Your Money

I have a guilty secret. Over the course of blogging for nearly a year, I've become something of an econo-geek. I have learned so much from the free graduate education handed out by the professors and professionals who share their expertise from us. I'm learning constitutional law, economics (micro and macro), history and a host of other disciplines, free but for the cost of my dial up. I find it pretty amazing to get to sit at the feet of these generous people, but the biggest surprise to me is that I've really been taken by economics, the "dismal science" course I snoozed through in high school. I guess I had to get older to see how this material matters in peoples' lives (and to have been through the desert in my personal economy.) This discipline now feels to me more like one of the social sciences, with the same kind of resonances those have for me: economics, in the end, is about people, not statistics.

Urk, Liddy Dole is on the tube. I've gotten past the biblical references to the girl herself. "Its roots deep in the soil of timeless truth" is the Repubs? Liddy, I can see your roots. If my hair stylist turned out a highlight job like that, she'd fire herself. She looks and sounds like the cheap knock-offs that greet me at the top of the subway every morning. Hope that that Viagra is working for ya, Liddy. God, you sound awful.

Cheap Repub whore? We report, you decide, but don't look at the pictures. You'll feel dirty. Anybody know where Sen. Dole goes to church?

Not all of you are so entranced with the discipline, so I'm not going to excerpt the article I'm linking here. This is another one of those "sit at the feet of the master" articles, but it is pretty technical and not all of you are going to be interested. Let me give you a few lines, and a little explanation of why I think this is both groundbreaking work and horribly scary.

The announcement on Friday the 13th of August that the US trade deficit had grown by more than $8 billion is deeply significant.[1] Its meaning is that the US has entered a phase, long predicted by us, in which it is impossible to stabilize the American external position within a democratic and free market context. The long ascendance of finance capital from its nadir during the depression of the 1930s and the parallel erosion of real capital accumulation is reaching, in our view, a climax.[2] What appears to be the permanent loss of over three million manufacturing jobs[3] in the last three years testifies to the tacit acceptance of this state of affairs by the managers of the US political economy. This acceptance is emphasized by the Kerry candidacy for the presidency, which underlines the cross-party stranglehold that finance capital holds over the political system. There is nothing new about this; what matters here is that the numbers are evidence that we have reached a point of departure for radical systemic change.

A detailed look at the breakdown of the trade numbers makes the point quite clearly.[4] With no significant part of the world is the US improving its trade balance. But apart from geographic universality what really stands out is the deterioration across commodity classes. In category after category, the US runs deficits, including its vaunted high tech sector. The last statistically significant area of surplus, services,[5] has been in trend decline since the middle 90s. A projection of that trend suggests that it too will fall into deficit in 2005.

You don't have to be able to interpret a lot of statistics to read the piece, but it is fairly complex and if economics give you the hives, you might want to skip it. If you are interested in politics and history, you might want to sigh and dig in.

Chris Sanders lays out the trend lines on why we are headed for an Argentine economy sooner rather than later, with the concommitant strong man fascism. It is chilling to see it laid out so cogently. Paul Krugman has been making this case for months, but here is a statistician who has "the internals," as it were. If you've been reading Brad DeLong and Steve Roach for the last year, none of this will come as a surprise, other than the fact that the numbers are so firm. I've been of the opinion that we are at a cross-roads right now, and good choices could make a difference. Sanders is much more pessimistic and argues that the die was cast decades ago.

I hope you'll forgive me for not doing the RNC outrage of the day. The horse race part of political contests is of very little interest for me as a writer. The macro conditions behind such contests are much more interesting, the movements of cultures, populations, and, yes, money, because spending, saving and valuing are matters for sociologists and anthropologists (and even theologians). Allocation of resources is always a decision on what one holds most dear, and that is theological. In that regard, economics has a transcendent dimension which goes beyond reason, and boy are the ad guys good at manipulating that!

It's cheap and quick to do what Kos and Atrios do. I hope you come here for more added value beyond snark. If you are prepared to read an article with footnotes (I do believe that most of you have a graduate education, no wonder my stats have dropped over 50% since I went back to work) this one is worth your time. I'm going to need to think on this for a couple of days before I offer some solutions, because there is no point in posting a problem, particularly one as big as this one, without charting another course.

For the short term, vote Kerry, and put the inevitable confrontation off while we work on the solution. For the near term, get your money out of dollar-denominated equities and securities. Move to your safe harbor investment strategy immediately. And then bust your financial planner's and investment advisors' asses with this data and make them come up with something. I'd listen to them before I'd listen to me. Disclaimer: I own no equities or securities. I barely own the clothes on my ass, so you can take my advice for what it is worth.

If I had money that I was saving for later, like retirement, I'd be one third in gold (it's a parking lot), one third in cash (ready to turn on a dime), and one third in blue chips. I'd be getting ready to move into Euro denominated equities and bonds. Unless you are a perfect market timer, expect to pick up some losses along the way to greater security. All risks have costs, and the equity and money markets are about to go through the roof with risks. If Sanders is right, savings accounts and CDs are going to start looking bad. Don't stuff your mattress just yet. But use your little exacto knife to install a zipper. You might want it later.

Tax shift: my sales tax goes up tomorrow, under Bush. That tax cut? Less than $250. I'm going to be paying this one for ever. My property tax doubled in the last two years. Gee, Jeb, thanks. Finding money for a down payment ain't my problem, making the payments IS the problem. Thanks for doubling my escrow, while my wages have grown not at all.

Compassion? Where is it?

Tax cuts? Where are mine?

No Change

Sovereign Iraq Just as Deadly to U.S. Forces
With attacks more frequent, the hand-over of power has not mollified insurgents.

By Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — Two months after the U.S. handed sovereignty back to Iraq amid hopes of reduced violence, more than 110 U.S. troops have been killed and much of the country remains hostile territory. The toll of U.S. dead since the war began last year is fast approaching 1,000.

Although attention in recent weeks has focused on Najaf, where U.S. forces battled Shiite Muslim militiamen, most of the deadly confrontations for American troops in newly independent Iraq have occurred in the Baghdad area and the so-called Sunni Triangle to the north and west.

The concentration of attacks in those areas is a reminder that the fiercest and most organized opposition to U.S. forces and the U.S.-backed interim government continues to be in Sunni-dominated cities, such as Fallouja. Nationwide, U.S. forces are being attacked 60 times per day on average, up 20% from the three-month period before the hand-over.

The occupation of Iraq has technically ended, but a U.S.-commanded multinational force of more than 150,000 is still there, tasked with providing security to the fledgling government. Ubiquitous graffiti denouncing the continued occupation indicate that insurgents see little change in their enemy — U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies.

With Iraqi security forces still largely in training, U.S. forces continue to run raids and conduct patrols in many areas, maintaining a very visible presence, especially on the roads. Pulling back to the garrisons now, commanders agree, would open the door to even more chaos and violence.

Although U.S. authorities did not expect casualties to plummet immediately after the transfer of power June 28, American, Iraqi and international officials expressed optimism that restoring sovereignty and officially ending the U.S. occupation would curb the violence.

"We hope that this is going to be a true beginning, and those who are opposing occupation will now consider that opposing occupation is not necessary anymore," Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. envoy who helped select Iraq's interim government, said on the day of the transfer.

But many of the underlying grievances that have stoked the insurgency, such as the presence of U.S. troops and the slow pace of reconstruction, remain. The number of fighters — including loyalists of former President Saddam Hussein, religious militants and others dissatisfied enough to take up a gun or plant a bomb — shows no sign of decreasing.

"There was a government in South Vietnam all those years ago, and we lost a lot of people back there," noted U.S. Army Col. Dana Pittard of the 1st Infantry Division in Baqubah, a zone of conflict northeast of the capital.

In August so far, 63 U.S. troops have died, and 54 died in July, the first complete month after the hand-over of power. In June, 42 American troops died, according to Associated Press and the Pentagon.

Neither July nor August come close to the death tolls of April and May — 135 and 80 troops, respectively. Still, July and August rank among the deadliest months for U.S. forces in Iraq this year.

Overall, 974 U.S. troops had died in Iraq as of Monday, the vast majority — 836 — since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1 of last year, the Pentagon said. About 6,500 have been wounded. Since January, the majority of attacks on U.S. forces have come in the form of "indirect fire" — such as mortar and rocket strikes — along with homemade roadside bombs.

There is no reliable accounting of Iraqi civilian deaths, but some rough calculations top 10,000. The number of Iraqi military dead is in the 5,000 to 6,000 range, according to think-tank estimates cited by Reuters.

What the writer fails to notice is that the "handover of power" to an appointed government was little more than a token and the Iraqis are not fooled by this.

This is a long and rather aimless piece, but McDonnell covers a lot of territory, including a couple of quotes from the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Tony Cordesman, whose most optimistic prediction is a 50-50 chance of a quiet Iraq by the end of 2005. I suppose that if the media continue not to cover the violence and death in Iraq the public will put up with this.

What Went Wrong

A No-Win Situation
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: August 31, 2004

For a long time, anyone suggesting analogies with Vietnam was ridiculed. But Iraq optimists have, by my count, already declared victory three times. First there was "Mission Accomplished" - followed by an escalating insurgency. Then there was the capture of Saddam - followed by April's bloody uprising. Finally there was the furtive transfer of formal sovereignty to Ayad Allawi, with implausible claims that this showed progress - a fantasy exploded by the guns of August.

Now, serious security analysts have begun to admit that the goal of a democratic, pro-American Iraq has receded out of reach. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies - no peacenik - writes that "there is little prospect for peace and stability in Iraq before late 2005, if then."

Mr. Cordesman still thinks (or thought a few weeks ago) that the odds of success in Iraq are "at least even," but by success he means the creation of a government that "is almost certain to be more inclusive of Ba'ath, hard-line religious, and divisive ethnic/sectarian movements than the West would like." And just in case, he urges the U.S. to prepare "a contingency plan for failure."

Fred Kaplan of Slate is even more pessimistic. "This is a terribly grim thing to say," he wrote recently, "but there might be no solution to the problem of Iraq" - no way to produce "a stable, secure, let alone democratic regime. And there's no way we can just pull out without plunging the country, the region, and possibly beyond into still deeper disaster." Deeper disaster? Yes: people who worried about Ramadi are now worrying about Pakistan.

So what's the answer? Here's one thought: much of U.S. policy in Iraq - delaying elections, trying to come up with a formula that blocks simple majority rule, trying to install first Mr. Chalabi, then Mr. Allawi, as strongman - can be seen as a persistent effort to avoid giving Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani his natural dominant role. But recent events in Najaf have demonstrated both the cleric's awesome influence and the limits of American power. Isn't it time to realize that we could do a lot worse than Mr. Sistani, and give him pretty much whatever he wants?

Here's another thought. President Bush says that the troubles in Iraq are the result of unanticipated "catastrophic success." But that catastrophe was predicted by many experts. Mr. Cordesman says their warnings were ignored because we have "the weakest and most ineffective National Security Council in post-war American history," giving control to "a small group of neoconservative ideologues" who "shaped a war without any realistic understanding or plans for shaping a peace."

Yesterday Mr. Bush, who took a "winning the war on terror" bus tour just a few months ago, conceded that "I don't think you can win" the war on terror. But he hasn't changed the national security adviser, nor has he dismissed even one of the ideologues who got us into this no-win situation. Rather than concede that he made mistakes, he's sticking with people who will, if they get the chance, lead us into two, three, many quagmires.

The whole Iraq/WMD/Director of National Intelligence controversy all point to catastrophic failure on the part of the NSC and Condi Rice. If this body were functioning correctly, none of this would be at issue. We don't need more legislation and a new bureaucracy. We need a competent NSA.

Identity and Politics

What you fear is not who I am

By TARIQ RAMADAN
Globe and Mail Update
Monday, Aug 30, 2004

In my 20 years of studying and teaching philosophy, I have learned to appreciate the inherent difficulty in defining and recognizing "the truth." Descartes put it simply: "A clear and obvious idea is true"; Kant aptly added "consistency" as a needed element. My life experience over the past 15 years enabled me to appreciate yet another definition.

In today's world of communication and mass media, truth is not firstly based on coherence and clarity, but rather on frequency. Here, a repeated hypothesis or suspicion becomes a truth; a three-time-repeated assumption imperceptibly becomes a fact. There is no need to check because "it is obvious"; after all, "we have heard it many times" and "it is being said everywhere."

Lately, I have been going through an interesting experience. I am constantly being told "the truth" about who I am: "You are a controversial figure"; "you engage in double-talk, delivering a gentle message in French and English, and a radical - even extremist - one in Arabic, or to a Muslim audience in private"; "you have links with extremists, you are an anti-Semite"; "you despise women" etc.

When I ask about the source of this information, invariably the response is: This is well-known, it is everywhere, check the Internet and you will find thousands of pages referring to this.

A closer examination reveals that what we have is journalists or intellectuals quoting each other, conclusively reporting and infinitely repeating what others said yesterday, with caveats. Rather than using this as an occasion for reflection, the response to this finding is usually: "Well, there has to be some truth in all that."

Strange truth, indeed! I have written more than 20 books and about 800 articles; 170 tapes of lectures are circulating, and I keep asking my detractors: Have you read or listened to any of my material? Can you prove your allegations? To repeat them is not to prove. Where is the evidence of my double-talk? Have you read any of the numerous articles where I call on Muslims to unequivocally condemn radical views and acts of extremism?

How about my statements of Sept. 13, 2001, calling on Muslims to speak out, to condemn the terrorist attacks and acknowledge that some fellow Muslims are betraying the Islamic message?

What about the articles in which I condemn anti-Semitism, criticizing those Muslims who do not differentiate between the political Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the unacceptable temptation to reject the Jews simply because they are Jews?

Are you familiar with my chapters and taped lectures promoting women's rights and a revival leading to an Islamic feminism, and rejecting every kind of mistreatment (domestic violence, forced marriage, female circumcision etc.) and all sorts of discrimination?

Finally, are you acquainted with my extensive study of the Islamic scriptural sources and efforts to promote a new understanding, a new way for Muslims to remain faithful to their principles and, at the same time, able to face the challenges of the contemporary world?

