But the nine states accused the administration of gutting the Clean Air Act. "I join my colleagues in other states to challenge this assault on the Clean Air Act and continue to fight to achieve the goals that the law intended," New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said at a press conference.
"Eight miles away in New Baltimore, Melanie Hankinson said she found singed papers and other light debris from the crash, including pages from Hemispheres Magazine, United's in-flight magazine. Stoe said authorities initially insisted crash debris could not have traveled over a mountain ridge more than eight miles from the crash. Comment: Secondary Debris floated miles away on this breeze? At the time of the crash? But it did not do that at the Pentagon Crash? Or other similar crashes?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/07/opinion/07KOVA.html?pagewanted=print&position=top January 7, 2003 All News Media Inc. By BILL KOVACH and TOM ROSENSTIEL WASHINGTON Without much notice, the federal government is moving toward the most sweeping change ever in the rules that govern ownership of the American news media. This shift could reduce the independence of the news media and the ability of Americans to take part in public debate. Yet because of meager press coverage and steps taken by the Federal Communications Commission in its policy-making process, most people probably have no idea that it is taking place. Having seen how totalitarian regimes moved the world to war through domination of their news media, the government during the 1940's put restrictions on how many news media outlets one company could own, both nationally and in a single city. Though those rules have been relaxed in the last 20 years, companies are still blocked from buying a newspaper and television station in the same city or from owning more than one TV station in the same market. What will happen to communities if the ownership rules are eliminated? The precedent in radio is telling. Since the rules on ownership of radio were last relaxed in 1996, the two biggest companies went from owning 130 stations to more than 1,400. The F.C.C. chairman, Michael K. Powell, has scheduled only one public hearing, in Richmond, Va., on the proposal, and the public comment period will close at the end of this month. It is a small and brief opportunity, but one that the public should seize if it cherishes an independent press.
1/10/03a http://politicalstrategy.org/weblog_archive/2003_01_08_weblog_archive.htm Wednesday, January 08, 2003 It's Official. Bush is a Racist. Closeted bigots have become versed in traversing the bumpy bigoted landscape, furthering their ideals while claiming tolerance and proclaiming their love for diversity. Thus, they are often difficult to expose outright. We must therefore watch their "walk" vs. their "talk". ... Indeed, until Trent Lott recently spilled the beans regarding his racist beliefs, accusations of contemporary GOP racism was often pooh-poohed as left-wing rhetoric with little evidence (i.e. signed confessions). George W. Bush is THE prime example of rhetoric without support of actions. However, with adept handlers, a propaganda machine and historical revisionist spinners, Bush has been shielded from any outright racist gaffes. Nevertheless, his actions have unerringly exposed a character that fits snugly in the racist mold. Yesterday, he put a fork in that theory and declared it done. - During his 2000 (in 1999 and 2000) Primary campaign for the Presidency, Bush drummed-up support from his racist buddies at good ol' Bob Jones University. You know. The one that banned interracial dating and declared on its website that the Catholic Church is a minion of Satan. - In addition, Bush nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, CA state Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl who is pushing to reinstate the undeserved tax-exempt status of the blatantly racist Bob Jones University. Isn't that nice. - Southern Exposure magazine published an article documenting "a questionable relationship between Bush and far-right neo-Confederate groups." For example: "Bush is listed as a donor to the Museum of the Confederacy, based in Richmond, Virginia, as a supporter of the Museum's annual ball - an event held in a slave hall, which has drawn fire for its celebration of the Southern Confederacy." Also, "a letter on Texas Governor stationary, dated January 1, 1996, shows Gov. Bush congratulating the 100th anniversary of the United Daughters of the Confederacy - a group known for glorifying the Confederate past." - According to Ralph G. Neas, President of People For the American Way, "It is more important that the White House and GOP leaders make a break not only with the segregationist past but with their policies and actions that continue to undermine civil rights protections in America today. This includes especially the efforts by Bush to pack the federal judiciary with states' rights ideologues." The federal Judiciary, eh? I see. Well, that returns us to the issue of the newest racist Bush atrocity. You see, long ago in a place far away, when Democrats actually had a say in the confirmation of Bush federal judgeships, there were two candidates in particular with abominable records on civil rights, (a tell-tale sign of the stealth racist.) who were rejected from serving on the federal bench. Indeed, these monsters were Priscilla R. Owen of Texas and Charles W. Pickering Sr. of Mississippi, a longtime friend of Trent Lott (Need we say more?). So what did Bush do? Unbelievably, Bush had the unmitigated cojones to renominate not only these two right-wing, senate-rejected, judicial-activist extremists but also 28 other previously-rejected radical-right losers. ..... posted by Thomas Ball 10:51 AM 1/10/03b http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/010903G.cuomo.class.war.p.htm Former N.Y. Gov. Cuomo Says Bush is Guilty of Class Warfare By Jonathan D. Salant Associated Press | San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday 7 January 2003 President Bush's proposed tax cuts favor wealthy Americans, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said Tuesday as he kicked off a speaking tour aimed at helping revive Democrats after last November's election setbacks. "Class warfare? He declared the war," Cuomo said at the National Press Club. "He said, 'We're going to give all the money to the rich."' Cuomo, who is pushing the Democratic Party to sharpen its difference with the Republicans on issues such as tax cuts, declared: "We're not the ones who started the war. We're just defending ourselves against his attack." In his speech Tuesday, Cuomo said the 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut enacted in 2001 should be frozen until the federal budget runs a surplus again. That cut gives 52 percent of its benefits to the richest 1 percent of Americans by 2010 -- those with an average income of $1.5 million -- according to the labor-funded advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0212/S00126.htm Top-secret Iraq Report Reveals U.S. Corporations, Gov't Agencies and Nuclear Labs Helped Illegally Arm Iraq *** A Democracy Now! exclusive *** From: http://www.democracynow.org/Zumach.htm (Please note this link has had problems) Hewlett Packard, Dupont, Honeywell and other major U.S. corporations, as well as governmental agencies including the Department of Defense and the nation's nuclear labs, all illegally helped Iraq to build its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs. On Wednesday, December 18, Geneva-based reporter Andreas Zumach broke the story on the US national listener-sponsored radio and television show "Democracy Now!" Zumach's Berlin-based paper Die Tageszeitung plans to soon publish a full list of companies and nations who have aided Iraq. The paper first reported on Tuesday that German and U.S. companies had extensive ties to Iraq but didn't list names. Zumach obtained top-secret portions of Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration that the US had redacted from the version made available to the non-permanent members of the UN Security Council. Key Links: "We have 24 major U.S. companies listed in the report who gave very substantial support especially to the biological weapons program but also to the missile and nuclear weapons program," Zumach said. "Pretty much everything was illegal in the case of nuclear and biological weapons. Every form of cooperation and supplies… was outlawed in the 1970s." The list of U.S. corporations listed in Iraq's report include Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Honeywell, Rockwell, Tectronics, Bechtel, International Computer Systems, Unisys, Sperry and TI Coating. Zumach also said the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, Commerce, and Agriculture quietly helped arm Iraq. U.S. government nuclear weapons laboratories Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia trained traveling Iraqi nuclear scientists and gave non-fissile material for construction of a nuclear bomb. "There has never been this kind of comprehensive layout and listing like we have now in the Iraqi report to the Security Council so this is quite new and this is especially new for the U.S. involvement, which has been even more suppressed in the public domain and the U.S. population," Zumach said. The names of companies were supposed to be top secret. Two weeks ago Iraq provided two copies of its full 12,000-page report, one to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Geneva, and one to the United Nations in New York. Zumach said the U.S. broke an agreement of the Security Council and blackmailed Colombia, which at the time was presiding over the Council, to take possession of the UN's only copy. The U.S. then proceeded to make copies of the report for the other four permanent Security Council nations, Britain, France, Russia and China. Only yesterday did the remaining members of the Security Council receive their copies. By then, all references to foreign companies had been removed. According to Zumach, only Germany had more business ties to Iraq than the U.S. As many as 80 German companies are also listed in Iraq's report. The paper reported that some German companies continued to do business with Iraq until last year.