To seek "the truth," one must read, listen carefully, check and recheck for clarity and consistency, and be willing, if for a moment, to be decentred. Very often, even within the academic field, I encounter individuals who are not familiar with my writings. When this becomes obvious in the course of discussion, their final argument is: "Well, aren't you the grandson of Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood?" As if this was sufficient proof of all the allegations.

My response is: So what? And what do you really know about him and his life history anyway? Furthermore, are one's thoughts genetically transmitted or do one's morals and ethics descend from the vices or virtues of one's pedigree? This obsession with my genealogy is frankly disconcerting, for it is dismissive. Those so focused on my genealogy should examine my intellectual pedigree, which along with my grandfather and father includes Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche.

They should know my academic contributions and the years I spent travelling and working in partnership and on the ground with Dom Helder Camara, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Abbot Pierre and the countless ordinary people from Canada, South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and America; Christians and Jews; agnostics and atheists. For 20 years, each has educated me, touched my heart, nourished my soul, shaped my mind and strengthened my faith and conviction. That, and not my genetic heritage, is my life's legacy. Along the way, I have learnt that something was missing in Descartes's way of speaking about truth. Clarity and consistency are not enough: The quest for truth requires deep humility and uncompromising effort. My experience of living with people of different religions, origins and cultures taught me that one will never be at peace with the other if one is at war with oneself.

Tariq Ramadan is one of the leading liberal Islamists in the world. We claim to want such liberal intellectuals to speak out against the voices of Islamic fundamentalism, and then the Immigration Department goes and pulls a boneheaded move like this. It reminds me of the visa revocation of Finnish theologian Veli-Matti Karkkainen of Fuller Theological Seminary in California earlier this summer. Our immigration system made no sense before 9-11 and hasn't gotten any better.

Too bad we had to read a Canadian paper to find this out.

A letter from Scott Appleby, Director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute of Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame:

To recap: Tariq, a Swiss scholar, accepted an appointment to be our Luce Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding. It is a joint, tenured appointment with the Department of Classics. Earlier this year he applied for, and received, a work visa from the U.S. State Department. He was to start work this semester, with Aug. 24 his first day of teaching a course in Islamic Ethics.

Tariq Ramadan is a strong but moderate voice in a world plagued by extremism. He addresses issues that evoke strong feelings because they touch the heart of personal and communal identity. We have known from the start that he is controversial. But controversy cannot and should not be avoided in a place that examines the challenges to international peace. The University of Notre Dame is such a place. We look forward to having him here.

News

Hi, all,

Sorry the posting has been so light. It is complex to be an employed blogger, particularly one who has just taken on a new career and for whom the learning and output rate at work is particularly steep right now. The next couple of weeks will be thin, there is no getting around it. I'm swamped on the job right now and even posting from lunch is problematical. Lunch is sandwich bites while juggling projects. And I'm wasted by the time I get home, and still needing to do the ordinary household upkeep.

Here is what I think the next couple of weeks is going to look like: I'll get a couple to three posts up in the morning before work, another one or two during lunch or dead spots during the day, and maybe another one or two or a longer essay in the evening if I've got a bee in my bonnet (or a wild hair...) that I need to work out. This is a far cry from the 8-12 you got from me during poverty. I'll try to make up with quality what I lack in quantity. I hope you'll do likewise.

I'm probably going to be sent out of town for training for my new responsibilities in the next month, and whether or not I can blog that will depend on my ability to procure a laptop with ethernet and WiFi capability. For a week. If I can get a couple of paychecks under my belt, I'll go shopping for a laptop. Your suggestions are welcome. I need something basic with a current chip which is indestructable.

Your suggestions are also welcome on some professional questions. I have lots of experience as a data base end user. I've never been a data base administrator before. My readership runs heavily to political techies, lawyers and journos, but I don't know if there are any dbas out there. If there are, I sure would appreciate links to the resources you find helpful. I'm investigating programs for training for cert in SQL (there is even a magazine! Who knew?) and anything you can add would be helpful, as one who has been there.

I've got a very desired family reunion in September, and have recruited a guest blogger to cover that time--I'll be out in far western Maryland at the end of a 14.4 line and I don't think the family will sit still while I try to research and post that slow. I think the new voice will add something to the site.

Thanks for all your thoughts on clothing. As the situation mutated last week, I decided not to go shopping, but to spend this week observing. I'm a much dressier person than this office, which is on the verge of tolerating shorts. I may not need to buy anything at all. My boss wears informal (but not jeans) black slacks and informal tops. I'm going to watch for another week before I commit funds. I wore capri khakis today, with silly sneaks (polka dotted all over) and a camp shirt and was probably the most formal person in the joint below the senior mgmt. This'll take another week to sort out by a person used to wearing evening gowns. This place will never see a tie, much less a jacket.

The office looks like graduate students on moderately good behavior. Moderately. Oh, well, one of the reasons Sharon hired me was that so there could be a grown up in the house. Maybe I should look like one.

Time to change the catbox. The humidity means the place stinks. The remnants of Tropical Storm Gaston will be here in hours and the air is so wet it leaks.

Expect more as I figure out how to do more under new circumstances. Can I tell you how much I hate IE? On my desktop at work I don't have the clearances to download Mozilla. This will get fixed in the next couple of weeks, but in the interim I feel like my fingers have been cut off. No tabbed browsing? What's a blogger to do?

If you are still using IE, it is time to change. MS left big holes in this puppy subject to hacker attack, and you don't want to let them into your system. Upgrade to mozilla.org" and click on the new version. It'll keep you bug free and cruisin'. Moz is an open source product and no one is making a dime on it. Open source technology is an attempt by many of us to put the best product out their and let you run with it.

peace and grace,
Melanie

Selling "Product"

Of Campaigns and Breakfast Cereals
By BOB HERBERT

Published: August 30, 2004

You want complicated issues? Start with Iraq - a war with no clearly defined goal, not even the remotest timetable for victory, and no exit strategy whatsoever. The ad men (and women) will reduce this monumental tragedy to crisp, poll-tested campaign sound bites.

Or consider the economy. We're in a new world of work in which good jobs at good pay with good benefits are ever more hard to find. Despite the administration's insistence that the economy is strong and getting stronger, there is no light at the end of this dismal tunnel. Job growth is anemic. The middle class is being relentlessly squeezed. And the Census Bureau tells us that in 2003, for the third year in a row, the number of Americans who are poor increased.

As David Leonhardt wrote in The Times on Friday, "The economy's troubles, which first affected high-income families even more than the middle class and poor, have recently hurt families at the bottom and in the middle significantly more than those at the top."

These are issues that should be ruthlessly explored, but the politicians, their handlers and much of the media have taken their cues from Harry Treleaven. You don't want to bore the readers or viewers or voters with anything too complicated. A well-rehearsed comment or two will suffice, followed by the jokes on Leno and Letterman, and then it's on to the "real world" of Paris and Kobe and whatever.

This week's Republican convention in New York is a rigidly scripted theatrical event that will garner a grand total of three hours of live coverage on network television - a reprise of the Democrats' rigidly scripted extravaganza in Boston last month. Anyone who drifts off message will be viewed as a nut.

So we won't get anything but pap about Iraq. We'll be told about the miraculous economic healing powers of the Bush tax cuts. We'll be told that the era of George Bush II has been a rousing success for America.

Serious voters who would like to hear a discussion (from the leaders of both parties) about why we are in Iraq and when and how we might get out of there will be disappointed. So will voters interested in exploring ideas about the leadership role of the United States in the post-9/11 world, which is at least as important as the role thrust upon the U.S. in the aftermath of World War II.

More scary stories are emerging about global warming, and our dependence on foreign oil is undermining our security like never before. But these topics, too, are complex, and therefore, according to the advertising folks and media gurus, too difficult and boring for general consumption.

In other words, we're a nation of nitwits, and a presidential campaign at a critical moment in world history will be spoon-fed to us like an ad for Wheaties.

Raymond Price, a speechwriter for Nixon in the 1968 campaign, was as contemptuous of substance in politics as Treleaven. "It's not what's there that counts," he wrote, "it's what's projected." In Price's view, "Voters are basically lazy, basically uninterested in making an effort to understand what we're talking about."

Voters could revolt against this kind of humiliating treatment. But that would happen only if the Treleavens and Prices of the world were wrong.

Are they?

Patriot Games

Upstaging Before the Show
By TODD S. PURDUM

Published: August 30, 2004

"I've been going to Republican conventions since 1972, and I've never seen a convention with as many protesters in the streets," said David Gergen, who has worked for several Republican presidents, and Bill Clinton. "The irony is that was a convention held here because of echoes of 9/11, but it opens with echoes of Chicago and the Vietnam war.

"The protests are anti-Bush, with heavy antiwar overtones, but this is Chicago without the fisticuffs, without the fight, without the bloodshed - so far," Mr. Gergen added. "To interpret this politically is hard, but my gut is that large, peaceful protests are not what the Republicans want. The protesters are stealing the story for the first day and drowning out the Republican message. If there's violence, that could all change."

To be sure, a seething anger pulsed throughout the protesting crowds. T-shirts and signs branded Mr. Bush a warmonger, a liar or a criminal, and there were fly-swatters with an image of his face. Two protesters, Jim Higgins and Kathy Roberts, dressed in suits made of duct tape to spoof Mr. Bush's handling of national security.

"We're occupying Iraq, but we're using duct tape here at home," Mr. Higgins said.

Moira Weidenborner, an English teacher and native New Yorker, sat on the corner of 14th Street and Seventh Avenue before the march began, straw hat in hand, in a shirt that said: "Justice, No War." She said the people she had met on the streets were "a very broad spectrum."

"There's all this attention on the radicals, which makes me upset," Ms. Weidenborner said. "Look around you today: It is middle class, it is working class, it is just people who want to speak their mind."

But Jason Glodt, executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party, said he thought the protesters did "reflect the base of the Democratic Party," and added: "I hope that all Americans are taking a close look at those protesters and what they represent. I don't think they represent American values.

"It's not their freedom of speech that we disagree with," Mr. Glodt said, "it's the content of what they're saying. It really only motivates us even more to go home and work harder at the grass-roots level and make sure people are going out and voting."

I don't know how this resonates with you, but the suggestion that Democratic values and ideals are somehow unAmerican just pisses me off. Of all the crap the Repubs have pulled in the last ten years, this is the most offensive. There are a whole host of things that reasonable people can disagree about without becoming disagreeable. With this tactic, the Rs have become not just disagreeable, but offensive. When you label your opponant as unworthy of argument, you've marginalized yourself. This is another piece of the Gingrich legacy.

Takin' it to the Streets

AP takes a similar tack.

Protesters Pour Into Manhattan Streets
On Eve of GOP Convention, Thousands Demonstrate Against Bush and Iraq War

By Sara Kugler
The Associated Press
Sunday, August 29, 2004; 5:24 PM

NEW YORK -- Bearing flag-draped boxes resembling coffins and fly-swatters with President Bush's image, more than 100,000 protesters peacefully swarmed Manhattan's streets on the eve of the Republican National Convention to demand that President Bush be turned out of office.

Flanked by police in riot gear, the protesters moved through the fortified city, loudly and exuberantly chanting slogans such as "No more years." They accused the Bush White House of prosecuting an unjust war in Iraq, making the country poorer and undermining abortion rights.

There were no reports of major violence and about 100 scattered arrests.

Police gave no official crowd estimate, though one law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, put the crowd at 120,000; organizers claimed it was roughly 400,000.

The march snaked in a circular route around midtown Manhattan, shutting down dozens of blocks and bringing out hordes of police in a city already girded against terrorist attacks.

"They chose New York, where they're universally hated," said writer Laurie Russo, 41, of the New York borough of Queens. "They should have gone somewhere they're more welcome. They exploited 9/11 by having it in New York at this time."

In the largest set of arrests, some 50 protesters on bicycles who stopped near the parade route were carted away in an off-duty city bus. Also, 10 people were arrested after someone set a paper dragon float afire near Madison Square Garden, site of the convention, and nine demonstrators tried to prevent the arrest, authorities said. The nine were charged with assault.

"There's been a few minor arrests," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "It has been peaceful."

Residents leaned from windows along the demonstration route to shout their support. Scattered opposition was visible only around Madison Square Garden, where the GOP convention opens Monday. Some early convention arrivals looked across police lines, shouting at demonstrators: "Go home!"

"I hope this shows the world that they're not alone in their hatred of George Bush," said Alan Zelenki of Eugene, Ore., who planned for three months to attend this week's protests.

I watched it on C-Span, which is, I think, looking for ways to expand its role in this election season. I'm a big fan of Brian Lamb's networks. I thought they did a nice job with minimal commentary. The spectacle of the flag-draped coffins was extraordinarily moving. For a decentralized protest, this one really looked effective. I'd have been there if I weren't starting a new job in the morning.

John Kerry has energized a whole lot more than his base. He's not a perfect candidate, but the alternative is so perfectly awful that JFK is pulling in an interesting coalition. By the way, I'm pretty sure that the Repubs are on the verge of a major split, win or lose this fall. The Dems have internal tensions in their broad coalition but they don't have internal contradictions, which the Repubs do right now. Their moral theology is going to tear them apart.

Scary Thoughts

Off the Bench
By DAHLIA LITHWICK

Published: August 29, 2004

The Supreme Court is by far the most mysterious branch of government - its members glimpsed only rarely, like Bigfoot, crashing through the forest at twilight. The court is the one branch that operates in near secrecy - no cameras, no tape recorders, no explanations, no press conferences, rare interviews, no review by other branches. The most powerful branch is also the most enigmatic. They love it that way.

So how do the justices spend their summers? Some travel to exotic locales, where they get paid lots of money to teach at fabulous seaside summer law school programs. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg taught at Hofstra University law school's program in Nice, France, this summer, while Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist taught at Tulane's program at Cambridge.

What else do they do with their summers? Since all four justices over age 70 are hostages to their mutually-assured-destruction refusal to retire (each unwilling to give an opposing president the chance to fill a seat), they probably do lots of resting. Even one extra day on that court may mean casting the deciding vote in Bush v. Kerry - a case poised to detonate over the legal landscape this winter, the moment the recount starts in Ohio.

Shunning travel and speeches, Justice David Souter - the man who says cameras will be rolled into the Supreme Court only over his dead body - hightails it home to New Hampshire each summer, where, like Punxsutawney Phil's New England cousin, he'll hide out until the first Monday in October. Justice Souter will under no circumstances be found in a Louisiana duck blind, where Justice Antonin Scalia is rumored to spend his summers hunting with his pal Dick Cheney.

Moreover, that rumor is totally unfair to Justice Scalia.

Duck season in Louisiana doesn't start until November.

Perhaps the most emblematic justice is Clarence Thomas, who spends much of his summer touring the country in a used bus that's been converted into a luxury motor home. That bus is the perfect symbol for a man who won't read newspapers, or engage audiences that don't share his ideology. It allows him to roam the country, hermetically sealed and unreachable inside a moving fortress.

Ultimately, that's what members of the Supreme Court do each summer - they roam the world, safe with their secrets, secure in their lifetime appointments, unaccountable and unavailable to voters or presidents.

And just as the presidential candidates beg you to know them - to look deep in their eyes and see their souls - the Supreme Court justices beg to be forgotten. They still believe that their sole authority rests in the myth that they are oracles. That's why it's not in their interest to remind you that you'll be picking the next Supreme Court with your vote come November. We forget that appointing judges may be the single most important thing a president does - it's easy to forget it when they've fixed it so you can't even pick Anthony Kennedy out of a lineup.

(He's the guy who looks like Ken Starr.)

Trust me, beneath their sunblock, and their duck hats, sit the nine most powerful, secretive public officials in this land. And whether you can name them or not is immaterial. Because after November, that president whose soul you've come to know so well is going to start naming a whole lot of their successors.

This is the non-reducible bottom for this fall's election and the reason why discussions about whether or not it would be tactically better for the Dems to win the Senate than the White House are absurd. A Bush win would mean a theocracy constructed with the aid of the SCOTUS.

Crime Family

I noted the publication of Kevin Phillip's American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush back in January. A "traditional" conservative, his antipathy for the Bush family hasn't abated and he puts in an appearance in the WaPo today.

Conservatives for Kerry? Here's Your Man.
An Old Nixon Hand Smacks the Bushes

By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 29, 2004; Page D01

LITCHFIELD, Conn. -- Utter three words -- George Walker Bush -- and watch eminent author Kevin Phillips, a longtime Republican, a former Nixon aide and past party theoretician, pucker like he has inhaled a pickle.

"I've never understood why we take Bush and his family seriously," he says. "They come from the investment-inherited-money wing of the Republican Party. They display no real empathy for anyone who is not of their class."

He pauses a few seconds as his fingers execute a tap dance on his picnic table.

"They aren't supply-siders; they're crony-siders. As far as I'm concerned, I would put Bush on a slow boat to China with all full warning to the Chinese submarine fleet."

Silence again. Phillips sits on his back porch and looks at you from under hooded eyes, with only the vaguest hint of a chipmunk smile. He's a curious cat, this 63-year-old Nixon-era Republican populist. His best-selling, muckraking book on the family that has held the presidency for eight of the past 16 years, "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," is a sustained rummage through the Bush family closet. He pulls out all manner of files on the early Bushes and the Walker branch of the family, and their dealings with post-World War I German industrialists and post-World War II Saudi princelings. And he draws a bright connecting line between those wheeler-dealer financiers and their Texas-lite descendants.
....
What bothers him is that generation after generation of Bushes are so unwilling to transcend their class interests.

"An old buccaneer and bootlegger like Joe Kennedy became an SEC head for Roosevelt and cracked down on his own class," Phillips says, adding: "The Bush family would just appoint a Gucci-shoe-licking sycophant. The family has simply developed a culture of being enormously supportive of their class."

Even the president's Texas twang grates on Phillips, whose own accent is clipped and clear and, we must note, a tad patrician. "Listen to them! Assemble the very best panel of linguists you could find and have them listen to brothers Jeb and G.W. -- they wouldn't even guess they're in the same family," Phillips says. "G.W. talks like a cowboy and he's no more a backwoods Texan than I am."

So what's an Nixon-Eisenhower Republican to do when he steps inside a voting booth in November 2004? Phillips shrugs. As it stands, Kerry has his vote, although the text of Phillips's endorsement probably won't appear in any Democratic ads. "I'm hoping that Kerry's a seven on a scale of 10, but I'm afraid maybe he's just a five," Phillips says. "But Kerry's running against a zero. So my choice is clear."

This pretty much sums it up: a fake, a fraud, an incompetent. A lie on two legs. A class warrior with nothing but contempt for the working people of this country. We get the next four days to see how the corporate Repubs are going to put lipstick on this pig.

Contrary to the bobbleheads, the CW on the lefty web is that it is already over: no one who voted for Gore is going to vote for Bush, all the defections are going to go in the other direction. I'm not so sure it's over. If any one of the fifty-eleven investigations into various Bush administration crimes breaks open into the news, everythig could chage very quickly, but I don't see much interest on the part of our drowsy media.

Performance Review

Ten Reasons

(1) He has divided the country; we are all part of a vicious little hissing match. We were united and humbled on Sept. 12, 2001. We are divided and humiliated now, telling lies about each other.

(2) He has divided the world. "We are all Americans now," headlined Le Monde on that Sept. 12. Now there are days when it seems as if they are all anti-Americans.

(3) He is leaving no child or grandchild without debt. He has taken the government from surplus into deficit in the name of national security and increased private investment. We can pay the debt in two ways: with more government revenues (taxation) or by borrowing -- against the sweat and income of new generations. The president has chosen to borrow.

(4) He campaigns as a champion of smaller government, but is greatly increasing the size and role of government. Ideological conservatism, it turns out, costs just as much or more than ideological liberalism. Conservative and liberal politicians are both for increasing the reach and power of government. The difference between them is which parts and functions of the state are to be empowered and financed. The choice is between military measures and order, or more redistribution of income. Money is power.

(5) He is diminishing the military of which he is so proud now as commander in chief. The invasion and occupation of Iraq (news - web sites) have obviously not worked out the way he imagined -- naked torture was not the goal. But the far greater problem for the future is that our proud commander has revealed the hollowness behind the unilateral superpower. From the top down, we have not been able to win Iraq, much less the world. And going into Iraq has compromised or crippled the war on terror he declared himself.

(6) He is diminishing scientific progress, the great engine of the 20th century. Only the truly ignorant can believe that the proper role of government is to hinder medical research and environmental study in the name of God.

(7) He is diminishing the Constitution of the United States. Cheesy tricks like amending the great text of freedom to attack homosexuality can be dismissed as wedge politics. But it is worse to preach against an activist judiciary while appointing more activist judges who happen to hold different beliefs, particularly the idea that civil liberties are the enemies of patriotism, security and freedom itself.

(8) He has surrounded himself with other incompetents. The secretary of state is presiding over the rape of diplomacy and its alliances. The secretary of defense has sent our young men and women into situations they were never meant or trained to handle, and now they are being ordered into battle by an appointed minister in a faraway land. The national security adviser does not seem to know that her job description includes coordinating defense and diplomacy. And then there was our $340,000-a-month local hire, Ahmed Chalabi, sitting in the gallery of our House.

(9) He has been unable or unwilling to deal with declining employment and the rising medical costs of becoming an older nation.

(10) He is, as if by design, destroying the credibility of the United States as a force for peace in the world -- an honest broker -- particularly in the Middle East.

The list is longer, miscalculation after miscalculation. President Bush has not been able to function effectively at this pay grade. He may mean well, but this has been a difficult time, and he is in over his head. We and our kids will pay the price for his blundering, blunderbuss adventure in Washington. He has been tested in a difficult time -- and, unhappily for all of us and the world, he has not been up to the job.

Isn't this the bottom line? He's not up to the job. It is that simple.

Compassion

Dear Team,

I've been deeply moved and very gratified by all the encouragement and congratulations you've sent my way as I begin this transition from 13 unemployed months to a new career in a new field, one that I didn't know even existed a week ago. One that I'm still not sure I have the chops for today. I'm going to be on a steep learning curve. The glory part is that the field is still new enough that EVERYBODY is on a steep learning curve, and I've got a boss who hired me for my work ethic and willingness to try, my commitment to helping others on the staff learn and my desire to "show up excellent," an ego which rejects the "average" work product.

I spent last evening on the phone with Susie Madrak, the Suburban Guerrilla, who called to offer her congrats and commisseration, and we talked a lot about work ethos, the spirituality of work and related topics. Work and spirituality are not separate things, they are all the ways we live and who we are. Suze and I are at one on this. She's still unemployed, by the way, and if you are in a position to hire a gifted writer in Philly, I urge you to click on the link and take a look. She has a gimlet editor's eye for a story. I've never met someone who can pick up the critical detail in the news the way she does. Atrios is good, Susie is better.

I've been rotating the blog in my mind today, and letting it reach out and touch my heart and my gut, the critical elements in its evolution. And I decided I want to tell you something.

Since 1998 I've been living in a world which is so poor that I haven't been able to want anything. For the last two years, I haven't even been able to need anything. Healthcare for me and veterinary care for the cats have been out the window, I've been buying groceries on the fund you've provided. Your generosity has fed the cats and me for the last six months. Think about that for a moment. You actually changed someone's life. And you could do it again, 25 dollars at a time. You are a force to be reckoned with.

Would you consider changing another lefty blogger's life for the better? Jim Capazzola and Susie Madrak are barely hanging on. It took me 13 months to find a job in Bush's economy. Both of my friends are used to working hard, neither are slackers, but they aren't investment bankers in New York, which seems to be the employment strategy for team Bush. If you can hit their tip jars with some help, you'd be doing a kindness to a fellow human who wants to work, isn't some sort of loser who made bad choices, and I'd appreciate it. Remember, the Reagan/Bush doctrine is that if you are unemployed, it means you aren't trying hard enough and it is your fault. Pure Calvinism. The millions who are unemployed are going to be so voting against the Bush Doctrine on economics that I think this election is no longer going to be close.

Next up: the culture wars. Give me a couple of days. I'm moving into longer form blogging while I'm negotiating a change in job/lifestyle. The next week will be an experiment in form and I invite your input.

Shove this Job to the Third World

Office of Tomorrow Has an Address in India
U.S. companies that discreetly embrace outsourcing find workers -- accountants typists, editors -- who are eager and talented.

By David Streitfeld, Times Staff Writer

MADRAS, India — Task by task, function by function, the American office is being hollowed out and reconstituted in places like this, a makeshift facility on the sixth floor of a shopping arcade.

OfficeTiger Ltd., one of the most prominent and aggressive of a new breed of outsourcing companies, has hired 2,000 Indians, most of them young and all of them relentlessly gung-ho.

They work as typists, researchers, librarians, claims processors, proofreaders, accountants and graphic designers. Their clients are U.S. brokerage firms, investment banks, law firms and even copy shops.

The Indians take on jobs both big — 100-page investment reports requiring weeks of work — and small. Iayaraja Marimuthu, for instance, is designing a program for next month's wedding of Ann and John, a Texas couple proclaiming their joy in being "together for life." It will take him less than an hour.

Outsourcing, which started with U.S. firms laying off software programmers and call center workers and hiring cheaper employees overseas, is now stretching to encompass almost any kind of work that is done on a computer and is orderly and repetitive in structure. That's a vast category that stretches from copy editing to financial analysis to tax preparation.

Just as voice mail reduced the need for receptionists and word processors transformed the traditional role of secretaries, outsourcing is beginning to reshape the American office, eliminating some jobs and redefining others. Its proponents say it will lift the burden of tedious chores from millions of office workers, giving them more time to spend on challenging and creative enterprises.

"We're allowing employees to delve deeper, to learn more, to push the boundaries of what had been standard work," says OfficeTiger's American co-founder, Joe Sigelman.

That's one side of the argument.

But for other employees, outsourcing means the permanent threat of dismissal in favor of someone who can do the same job for one-tenth the salary.

It also means revamping the methods of entering certain professions, including law and finance. There's a time-honored tradition in those fields of making new associates do the drudgery. It teaches them the subject and winnows the number of aspirants to the truly dedicated. That won't happen if the drudgery is shipped elsewhere.

Those happy Indian workers don't understand that they are being Wal-marted. The jobs that they are taking from North Carolina and West Virginia will show up in Maylasia next.

Until the planet gets serious about understanding the capital is portable, we are going to be a Wal-Mart world. I don't find that attractive.

David and Goliath

If Ben Barnes didn't help W jump to the front of a line for the TANG that was several thousand long, who did? CNN is treating Barnes' statement as just another piece of opinion, rather than a matter of historical fact. One would think the guy knows what he did. In other news, the most expensive war in American history is going like this:

After 3 Weeks of Fighting in Najaf, 1 Riddle: Who Won?
By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: August 29, 2004

NAJAF, Iraq — In a single moment last week, all the mystery and contradiction surrounding Moktada al-Sadr, Iraq's rebel cleric, came into focus.

It was near midnight Thursday, and the 50-odd reporters following the fighting here were hustled from their hotel by the local police and gathered for a press conference in the courtyard of a home where the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country most powerful Shiite leader, was staying.

Just as one of Ayatollah Sistani's aides stood to announce that a peace deal had been struck, Mr. Sadr, the man most responsible for the bloodshed, scurried out the front door, across the lawn and into the street.

And then he was gone.

The moment seemed to encapsulate the conflicting currents that have made Mr. Sadr, and his relationship to the Iraqi and American governments, so hard to fathom.

It was Mr. Sadr, after all, whose Mahdi Army began the current round of bloodletting by attacking a police station earlier this month after the Iraqi police arrested one of his aides. It was Mr. Sadr who had turned the Imam Ali Shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, into a fortress from which he dared the government and the Americans to expel him. And it was Mr. Sadr, facing an indictment for the murder of a rival cleric, who had mocked the Iraqi government's efforts to arrest him.

Yet for all of that, the burden of announcing the tentative peace accord had fallen to Ayatollah Sistani, the country's most revered religious figure. Mr. Sadr was allowed to dash out the front door.

The kid-glove treatment of Mr. Sadr here, after days of fighting that left hundreds of Iraqis dead, points up the dilemma faced by American commanders and Iraq's new leaders. As much as both groups would like to capture or kill Mr. Sadr - and there is no doubt that they would - neither the American military nor Iraq's American-appointed government feels politically strong enough to get away with it.

It is for that reason, too, that Mr. Sadr and his Mahdi Army will almost certainly be back.