Veterans decry Rumsfeld's draft comments By Pamela Hess UPI Pentagon Correspondent From the International Desk Published 1/10/2003 2:46 PM WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- A Vietnam War veterans' group is taking exception to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's comments this week on the possibility of a new draft. "Secretary Rumsfeld said troops from Vietnam War conscription 'added no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services ... '" Bobby Muller, president of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation said in a statement issued Friday. "As Vietnam veterans who served with conscripted soldiers, we find Secretary Rumsfeld's egregious slur a grave insult to the memory, sacrifice and valor of those who lost their lives, and, further, dismissive of the hundreds and thousands of lives, both in the U.S. and in Vietnam, who were devastatingly shattered by the Vietnam War." Rumsfeld, while commenting on a bill introduced to initiate the draft, said it was unnecessary. "We're not going to re-implement a draft," he said Tuesday. "There is no need for it at all." He spoke of the fact that many of those who were drafted were trained, served for a short time and then left the service. Rumsfeld first referred to the many exemptions issued to certain men in the draft and then said, "what was left was sucked into the intake, trained for a period of months, and then went out, adding no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time, because the churning that took place, it took enormous amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone." Critics said Rumsfeld's comments were unconscionable. "To me if you look at the whole quote it's even worse," said John Terzano, vice president of the Vietnam Veteran of American Foundation, which shared a Nobel Prize in 1997 for its work helping landmine victims. "He's sitting there saying draftees add no value to the military and that's unconscionable ... Draftees stayed in as long they needed to be in the service -- they stayed in. "How can he sit there and say they added no value to the army?" He said Rumsfeld should have been "a little bit more careful with his wording and not be so glib." An official at the organization said the base concern was the "cavalierness of the way (Rumsfeld) said it." Rumsfeld declared unequivocally Tuesday there would be no resumption of the draft as he and his military leaders all believe a volunteer force was more efficient and effective. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a Korean War veteran and a strong critic of going to war with Iraq, introduced a bill to initiate a draft because he believes the burden of military service is borne disproportionately by minorities. Rangel also believes if there were a universal draft, Congress and the public would have less of an appetite for war as it would mean endangering their own children's lives. Minorities compose more than a third of the military, though they make up only about one-quarter of the American populace. "I don't find that a compelling argument to spend all the money you would spend in churning people through and all the disadvantages that would accrue to bringing people into the service who didn't want to serve in the service," Rumsfeld said Tuesday. Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ Chicago City Council resolution opposes Iraq war but calls Saddam a tyrant Thu Jan 16, 8:54 PM ET By DEANNA BELLANDI, Associated Press Writer CHICAGO - Chicago's City Council voted 46-1 to oppose a pre-emptive military attack on Iraq unless the country is shown to be a real threat to the United States. The resolution makes Chicago the biggest U.S. city to speak out against war. Anti-war statements have been passed in other, smaller cities, including San Francisco; Seattle; Ithaca, New York, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. Chicago, the third largest U.S. city after New York and Los Angeles, has 2.9 million people.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0118-04.htm Published in the February 3, 2003 issue of The Nation Crunch Time at the FCC by Michael Copps One of the most important votes of 2003 will be cast not in Congress or in voting booths across the country but at the Federal Communications Commission. At stake is how TV, radio, newspapers and the Internet will look in the next generation and beyond. At stake are core values of localism, competition, diversity and maintaining the vitality of America's marketplace of ideas. And at stake is the ability of consumers to enjoy creative, diverse and enriching entertainment. But most people and most journalists are ignoring this momentous vote. Last year FCC chair Michael Powell announced that the commission would vote this spring on whether to scrap, modify or retain our media concentration protections. These rules currently limit a single corporation from dominating a local TV market; from merging a community's TV stations and newspapers into one voice; from merging two major TV networks; and from controlling more than 35 percent of TV households in the nation. And now we are on the verge of dramatically altering the nation's media landscape without the national debate that this issue merits. What will happen if these rules disappear or are significantly loosened? We have some history to guide us. The FCC eliminated many of its radio consolidation rules in 1996. This action has already caused real problems, according to numerous media experts. Conglomerates now own hundreds of stations across the country. One company, Clear Channel, owns more than 1,200. Today there are 30 percent fewer radio station owners than there were before the commission abandoned its rules in 1996. Most local radio markets are oligopolies. More and more programming originates outside local stations' studios--far from listeners and their communities. 1/19/03b http://www.gregpalast.com/printerfriendly.cfm?artid=181 Greg Palast: Beat the Press Hustler Magazine Saturday, March 1, 2003 Interview by Bruce David For those of us who've long suspected that our democracy is up for sale to the highest bidder, award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast has uncovered disturbing evidence confirming as much. Palast's exposés of the theft of the 2000 election, the financial ties between the Bush and the Bin Laden families, and how these connections kept the FBI from perhaps preventing the horrific events of 9/11 have thrown fear into the hearts of media pundits. There has been a near-complete news blackout of the explosive findings documented in Palast's book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. First released in England, where he reports for the BBC and The Guardian, Palast's collection of writings is finally being published in America by Penguin/Plume books with 40% new material. In an exclusive HUSTLER interview, the author discloses the truth on high crimes in high places that the mainstream media is afraid to touch. HUSTLER: What kind of material do you have in the book? PALAST: How about this for an example: After Daddy Bush left the White House, he went to work for a company called Barrick Gold Corporation in Canada, something you haven't read in the United States. The first thing he does is pick up a big, fat check and stock options from Barrick Gold Corporation for, essentially, selling them the presidential seal and the presidential Rolodex. And he writes letters to dictators like [former president of Indonesia] Suharto, saying, "Give these nice guys gold-mining concessions." HUSTLER: What is Barrick Gold? PALAST: It was founded with money from Adnan Khashoggi, the arms dealer. You may remember that Adnan was the bagman in the guns-for-hostages, Iran-Contra scandal. The sheikh got out, then Bush got in. You have to ask yourself a question: What would a Canadian gold-mining company do with a used president? Well, it turns out that before he left office, Daddy Bush put in motion an expedited process for laying claims to gold in the United States. It allowed Barrick Gold Corporation and a couple of other operators to lay claim to the largest gold mines in America. To stake a claim on $10 billion worth of gold ore, Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury less than $10,000. HUSTLER: Your book also mentions Bush and intelligence failures prior to September 11, right? PALAST: CIA and FBI agents told BBC Television, for which I was reporting, that they were ordered not to investigate Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks such as al Qaeda. The FBI agents "accidentally" left a file about the Bin Laden family on the desk of one of my researchers. They called up and said, "Oops, we left our file on your desk by accident. You haven't read it, have you? Well, we'll be back to pick it up in 30 minutes-unless you need 45." The FBI agents handed us material dated September 13, 2001, two days after the attack. It was on that date that the FBI was finally released to go after two members of the Bin Laden family, who they had already identified as being involved with a suspected terrorist organization. But by September 11th, they were flown birds. HUSTLER: What happened to other members of the Bin Laden family living in the U.S. after 9/11? PALAST: Just after the no-fly restriction was lifted, a private Saudi Arabian jet airlifted the Bin Laden family members out of the country before the FBI could talk to them. Everyone thinks there's just one black sheep in that family, but the FBI agents were telling us at BBC they think there's a couple of gray sheep, and they had some questions for the family members. There were a lot of people dead under the rubble at that moment when those people left. HUSTLER: What had American policy been regarding the Bin Laden family prior to the Bush Administration?
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-17-06.asp Bush Record on Environment Called Dismal WASHINGTON, DC, January 17, 2003 (ENS) - The Bush administration undermined America's landmark environmental laws on almost a daily basis in 2002, two new reports suggest. The reports document more than 100 anti-environmental actions by the administration last year, and point to ongoing efforts to undermine existing protections and delay proposed new rules that could help the environment. 1/22/03b http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19221-2003Jan20?language=printer France Vows to Block Resolution on Iraq War U.S. Schedule Put at Risk By U.N. Debate By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, January 21, 2003; Page A01 UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 20 -- France suggested today it would wage a major diplomatic fight, including possible use of its veto power, to prevent the U.N. Security Council from passing a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq. France's opposition to a war, emphatically delivered here by Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, is a major blow for the Bush administration, which has begun pouring tens of thousands of troops into the Persian Gulf in preparation for a military conflict this spring. The administration had hoped to mark the final phase in its confrontation with Iraq when U.N. weapons inspectors deliver a progress report Monday. But in a diplomatic version of an ambush, France and other countries used a high-level Security Council meeting on terrorism to lay down their markers for the debate that will commence next week on the inspectors' report. Russia and China, which have veto power, and Germany, which will chair the Security Council in February, also signaled today they were willing to let the inspections continue for months. Only Britain appeared to openly support the U.S. position that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has thwarted effective inspections. 1/22/03c http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0121-01.htm Published on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by the Chicago Tribune European Leaders Hear Anti-War Cry -- And Listen U.S. intervention in Iraq questioned by Tom Hundley LONDON -- After a weekend of anti-war demonstrations across the continent, political leaders in European capitals appear resolved to slow the Bush administration's drive toward a military confrontation with Iraq. "We will not take part in a military intervention in Iraq, and that is exactly how our voting behavior will be in all international bodies," German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in a weekend speech. German Defense Minister Peter Struck said that a "yes" vote by Germany was "no longer conceivable." In Paris, senior French officials said that France will use its seat on the Security Council and all of its influence to restrain U.S. militarism. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Bush administration's most steadfast ally in the confrontation with Iraq, has been warned by members of his Labor Party that he faces a full-scale revolt within the ranks if he attempts to take Britain to war without the political fig leaf of a second UN resolution. The German polling group Infratest-Dimpa showed that 76 percent of the population opposed a war with Iraq even if it had UN backing.