"No one can defeat the Mahdi Army," said Arkan Rahim, a 30-year-old Iraqi who fought the entire three week-long battle. "The Mahdi Army is all Iraqis, the whole Iraqi nation."

An Accord for Now, But Risks Ahead

By Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 28, 2004; Page A01

The Najaf deal may bring short-term peace to the ravaged holy city after three weeks of urban warfare, but the cease-fire terms could pose a long-term danger to U.S. troops and interests in Iraq, U.S. officials and Middle East experts said yesterday. The issues underlying the bloody showdown have not been resolved, they warned.

Rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr is free and capable of rallying his dispersed forces in other Shiite strongholds, many of which are already political cauldrons. The goal of dismantling all Iraq's illegal militias -- with Sadr's Mahdi Army as the test case -- remains elusive for a vulnerable new government struggling to assert centralized control. And the United States has been stuck with the bill for damage to Najaf as part of the deal, the officials and experts said.

U.S. military strategy has also suffered a blow, particularly since Najaf is the third confrontation in five months in which Iraqi insurgents fought American troops until they began to take losses, then agreed to a cease-fire so their fighters could rest and regroup. The fear is that Iraqis now believe they can pick the time and place of their attacks and then beat a safe retreat.

"What we will see here is that the Mahdi Army will just rearm, recruit a new group of fighters and move to another city," said retired Marine Lt. Col. Rick Raftery, an intelligence officer who served in Iraq. "We'll be playing 'whack-a-mole' somewhere else shortly."

Ask yourself the question, why is the most powerful nation on earth reduced to fighting a rag-tag "army" to a draw? Because 1.) we shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place and 2.) Rummy is the new MacNamara. This is the height of self-deception.

Ch-chch-changes

More changes, gang. This week turned out 'way different than anything I expected.

When I started on Wednesday, it was with the expectation of 10 weeks of conference planning/marketing/recruitment for an annual event. My boss was going to rent me quarter time to the COO after the initial crunch in order to look into some "issues" with their brand new data base which has just received all the data reported by the old system. The new system does a lot more things and is highly functional for workgroups outside the fund development shop. And it really is an interlocking workgroup product. The COO's thinking evolved a lot this week and he'd decided by the time I came aboard that they we're probably going to have to hire a d-base administrator to be available to the staff full time, as the entire staff, program to development to education, was going to be using it. I was offered the job this afternoon and accepted it.

When I took this temp position, I thought it was so I could get a foot in the door for openings in the development side. It never occured to me that my geeky side was the employable part. I know a fair amount about d-bases and have used probably dozens of programs, as well as designing the query architecture for a few more. My first real job after undergraduate school was training HR departments,payroll departments and bookkeepers how to use computer data bases and spreadsheets, back in the day when mainframes just became a regular feature of working life, before PCs. Most of you are probably too young to remember when most offices, even pretty big ones, kept their records typed on paper, or in reports generated by punch cards. I was present at the creation of the tech revolution and one of its early enthusiasts. I built my first PC out of a kit from a catalog, soldering iron and all, and went on to own iterations of each generation of the changes. I've designed data bases, word processors and spread sheets from CP/M, Basic and DOS command lines, but when the GUI revolution hit the PC standard, I retired from the design world, in favor of putting those apps into real world use as a writer, organization builder, fundraiser and artist. Now, it seems that this piece of my past is asking for updating. Back at the beginning, I was explaining interactive software to end users and this is what I'll be doing again, in a new environment. It's still all about teaching, which has been the one constant in my life. Teaching and relationships, which is what fund development is, too.

I view this past week with astonishment. Me? A geek? As I shook hands with my new boss I commented that I think I'm going to get awfully geeky. He said, "No, just geekier." I didn't see this one coming but my friend, Sharon, who put me on this path, did. We'll be peers now, in different pipestems of the organization, both of us aware that there are both dangers and delights in two old friends working for the same organization. We both report to the same boss, you can see the issues. I can't be seen as favoring her part of the staff, and I'm a sole operator who reports to the head cheese in admin. Sharon and I are both aware of the pitfalls. We'll make some mistakes and we'll learn. We are both good at viewing and understanding human systems, both of us natural anthropologists and sociologists. She knows where the alliances and informal power structures are, as well as the top-down, so I'm not swimming without a clue.

For this blog, and for you: hey, thanks for reading while I just put more personal content on the Web than I ever have. The blog has been a part of my personal process since the day we went live, but you are seeing a window I want to continue to keep open--not because I want to turn this into Bridget Jones' Diary, I don't, but because this blog is in the early stages of an interactive change and I want you to know about it and participate in it.

For the next couple of weeks, my work life is going to be consuming. It probably won't fit very neatly within a forty hour week. You'll get a couple of posts per day out of me, but my writing is also changing, pulling me into longer form pieces. I've got some magazine comissions and I'm pulled to longer form writing. The Blog will emerge from all of this as something new after Labor Day, when you all have the time to pay attention again. Between now and then, I have some serious thinking to do about the direction.

When my current responsibilities are over, I'm going to be a tech geek, attached to the pipeline, and able to post nearly at will. What do I want to post, what do you want to read? That is the state of the question. I won't be able to provide a daily journal as I have in the past, but I'm not interested in that either. I don't want to be Atrios, Kos, Steve Gilliard or Paul Woodward. I think I have something else to offer but I work best by collaboration and I want to know what you think. Become the new Bump. What you say matters.

Now I'm going to go celebrate, and spend the weekend buying some clothes. I haven't bought any since 1998. Poverty is a hard school.

Melanie

Omnium Gatherum

I slept in this morning, so the morning report will be short. The good news is that the office is still on "summertime," a halfday on Fridays, and I'll be home early to pick up the papers.

Iraqis Stream Into Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 27, 2004; 4:12 AM

BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 – Scores of militiamen loyal to rebellious cleric Moqtada Sadr put down their weapons in Najaf Friday as thousands of Iraqis streamed into the once-besieged shrine of Imam Ali following an agreement brokered overnight by the top Shiite Muslim religious figure in Iraq.

Under the agreement, rebellious cleric Moqtada Sadr pledged to withdraw his militia from the contested shrine and other parts of the city of Najaf after three weeks of fighting against U.S. and Iraqi forces.

The country’s interim government, in turn, made significant concessions. In exchange for Sadr's compliance, the government pledged to pull U.S. military forces out of Najaf and to allow Sadr, who had been wanted by the former U.S. occupation authority on murder charges, to participate in politics.

"He is as free as any Iraqi citizen to do whatever he would like in Iraq," said Qasim Dawood, a minister of state, after announcing the government's acceptance of the peace plan arranged by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

At 6:30 a.m. Friday, authorities in Najaf permitted the pilgrims to enter the city and walk toward the shrine. The crowd, estimated at more than 10,000 people, was searched for weapons by Iraqi police officers at the edge of Najaf's Old City district, where the shrine is located.

Two hours later, a message conveyed from Sadr was broadcast from the shrine's loudspeakers instructing militiamen to depart with the crowd. "Drop your weapons and leave Najaf and Kufa," the announcement said. "You have done a great job."

Scores of Sadr's militiamen were seen dropping off their weapons at Sadr’s office near the shrine. Those who had been dressed in black shirts and black trousers—the uniform of the Mahdi Army--changed into normal clothes and joined the throng of people.

It was unclear how thoroughly the Mahdi Army was complying with the orders to hand in weapons, however.

Ahmed Shaibani, a Sadr spokesman, pledged that the city would soon be free of militants. He said that members of Sadr’s Mahdi Army would return to their homes and that leaders of the movement would go back to the religious schools that they had been attending.

If that happens—Sadr does not have a good track record when it comes to peace agreements--it would end a conflict that has claimed hundreds of lives and roiled Iraq's Shiite majority, who have been concerned that using force to resolve the standoff could damage the gold-domed edifice.

"Iraq has achieved a victory today," Dawood said at a Thursday night news conference. "No more fights. Najaf and Kufa will be peaceful cities, free from arms, free from militias."

Since I'm not Juan Cole and don't have any scholarly objectivity to protect in this situation (but if you aren't reading him everyday, you are missing 90% of what is happening in Arab lands) allow me to make the following observations:

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is the most powerful man in Iraq. By treating with him successfully, Moqtada has become the power broker of the poor of the slums in the Shiite south. Ayyad Allawi maybe a strong man and a thug, but he has just been made extraneous, for all the world to see, even John Negroponte.

The emergence of the Shiite cleric as the real power in Iraq (this was predictable, and predicted by everyone from me to Juan to Steve Gilliard) is going to make the Sunni, Turkmen and Kurds less than happy. They are restive now, whether or when they will be provoked to uprising is a guess.

Allawi and the fake council which was just selected will have everything they do ratified or vetoed by Sistani. They were a joke before, they are extraneous now. Note to Ambassador Negroponte: the same is true for you.

Over at DKos, Tom Schaller notes that American deaths in Iraq so far this year have now exceeded those for all of 2003. My best guess is that we can say the same for Iraqi civilian deaths, but I think the order of magnitude is probably much different. (Note: I've received an invitation to produce an article for Dr. Schaller's publication, The Gadflyer, and I'll have more to say as we get closer to the publication date. Tom and I have just opened the discussion of a topic for the piece. He has such a strong stable of writers that I don't want to duplicate anything they are quite capable of producing in-house.)

Dr. Cole made his usual reasoned and thoughtful presentation on The Newshour last night. Click on the link above and read his site to hear him without the constraints of a chiron which offers his academic credential. And thank him for offering the public service of a daily update in addition to all of his academic duties and his unlooked for role as news commentator on the TV and in the papers. This has cut deeply into his production as a scholar, but I think he finds it satisfying. Scholars write for other scholars, Dr. Cole is now hard at work for those of us in the lay community who are trying to learn and understand life in a conflict a half-world away which now has something to say about our fate. We owe him a debt of gratitude which we can never adequately repay. He has been one of the most reliable, thoughtful and reasoned Arabists working in public since our current madness began.

Fog of War

At Least 25 Killed in Mosque Attack in Kufa
Sistani Heads to Najaf in Attempt to End Uprising

By Michael Georgy
Reuters
Thursday, August 26, 2004; 5:41 AM

NAJAF, Iraq, Aug 26 (Reuters) - A mortar attack on a packed mosque in the town of Kufa on Thursday killed at least 25 people as Iraq's most influential Shi'ite cleric headed to the nearby holy city of Najaf to try to end a bloody three-week uprising.

The Interior Ministry said 60 people had been wounded in Kufa, where hundreds of supporters of rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- the firebrand leader behind the Najaf rebellion -- were in the town's main mosque when the mortar bomb hit.

Television pictures showed dozens of wounded men on the ground amid pools of blood or being ferried to Kufa's hospital.

Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was heading for Najaf to try to persuade Sadr's Mehdi Army militia to leave a sacred shrine where they are holed up and end fighting with U.S. marines that has killed hundreds of people.

Both Sistani and Sadr called on their supporters to converge on Najaf.

Supporters of Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric were fired upon in the town of Kufa and 20 people were killed, a Reuters witness said. It was unclear who opened fire.

Sadr supporters marching to Najaf from Kufa were also attacked and several were wounded, witnesses scene.

A senior aide travelling with Sistani on the lengthy journey from the southern city of Basra said the 73-year-old Iranian-born cleric would not delay his trip despite the Kufa bloodshed, which could ignite passions among Sadr's supporters.

At the moment we don't know who was responsible for the attack on the Kufa mosque, but let's say the "coalition" forces are under reasonable suspicion. Combine this with American conduct in Fallujah, Najaf and Abu Ghraib, rumors of mass executions in Afghanistan and you have to wonder if there is anything left of the American image around the world.

I heard Brooking's Michael O'Hanlon on NPR make the point, a good one, that America looks very much like Billy in the "Family Circus" comic: things get broken and "I don't know" is responsible. A few low-level functionaries take the fall. Plausible deniability remains supreme at the highest level. Honor, personal or national, is sacrificed for the trappings of power.

If there is anything left of the American Republic in five years, I wonder how we will look back on these dark years? The judgement of history has been rendered on our Viet Nam misadventure, and yet we are still fighting that war among ourselves.

The Responsibility Administration

No Smoking Gun
By DAHLIA LITHWICK

Published: August 26, 2004

It has been four months since the photos from Abu Ghraib came to light, and America still can't decide what to make of them. Yes, they're appalling. But who's to blame? With the release of two new reports this week, we still can't quite connect the torture and abuse to the commander in chief or his defense secretary; we still can't quite find that smoking gun.

Because there's never going to be a smoking gun.

If you're waiting around for evidence of the phone call from Donald Rumsfeld to Pfc. Lynndie England - the one where he orders the "code red," instructing her to pile up a bunch of naked, hooded men and strike a queen-of-the-mountain pose - you'll wait forever. That's not how armies function. Armies depend on the realities of the chain of command and the cha-cha of plausible deniability.

This week's report by the James Schlesinger panel offers the closest thing we'll get to a smoking gun. Connect the dots and it's all there: the sadism at Abu Ghraib stemmed from "confusion." Confusion sounds accidental - like maybe it just blew in off the Atlantic - but the report is clear that this confusion resulted from systemic failures at the highest levels. The report faults ambiguous interrogation mandates, an inadequate postwar plan, poor training and a lack of oversight. It notes that much of this confusion stemmed from the Bush administration's posture that the Geneva Conventions applied only where the president saw fit, and that the definition of "interrogation" was up for grabs at Guantánamo Bay, thus possibly at Abu Ghraib.

Or you can put your ear right up to the horse's mouth, where - even before the Schlesinger report - Mr. Rumsfeld owned the blame. "These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee last May. But we live in an era when such words are intended to signify simultaneous culpability and absolution.

Mr. Schlesinger's insistence that Mr. Rumsfeld not leave office - because his departure would "be a boon to all of America's enemies" - is a pragmatic argument. It doesn't even pretend to be a just one.

You can choose to connect these dots, or cast your vote in November based on whether Colonel Mustard was in a Swift boat with a lead pipe. But Abu Ghraib can't be blamed solely on bad apples anymore. It was the direct consequence of an administration ready to bargain away the rule of law. That started with the suspension of basic prisoner protections, because this was a "new kind of war." It led to the creation of a legal sinkhole on Guantánamo Bay. And it reached its zenith when high officials opined that torture isn't torture unless there's some attendant organ failure.