1/27/03 http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/01/27.html January 27, 2003 EDITORIAL ARCHIVES A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL There he is, our macho Secretary of Defense trash talking the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to a Washington Times story (See: http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030124-14721132.htm In the intervening time between the draftee insult and the leaked memo about his disparagement of the highest commanders in our military, Rummy had a good time insulting and angering our allies, France and Germany. Rummy, in a patronizing outburst of smug bravado, called them "the old Europe." Rummy has got it in for just about everybody these days. Let's see, in two weeks, he's managed to insult and anger men who fought for America in Vietnam and other wars (unlike Bush and Cheney who ran yellow from fighting in Vietnam), impugn the capabilities of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and tick off the two largest nations in Europe. That's quite an accomplishment, even for the oversized brazen egos of the Bush Cartel. I mean, Clinton would have been ousted from office for any of these three statements, but our Little Caesar, Bush, has full confidence in his Rummy. As far as his running down of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which some might call treason given our "war footing," Rumsfeld is following a stance laid out by one Eliot Cohen, a key military policy advisor to the Bush administration (and professor at Johns Hopkins). In a Washington Post commentary last year, Cohen argued that military leaders should take a back seat to the president when it comes to determining the feasibility of war. So even though the Joint Chiefs of Staff have second thoughts about our ability to successfully win in Iraq without great loss of life -- and no doubt don't relish a post-victory role in occupying the nation, a man who wasn't even elected to the White House and let others die in Vietnam in his place should overrule the military judgment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Got it? Yes the men with military fighting experience have a different perspective than the Bush Cartel honchos who never fought in a war. As a recent online publication (by no means liberal) noted http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_1587.shtml Senior Pentagon officials are quietly urging President George W. Bush to slow down his headlong rush to war with Iraq, complaining the administration's course of action represents too much of a shift of America‚s longstanding "no first strike" policy and that the move could well result in conflicts with other Arab nations. "We have a dangerous role reversal here," one Pentagon source tells Capitol Hill Blue. "The civilians are urging war and the uniformed officers are urging caution." "This is not Desert Storm," one of the Joint Chiefs is reported to have told Rumsfeld "We don‚t have the backing of other Middle Eastern nations. We don‚t have the backing of any of our allies except Britain and we‚re advocating a policy that says we will invade another nation that is not currently attacking us or invading any of our allies." Intelligence sources say some Arab nations have told US diplomats they may side with Iraq if the U.S. attacks without the backing of the United Nations. Secretary of State Colin Powell agrees with his former colleagues at the Pentagon and has told the President he may be pursuing a "dangerous course." An angry Rumsfeld, who backs Bush without question, is said to have told the Joint Chiefs to get in line or find other jobs. Bush is also said to be "extremely angry" at what he perceives as growing Pentagon opposition to his role as Commander in Chief. "The President considers this nation to be at war," a White House source says," and, as such, considers any opposition to his policies to be no less than an act of treason." In short, Bush is showing disrespect for the Joint Chiefs, and accusing anyone, even the Joint Chiefs, who don't agree with him of treason. But this is the real treason, that a president appointed by a 5-4 vote can accuse anyone, even the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of disservice to America because they question Little Caesar's judgment. Shouldn't such trust be based on having an endgame plan to an invasion of Iraq, not making our soldiers vulnerable to terrorists during an occupation of that large nation? As conservative Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman noted in his January 26th See: In the first place, we may have to cope with uprisings and bloodlettings among groups that have been oppressed by the central government and would like to escape its control. In the second place, our efforts to keep peace and order could provoke some Iraqis to turn their fury on us -- in a repeat of Somalia. But nation-building may be the least of our burdens. A large force of U.S. soldiers and civilians stationed in the Middle East will furnish the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet for Osama bin Laden. (Remember him?) Postwar Iraq promises to be a magnet for Al Qaeda operatives eager to resume the fight against America. If we can't prevent terrorist attacks in places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, imagine what we can expect in Iraq.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/letters/cst-edt-vox23a.html Frist has serious conflict on health care issue January 23, 2003 Chicago Sun-Times Jan. 23, 2003 Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist must recuse himself from health care legislation deliberations. He comes to his new post with a record of self-interest and partiality for the corporate health care delivery system. Frist owns $26 million of his family's company, Hospital Corporation of American (HCA), the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain. HCA has the questionable achievement of executing the largest white-collar crime in U.S. history, having been penalized $1.7 billion in fines, so far, for gouging Medicare, health care for our elderly. It was only a forgiving Bush administration Justice Department that spared the perpetrators prison time. In 1995, Frist supported a Medicare bill to increase for-profit hospital reimbursements by $65 per patient, while reducing not-for-profit reimbursements by $6 per patient. More recently, he has worked to stop a strong patient's bill of rights, and gridlocked a Medicare prescription benefit. His reward from the health care industry: more campaign finance dollars than all but two Senate colleagues. Dr. Frist has an ethical imperative to assure the American public that he will not, as majority leader of the Senate, frame health care legislation. Quentin Young, M.D., Physicians For a National Health Program 1/29/03b World Net Daily Jan. 25, 2003 http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30664 2 of 5 Gulf War vets on disability 209,000 make VA claims, 161,000 getting payments © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com As the U.S. contemplates another war on Iraq in the coming weeks, most Americans expect relatively few casualties among the U.S. troops &endash; just like the first Gulf War. The Gulf War was remarkable, as U.S. conflicts go, for the strikingly low number of U.S. dead and wounded &endash; 148 killed and 467 wounded. But the truth is nearly two of every five of the approximately 540,000 Gulf War vets are on disability as a result of illnesses they believe they sustained during that conflict. About 161,000 Gulf War veterans are receiving disability payments from the U.S. government. About 209,000 have filed VA claims. A report made public earlier this month details which chemical weapons Iraq declared and the companies they claim supplied them. The disclosure is providing ammo for vets who say they have Gulf War Syndrome &endash; a mysterious illness many believe is connected to the use of chemical weapons by Iraq. More than 5,000 veterans are plaintiffs in a lawsuit that accuses companies of helping Iraqi President Saddam Hussein build his chemical warfare arsenal. The plaintiffs are among the tens of thousands who came down with Gulf War Syndrome, a debilitating series of ailments that can include chronic fatigue, skin rashes, muscle joint pain, memory loss and brain damage. Now, plaintiffs' attorneys have acquired, for the first time, what they believe is strong evidence of which companies supplied Iraq the chemicals that might have been used to produce mustard gas, sarin nerve gas and VX. The supplier list is included in Iraq's 1998 weapons declaration to the United Nations, parts of which were resubmitted to weapons inspectors last month. The Iraqi list names 56 suppliers of chemicals and equipment to process them. A majority are based in Europe. The lawsuit, originally filed by plaintiff attorney Gary Pitts in a civil court in Brazoria County, Texas, in 1994, alleges that companies knew "products and/or manufacturing facilities supplied ... were to be used to produce chemical and biological weapons." The suit seeks at least $1 billion in damages for medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/31/1043804520548.html US is misquoting my Iraq report, says Blix By Judith Miller and Julia Preston in New York February 1 2003 The New York Times, agencies 1/30/03b http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/31/sprj.irq.carter/index.html Carter: Iraq threat does not justify war Former president calls for 'sustained' inspection team ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) --Former President Jimmy Carter urged th United States Friday not to attack Iraq, saying the Bush administration has failed to make a case for war and that military action could trigger Saddam Hussein to use weapons of mass destruction. "Despite marshaling powerful armed forces in the Persian Gulf region and a virtual declaration of war in the State of the Union message, our government has not made a case for a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq," he said in a written statement released by the Carter Center in Atlanta. 1/30/03c http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/01/29_Unprecedented.html Earl Katz, Co-Executive Producer of the Documentary "Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election" "Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election" is a riveting documentary about the battle for th Presidency Florida and the undermining of democrac y in America. Filmmakers Richard Ray Pérez and Joan Sekler examine modern America's most controversial political contest: the Election of George W. Bush. What emerges is a disturbing picture of an election marred by suspicious irregularities, electoral injustices, and sinister voter purges in a state governed by the winning candidate's brother. 1/30/03d http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/reuters20030130_674.html Mandela Blasts Bush on Iraq, Warns of 'Holocaust' Jan. 30 By Toby Reynolds JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African President Nelson Mandela lashed out at U.S. President George Bush's stance on Iraq on Thursday, saying the Texan had no foresight and could not think properly. |
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2/04/03a Standing on the Dead By Marc Ash t r u t h o u t | Essay Wednesday 22 January 2003 "What luck for the rulers that men do not think." --Adolf Hitler In October of 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the U.S. government halted operations at New York's Union Banking Corporation. A bank official was charged with "Running Nazi front groups in the United States." His name: Prescott Bush Prescott Bush, father of future U.S President George Herbert Walker Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush, had been hard at work on behalf of his Nazi partners. In flagrant violation of U.S. law, Prescott Bush had worked tirelessly to launder money, procure raw materials, arrange transportation and provide guidance for the Nazi war effort and the German army he had helped to build In April of 2002, George W. Bush -- standing literally on the bones of the men who fell at Normandy beachhead in mortal combat with that very same Nazi army -- delivered his Memorial Day address. He said, in part, "This is a day our country has set apart to remember what was gained in our wars, and all that was lost." Let us remember. As the German army came crashing into Poland, spreading death and destruction in its path, Prescott Bush continued aiding the Nazis. As German tanks rolled through the Ardennes Forest and into Paris, Prescott Bush continued aiding the Nazis. As Allied forces fighting to defend France were forced literally into the sea at Dunkirk by the German Army, Prescott Bush continued aiding the Nazis. As German war planes rained bombs down on London, killing 50 thousand English men, women and children, Prescott Bush continued aiding the Nazis. As millions died at the hands of the most ruthless and violent organization the world has ever known, Prescott Bush continued aiding them. And of course, as Hitler and the Nazis planned and carried out the extermination of Europe's Jews, Prescott Bush was an eager and active partner. When did Bush stop? When we made him stop. In this case, George W. Bush won't have to worry about the US Government shutting him down. That's been taken care of -- he is the US Government. As debate rages back and forth across the Atlantic over the morality and acceptability of this assault against Iraq, it is interesting to note the German position. It was Germany who bought most completely into the war lie during the past century. It was the German people who, with their faith in country and leadership, and even their loyalty to the Fatherland, made possible the greatest nightmare the world has ever known. It is those same German people who stand today before Europe and the world in unflinching opposition to this latest world conquering force. How well do the German people know George W. Bush? Better than they want to. Heir to the Holocaust: http://www.clamormagazine.org/features/issue14.3_feature.3.html The Bush Nazi Connection: http://www.lpdallas.org/features/draheim/dr991216.htm Gold Fillings, Auschwitz & George Bush: http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/bushies.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/international/middleeast/31BLIX.html http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/02/02_Blix.html Blix Gets Bushwhacked by Mainstream American Media A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Paul Lukasiak On Friday, January 31st, a number of things happened related to the possible war with Iraq. One was the scheduled meeting between George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. No real news came out of the meeting. They stood side by side, and once again warned Saddam Hussein that he must disarm. The other event, perhaps even more significant, was UNMOVIC Chief Inspector Hans Blix telling the New York Times that the there was insufficient evidence to justify a war with Iraq. Except for the New York Times, all the major media's web outlets led with the Blair Bush meeting, and virtually ignored the Blix story. When the American media did report on the Blix interview, it headlined Blix's criticism of Iraq 2/05/03b http://www.pressherald.com/news/statehouse/030205resolution.shtml Wednesday, February 5, 2003 Senate OKs resolution opposing war in Iraq By TOM BELL, Portland Press Herald Writer Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. AUGUSTA ˜ The Maine Senate endorsed a resolution Tuesday that asks President Bush to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iraq rather than going to war. The House is expected to take up the proposal on Thursday at the earliest. The 18-15 Senate vote represents the first time nationally that a state legislative body has taken a stance against a war in Iraq. Sixty-three U.S. cities, including Portland, have voted to support similar resolutions. The Senate vote was partisan, with every Democrat supporting the measure and every Republican in attendance opposing it.
Britain's Intelligence Dossier on Iraq was Plagiarized from a Grad Student: by Michael C. Ruppert [© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All rights reserved. May be copied, distributed or posted on the Internet for non-profit purposes only.] Update: Feb. 7, 2003, 1830 hrs, PST, (FTW): Mainstream media in the U.S. has finally started to report on this story: CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/07/sprj.irq.uk.dossier/index.html Feb. 6, 2003, 2230 hrs, PST, (FTW) - A story is sweeping the world tonight and it says a great deal about those who are forcing the world into a war it does not want. The famed dossier presented by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to his Parliament was plagiarized from two articles and a September 2002 research paper submitted by a graduate student. Worse, the Iraq described by the graduate student is not the Iraq of 2003 but the Iraq of 1991. So glaring was the theft of intellectual property that the official British document even cut and pasted whole verbatim segments of the research paper, including grammatical errors, and presented the findings as the result of intense work by British intelligence services. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell both praised and quoted that same British report in his presentation at the United Nations yesterday. It is important that readers see and understand the enormity of this violation of public trust for themselves. The story was first broken by Britain's Channel 4 today and it is appearing in more papers and web sites by the hour. The following links lead directly to the Channel 4 story, to the British "intelligence" report and to the original student paper. What was also disclosed was that certain portions of the academic report were altered by the PM Tony Blair to make them more inflammatory. In one cited instance Blair changed "aiding opposition groups" to "supporting terrorists." The Channel 4 story is at: http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/02/week_1/06_dossier.html The Official UK intelligence report is at: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7111.asp The original student research paper is located at: http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue3/jv6n3a1.html
2/08/03b http://truthout.org/docs_02/020703C.htm BBC | Australian PM Censured over Iraq Wednesday 05 February 2003 Mr Howard's stance on Iraq has been met with protests.The Australian Senate has passed an historic no-confidence motion against the prime minister over his handling of the crisis in Iraq. John Howard and his conservative Liberal/National coalition were censured for deploying troops to the Gulf ahead of a possible war. Opposition and minor parties joined forces to pass the motion against Mr Howard by 33 to 31 votes.
2/13/03a http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-572322,00.html Vatican diplomacy: Pope takes issue with America's 'just war' From Richard Owen in Rome THE POPE launched an eleventh-hour crusade yesterday to avert a war against Iraq, for which he believes there is no justification. The ageing pontiff rebuffed attempts by the Bush Administration to persuade him that impending military action against Baghdad amounted to a Christian "just war" 2/13/03b http://dailynews.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=518&u=/ap/20030210/ap_on_re_eu/nato_iraq&printer=1 NATO in Crisis Over Protecting Turkey 22 minutes ago By PAUL GEITNER, Associated Press Writer BRUSSELS, Belgium - Europe's split with America deepened Monday after France, Germany and Belgium vetoed a U.S.-backed measure to authorize NATO (news - web sites) to make plans to protect Turkey in the event of attack by Iraq. 2/13/03c http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,894449,00.html 10 million join world protest rallies From Africa to Antarctica, people prepare to march for peace John Vidal Thursday February 13, 2003 The Guardian Up to 10 million people on five continents are expected to demonstrate against the probable war in Iraq on Saturday, in some of the largest peace marches ever known. Yesterday, up to 400 cities in 60 countries, from Antarctica to Pacific islands, confirmed that peace rallies, vigils and marches would take place. Of all major countries, only China is absent from the growing list which includes more than 300 cities in Europe and north America, 50 in Asia and Latin America, 10 in Africa and 20 in Australia and Oceania. Many countries will witness the largest demonstrations against war they have ever seen. The majority will be small but 500,000 people are expected in London and Barcelona, and more than 100,000 in Rome, Paris, Berlin and other European capitals. In the US, organisers were yesterday anticipating 200,000 marching in New York if permission is given. A further 100,000 are expected to march in 140 other American cities.
2/14/03a POWELL CREDIBILITY GAP THROWS U.S. MEDIA INTO CRISIS Fact or Fiction? Which Will They Communicate? Bush Decides, They Report? Vietnam Syndrome Hits Media Falling Dominoes? First Powell's Integrity, Then Media's? In an extraordinary development, Secretary of State Colin Powell is shredding his reputation on the world stage in his propaganda war in favor of an invasion of Iraq. Now he has misrepresented the contents of the purported tape from Osama bin Laden in order to draw a link that does not exist between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Full transcripts of the tape, as provided by the BBC and other corroborating news sources, directly refute Powell's spin. On the tape, bin Laden attacks Hussein as a "socialist" and "infidel," and calls for the overthrow of other Arab regimes. In this context, Osama bin Laden's call for resistance to the death against a U.S. invasion of Iraq shows that he wishes this apart from what he calls the "survival" of Saddam Hussein. Some link! The objective facts are: 1) Colin Powell has deliberately distorted the contents of the tape. 2) The rest of the world has noted this. 3) The U.S. media have not, and acts as though Powell's claim is the truth -- when it is not. All of which raises a large question for the U.S. news media: Will it leap into Powell's credibility gap after him, or will it keep its head and report the facts to inform the American people. NYT: Powell's Propaganda ..... http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/12/international/middleeast/12TAPE.html BBC Transcription of Actual Tape ..... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2751019.stm The World Responds ..... http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-binladen-germany.html The Philadelphia Daily News, "Bin There Before" ..... http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/5157847.htm McCain Speaks Out ..... http://www.msnbc.com/news/871811.asp?0cv=CB10&cp1=1 2/14/03b http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=378163 CIA 'sabotaged inspections and hid weapons details' By Andrew Buncombe in Washington 14 February 2003 Senior democrats have accused the CIA of sabotaging weapons inspections in Iraq by refusing to co-operate fully with the UN and withholding crucial information about Saddam Hussein's arsenal. Led by Senator Carl Levin, the Democrats accused the CIA of making an assessment that the inspections were unlikely to be a success and then ensuring they would not be France, Russia, Germany and other members of the Security Council are likely to back a counter-proposal to increase the number of inspectors, providing them, necessary, with the support of armed UN soldiers, as a means of avoiding a military strike. The accusation of US sabotage emerged from a series of Senate hearings on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, George Tenet, the CIA director, told the armed services committee panel that the agency had provided the UN inspectors with all the information it had ... But Mr Tenet later told a different panel that he had been mistaken and that there were in fact "a handful" of locations the UN inspectors may not have known about. Senator Levin, from Michigan, responded by saying the CIA director had not been telling the truth. Citing a number of classified letters he had obtained from the agency, he said it was clear the CIA had not shared information with the inspectors about a "large number of sites of significant value".
2/15/03a Published on Thursday, February 13, 2003 by CommonDreams.org The Bush Administration‚s Attacks on the United Nations by Stephen Zunes One would have to go to the annual convention of the John Birch Society to find as many invectives directed against the United Nations as has been spewed out in recent weeks by the Bush Administration and its supporters in Congress and in the media. With the United States on the verge of launching an invasion of Iraq without approval of the United Nations Security Council, a concerted effort is underway taking advantage of the lack of knowledge most Americans have of the United Nations‚ structures and procedures to discredit the world body in the eyes of public opinion. This could prove pivotal, because currently a majority of Americans oppose an invasion of Iraq unless the UN Security Council authorizes the use of force Below are the main arguments of the Bush Administration and its supporters in delegitimizing the authority of the United Nations, followed by rebuttals. "Since the United Nations is unwilling to enforce its Security Council resolutions, the United States must do so unilaterally in order to preserve the UN‚s credibility." These are over 90 UN Security Council resolutions currently being violated by countries other than Iraq. The United States has blocked the enforcement of the vast majority of these since they involve important U.S. allies such as Morocco, Israel and Turkey. In addition, over the past thirty years, the United States has vetoed over 50 Security Council resolutions, more than all the vetoes by all other members of the Security Council during that same period combined. In all but a few cases, the United States cast the sole dissenting vote in the 15-member body. Indeed, the United States has done more to undermine the authority of the UN Security Council than any other member state. "The United Nations has demonstrated its pro-Iraqi bias by choosing Iraq to chair its Conference on Disarmament.": The Conference on Disarmament is one of several bodies of the General Assembly that meets on an ongoing basis. The chair of the conference is rotated alphabetically among its sixty-six members for 30-day terms. It happens that they are up to the letter „I‰ early this year, so Iraq‚s turn will be coming up shortly. Like similar UN bodies, there is generally no exception to this strict alphabetical rotation. The chairmanship means little more than holding a gavel, however, and several countries which possess weapons of mass destruction have held the chairmanship or will hold the chairmanship in the coming months, including the United States, Pakistan, Israel and India, among others. Furthermore, Iraq is not the only country in the conference to defy United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding disarmament issues. Israel, which will be taking the chairmanship later this spring, is in open defiance of UN Security Council resolution 487, which calls upon the Israeli government to open its nuclear facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Perhaps most importantly, the Disarmament Conference has been unable to do anything for more than four years because of its failure to agree on a program of work, primarily because of U.S. opposition to demands that the prevention of an arms race in outer space be put on the agenda.
2/15/03b http://www.takebackthemedia.com/news-cnnedit.html Posted Friday, February 14, 2003 by stranger How in the world do you trust a 'news' organiztion like CNN, when they offer what purports to be a full transcript of Hans Blix' address to the UN Security Council but they leave out nearly 800 words - and those words just happen to be the ones where Blix refutes Colin Powell's 'smoking gun' presentation from earlier this week? Here is CNN's transcript: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/14/sprj.irq.un.transcript.1/index.html Here is the BBC's: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2763653.stm In the public interest, here are a couple of excerpts from the Blix address that CNN chose not to put on their web site: "I trust that the Iraqi side will put together a similar list of names of persons who participated in the unilateral destruction of other proscribed items, notably in the biological field... The presentation of intelligence information by the US secretary of state suggested that Iraq had prepared for inspections by cleaning up sites and removing evidence of proscribed weapons programmes. I would like to comment only on one case, which we are familiar with, namely, the trucks identified by analysts as being for chemical decontamination at a munitions depot. This was a declared site, and it was certainly one of the sites Iraq would have expected us to inspect. We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart."