The very concepts of responsibility and accountability have become completely debased there are no consequences. Donald Rumsfeld oversees a military establishment which is, apparently, completely out of control. James Schlesinger couldn't be more wrong: it is Rumsfeld who gives aid and comfort to America's enemies through incompetence and shocking disregard for the sensibilities of the rest of the world, which creates more enemies. If this is the kind of "wise advisor" Bush surrounds himself with, it is long past time to get a clue. The rest of the planet surely has.

The Provinces

A degree in bullying and self-interest? No thanks

The decline of American studies reveals our increasing dislike of the US
Polly Toynbee
Wednesday August 25, 2004

The Guardian

Turn to the Guardian's university clearing pages and there are many vacancies for a subject that was once hugely popular. Until recently, American studies departments sprang up everywhere. But no longer.

Now 28 universities still have American studies places unfilled, and they include many at well-regarded institutions - Essex, Keele, Kent and Swansea among them. Due to lack of demand, five universities have closed American studies departments while others have cut staff. Keele, traditionally the top-ranking American studies department, with a maximum, grade five ranking for research for the past few years, has had to fire half its staff. Professor Ian Bell at Keele says: "Students don't want to be branded by doing American studies. They still want to do American modules as part of English or history but, after Bush, they shy away from being labelled as pro-American - not after the obscenity of Iraq."

It's only a straw in the wind: student choices are notoriously fickle. But it fits the picture of a groundswell of anti-American feeling. Where in the world could you walk down the street and not collect overwhelmingly negative vox pops on Bush's America and its global impact? Last year's BBC/ICM poll, taken in a string of countries across the continents, found only Israel in support of Bush - with Canada, Australia and Korea least unfavourable, but still with a majority against.

That is not necessarily the same as anti-Americanism. The Bushites in their daily, foul-mouthed email assaults on Guardian writers try to portray current anti-American sentiment as racist, akin to anti-semitic. They try to pretend "old" Europe is just effetely snobbish about the Ugly Americans. They dismiss anti-Bush disgust in developing countries as envy and as ignorant support for terror.

But opinion polls make it clear that people are well able to separate their feelings about Americans from the politicians and policies now occupying the White House: 81% of the British say, "I like the Americans as people", according to Mori, but only 19% admire American society. They overwhelmingly reject the proposition "We would be better off if we were more like the Americans in many respects" - the view of the right and of younger Tories infatuated with US neo-conservatism.

How much wider the Atlantic has grown under Bush. A Mori poll for the German Marshall Fund examined European attitudes towards America. It found massive condemnation of US Middle East policy (among the British just as strongly) and equally strong opprobrium for US policies on global warming and nuclear proliferation. Most Europeans - the British too - want the European Union to become a superpower to match the US, with a strong leadership in world affairs. (Americans said they wanted to be the only superpower.) Yet there was also surprisingly strong support among two-thirds of Europeans for strengthening Nato - even in France.

However, President Bush's election pledge this week to withdraw 70,000 troops from Germany and Korea may bring an abrupt end to Europe's old doublethink on Nato. If the troops go, it may force Europe to confront the hypocrisy of detesting America while relying on it to provide the defence European nations refuse to pay for. The Bushite emailers are justified in sneering, "We pulled your sorry asses out of two world wars" (the printable version), and it's just as well Fox News hasn't covered celebrations in Paris this week that pretend France liberated itself, with never a mention of Europe's American saviours.

If a Bush victory brings a major withdrawal from Europe, it should prod the EU into coordinating its defence capability, without having to beg the US for a transport plane to mount every tiny border peacekeeping operation in Macedonia. If the EU starts to put its still considerable defence spending to better collective use, Bush won't like it: his ministers protested when Blair and Chirac began the task.

If Bush wins it may galvanise Europe into a stronger sense of what it must do in response. Forget Blair's phantom "bridge" across the Atlantic, and start building across the Channel. (Sadly there has been no growth in university applications to read European studies or languages.)

The world waits on the US elections with particular trepidation this time. The fall of the Berlin wall was a great opportunity missed for America the victor to become the global force for good it thinks it is. The fall of the twin towers was a chance to reclaim that lost global respect, but in every action Bush has swelled the ranks of those who cheered in the streets when it happened.

ICM's poll reveals a world that thinks America arrogant, less cultured, a worse place to live than their own countries and a threat to world peace. Is that hatred now irreversibly hardwired?

Even for Polly Toynbee, this piece has drifted a shade over the left edge, but she has a point. It is a measure of how far the US has fallen when The Guardian starts printing anti-American screeds. Most of the former Western Alliance are looking at our election this fall not as a referendum on Bush but as a referendum on American sanity. That probably isn't an argument you can use with your Aunt Tess or your neighbor, but keep it in abeyance, as I hope to have more later.

The rest of the world really does see the Bush presidency as some sort of collective nervous breakdown on our part, and they are hoping we recover soon. I'm still reeling from the fact that W could do so many things imbecile wrong and half the country still wants to re-elect him, including most of my relatives. He speaks to the fears and class hatreds of this country in a way I've heard few demagogues do, and he does it successfully. He provokes the "us and them" think which has always been part of the American wallpaper. The now-vanquished protection of two oceans has always kept us a provincial people, and Bush is a man of the province, of the small mind, of the threatened hearth. He makes Pat Buchanan look like an internationalist. Bush wants us to concentrate our fears, not just of the rest of the world, but of each other. And that is the most stinging indictment of his presidency and of his "christianity" that I can think of.

The new gig

Well, let's just say it was a very packed day. I'm going to be planning and executing this organization's annual conference and career fair and they are about two months behind where they should be right now. I need to recruit about 200 employers willing to interview at the event in the next week. They've never had a professional event planner who knows how to use events to gather data, so my hands are going to be very full for the next couple of months, and that means a new relationship with the blog and with you.

When I get through the crush of the next week, I'll probably be able to post from work. For the next ten days, it's hopeless. I'll try to pick up some of the slack on the weekend, but I notice that my readership craters on weekends. You people appear to have lives. But I imagine that, by the weekend, I'll have built up some unfulfilled desire to blog and will have something to say, perhaps you will, too. Some kind reader sent me an Amazon gift certificate today, so I can even do my Target shopping from my computer. Yes, the boss knows I blog. She's my oldest friend and this job is part desperation to pick up a paycheck (and a foot in the door, more on that in a minute) and part helping her out, overwhelmed by trying to do her very demanding job and pick up the edges of two others, which are vacant at the moment. This is a highly stressed organization right now.

On weekdays, I'll probably put up a few things in the morning. I'm a very early riser, so I have plenty of time to check the papers in the morning before I leave for work, provided that I get some discipline about putting the coffee pot on the timer the night before. Depending on how I feel in the evenings, I'll try a post or two after work. Tonight I'm fried, but still curious because I haven't had the time to read 15 papers, a bazillion websites and a couple of progressive magazines. I'm used to being a couple of weeks ahead of the American papers, but I won't be able to be that swift for a while, until I learn how to negotiate my new schedule. I read blogs and a couple of papers while I grabbed a sandwich at my desk at lunchtime today, and felt very odd to be a reader rather than a writer. But, man, does it suck to be browsing with IE. The sysadmin at work has downloads of Mozilla in the forbidden category. Yes, I tried. It keeps bugs and worms off the sys, but Moz has a lot fewer holes for letting bad things in than does IE. It's an all MS Office, I haven't worked in one of those in a long time, and I'd forgotten how ponderous it is. It's clunky, slow and not at all intuitive (unless you've entered the Mind of MicroSoft, which I did a while back and will have to try to recapture. Yeecch.) Excel mailmerges give me hives, but here we are. The place provides excellent coffee, however, using one of those one cup at a shot steam brewers. They even have Green Tea!

You'll probably get a post from me on office and food shortly: I'm attending a full day training on the New Data Base tomorrow, as I'll be needing to use it, and Lunch Is Provided. Those of you who have attended full day trainings on the New Data Base know how deadly these things are. A one day training won't teach you much more than how not to fsck it up. It will teach you nothing about how to think about the data base. Each dB comes with a different set of assumptions about how data is organized and how various pieces of data relate to each other, and you can't learn much more than how to sign on, enter and retrieve some elementary material and feel like you know something from a one day training. I know something about these puppies, I used to design the algorithms for them. If they'd give me a couple of days to study them, I could give the staff a week's training so they could optimize the system and all use the same assumptions. This is a big system, a competitor with Raiser's Edge, and nearly as subtle and complex. And, because of shoddy training, they could have gone with a little Excel hack and accomplished about the same thing. Pity.

I want to thank all of you for the kind and warm words, thoughts and prayers as I've negotiated this particularly rough passage. Thank you for the gifts and very real and important material help you've given me. The lefty blogosphere is a generous place, and you've been very kind in words and deeds. You've kept me sane during the time when the blog was my job, the only one I could find, and you said "Make it so." Now, it will become something new and I don't know what it will be. This is a transition time and I hope that you've found enough here to stick with me while we learn what it is. Tell your friends, I'm relying on feedback from you during this transition. Tell me more about what works for you to make a website a must-read. I won't be able to stay on top of the news and break things like I did before, but I'm a writer with some range and a lot of interests. Tell me more. I carved out my unique niche since Nov. 15, 2003, but now it has to change. Tell me more.

I'm listening to CBS's "60-II" and Dan Rather is demolishing Bush's "Texas Miracle" in education. The deluge begins. W has lost Rather, that's the beginning of the end.

Sharon and I? I told you that she's worrying. It's going to be fine. We had a very good first day. The Exec Director has already noticed and that's a very good thing. When the ED stops at the end of the day to talk to the new temp, there is something more going on. But I'm so tired right now that I can't believe I'm going to be on the subway in less than twelve hours to do it again. And I don't see this job staying within a 40 hour week for the next month. I can get away with saying this kind of stuff until the weekend, when Sharon gets her broadband connection at home, so I wanted to be upfront with you now. If I get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, you'll get the usual dose in the morning, some more tomorrow night. And so on, while I figure this out with your help.

Thanks for all the clothing suggestions, with your help I'll be ready to report for duty by next week. Now I have to figure out what to wear tomorrow, this is a VERY casual place, my boss dresses up, the plebs are in jeans, the exec has his shirts cleaned and hung, not a folding crease anywhere, but definitely machine ironed. I DO pay attention to such things. That crease in the pocket was a machine crease.

I've operated those machines.

Later.

New Dawn

Okay, team, I'm off to work, a new job in a field where I know next to nothing, so this is going to be a long day, and I've already got meetings scheduled. I can't predict that I'll have time to post during the day or what kind of shape I'll be in when I get home, but I'll try to bring you the content you've come to expect on this site as I can. I suspect that blogging, which I'm currently burned out on, will become a delightful relief from the job once I've made the transition back to being a normal human being who does things like working, lunching with colleagues and going out with friends after work. I look forward to being reminded what that is like.

The office dress is business casual and this is going to be an issue. I have jeans and shorts and t-shirts and I have the formal wear of a classical musician and the Brooks Brothers of matinee wear, for negotiating contracts with bigwigs, not much in between. If any of you can help me out with suggestions, I'd be grateful. Where's a good place to shop for "business casual" on the cheap? Kohl's? Target? I haven't shopped in so long that I'm clueless. Some of my ideas are over on the right under the link called "Amazon Wish List" if you have a little extra cash and some compassion for a blogger who is trying to fit back into the work force on minimal cash. I promise to have an Amazon link by the weekend, for those of you who prefer that portal. Gotta buy shoes, these ancient Dr. Scholl's sandals ain't gonna cut the walk downtown and black patten pumps don't cut it with khakis. God, what kind of socks are people wearing these days? I'm SO behind....

But I'm going to be downtown, a block off of K street and sniffing the political wind. I love the smell of politics in the morning. Don't forget to vote in the WaPo "Best Blogger" contest, the link to the nomination form is over there on the right.

Fabulous

A Trail of 'Major Failures' Leads to Defense Secretary's Office
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 - For Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign over the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib would be a mistake, the four-member panel headed by James M. Schlesinger asserted Tuesday. But in tracing responsibility for what went wrong at Abu Ghraib, it drew a line that extended to the defense secretary's office.

The panel cited what it called major failures on the part of Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides in not anticipating and responding swiftly to the post-invasion insurgency in Iraq. On the eve of the Republican convention, that verdict could not have been welcome at the White House, where postwar problems in Iraq represent perhaps President Bush's greatest political liability.

The report rarely mentions Mr. Rumsfeld by name, referring most often instead to the "office of the secretary of defense.'' But as a sharp criticism of postwar planning for Iraq, it represents the most explicit official indictment to date of an operation that was very much the province of Mr. Rumsfeld and his top deputies.

"Any defense establishment should adapt quickly to new conditions as they arise, and in this case, we were slow, at least in the judgment of the members of this panel, to adapt accordingly after the insurgency started in the summer of 2003,'' Mr. Schlesinger, a former defense secretary himself, said in presenting the panel's findings at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Beginning in late 2002, the panel said, Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff set the stage for an environment in which abuses later became widespread. They did this first by sowing confusion about what kinds of interrogation techniques would be permitted, then by failing to plan for the intensity of the post-invasion insurgency, and finally by delaying for months in dispatching reinforcements to help the American guards at Abu Ghraib contend with the swelling number of prisoners.

The panel sidestepped the broader, even more contentious, question of whether Mr. Rumsfeld had sent enough troops to Iraq. It focused instead on what it described as short staffing among the military police, who were outnumbered by prisoners by a ratio of 75 to 1 at Abu Ghraib, and at the headquarters of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, whose 495-member staff numbered only about one-third of the authorized total.

Rumsfeld's War Plan Shares the Blame

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 25, 2004; Page A01

Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's leadership of the Pentagon has been weighed by a jury of his peers and found somewhat wanting.

A report by a blue-ribbon panel he appointed to review the military establishment's role in creating and handling detainee abuse problems at Abu Ghraib prison said that the Iraq war plan he played a key role in shaping helped create the conditions that led to the scandal.

In addition, the four-member panel, which was led by one former defense secretary, James R. Schlesinger, and included another, Harold Brown, found that Rumsfeld's slow response when the Iraqi insurgency flared last summer worsened the situation.