2/17/03a http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14040-2003Feb15?language=printer Forceful Tactics Catch Up With U.S. Efforts to Build Support on Iraq Stymied by Two Years of International Resentment Glenn Kessler Months of painstaking efforts by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to win international consensus for military action against Iraq have been complicated by a growing resentment over what many foreign diplomats regard as the Bush administration's heavy-handed and bullying tactics over the past two years. Those tensions boiled over at the Security Council on Friday to a degree rarely seen in the U.N. chamber. Although Iraq's cooperation with weapons inspectors was the official subject at hand, U.S. behavior became an important subtext of the debate as the audience broke U.N. rules and applauded French and Russian demands that the rush to war be slowed down. ... Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the administration has pursued an especially muscular foreign policy, but foreign officials say anger at the administration's style set in almost from the moment President Bush took office. The administration's rejection of the Kyoto treaty to stem global warming and Bush's abrupt dismissal of South Korea's "sunshine" policy toward North Korea set the impression that the administration was not interested in listening too closely to the concerns of its allies, diplomats said. The administration exacerbated tensions by refusing to join the International Criminal Court, withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and announcing a doctrine of fighting preventive wars that surprised and concerned allies. 2/17/03b http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14040-2003Feb15?language=printer Months of painstaking efforts by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to win international consensus for military action against Iraq have been complicated by a growing resentment over what many foreign diplomats regard as the Bush administration's heavy-handed and bullying tactics over the past two years. Those tensions boiled over at the Security Council on Friday to a degree rarely seen in the U.N. chamber. Although Iraq's cooperation with weapons inspectors was the official subject at hand, U.S. behavior became an important subtext of the debate as the audience broke U.N. rules and applauded French and Russian demands that the rush to war be slowed down. ... Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the administration has pursued an especially muscular foreign policy, but foreign officials say anger at the administration's style set in almost from the moment President Bush took office. The administration's rejection of the Kyoto treaty to stem global warming and Bush's abrupt dismissal of South Korea's "sunshine" policy toward North Korea set the impression that the administration was not interested in listening too closely to the concerns of its allies, diplomats said. The administration exacerbated tensions by refusing to join the International Criminal Court, withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and announcing a doctrine of fighting preventive wars that surprised and concerned allies. 2/17/03c http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=404 "The Whole World is Against This War." 02/14/2003 @ 6:11pm "The whole world is against this war. Only one person wants it," declared South African teenager Bilqees Gamieldien as she joined a Cape Town antiwar demonstration on a weekend when it did indeed seem that the whole world was dissenting from George W. Bush's push for war with Iraq. Millions of protesters marched into the streets of cities from Tokyo to Tel Aviv to Toronto and Bush's homestate of Texas to deliver a message expressed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to a crowd of more than one million in London: "It's not too late to stop this war." Britain's Guardian newspaper described the London march as the largest peace demonstration in the country's history. The headline on Sunday morning's Observer newspaper read, "One million. And still they came," and announced that the "massive turnout surpassed the organisers' wildest expectations and Tony Blair's worst fears." Organizers of the British march estimated that as many as 1.5 million were cheering as London Mayor Ken Livingstone told the crowd, "So let everyone recognise what has happened here today: that Britain does not support this war for oil. The British people will not tolerate being used to prop up the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years." No leader could have felt more pressure Saturday than Britain's Blair, whose personal approval ratings have dipped dramatically as he has continued to side with Bush's position on war. Among those marching with Jackson and the others was British author John Mortimer, long one of the most prominent members of Blair's Labour Party. Noting revelations that Blair's government doctored intelligence reports to create a false impression that they revealed clear and present dangers from Iraq, Mortimer said in announcing his decision to join the London demonstration: "We are being persuaded into war by lies and half truths. A secret service document, making it clear there is no evidence of a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, is disregarded. A 10-year-old article by an undergraduate is presented, and solemnly referred to by Colin Powell as if it were the latest government report, and no effort has been made for our Government to tell the truth about it."
2/18/03a Published on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 by CommonDreams.org Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences by US Senator Robert Byrd Senate Floor Speech - Wednesday, February 12, 2003 To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war. Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. Only on the editorial pages of our newspapers is there much substantive discussion of the prudence or imprudence of engaging in this particular war. And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world. This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption -- the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future -- is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter. And it is being tested at a time of world-wide terrorism, making many countries around the globe wonder if they will soon be on our -- or some other nation's -- hit list. High level Administration figures recently refused to take nuclear weapons off of the table when discussing a possible attack against Iraq. What could be more destabilizing and unwise than this type of uncertainty, particularly in a world where globalism has tied the vital economic and security interests of many nations so closely together? There are huge cracks emerging in our time-honored alliances, and U.S. intentions are suddenly subject to damaging worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after September 11. Here at home, people are warned of imminent terrorist attacks with little guidance as to when or where such attacks might occur. Family members are being called to active military duty, with no idea of the duration of their stay or what horrors they may face. Communities are being left with less than adequate police and fire protection. Other essential services are also short-staffed. The mood of the nation is grim. The economy is stumbling. Fuel prices are rising and may soon spike higher. This Administration, now in power for a little over two years, must be judged on its record. I believe that that record is dismal. In that scant two years, this Administration has squandered a large projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to projected deficits as far as the eye can see. This Administration's domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition, under funding scores of essential programs for our people. This Administration has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth. This Administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health care for our elderly. This Administration has been slow to provide adequate funding for homeland security. This Administration has been reluctant to better protect our long and porous borders. In foreign policy, this Administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and urging them to kill. This Administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling, for all time, International order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO. This Administration has called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as well-intentioned, peacekeeper. This Administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling, and name calling of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders, and which will have consequences for years to come. Calling heads of state pygmies, labeling whole countries as evil, denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant -- these types of crude insensitivities can do our great nation no good. We may have massive military might, but we cannot fight a global war on terrorism alone. We need the cooperation and friendship of our time-honored allies as well as the newer found friends whom we can attract with our wealth. Our awesome military machine will do us little good if we suffer another devastating attack on our homeland which severely damages our economy. Our military manpower is already stretched thin and we will need the augmenting support of those nations who can supply troop strength, not just sign letters cheering us on. The war in Afghanistan has cost us $37 billion so far, yet there is evidence that terrorism may already be starting to regain its hold in that region. We have not found bin Laden, and unless we secure the peace in Afghanistan, the dark dens of terrorism may yet again flourish in that remote and devastated land. Pakistan as well is at risk of destabilizing forces. This Administration has not finished the first war against terrorism and yet it is eager to embark on another conflict with perils much greater than those in Afghanistan. Is our attention span that short? Have we not learned that after winning the war one must always secure the peace? And yet we hear little about the aftermath of war in Iraq. In the absence of plans, speculation abroad is rife. Will we seize Iraq's oil fields, becoming an occupying power which controls the price and supply of that nation's oil for the foreseeable future? To whom do we propose to hand the reigns of power after Saddam Hussein? Will our war inflame the Muslim world resulting in devastating attacks on Israel? Will Israel retaliate with its own nuclear arsenal? Will the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments be toppled by radicals, bolstered by Iran which has much closer ties to terrorism than Iraq? Could a disruption of the world's oil supply lead to a world-wide recession? Has our senselessly bellicose language and our callous disregard of the interests and opinions of other nations increased the global race to join the nuclear club and made proliferation an even more lucrative practice for nations which need the income? In only the space of two short years this reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years. One can understand the anger and shock of any President after the savage attacks of September 11. One can appreciate the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution. But to turn one's frustration and anger into the kind of extremely destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable from any Administration charged with the awesome power and responsibility of guiding the destiny of the greatest superpower on the planet. Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this Administration are outrageous. There is no other word. Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of Iraq -- a population, I might add, of which over 50% is under age 15 -- this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send thousands of our own citizens to face unimagined horrors of chemical and biological warfare -- this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate. We are truly "sleepwalking through history." In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings. To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is "in the highest moral traditions of our country". This war is not necessary at this time. Pressure appears to be having a good result in Iraq. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our own making. Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time.
2/20/03a http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/outrage/hager.htm Whether you're Right or Left on the issue of women's reproductive rights, please consider the following... President Bush has announced his plan to select Dr. W. David Hager to head up the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. The committee has not met for more than two years, during which time its charter has lapsed. As a result, the Bush Administration is tasked with filling all eleven positions with new members. This position does not require Congressional approval. The FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee makes crucial decisions on matters relating to drugs used in the practice of obstetrics, gynecology and related specialties, including hormone therapy, contraception, treatment for infertility, and medical alternatives to surgical procedures for sterilization and pregnancy termination. Dr. Hager's views of reproductive health care are far outside the mainstream and a setback for reproductive technology. Dr. Hager is a practicing OB/GYN who describes himself as "pro-life" and refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. Hager is the author of "As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now." The book blends biblical accounts of Christ healing women with case studies from Hager's practice. In the book Dr. Hager wrote with his wife, entitled "Stress and the Woman's Body," he suggests that women who suffer from premenstrual syndrome should seek help from reading the bible and praying. As an editor and contributing author of "The Reproduction Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality, Reproductive Technologies and the Family," Dr. Hager appears to have endorsed the medically inaccurate assertion that the common birth control pill is an abortifacient. Lamer, Timothy. "Hager Will Face a Fury." World Magazine. 11 January 2002. Neergaard, Lauran. "Abortion Rights Groups Blast Anti-Abortion Candidate for FDA Panel." The Associated Press. 16 October 2002. Tumulty, Karen. "Jesus and the FDA." Time. 14 October 2002. Associated Press. "Kentucky Physician Named to FDA Panel." 26 December 2002.
2/22/03a http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=1648385 The Swiss-based ABB on Friday told swissinfo that Rumsfeld was involved with the company in early 2000, when it netted a $200 million (SFr270million) contract with Pyongyang. The ABB contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho, on North Korea's east coast. Rumsfeld &endash; who is one of the Bush administration's most strident "hardliners" on North Korea &endash; was a member of ABB's board between 1990 and February 2001, when he left to take up his current post. Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB, told swissinfo that Rumsfeld "was at nearly all the board meetings" during his decade-long involvement with the company. 2/22/03b http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_hersh.html JANE WALLACE: Let's talk about Konduz. During the war with Afghanistan-- SY HERSH: Great story. JANE WALLACE: -- you reported that during a key battle our side in that battle had the enemy surrounded. There were a reported perhaps 8,000 enemy forces in there. SY HERSH: Maybe even more. But certainly minimum that many. JANE WALLACE: It's your story, take it. SY HERSH: Okay, the cream of the crop of Al Qaeda caught in a town called Konduz which is near ... it's one little village and it's a couple hundred kilometers, 150 miles from the border of Pakistan. And I learned this story frankly-- through very, very clandestine operatives we have in the Delta Force and other very... We were operating very heavily with a small number of men, three, 400 really in the first days of the war. And suddenly one night when they had everybody cornered in Konduz-- the special forces people were told there was a corridor that they could not fly in. There was a corridor sealed off to-- the United States military sealed off a corridor. And it was nobody could shoot anybody in this little lane that went from Konduz into Pakistan. And that's how I learned about it. I learned about it from a military guy who wanted to fly helicopters and kill people and couldn't do it that day. JANE WALLACE: So, we had the enemy surrounded, the special forces guys are helping surround this enemy. SY HERSH: They're whacking everybody they can whack that looks like a bad guy. JANE WALLACE: And suddenly they're told to back off-- SY HERSH: From a certain area-- JANE WALLACE: -- and let planes fly out to Pakistan. SY HERSH: There was about a three or four nights in which I can tell you maybe six, eight, 10, maybe 12 more-- or more heavily weighted-- Pakistani military planes flew out with an estimated-- no less than 2,500 maybe 3,000, maybe mmore. I've heard as many as four or 5,000. They were not only-- Al Qaeda but they were also-- you see the Pakistani ISI was-- the military advised us to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. There were dozens of senior Pakistani military officers including two generals who flew out. And I also learned after I wrote this story that maybe even some of Bin Laden's immediate family were flown out on the those evacuations. We allowed them to evacuate. We had an evacuation. JANE WALLACE: How high up was that evacuation authorized? SY HERSH: I am here to tell you it was authorized ˜ Donald Rumsfeld who ˜ we'll talk about what he said later ˜ it had to be authorized at the White House. But certainly at the Secretary of Defense level. JANE WALLACE: The Department of Defense said to us that they were not involved and that they don't have any knowledge of that operation. SY HERSH: That's what Rumsfeld said when they asked him but it. And he said, "Gee, really?" He said, "News to me." Which is not a denial, it's sort of interesting.
2/22/03c http://212.2.162.45/news/story.asp?j=62748574&p=62749280&n=62749334 Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy-O'Connor today issued a joint statement expressing doubts about the "moral legitimacy" of a war on Iraq and calling for a continuation of weapons inspections. The churchmen's intervention came as a setback to Tony Blair, who responded to last week's million-strong march in London by vigorously asserting the "moral case for removing Saddam". 2/22/03d http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bish17.html Among the growing number of religious voices opposing military action in Iraq, Griswold's has been one of the loudest. Earlier this year, Griswold, who was Episcopal bishop of Chicago from 1987 to 1997 before being named presiding bishop of the United States in 1998, said, "We are loathed, and I think the world has every right to loathe us because they see us as greedy, self-interested and almost totally unconcerned about poverty, disease and suffering." In a speech Jan. 31 in Stamford, Conn., former President George H.W. Bush, who is an Episcopalian, called Griswold's comments "highly offensive." "We are the most generous, fairest nation in the world," Bush said. "How can this man of God think so little of the United States? . . . Unlike the bishop, I never feel the need to apologize for this great country. 2/22/03e http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/02/21.html Is the Pope Aiding and Abetting Terrorism? According to the Bush Cartel, the answer is "yes." John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney and Ari Fleischer have warned us: challenge the Bush administration's strategy in its war on terror and you are aiding the terrorists. So, in the Orwellian Bush Cartel world, God's emissary on earth for Catholics -- and the world's most high profile religious leader -- is a dangerous man. What's the "heresy" the Pope is committing according to the Bush Cartel? Well, the Pope is aiding and abetting terrorism because he wants a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis. To the Bush Cartel, if you don't subscribe to the peculiarly perverse theory that war IS peace, then you are facilitating terrorism. Will the Pope be detained for questioning by Italian police? Stay tuned. But the Pope's advocacy against an Iraq attack as violating the dictates of God's and Jesus' message of peace presents a more profound challenge to Bush. Just as the Bush cartel seized control of our democracy through a 5-4 Supreme Court decision -- despite another man winning the popular vote by more than a half a million votes -- Bush has seized the mantle of God. In has daily oozing of religiosity, Bush has claimed, in the most fundamental sense, that God is on his side, the side of the avenging, wrathful Crusader, the side of unending conflict, the side of the war with Iraq. 2/22/03f Sarasota Herald-Tribune 11/11/2000 What my cabinet shows is that I am not afraid to surround myself with strong and competent people...a good executive is one that understands how to recruit people and how to delegate authority and responsibility."-GW Bush 1/2/2001 As promised GW Bush has recruited competent and experienced advisors. Despite their seeming diversity however they have a common denominator. The America they reflect is the oil, pharmaceutical, armament, Wall Street and eugenics interests long associated with the Bush family. Seventy years ago a similar configuration of oil, pharmaceutical, chemical, military supply and eugenics interests were organized by Wall Street into IG Farben/Standard Oil-Hitler's industrial powerhouse. To grasp the real significance of what GW Bush's cabinet has been brought together to accomplish it is essential to understand the history of IG Farben, its relationship with American corporations and how together they applied modern technology to the task of eugenics or scientific racism. According to former US Justice Dept. Nazi War Crimes prosecutor John Loftus-who is today the director of the Florida Holocaust Museum-"The Bush family fortune came from the Third Reich,"-Sarasota Herald-Tribune 11/11/2000 (Click Here) http://www.baltech.org/lederman/bush-farben-1-5-01.html Bush and Eugenics links http://www.bartcop.com/nazigop.htm http://www.shorejournal.com/elkhorn http://www.geocities.com/alanjpakula/triplecrown.html http://www.padrak.com/alt/BUSHBOOK_INDEX.html
2/28/03 http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0227-13.htm# Published on Thursday, February 27, 2003 by the New York Times U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation by John Brady Kiesling The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan. Dear Mr. Secretary: I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal. It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer. The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America‚s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security. |
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3/03/03 Graham: His 9-11Outrage‚ The Florida senator says reported FBI and CIA failures inspired his White House run NEWSWEEK March 10 issue ˜What prompted Florida Sen. Bob Graham to join the Democratic presidential sweepstakes last week? The 66-year-old Graham˜who recently had heart surgery˜has toyed with the idea of running for years, but says he always lacked "fire in the belly." WHAT GAVE IT to him this time, he tells NEWSWEEK, was his experience last year overseeing a joint House-Senate inquiry into the events of 9-11. Graham says he became "outraged" by the intelligence and law-enforcement failures discovered by the inquiry˜most of which, he charges, are still being suppressed by the Bush administration. The inquiry‚s 400-page report can‚t be publicly released because the administration won‚t declassify key portions. Graham says the report documents far more miscues by the FBI and CIA than have been publicly revealed, as well as still unpursued leads pointing to "facilitation" of the hijackers by a "sovereign nation." (Sources say the country is Saudi Arabia.) "There‚s been a cover-up of this," Graham said.
3/08/03 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59403-2003Mar7?language=printer Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake U.N. Nuclear Inspector Says Documents on Purchases Were Forged By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, March 8, 2003; Page A01 A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions. Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council. ElBaradei also rejected a key Bush administration claim -- made twice by the president in major speeches and repeated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday -- that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Also, ElBaradei reported finding no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material in an extensive sweep of Iraq using advanced radiation detectors. "There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities," ElBaradei said.
3/10/03 Times (UK) March 10, 2003 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-605441,00.html March 10, 2003 Bush Sr warning over unilateral action From Roland Watson in Washington THE first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international unity. Drawing on his own experiences before and after the 1991 Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr said that the brief flowering of hope for Arab-Israeli relations a decade ago would never have happened if America had ignored the will of the United Nations. He also urged the President to resist his tendency to bear grudges, advising his son to bridge the rift between the United States, France and Germany. "You‚ve got to reach out to the other person. You've got to convince them that long-term friendship should trump short-term adversity," he said. The former President's comments reflect unease among the Bush family and its entourage at the way that George W. Bush is ignoring international opinion and overriding the institutions that his father sought to uphold. Mr Bush Sr is a former US Ambassador to the UN and comes from a family steeped in multi-lateralist traditions. Although not addressed to his son in person, the message, in a speech at Tufts University in Massachusetts, was unmistakeable. Mr Bush Sr even came close to conceding that opponents of his son's case against President Saddam Hussein, who he himself is on record as loathing, have legitimate cause for concern.
3/10/03a http://www.wnbc.com/news/2036228/detail.html? It's Official: NYC Council Opposes War POSTED: 3:57 p.m. EST March 12, 2003 UPDATED: 8:38 p.m. EST March 12, 2000 NEW YORK -- In a vote that elicited a range of emotional responses, the City Council approved a resolution Wednesday opposing war with Iraq except as a last resort. The 31-17 vote in the city hardest hit by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks came after months of behind-the-scenes debate about whether the council should take a position, particularly given the city's position as a symbol in the war on terrorism. 3/10/03b http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0312-07.htm# Published on Wednesday, March 12, 2003 by the Globe & Mail/Canada How Dare Bush Invoke Rwanda to Justify His War by Gerald Caplan Just about every day, George W. Bush or his acolytes lie about why his administration is about to attack Iraq. Often these distortions are preposterous. An obvious example is Mr. Bush's dismissal of the United Nations as irrelevant because other Security Council members refuse to buckle under to U.S. demands. In fact, it's the United States that's done most to undermine the UN in the recent past, not least by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars that it's owed in dues. But there are depths even Mr. Bush shouldn't be allowed to plumb without rebuttal. This week, his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, reached these limits. Pouring contempt on the UN's record of inaction, Mr. Fleischer said on Monday that, "from the moral point of view, as the world witnessed in Rwanda . . . the UN Security Council will have failed to act once again." In a literal sense, he is dead right; the Security Council did fail miserably in 1994. But his insinuation distorts what happened. With the ninth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide only weeks away, certain truths mustn't become casualties of U.S. spin doctors To begin, Mr. Fleischer should review an interview between ABC's Sam Donaldson and Mr. Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign. When Mr. Donaldson asked him what he would do if "God forbid, another Rwanda should take place," Mr. Bush replied: "We should not send our troops to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide outside our strategic interests. . . . I would not send the United States troops into Rwanda." 3/10/03c http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2747153.stm Tuesday, 11 February, 2003, 12:49 GMT Economists attack Bush's 'madness Joseph Stiglitz: Bush package simply won't work More than 400 economists, led by 10 Nobel prize winners, have criticised President George W Bush's economic policy in the US press. In a full-page advertisement in the New York Times newspaper, the economists said that proposed tax cuts would not help the economy in the short term. When you are designing a tax programme, you look for the biggest bang for the buck 3/10/03d http://www.theonion.com/onion3734/god_clarifies_dont_kill.html NEW YORK&emdash;Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday. "Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand." Worshipped by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, God said His name has been invoked countless times over the centuries as a reason to kill in what He called "an unending cycle of violence." "I don't care how holy somebody claims to be," God said. "If a person tells you it's My will that they kill someone, they're wrong. Got it? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else's, ever again."
3/14/03a http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/14/sprj.irq.documents/index.html Fake Iraq documents 'embarrassing' for U.S. From David Ensor CNN Washington Bureau WASHINGTON (CNN) --Intelligence documents that U.S. and British governments said were strong evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons have been dismissed as forgeries by U.N. weapons inspectors. The documents, given to International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, indicated that Iraq might have tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, but the agency said they were "obvious" fakes. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to the documents directly in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council outlining the Bush administration's case against Iraq. "I'm sure the FBI and CIA must be mortified by this because it is extremely embarrassing to them," former CIA official Ray Close said. Responding to questions about the documents from lawmakers, Powell said, "It was provided in good faith to the inspectors and our agency received it in good faith, not participating ... in any way in any falsification activities." "It was the information that we had. We provided it. If that information is inaccurate, fine," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press" last Sunday. "We don't believe that all the issues surrounding nuclear weapons have been resolved [in Iraq]," he said. How were forgeries missed? But the discovery raises questions such as why the apparent forgeries were given to inspectors and why U.S. and British intelligence agents did not recognize that they were not authentic. Sources said that one of the documents was a letter discussing the uranium deal supposedly signed by Niger President Tandja Mamadou. The sources described the signature as "childlike" and said that it clearly was not Mamadou's. Another, written on paper from a 1980s military government in Niger, bears the date of October 2000 and the signature of a man who by then had not been foreign minister of Niger in 14 years, sources said. "The IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts that these documents -- which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger -- are not in fact authentic," ElBaradei said in his March 7 presentation to the U.N. Security Council.