But the report does not appear to threaten Rumsfeld's position as defense secretary, especially because all four panel members emphatically rejected the idea of calling for his resignation yesterday at a Pentagon news conference to release their conclusions.

The panel's findings do, however, provide new support for two central criticisms of the Rumsfeld team's approach in Iraq last year: that the invasion plan called for too few troops, half as many as were used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and that the Pentagon failed to plan smartly for occupying the country after the United States defeated the Iraqi military.

Before the war, the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, said publicly that he thought the invasion plan lacked sufficient manpower, and he was slapped down by the Pentagon's civilian leadership for saying so. After Baghdad fell, Rumsfeld dismissed reports of widespread looting and chaos as "untidy" signs of newfound freedom that were exaggerated by the media. And some State Department officials complained that their attempts to plan for postwar Iraq were largely disregarded by the Pentagon.

We're trapped in the sands of Iraq with bad planning, insufficient troops and it is all just fine and no heads will roll. We can squander, and that's what it is, lives and dollars forever and there is no accountability. Man, where do I sign up to get a job like this?

Oafs in Uniform

Three-Star Bigotry

It is unfathomable why Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin has been allowed to keep his job. When Boykin's remarks became known last October, President Bush limited himself to a tepid announcement that the comments about Muslims and Islam did not reflect his point of view or that of his administration. And Boykin soldiers on.

The general remains the deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, the job he held while appearing in uniform to tell an Oregon religious group in June 2003 that radical Islamists hated the U.S. "because we're a Christian nation … and the enemy is a guy named Satan." He told a Florida audience months earlier that a Muslim Somali warlord was captured because "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

Boykin's comments have been widely reported in the Muslim world. They resonate with supporters of Osama bin Laden and other radical Islamic fundamentalists preaching a war between Islam and Christian "crusaders" and Jews. Any time the flames of bigotry wane, a fundamentalist need only broadcast a tape of Boykin again and contend he is mouthing official U.S. policy, made clear by the fact that he holds the same job and wears the same uniform. U.S. Muslims have protested, for good reason.

The internal Defense Department report concluded that Boykin had failed to clear the speeches with the Pentagon, had not given a required statement that he was not speaking for the military and had failed to report that a religious group paid for his travel. His punishment is unlikely to go beyond a written reprimand.

The comments would be bad enough from a buck private. From a three-star general whose job includes gathering information for the campaign against Islamic radicals, they are unforgivable. Let Boykin retire and speak out as much as he wants. But do not give others the chance to assume that the general speaks for the Pentagon, the administration and the nation.

It seems incredible to me that we are still talking about this guy, and that he's still got a job. I think about all of the competent generals Rummy cashiered before the war and the SecDef can't figure out that this guy is an embarrassment? The military culture around the Pentagon is fairly friendly to evangelical types, but talking about religion while in uniform is a lot like talking politics: it isn't done.

Incompetence

Most Army Reservists Have Payroll Problems, GAO Finds

Army Reserve payroll procedures for activated soldiers are so convoluted that mistakes occurred in 95 percent of the cases examined by congressional auditors, the Government Accountability Office said yesterday.

Soldiers sent to Iraq and Afghanistan have had to spend a year or more straightening out problems affecting their pay, allowances and tax benefits, the GAO said.

Most errors involved overpayments, but those proved to be problematic for soldiers who did not acknowledge the extra pay or did not set aside enough money to pay it back. In one example, the GAO recommended a criminal investigation for a soldier who did not report $36,000 in overpayments.

The GAO found the payment system was so "error-prone, cumbersome and complex that neither [the Defense Department] nor, more importantly, Army Reserve soldiers themselves could be reasonably assured of timely and accurate payments."

In its response, the Pentagon agreed with 15 GAO recommendations for improving payroll procedures and said it is working to correct the problems.

The National Guard and reserves make up about 40 percent of the U.S. force in Iraq. The GAO previously found similar problems affecting the Army National Guard. In November, it said payroll problems affected 450 of 481 mobilized soldiers whose records it examined.

Bob Dole, Partisan Hack

It's His Party
Bob Dole turned the GOP into a repugnant animal. Not surprisingly, he's leading its latest attack.

By Matthew Yglesias

Thus Dole found himself present at the creation, almost simultaneously, of all the most repugnant aspects of the modern Republican Party: the pursuit of partisan gain at the expense of the public interest and any recognizably coherent ideology, the dogmatic insistence that no tax ever be raised under any circumstances, and the pretense that the Democratic Party is less an opposition party than some sort of illegitimate force to be crushed by any means necessary. In combination, the resulting legacy is one of fundamental unseriousness about public life -- the sort of mentality that spends tens of millions of dollars investigating various Clinton-era "scandals" but can't provoke a simple hearing into why the Bush administration lied to congressional Republicans about the cost of its Medicare bill.

As the man who did so much to build the Republican Party into what it is today, Bob Dole is now being called upon to dig a new low for it. How fitting.

Big Media Matt starts his overview of Dole by saying:

I've sort of grown to like Bob Dole over the years, mostly because he's shown himself to be a genuinely funny guy, able to move beyond the sort of faux-earnest self-righteousness of the practicing politician ever since he lost the presidential race.

which just goes to show that Matt was really too young to have been paying attention back then.

Outing Update

Journalist gives a statement, won't pay in CIA investigation

WASHINGTON (AP) — Contempt of court orders against Time magazine and one of its reporters were dismissed after the journalist agreed to give a statement to prosecutors probing the Bush administration leak of a covert CIA officer's identity.

In a statement Tuesday, Time said reporter Matthew Cooper agreed to give a deposition after Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, personally released Cooper from a promise of confidentiality about a conversation the two had last year.

Time and Cooper had been held in contempt earlier this month by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan for refusing to testify in the leak probe. Hogan rejected their claims, as well as those of Meet The Press host Tim Russert, that the First Amendment protected them from having to testify.

Cooper had faced up to 18 months in jail and the magazine could have been forced to pay $1,000 a day under the contempt order, which has now been vacated. Russert avoided the contempt citation by agreeing to an interview with prosecutors earlier this month, again after Libby released him from a confidentiality promise.

Cooper gave his deposition Monday to the special prosecutor appointed in the case, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, in the Washington office of his lawyer, Floyd Abrams, the magazine statement said. The deposition focused on a single July 2003 conversation about the leak between Cooper and Libby, the statement said.

Investigators are trying to find out who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose name was published by syndicated columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak cited two "senior administration officials" as his sources. It can be a felony to leak the name of an undercover officer.

I'm hearing that we are, at most, weeks away from having indictments issued.

Up the Chain of Command

Abu Ghraib Report Faults Top Officials

By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
Published August 24, 2004, 10:02 AM CDT

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon's most senior civilian and military officials share a portion of blame for creating conditions that led to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq, according to a new report.

The report, by a commission appointed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was briefing Rumsfeld on its findings and recommendations Tuesday in advance of a Pentagon news conference to release the details. The commission was headed by James Schlesinger, a former secretary of defense.

A person familiar with the report said it implicitly faulted Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by finding that those responsible for the military prison system in Iraq were operating under confusing policies on allowable interrogation techniques. The person discussed some aspects of the report on condition of anonymity.

Also faulted is Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was the top field commander in Iraq at the time of the reported abuses last fall.

Sanchez also takes a portion of the blame in a separate Army investigation which looked specifically at the role of military intelligence soldiers. That probe has been completed and is expected to be publicly released as early as Wednesday.

Judge Denies Request for Rumsfeld Testimony

By Robert H. Reid
The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; 11:56 AM

MANNHEIM, Germany -- The U.S. military judge hearing the Abu Ghraib abuse said Tuesday that prosecutors have until Sept. 17 to convince him that top military intelligence commanders should not be forced to testify under a grant of immunity.

Prosecutors argued against a defense request for such testimony on the grounds that the commanders might be charged themselves and a grant of immunity would complicate any case against them.

The judge, Col. James Pohl, also rejected a request from the attorney for Spc. Javal Davis to make Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld submit to an interview about treatment of prisoners. But he said the request could be raised again if the defense made a stronger argument tying purported Rumsfeld comments on detainees to what happened at Abu Ghraib.

"There's got to be some links in that chain," Pohl said.

Econ Round Up

Bush Team Lacks Clear Economic Plan, Critics Say

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page E01

High oil prices, a stagnant labor market -- and the lack of a more forceful response from the Bush campaign -- have sparked worry among White House allies that the administration's economic team has been too content cheerleading in defense of past policies instead of setting more detailed plans for a second term.

While the economic recovery hummed along, there were few complaints about the low-key styles of Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, National Economic Council director Stephen Friedman and Council of Economic Advisers Chairman N. Gregory Mankiw -- especially after the internal bickering that marred the tenure of Bush's first economic team. But recent news, from slowing economic growth to wilting job creation, has changed the landscape. With the Republican convention a week away, allies and opponents are clamoring for more specifics.

"You either define yourself on these big issues or the Democrats will define you," said Richard K. Armey, the former House Republican leader who co-chairs the new conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks. "John Kerry will do just fine with what he thinks your secret plan is if you don't tell us what it is."

"This is a team that's much more subtle, much more behind the scenes, working together rather than three lone rangers" like the first Bush team, said Diane Swonk, the chief economist at Bank One Corp. "Up until even just a month ago, it was okay to be behind the scenes, but we have a different economic atmosphere now."

Responding to such pleas, the Bush campaign recently began advertising the "ownership agenda," with the president intoning, "One of the most important parts of a reform agenda is to encourage people to own something: own their own home, own their own business, own their own health care plan or own a piece of their retirement."

But the advertisement did little to quell the concern. Voters, in fact, received few details. Those were left to a fact sheet e-mailed to reporters: tax-free medical savings accounts, assistance with down payments for low-income home buyers, the extension of previous tax cuts and the diversion of some Social Security taxes to personal accounts that could be invested in stocks or bonds.

Armey said Bush spoke more clearly and forcefully on some of these issues -- especially Social Security privatization -- in the 2000 campaign than he is doing now. Besides, said Richard Berner, chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, "he has been talking about the ownership agenda for a while. I can't see this at all as new."

"I guess the most accurate thing I could say is there's sort of a deafening silence," said Donald Luskin, a conservative investment adviser in California. Referring to the current economic team, Luskin said, "The period these people have been in power is a period when very little economic initiative has been coming out of the White House."

Oil Falls Below $46 as Iraq Flow Rises
By REUTERS

Published: August 24, 2004

Filed at 10:58 a.m. ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices extended losses below $46 on Tuesday in a third day of falls as a more optimistic Iraq export picture helped unwind some of the supply worries that have lifted the market to historic levels.

U.S. light crude fell 40 cents to $45.65 a barrel, slipping further from last week's $49.40 peak, which was the highest level in 21 years of New York oil futures trading. London Brent crude lost 34 cents to $42.69 a barrel.

The correction follows a failure to hit the psychological $50 mark in New York, together with the resumption of full tilt Iraqi exports from the south and restored flows in the north.

``Oil continues on the defensive after (NYMEX) failed to test $50 and exports from Iraq appear to be on the rise at least for the moment,'' wrote brokerage Refco.

July job figures decline in six swing states

Mon Aug 23, 8:21 AM ET

By Peronet Despeignes, USA TODAY

Twenty-two states reported a drop in payroll jobs last month, double the number for June, according to new Labor Department (news - web sites) statistics. Among them were six of the states that could decide this fall's presidential election.

The declines in most cases were slight, but they drove home the frailty of the jobs recovery and highlighted risks to President Bush (news - web sites)'s re-election strategy. The White House has been counting on consistent, robust growth by now to restore confidence in the economy and counter grim news from Iraq (news - web sites).

The battleground states showing job losses in July were Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, according to Labor Department figures released Aug. 20. Battleground, or swing, states are those expected to be close in this fall's election, and they are drawing the bulk of both campaigns' attention.

Prof. De Long says:

Trimming the Macro Forecast

Three new macro forecast revisions arrived in my inbox over the past week. They're all down--oil prices and the effective end of fiscal stimulus. In fact, they are all suggesting growth at or below the growth rate of potential output. This means that the labor market is unlikely to get any better over the next eighteen months or so.

This is really depressing...

The Endless Cycle

Iraqis risk death to bury the dead
Fighting between the US and Sadr's militia continued Monday, but families still arrive in Najaf for burials.

By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NAJAF, IRAQ – It is midmorning when the family of Adel Shamshur arrives in the gravediggers market, with Mr. Shamshur's coffin strapped to the top of their car. The gravediggers surround the car, negotiate a price, and decide where to bury the 30-year-old merchant, who has died of a heart attack.

There is only one place the gravediggers won't go, and that is the Old Cemetery, scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the 13-day standoff between Shiite militants and American forces that continued throughout Monday with fierce battles and explosions in the heart of this holy city.

Within minutes, the bereaved family chooses the lowest bid (25,000 dinar, or $17), and tear down the road to the second-best cemetery in town, still only half a mile or so from the American front lines.

"This cemetery is just as good as the Old Cemetery," says Ghali Mehna, the family patriarch, who has just driven about 110 miles to bury his cousin in Najaf. Like many Shiites, his family hopes that burying Shamshur close to the Shrine of Imam Ali will ease his passage to Paradise.

"We were very worried that we might die on the way here ourselves, there were so many checkpoints, so many US Army convoys, and helicopters, too," says Mr. Mehna. "But still we insisted to come to Najaf. It is our faith."

Even in the fiercest fighting of the past two weeks, Iraqi Shiites continue to bring their dead to Najaf in the hopes of placing their departed relatives as close to the Shrine of Imam Ali as possible.

The cemeteries of Najaf are the largest in the world - the Old Cemetery alone is estimated to be 35 square kilometers, and growing. It's a massive industry for the city, and a stable source of income for hundreds of gravediggers, who once worked the hallowed ground of the Old Cemetery, which has recently become a deadly battleground where US soldiers and militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

"Najaf is just for pilgrims and for dead people," says Ali Hamza Jaffar, a gravedigger. "If the Americans set up roadblocks and stop the pilgrims and dead people from coming, there will be no business here at all."

It's hard to tell now, but residents say that Najaf once was a lovely city of tourist hotels, bustling markets, and aquamarine-tile mosques. The holiest site in the Shiite faith is here, the Shrine of Imam Ali, cousin of the prophet Muhammad, which until recently drew millions of tourists each year.