3/15/03a http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2480438,00.html Ex-CIA Officers Questioning Iraq Data Friday March 14, 2003 6:50 PM WASHINGTON (AP) - A small group composed mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq. Members of the group contend the Bush administration has released information on Iraq that meets only its ends - while ignoring or withholding contrary reporting. They also say the administration's public evidence about the immediacy of Iraq's threat to the United States and its alleged ties to al-Qaida is unconvincing, and accuse policy-makers of pushing out some information that does not meet an intelligence professional's standards of proof. `It's been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy,'' said Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who briefed top Reagan administration security officials before retiring in 1990. "That's why a lot of my former colleagues are holding their noses these days.'' 3/15/03b http://www.turkishdailynews.com ..... Emine Dolmaci- Edip Ali Yavuz / Ankara / TURKEY This URL has been "on and off" for a few days, so be patient, look for the authors and stories related to US/Turkey relations. Harsh Bush Letter Strains US-Turkish Relations Ankara, TURKEY, March 14, 2003 - A harsh letter to Turkey from U.S. President George Bush relaying the message, "We cannot take it anymore. Speed up the process of the note. Make your airspace available," received an equally harsh reaction from Ankara that in essence said, "The formation of the new government will be delayed, and the United Nations' decision will be awaited." For the first time since they began, negotiations between the United States and Turkey regarding the Iraq operation are straining relations. The crisis triggered by Bush's letter to Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan took a more serious turn with a phone call from Erdogan to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. While Bush was sending an ultimatum, Cheney was reiterating the president's message, saying, "We cannot afford to wait for the second note." Due to heightened tensions between the parties, Erdogan held a surprise one-hour meeting with Prime Minister Abdullah Gul and Chief of General Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkok to discuss a strategy for dealing with the U.S. attitude.
3/16/03a http://www.DemocraticUnderground.com/articles/03/03/15_character.html Character is Fate March 15, 2003 By punpirate It's now as if no one, not a soul in this country, remembers what Bush said during his campaign. Certainly, if no one can remember what the hell he said, no one can hold him accountable. Time for a little institutional memory: On the Oct. 31st preceding the 2000 election, George W. Bush said, "You can't say one thing and do another." 3/16/03b http://www.DemocraticUnderground.com/articles/03/03/15_regression.html These days, as veterans like Helen Thomas are "called out" and others hurl powder puffs during puppet show press conferences, good journalists are hard to find. And it seems, as with Afghanistan, few will be reporting from Iraq whatsoever. According to the BBC's Kate Adie, the Pentagon is warning it will shoot down satellite uplink positions of independent journalists stationed there and is "threatening freedom of information" even before the war starts What has happened to America? How has it regressed beyond recognition? More and more, it looks as if our nation is taking a giant leap backwards in terms of leadership, the media and the quality of our national debate. Since the Federal Communications Commission eliminated the Fairness Doctrine in the mid 1980s, many broadcasters haven't even attempted to present balanced coverage of controversial issues. And though the Chicago Sun Times recently announced that talk radio was "the key to GOP victory," (showing how effective this shilling can be), media personalities and government spokesman are becoming increasingly hostile as they propel us towards war -- especially in their attempts to squelch dissent. A Matter of Treason Though Bill O'Reilly recently retracted his statements that dissidents would be "spotlighted" and considered "enemies of the state," Ann Coulter is poised to follow her best-selling Slander with the June publication of Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. Like a rancid batch of Windsong, her February 2002 observation on leftist treason stays on one's mind. "We need to execute people like John Walker, in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too," she said. "Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors." Will her book contain more of the same? And if so, is this simply mindless hyperbole or is it something worse? In an October 2001 article entitled "Liberties Lost: Unintended Consequences of the Anti-Terror Law," former White House counsel John Dean lamented that the "right to dissent" was in jeopardy. Charging that the USA PATRIOT Act twisted the definition of domestic terrorism to include "homegrown political activists," his concern was that any act "that appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population," is considered terrorism. Robert Higgs, a senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute, made a similar observation regarding the leaked Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. "The most innocent action -- from signing a petition or making a charitable contribution," he warned, could be considered "an act of terrorism" and "almost anything could be defined as an applicable offense." Given this, could Coulter and Savage's labels of "treason" apply? And could Sy Hersh indeed be considered a "terrorist?" Moreover, the DSEA would also resuscitate John Ashcroft's Alice Kravitzian TIPS program, encouraging neighbor to spy on neighbor, while granting immunity to anyone filing dishonest claims. "I can only hope people will wake up to what is happening," Higgs told the Washington Times. "It seems to me that when we enacted the USA Patriot Act, the United States came closer to being a police state. If Patriot II is enacted we have kissed the Constitution goodbye."
3/17/03a http://www.consortiumnews.com/2003/022703a.html Before George W. Bush gives the final order to invade Iraq -- a nation that has not threatened the United States -- the American people might want a few facts about the real history of U.S.-Iraq relations. Missing chapters from 1980 to the present would be crucial in judging Bush's case for war. But Americans don't have those facts because Bush and his predecessors in the White House have kept this history hidden from the American people. When parts of the story have emerged, administrations of both parties have taken steps to suppress or discredit the disclosures. So instead of knowing the truth, Americans have been fed a steady diet of distortions, simplifications and outright lies. This missing history also is not just about minor details. It goes to the heart of the case against Saddam Hussein, including whether he is an especially "aggressive" and "unpredictable" dictator who must be removed from power even at the risk of America's standing in the world and the chance that a war will lead to more terrorism against U.S. targets. 3/17/03b Bush Plays Games With Our Oil Reserve And Prices Go UBush Plays Games With Our Oil Reserve And Prices Go Up What's responsible for sky-high oil and gasoline prices? To the threat of war in Iraq and this year's cold winter, add another culprit: the Administration's oil policies. That's the charge in a new Senate report produced by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan. After 9/11, Bush developed a plan to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), a 700 million bbl. store meant to sustain the U.S. in an emergency. Last year 40 million bbl. were added to the SPR. The report states those purchases drove up prices by adding to the demand for oil. An independent analyst says that had the Administration not acted, oil would be selling for just $28 per bbl. instead of its current price of nearly $38 per bbl. and gas would be 35¢ per gal. lower. The government oil-buying binge has not even increased the supply of available oil, the report claims, since most of the petroleum added to the SPR was bought from private refiners, which have not replenished their stocks because of high prices. The Bush Administration argues that the purchases were essential for national security and too small to affect prices. But the Senate report uncovered internal memos from the Energy Department warning of the plan's potential adverse impact. Sources tell TIME that Senate investigators have asked for additional documents on the purchases, but the Administration has refused because they contain communications with the White House.
3/21/03a http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/03/20/churches_030320 Churches deplore war in Iraq Last Updated Thu, 20 Mar 2003 17:07:55 GENEVA - Christian leaders around the world condemned the U.S.-led war against Iraq Thursday, pleading for an end to the bombing and a resumption of diplomacy. In Geneva, the World Council of Churches called the assault "immoral, illegal and ill-advised." The group, made up of 342 churches in 100 countries, urged Christians to stand together with members of all other faiths, especially Muslims, "to restore confidence and trust amongst the nations of the world." At the Vatican, one of Pope John Paul's closest aides said the Roman Catholic Church is "deeply pained by the latest developments in Iraq."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/18/iraq/main544418.shtml?cmp=EM8707 3/21/03b Global Outrage Over U.S.-Led Attacks March 21, 2003 Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators shut down airports and banks, snarled traffic with bicycles and called for boycotts of American products in the second day of global protests against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
3/23/03a http://www.aftenposten.no/english/world/article.jhtml?articleID=511811 USA lied about Iraq's weapons A US-based Norwegian weapons inspector accuses the USA and Secretary of State Colin Powell with providing the United Nations Security Council with incorrect and misleading information about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), newspaper Dagbladet reports. Joern Siljeholm, Ph.D. in environmental chemistry, risk analysis and toxicology, said that the USA's basis for going to war is thin indeed, and called it a slap in the face to the United Nations weapons inspectors. Siljeholm told Dagbladet that Colin Powell's report to the Security Council on how Iraq camouflaged their WMD program was full of holes. "Much of what he said was wrong. It did not match up at all with our information. The entire speech was misleading," Siljeholm said.