Now that the shrine is at the center of a deadly battle between Mr. Sadr's militia and US Marines and Army forces, the tourist trade has dropped almost to nil, but the dead bodies keep coming. Grieving families from all over Iraq, as well as from Iran, Pakistan, India, and much of the Middle East, still drive the roads to Najaf to bury their relatives here. After all, you only die once.

I find this incredibly poignant. Life goes on, as does death, war makes the quotidian more difficult. And I find myself growing angrier and angrier.

The Cost

Breslin tells you what W doesn't want you to hear:

The names of the dead in Iraq over the weekend have not been released yet, except for Army Pfc. Kevin A. Cuming, 22, of White Plains. And so you sat yesterday with all these Department of Defense death notices for the last weeks covering the desk and you glanced at them, with the ages of the dead reaching up from the paper to grab your throat. Now and then you called one of their homes to get a small idea of what they were like when they lived, and what we have lost in a war that now pleases only the mentally unbalanced.

Printing as many names and as often as possible is a gloomy task. These are the deaths that the president and his people try to sneak past the country. The dead were brave men. The president is craven. He buries the war, and the news reporters, indolent and in fear of authority, follow like cattle going into pens. For so long, the public believed the news it was given. Saddam Hussein was going to blow us up with an atom bomb! The Muslims of Iraq love us!

Herewith are some of the names we went through yesterday. It is taken here as an obligation that we print the rest in following columns.

Spc. Anthony J. Dixon, 20. 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany. Killed on Aug. 1 at Samarra when improvised explosive device detonated near his guard post. Home, Lindenwold, N.J. Killed with him was Spc. Armando Hernandez, 22. Home, Hesparia, Calif.

"He lived every day like it was his last day," Spc. Anthony J. Dixon's sister, Mary, said yesterday. "If something came up, he did it right then. We have a 100-foot cell-phone tower in the back yard. Somebody dared them to climb it. Anthony didn't say a word. He and Jay, the two of them climbed right to the top. They came down and my brother said, 'There. I did that.'

"His best friend, Adam Froehlich, was killed in Iraq. In March. He was 21. He and my brother enlisted together. Anthony already was in Iraq. Someone in his troop told him everything about Adam.

"On Sunday afternoon, somewhere between 1:30 and 2 o'clock, on August 1st, there was somebody at the door and my mother opened it. There were two officers, a sergeant and a chaplain. My mother knew what they were here for. She started crying. The two officers couldn't say anything. My mother threw them out."

Sgt. Juan Calderon Jr., 26, of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. Killed on Aug. 4 due to enemy action in Al Ambar Province, Iraq. Home, Weslaco, Texas.

Spc. Brandon T. Titus, 20, of 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, Watertown, N.Y. Killed on Aug. 17 in Baghdad when an improvised device exploded near his checkpoint. Home, Boise, Idaho.

Pfc. Fernando B. Hannon, 19, of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. Died Aug. 15 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province. Home, Wildomar, Calif.

And Pfc. Geoffrey, Perez, 24, of same unit and died on same day, Aug. 15, of wounds in Anbar Province. Home, Los Angles, Calif.

Spc. Jacob D. Martir, 21, of 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. Killed on Aug. 18 in Sadr City when his patrol came under enemy small arms fire. Home, Norwich, Conn.

First Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello, 24, of 1st Battalion, 34th Armor, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan. Died on Aug. 13 in Khalidiyah when improvised explosive device detonated near his mounted reconnaissance patrol vehicle. Home, Verrona, Pa.

"He lived for oatmeal cookies," his sister, Amy, said yesterday. "He was an Eagle Scout. He took children hiking, swimming. He went to Penn Hills High School and Dickinson College. What did he do after college? He went right into the Army. He had no time in between. He's only 24."

Capt. Michael Yury Tarlavsky, 30, of 1st Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group, Fort Campbell, Ky. Died Aug. 12 in Najaf when his unit came under small arms fire and a grenade attack. Home, Passaic, N.J.

Gunnery Sgt. Elia P. Fontecchio, 30, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Control Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif. Killed by enemy action in Al Anbar Province. Home, Milford, Mass.

His uncle, Dana Fontecchio, says that when Elia told them he was being sent back to Iraq for a second tour, "None of us moaned about it. He's a Marine. The gunnery sergeant. They need him."

The surgeon at the forward hospital where they operated on Fontecchio said a helicopter was waiting to fly him to Baghdad when he died.

Pfc. Raymond J. Faulstich Jr., 89th Transportation Company, 6th Transportation Battalion, 7th Transportation Group, Fort Eustis, Va. Died Aug. 5 in Najaf when enemy using small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades attacked his convoy. Home, Leonardtown, Md.

"He had a problem with drugs and alcohol and went one place to the other," his mother, Linda, was saying last night. "Then he met a girl he loved. Her family said she couldn't see him unless he straightened out. He did. For her love. He joined the Army, and they married.

"When the two Army men came to the house to tell us, I was inside cleaning. I started to scream. 'Oh, my God! My son is dead!' He had his rosary beads in his pocket when he was killed. His wife, Crystal, had been out, and when she came over and saw the crowd in the yard she thought he was home on his two-week leave that he was supposed to be on. She's 19. She was going to go to college but she just can't do it now.

"My son was a beautiful young man. Everybody speaks about his smile. He had such a beautiful smile. My husband's smile. I say to my husband, 'Could you please smile so I can see my son's face?'"

Who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake?

Posted by Melanie at 09:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

McPaper Grows Up

Questions about Bush's Guard service unanswered

By Dave Moniz and Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — At a time when Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has come under fire from a group of retired naval officers who say he lied about his combat record in Vietnam, questions about President Bush's 1968-73 stint in the Texas Air National Guard remain unresolved:

• Why did Bush, described by some of his fellow officers as a talented and enthusiastic pilot, stop flying fighter jets in the spring of 1972 and fail to take an annual physical exam required of all pilots?

• What explains the apparent gap in the president's Guard service in 1972-73, a period when commanders in Texas and Alabama say they never saw him report for duty and records show no pay to Bush when he was supposed to be on duty in Alabama?

• Did Bush receive preferential treatment in getting into the Guard and securing a coveted pilot slot despite poor qualifying scores and arrests, but no convictions, for stealing a Christmas wreath and rowdiness at a football game during his college years?

The White House has released hundreds of pages of records, but the files released so far haven't answered those questions. Since the documents were released in February, at least a half-dozen news organizations, including USA TODAY, have filed new requests for Bush's military records under the Freedom of Information Act.

In an e-mail to USA TODAY last week, presidential spokesman Dan Bartlett said: "The president has authorized the release of his records and we are complying with all requests. Some are taking longer than others, but all will be addressed."

Horseshft. W has been in public life for a decade. That this hasn't been fully addresed yet means he is hiding something.

Passing the Buck

Iraqi Teens Abused at Abu Ghraib, Report Finds
Officials Say Inquiry Also Confirms Prisoners Were Hidden From Aid Groups

By Josh White and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A01

An Army investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has found that military police dogs were used to frighten detained Iraqi teenagers as part of a sadistic game, one of many details in the forthcoming report that were provoking expressions of concern and disgust among Army officers briefed on the findings.

Earlier reports and photographs from the prison have indicated that unmuzzled military police dogs were used to intimidate detainees at Abu Ghraib, something the dog handlers have told investigators was sanctioned by top military intelligence officers there. But the new report, according to Pentagon sources, will show that MPs were using their animals to make juveniles -- as young as 15 years old -- urinate on themselves as part of a competition.

"There were two MP dog handlers who did use dogs to threaten kids detained at Abu Ghraib," said an Army officer familiar with the report, one of two investigations on detainee abuse scheduled for release this week. "It has nothing to do with interrogation. It was just them on their own being weird."

Speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been released, other officials at the Pentagon said the investigation also acknowledges that military intelligence soldiers kept multiple detainees off the record books and hid them from international humanitarian organizations. The report also mentions substantiated claims that at least one male detainee was sodomized by one of his captors at Abu Ghraib, sources said.

"The report will show that these actions were bad, illegal, unauthorized, and some of it was sadistic," said one Defense Department official. "But it will show that they were the actions of a few, actions that went unnoticed because of leadership failures."

The investigative report by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay focuses on the role of military intelligence soldiers in the prison abuse. It will expand the circle of soldiers considered responsible for abuse beyond the seven military police soldiers already facing charges, officials said, to include more than a dozen others -- low-ranking soldiers, civilian contractors and medics. Sources have said that the report also criticizes military leadership, from the prison and up through the highest levels of the U.S. chain of command in Iraq at the time.

One Pentagon official said yesterday that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is named in the report for leadership deficiencies and failing to deal with rising problems at the prison as he tried to manage 150,000 troops countering an unexpected insurgency. Sanchez, however, will not be recommended for any punitive action or even a letter of reprimand, the source said. About 300 pages of the 9,000-page report will be released publicly, according to Army officials.

Another report regarding the prison abuse, commissioned by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, is expected to be released this afternoon. That independent commission, chaired by James R. Schlesinger, a former defense secretary, will be critical of the guidance and policies set by top Pentagon and military officials as they worked to get more useful intelligence from detainees in Iraq, said a source familiar with the commission's work.

The Schlesinger report is not expected to implicate high-level officials by name, but it would be the first report to link the abuse at Abu Ghraib to policies set by top officials in Washington. The Fay report, by contrast, does not point a finger at the Pentagon and instead assigns most of the blame to military intelligence and military police who worked on the chaotic grounds of the overcrowded and austere Abu Ghraib.

Defense Leaders Faulted by Panel in Prison Abuse
By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: August 24, 2004

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 - A high-level outside panel reviewing American military detention operations has concluded that leadership failures at the highest levels of the Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff and military command in Iraq contributed to an environment in which detainees were abused at Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities, Defense officials said Monday.

The report, set to be released Tuesday, does not explicitly blame Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the misconduct or for ordering policies that condoned or encouraged it. But the panel implicitly faults Mr. Rumsfeld, as well as his top civilian and military aides, for not exercising sufficient oversight over a confusing array of policies and interrogation practices at detention centers in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq, officials said.

The military's Joint Staff, which is responsible for allocating military resources among the various combatant commanders, is criticized for not recognizing that military police officers at Abu Ghraib were overwhelmed by an influx of detainees, while the ratio of prisoners to guards was much lower at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The report also criticizes the top commander in Iraq at the time, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, for not paying close enough attention to worsening conditions at Abu Ghraib, delegating oversight of prison operations to subordinates.

The highest-ranking Army reservist charged in the Abu Ghraib case, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, said Monday that he would plead guilty to at least some charges. [Page A6.]

In contrast to the half dozen military inquiries into aspects of the Abu Ghraib scandal, including the roles of the military police and military intelligence officials, the four-member panel led by James R. Schlesinger, a former defense secretary, was appointed by Mr. Rumsfeld to identify gaps in the reviews and offer a critique of senior officials' roles that uniformed military officers might be reluctant to level against superiors.

The Schlesinger panel's report and a high-level Army investigation into the role of military intelligence officials in the misconduct, which is also set to be released this week, are expected to offer important new details and context that may help explain the causes of a scandal that came to the military's attention last January, but only became public in April with the disclosure of photographs of prisoner abuse. The panel said in a statement that it would brief Mr. Rumsfeld, who is traveling this week, by video-teleconference on Tuesday, and then present its findings at a news conference at the Pentagon. The Army is expected to release the findings of its own review this week, probably on Wednesday.

The broad outlines of the Schlesinger panel's work were described by two Defense officials who had portions of it summarized for them by associates. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the full report has not been made public.

Posted by Melanie at 07:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

New Rules

I knew (or, rather hoped) this day would come. I've finally found some work (it's temp, but it means income for a few months) and that means I can't put in 12 hours a day posting to The Bump in the Beltway. I start the new gig on Wednesday, and I think that the Bump day is going to look like this: a post or two early in the morning before I leave for work, one or two during the day when I have time for lunch and probably something longer and "thinkier" in the evening, after I've had the day to digest the news. I'll be taking public transit, the Metro here in Washington, which is a bit of a hike from my house, and walking and public transit time are "pondering" time. When the weather is good I plan to walk, as I need to work off the blogger's butt I've developed from all this time in front of a monitor in the last year. There is a bus to Metro, but it is an additional 30 minutes to walk, and I need the exercise.

I'm going to be working for my oldest friend, and we're both a little nervous about that, but I'll be doing the scut work to help her prepare for her organization's annual conference, which means lots of deadlines. This is a public interest law, social justice organization, and I support the work they do so I feel pretty good about this gig. I don't want to say much more about it than that because I don't want the organization to be uncomfortable with having a blogger in their midst, even temporarily. My focus will continue to be on current events and public policy, even as I'll be working for an organization who has a corner of the public square on public policy and is actively working for change. My friend Sharon has always been on fire for social justice and has staked her professional life on it. It is grounded in her understanding of her Jewish faith and the progressive politics she learned at her mother's knee. I know because I know her mother.

Sharon's cable connection should be up and running by next weekend, so I'll be over there to see her new house (in the most fabulous part of the DC area, Takoma Park, beloved of aging hippies) and to optimize her Internet connection (I'm not as geeky as Reid or pogge, the technical advisors to this site, but I can help most users find better ways to use their computers and their Internet experience, as well as optimizing their Internet time. I've lived on-line for over a year and I know a lot of tricks. And just enough HTML to get the novice into serious trouble.

At any rate, things are going to be changing a little and I wanted to give you a heads-up and let you know why. I also hope to add Blogads and Googleads in the next couple of weeks but have been warned by the site's designer that there are design issues I need to make decisions about, and I haven't figured that out yet. This will also facilitate an escape to broadband cable for yer bloghostess in the next couple of weeks, which is a consummation devoutly to be wished: given the limited time I'll have for blogging, the slowness of dial-up is no longer tolerable. Ads will help me bridge the difference in cost between my very cheap dial-up and the hideously expensive local cable monoply. I cannot tell you how little I am looking forward to changing email addresses. I've had this one since '97. A computer crash a couple of months ago wiped out my email address book and reconstructing it notify people is going to be a huge time sink.