3/25/03a http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0325-04.htm Published on Tuesday, March 25, 2003 by the Los Angeles Times The Wraps Come Off Bush's Colonialist Agenda Right-wing hawks have been calling the shots all along by Robert Scheer The war is getting messy, but the peace will be much worse. The Bush administration's plan to keep several hundred thousand U.S. and British troops for years in a divided, heavily armed Muslim country will make all Americans "targets of opportunity" for terrorists and become a rallying point for fundamentalist revolutionaries throughout the world. The post-Hussein strategy, formed by a neoconservative clique close to the White House, is another indicator that this is in no way a war "to disarm Iraq." If disarmament were the central goal, the U.S.-British alliance would need to control Iraq for only months, not years. That would be enough time for its weapons inspectors to do what it said the United Nations could not accomplish. Instead, unable to produce any real evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the invasion or since it began, the administration publicly shifted its rationale from disarmament to the "nation-building" that Bush properly derided during the 2000 election. However, there is ample evidence that "regime change" and redrawing the map of the Mideast were the goals of the Bush administration's neoconservative core all along. 3/25/03b http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/082/focus/The_World_Pushes_BackP.shtml The World Pushes Back Even if the US scores a quick victory in Iraq, the rest of the world won't fall in line behind America's new global agenda. Welcome to the era of ''soft balancing.'' By Robert A. Pape, 3/23/2003 OVER THE PAST six months, US diplomats have witnessed a profound change in the world's response to American power. They have seen not simply the reluctance of traditional allies to join the US war effort, but active efforts by many of the world's major powers to delay, frustrate, and undermine war plans and reduce the number of countries who would fight alongside the United States. Such widespread opposition is unprecedented in our country's history. Most troublingly, it is only likely to increase in years ahead. America's decision to launch an unprovoked and essentially unilateral war against Iraq is encouraging other countries to form counterweights to US power. Today's conventional wisdom holds that France, Germany, Russia, China, and important regional states may be grumbling now, but they will quickly mend fences once the war ends with a decisive US victory. But the conventional wisdom is likely to be wrong. 3/25/03c http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/25/opinion/25KRUG.html March 25, 2003 Channels of Influence By PAUL KRUGMAN By and large, recent pro-war rallies haven't drawn nearly as many people as antiwar rallies, but they have certainly been vehement. One of the most striking took place after Natalie Maines, lead singer for the Dixie Chicks, criticized President Bush: a crowd gathered in Louisiana to watch a 33,000-pound tractor smash a collection of Dixie Chicks CD's, tapes and other paraphernalia. To those familiar with 20th-century European history it seemed eerily reminiscent of. . . . But as Sinclair Lewis said, it can't happen here. Who has been organizing those pro-war rallies? The answer, it turns out, is that they are being promoted by key players in the radio industry ˜ with close links to the Bush administration. The CD-smashing rally was organized by KRMD, part of Cumulus Media, a radio chain that has banned the Dixie Chicks from its playlists. Most of the pro-war demonstrations around the country have, however, been organized by stations owned by Clear Channel Communications, a behemoth based in San Antonio that controls more than 1,200 stations and increasingly dominates the airwaves.
3/26/03a http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EC27Ak05.html The 'Palestinization' of Iraq By Pepe Escobar AMMAN - American tanks are now ripping at the heart of Mesopotamia, the "land between the rivers" and the cradle of civilization; the US 5th Corps is already engaging the Medina division of the Republican Guards as B52s increase their bombing raids of the "red line" in the outer ring of defenses of Baghdad, over which hangs a surreal, dust-induced dark orange cloud. For 280 million Arabs, the symbolic effect of the tanks in the country is as devastating as a lethal sandstorm. But Saddam Hussein seems to be one step ahead. It doesn't matter that Iraqi TV was silenced by a showering of Tomahawks (although domestic broadcasts, as well as the international signal, have been restored). Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV will be on hand to record the ultimate image that Saddam knows is capable of igniting the Arab world into an ocean of fire: an American tank in the streets of Baghdad juxtaposed with an American tank in the streets of Gaza. To date, an estimated 5,200 Iraqis have crossed the Jordanian-Iraqi border, going back "to defend their homeland" as they invariably put it. In already one week of a war that was marketed by the Pentagon as "clean" and "quick" and which is revealing itself to be bloody and protracted, not a single Iraqi refugee has crossed the al-Karama border point into eastern Jordan. 3/26/03b http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31796-2003Mar26.html Russia Slams U.S. on Iraq, 'Liberation' Claim Reuters Wednesday, March 26, 2003; 12:09 PM By Maria Golovnina MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Wednesday fired a new broadside against the United States over its military action against Iraq, scorning claims its troops were "liberating" Iraqis and accusing it of defying world opinion. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, using language at times reminiscent of the Cold War rivalry with Washington, said: "What the United States is doing challenges not only Iraq, but the whole world." Addressing parliament as U.S. and British forces pressed forward to Baghdad, Ivanov said the evidence so far gainsaid U.S. efforts to portray its troops as a liberating force freeing Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's rule. "It is already becoming clear how far removed from reality are their attempts to present military action against Iraq as a triumphant march for the liberation of the Iraqi people with minimal casualties and destruction," he told the Federation Council (upper house). He counseled Washington and London not to make unsubstantiated claims to have found caches of banned weapons in Iraq to justify their military offensive. "If there are claims by coalition forces about discovering weapons of mass destruction...only international inspectors can make a conclusive assessment of the origin of these weapons," he said. "No other evaluation and final conclusion can be accepted." (Then there is this at the end of the article:) But Russia's opposition to U.S. military action against its former close economic partner and Putin's call for a rapid end to military action has brought the relationship under pressure. Russia, with other U.N. heavyweights France and China, tried unsuccessfully to stop U.S. military action to topple Saddam. All three argued for more time to be given to U.N. arms inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Baghdad denies holding any banned arms. The atmosphere has been further soured by Moscow's suspicions that Washington will disregard Russia's economic interests in Iraq after the war is over. Highlighting Russia's fears, the head of a Russian state firm with big oil interests in Iraq said Moscow had little chance of getting a slice of the pie after the war. "Americans don't need anyone else in Iraq, they will control Iraqi crude themselves. Nobody will give the green light for Russian or French firms in Iraq," said Nikolai Tokarev, head of Zarubezhneft, in an interview with Reuters. Since the U.S. offensive, the two powers have become locked in a row over U.S. claims that Russian firms have supplied Iraq with banned military equipment including electronic jamming equipment and night vision goggles. Russia denies the sales were made. And the State Duma (parliament lower house) has delayed a vote to ratify a U.S.-Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty that would slash numbers of deployed warheads held by each side. 3/26/03c Boycott of American Goods Over Iraq War Gain Reuters News Service. March 25 By Erik Kirschbaum BERLIN (Reuters) - No more Coca-Cola or Budweiser, no Marlboro, no American whiskey or even American Express cards -- a growing number of restaurants in Germany are taking everything American off their menus to protest the war in Iraq. Although the protests are mainly symbolic, waiters in dozens of bars and restaurants in Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Bonn and other German cities are telling patrons, "Sorry, Coca-Cola is not available any more due to the current political situation." The boycotts appear to be part of a nascent worldwide movement. One Web site, www.consumers-against-war.de, calls for boycotts of 27 top American firms from Microsoft to Kodak while another, www.adbusters.org, urges the "millions of people against the war" to "Boycott Brand America." 3/26/03d http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,922217,00.html Bush fiddles with economy while Baghdad burns Could a faltering dollar and global rebellion against its values presage the decline, and eventual fall, of the American empire, asks Mark Tran Wednesday March 26, 2003 The war in Iraq is not going as smoothly as the Bush administration would like and the conflict is looking less and less like a walkover by the day. Yet there can be little doubt that the US, backed by Britain, its loyal junior ally, will eventually prevail. The conflict will bring the US little glory, pitting the world's most powerful military machine against a dilapidated army, but when American and British troops enter Baghdad, the US will surely cement its status as a hyperpower. But does the US colossus have feet of clay? It takes a brave soul to argue that America, the world's largest economy and by far its most potent military power, is about to go into decline, when it is widely perceived as a hyperpower. But Independent Strategy, a financial research company for institutional investors, has made the case in a paper that is making the rounds of big investment banks such as Goldman Sachs. Independent Strategy believes that the US shows many symptoms of an empire that is cresting. First, it sees deepening mistrust of the US and predicts a rise in terrorism in reaction to US unilateralism. 3/26/03e http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/26/sprj.irq.generals.clark/index.html Clark: Quick victory 'not going to happen' Central Command: Coalition 'certain of the outcome' (CNN) --The scenario of a quick coalition victory in Iraq is "not going to happen," according to retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, a CNN analyst and former NATO supreme allied commander.
3/28/03a http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34762-2003Mar26.html Anti-Hussein Officials Rebuke Unilateral U.S. Battle Strategy Dissidents Say Failure to Incorporate Iraqis Constitutes 'War of Conquest' By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page A29 SALAHUDDIN, Iraq, March 26 -- Iraq's U.S.-endorsed opposition has distanced itself from the Bush administration's war strategy, suggesting the plan to conquer the country without involving the Iraqi public has opened the way for military problems in the south. Opposition organizations all desired direct Iraqi involvement in the war. Just how much popular resistance they could have mustered remains an open question. But from their offices here in the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq, the groups have expressed little surprise that Iraqi civilians appear reluctant to greet allied forces, much less take up arms to expel government militias and soldiers from their midst. The opposition groups -- loosely allied Kurdish, Shiite Muslim and secular organizations -- have long insisted that most Iraqis look forward to the ouster of President Saddam Hussein and his security-heavy Baath Party government. But they have expressed irritation that, in their view, the Bush administration has made little effort to include Iraqis in military or political strategy. 3/28/03b As eyes of the world focus on Iraq, the rest of the world's hotspots get hotter Crises deepen in India and North Korea Ewen MacAskill, Chris McGreal in Jerusalem and Nick Paton-Walsh in Moscow Thursday March 27, 2003 The Guardian India and Pakistan Indian-Pakistani relations deteriorated to a dangerous level yesterday after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for a massacre in Kashmir earlier this week. Early yesterday India test-fired a nuclear-capable missile and, a few hours later, Pakistan followed suit. confrontation between the neighbours, both nuclear powers, is the most serious of a number of troublespots bubbling up while the focus of Washington and Europe is fixed on the war in Iraq. The latest flashpoint came in response to the massacre of 24 Hindus in Kashmir on Sunday. An Indian foreign ministry spokesman, Navtej Sarna, blamed Pakistan. "The pattern, methodology and the nature of targets of these acts of terror are all too familiar and, therefore, the culpability of Pakistan is all too clear." He warned that India would meet the challenge with resolve. A western diplomat also put the blame on Pakistan for "provocation" and said: "The Indians are really, really mad about it. It is not something to which they would react militarily, but it is close to their level of tolerance." North Korea Leaders of North Korea pulled out of border liaison talks with US officers yesterday and a UN envoy said Pyongyang was continuing to work on a nuclear reprocessing plant at the heart of a standoff with Washington. North Korea's parliament also agreed a 2003 budget increasing military spending. Israel An Israeli army undercover squad shot dead a 10-year-old girl in Bethlehem on Tuesday night in what the military described as a "tragic accident". Such deaths have become almost routine, though Israel has not so far taken advantage of the cover of the war in Iraq to escalate its campaign against the Palestinians. Russia The war in the Gulf has disrupted the United States-Russian strategic arms control negotiations. Russia has delayed the ratification of a seminal US-Russian arms treaty by its parliament. Russian ministers have suggested that final legislative approval be postponed because of the unilateral military action taken against Iraq. Yesterday the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, said: "If we wait for some time, and concentrate all our efforts on ending the war and switching over to a political settlement [of the Iraq crisis], then at a more quiet moment we can quickly deal with this issue." |