It's time to restructure a lot of things. I'd be interested in reviews from any of you who have made the jump to broadband telephony, like Vonnage. How well does it work with phones (on the receiving end) that are twisted pair? I'm looking for a new cell phone plan, happy with my Nokia phone, but it is time to go off my cheap "emergency" and very expensive minutes plan for something more broadly based. No, I won't ditch my landline, but I'll probably use it less. I also go places that have very little cell phone coverage and my landline answering machine may be the easiest way for most folks to find me. (Add to shopping list: batteries. The little light is blinking.) Seriously, don't give up your landline. There are emergencies which take out cell phone towers (like hurricanes and tornados) and leave underground phone lines just fine. It is better to have both. I was glad I did when Isabel hit here last fall, and we are now living in the days of possible random blackouts anywhere on the grid. Have a corded phone, not a wireless, for backup.

Sorry for the light posting today. I had to spend the day preparing to defend myself from a nuisance lawsuit which was going to court tomorrow. It took a while to get my ducks in a row, but I worked something out with opposing counsel late this afternoon.

UPDATE: Most egregious spelling errors fixed. Jeebus, I'm fried. Today was a horror.

Glory Days Long Gone

How the mighty Post has fallen

ANTONIA ZERBISIAS

Ten days ago, when the Post ran a 3,000 word front-page post-mortem of its coverage of the run-up to the war in Iraq, Nixon popped into my head. Talk about bad timing. The guy couldn't get a break. Had his team pulled the same Watergate stunt today, the Post probably would have buried the story in the back of the A-section and given front-page play to his latest pronouncements on the "peace" negotiations with North Vietnam.

That's pretty much how the Post dealt with the current president George W. Bush's lies and obfuscations on Iraq. It served largely as the White House's megaphone on smoking guns and mushroom clouds while muting, or stifling, dissent and contradictory evidence.

As the Post's Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks says in the Aug. 12 post-mortem, "There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff."

Make no mistake. The Post piece was no mea culpa. It was penned by media critic Howard Kurtz, as a feature he initiated. While the paper did give it prominent play, nowhere did it officially and explicitly admit to failing its readers, the public interest or the service of truth.

"People who were opposed to the war from the beginning and have been critical of the media's coverage in the period before the war have this belief that somehow the media should have crusaded against the war," executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. tells Kurtz. "They have the mistaken impression that somehow if the media's coverage had been different, there wouldn't have been a war."

Obviously not, raising the question: If the war was inevitable, and if the Bushies were hell-bent on waging it, then wasn't that a story? Isn't it still? Then why isn't it being told throughout the mainstream media?

Probably the most troubling admission comes from Karen DeYoung, a former assistant managing editor who reported on the prewar palavering: "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," she says. "If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said."

But since when is a presidential pronouncement The Word Of God? What happened to inquiry, investigation and, what's it called again, journalism?

Consider a Post report in July 2003 by the two dogged Danas, Milbank and Priest, who must have been very frustrated by their editors' kid glove handling of the Bush cow patties.

They were reporting on an outrageous claim Bush made — four months after the invasion began — at a news conference: "The larger point is and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power ..."

As the Danas would write, four paragraphs into a story about Bush defending his "darn good" Iraq intelligence, "The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective."

"Appeared?" Like, maybe we were dreaming? Like the president wasn't, er, um, lying? But did you hear anybody in the mainstream media call him out on that — even when he repeated it this year, in his state of the union address?

The irony, of course, is that this editorial is in The Toronto Star. And it's true.

Nya-Nya

North Korea Insults Bush, in Seeming Talks Ploy
By JAMES BROOKE

Published: August 23, 2004

SEOUL, South Korea, Aug. 23 — North Korea called President Bush an "imbecile" and "a tyrant that puts Hitler into the shade" in a vituperative stream of insults today that seemed to rule out any serious progress on nuclear disarmament talks before the American election is decided in November.

"The meeting of the working group for the six-party talks cannot be opened because the U.S. has become more undisguised in pursuing its hostile policy toward" North Korea, a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry told the nation's state-controlled news agency. New talks were to be held in Beijing in September or October, as North Korea's neighbors and the United States seek to persuade the Stalinist nation to stop making nuclear weapons.

Today's tirade was apparently set off by a campaign stop remark last week by Mr. Bush, who referred to Kim Jong Il, North Korea's hereditary leader, as a "tyrant."

Today, South Korean analysts, often optimists on Pyongyang's behavior, tended to say that North Korea was following a standard negotiating tactic of ratcheting up the rhetoric before settling down for real talks.
....
North Korean nervousness is expected to reach a higher pitch in late October, when warships of the United States Navy, the Japanese Coast Guard and other allied nations are to conduct joint exercises in the Sea of Japan. The maneuvers will be held under the banner of the Proliferation Security Initiative, a program designed to interdict seaborne illicit cargoes from an unnamed country. Previous training has taken place in locales distant from North Korea, such as the Coral Sea, off the coast of Australia.

"They really believe that Bush and Koizumi are in a plot for a pre-emptive attack on North Korea," Mr. Quinones recalled of his early August conversations in Pyongyang. "The hardliners will use P.S.I. The military will say, `I told you so.' "

To calm spirits on the peninsula, South Korea's top nuclear negotiator is to visit China and Japan this week. Hoping to break the deadlock on setting up a round of working-level, preparatory talks on North Korea's nuclear program, Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo Hyuck will fly to Beijing on Tuesday for talks with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei. On Friday, Mr. Lee will visit Tokyo for talks with his Japanese counterpart, Mitoji Yabunaka.

Japan does not have relations with North Korea, and, therefore, has minimal leverage with Pyongyang. China, a major source of food and fuel for North Korea, may not want to lean on Pyongyang until the American election is decided.

Ah, the fruits of telling the world that you "loathe" Kim Jong-Il, W. We have considerable leverage with the North Koreans, but any negotiator knows that you don't rub the other side's nose in it.

Do The Right Thing

Politics Color Troop Plan

Last week, President Bush proposed bringing more soldiers back to U.S. bases. Redeployment is something Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been studying since he took office in 2001. But what should be a study in strategy and tactics, a discussion on how best to provide national security, has been overwhelmed by politics. Hence the president's announcement on troop withdrawals less than three months before an election, at an appearance before the Veterans of Foreign Wars that was paid for by Bush's reelection campaign.

If the Pentagon's plans are good — and Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry denounced them in his equally political appearance before the VFW two days after Bush spoke — they'll be just as good after Inauguration Day.

Not that any of the redeployments (perhaps eventually totaling as many as 70,000) will happen anytime soon. Pentagon officials said they would not begin for more than a year and could take as long as a decade. Nor would changing the troop strength and locations be cheap.

Bush predicted savings, but they may come at the price of a steep initial investment, according to a Congressional Budget Office report in May on the Army, the service with the most permanent installations and troops outside the U.S. The moving costs will be great, base infrastructure in the U.S. must be expanded to cope with more troops and their families, and contributions from host nations such as Germany will undoubtedly be trimmed.
....
The primary reason for stationing U.S. troops in nations with strong militaries such as Japan and South Korea is to protect American interests, and only secondarily to give pause to enemies of the host countries. Political support in host countries also plays a role; the United States shut its bases in the Philippines after years of protest.

The Cold War dictated domestic and overseas deployments; the war on terror is necessitating new bases in nations such as Uzbekistan. Advanced technology in the hands of a well-equipped, highly trained military may make it easier to keep troops and their families at home rather than abroad, but the decision must be based on reasons of national security, not politics.

Given that the unnecessary Iraq war has called into question everything from force structure and size to deployment sites, why not throw this into the mix? Really, this whole discussion is premature while we're bogged down in the sands of Mesopotamia.

Boondogle

Everyone Wants a Piece of the $18-Billion Man in Iraq
The rebuilding czar so far has little to show for his efforts. 'Better times are coming,' he says.
By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer

HILLAH, Iraq — The man with $18 billion to spend is taking a beating.

Where's the money to rebuild Iraq? The jobs for broke Iraqis? The promised health clinics and schools, bridges and dams, electricity and clean water?

Retired Rear Adm. David Nash gives the same answer to the skeptics who quiz him on America's long-delayed effort to rebuild Iraq: Better times are coming.

"This country is going to take off," said Nash, 61, the head of the U.S. effort to rebuild a country devastated by a dozen years of sanctions, three wars and a simmering insurgency.

After long delays and broken deadlines, there are signs that the largest reconstruction effort since World War II's Marshall Plan is poised to explode.

New and refurbished power stations are starting up weekly. Private contractors are finishing plans for building thousands of schools, clinics and infrastructure projects. Iraqi jobs in the program have soared from 5,300 daily employees to more than 88,000.

But at least for now, there is little to show. Less than $900 million has been spent of $18.4 billion that Congress approved in November. Of 2,800 projects designed to make life better for Iraqis — and in the process, safer for American soldiers — only 214 are under construction.

I'm not going to try to summarize the rest of this article, just read it. And ask yourself and your colleagues, family and friends why it is we are occupying Iraq. Saddam was a really bad guy? Right.

An Honest Day's Pay

Controversial Overtime Rules Take Effect
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: August 23, 2004

The Bush administration's new overtime rules go into effect today, but the Kerry campaign has already begun attacking the overhauled regulations, saying they will hurt millions of American workers.

Urging President Bush to scrap the rules, the Kerry campaign and organized labor say the regulations will exempt up to six million additional workers from receiving overtime pay by redefining which workers qualify for time-and-a-half pay when they work more than 40 hours. But the administration asserts that no more than 107,000 workers will lose their eligibility, while 1.3 million workers will gain the right to overtime.

In essence, the hundreds of pages of new rules redefine the criteria for which administrative, professional and managerial workers qualify for overtime, among them nurses, chefs, pharmacists, funeral directors, claims adjusters and restaurant managers.

Senator John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, devoted his political party's weekly radio address on Saturday to assailing the new rules, making clear that the Democrats view them as an issue to exploit when many Americans are worried about the economy and stagnating wages.

"Why would anyone want to take overtime pay away from as many as six million Americans at a time when they need that money the most?" Mr. Edwards said. "And why would anyone support this new rule which could mean a pay cut for millions of Americans who have already seen their real wages drop again this year?"

That follows attacks by Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, who said last month, "The new overtime regulations represent a shameful assault on the paychecks of hard-working Americans at a time when they are already putting in more hours, paying more for everyday costs and saving less than ever before."

To turn up the volume on the issue, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. says it will hold a news conference today and will distribute several million fliers saying Mr. Bush has given its corporate friends a gift that will cut the paychecks of millions of Americans.

The administration asserts that the new regulations are needed to replace vague, outmoded rules that have spurred many lawsuits as employers and employees tussle over which workers are exempt and which are not. The administration argues that the overtime rules are clearer, will be easier to enforce and will reduce expensive litigation that hurts business and the economy.

"We view this as a step in the right direction for bringing clarity and certainty to this area of the law so there can be greater compliance," said Alfred Robinson, director of the Labor Department's wage and hour division. "And that's good for employers and employees. I'd rather focus on that than the spin and the politics."

Critics of the new rules say they are another example of the Bush administration's taking regulatory steps that please businesses, which have lobbied for years to revamp the overtime regulations.

The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, has issued a report, which many Democrats have relied on, concluding that the rules will exempt about six million workers from overtime coverage. Among those, the institute said, are 1.4 million low-level salaried supervisors, 130,000 chefs and sous-chefs and 900,000 workers with graduate or college degrees who will now be considered professional employees.

Here is the Economic Policy Institute's briefing paper on the subject. I've been digging into this topic for months and it looks to me like Bushco is handing employers a big gift, rather than covering a lot of new people. God help if you don't have a union. This is going to hurt a lot of people.

Moving the Deck Chairs

A G.O.P. Senator Proposes a Plan to Split Up C.I.A.
By PHILIP SHENON

Published: August 23, 2004

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 - The Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee said Sunday that he would propose legislation to break up the Central Intelligence Agency and divide its responsibilities among three new spy agencies.

The plan would eliminate the Pentagon's direct control over the National Security Agency and create a post of national intelligence director with virtually complete control over the government's $40 billion annual intelligence budget.

The sweeping proposal, by Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, which would also provide the national intelligence director with budget authority over counterterrorism and counterintelligence programs of the F.B.I., goes far beyond the recommendations of the independent Sept. 11 commission.

Aides to Senator Roberts said he had obtained support in principle from eight of nine Republicans on the intelligence committee and would present it Monday to the White House and to members of the Sept. 11 commission, whose final report has prompted President Bush and lawmakers to rush to overhaul the way the nation gathers and shares intelligence.

The plan is certain to be fiercely opposed by the C.I.A., which would cease to exist, its responsibilities shifted elsewhere and its name probably eliminated; by the Pentagon, which would have to cede control over the N.S.A. and other defense intelligence agencies that it long described as essential to the military; and by several influential members of Congress who have warned against any drastic restructuring of the nation's intelligence community.

"Our bill is real reform, and it's the right thing to do," Mr. Roberts said in a statement announcing the bill, which he titled the "9/11 National Security Protection Act." "We cannot allow turf battles to define this debate. No one agency, no matter how distinguished its history, is more important than U.S. national security."

A White House spokesman, Brian Besanceney, did not comment on the specifics of Senator Roberts's proposal but said, "We welcome ideas from members of Congress and will continue to work with Congress to accomplish the shared goal of intelligence reform and will look forward to reviewing the details of Senator Roberts's plan."

A C.I.A. spokesman said the agency would not comment until it saw details of Mr. Roberts's plan.

But a senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "The proposal is unworkable and would hamper rather than enhance the nation's intelligence efforts at a critical time. It doesn't make any sense.''

The official added, "Rather than bringing intelligence disciplines together it smashes them apart."

Mr. Roberts's proposal brought a mixed reaction from Democrats. Rand Beers, a national security adviser to Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, said in a statement that Mr. Kerry welcomed the plan and that it was similar to proposals from Mr. Kerry, who has embraced all of the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, including creation of a powerful job of national intelligence director.

But Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is a member of the intelligence committee and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, offered immediate resistance, saying it was a mistake for Senator Roberts to move on overhauling the intelligence community without obtaining the support of Democrats.

Hmm, I looked over the bulleted summary and this looks like something sketched out on the back of an envelope. You can click on the NYT link if you want more, but you won't learn much. Roberts is grandstanding and I'm starting to think maybe it isn't such a good idea to have Congress in town in August.

Old Virginny

It hasn't gone Democratic since LBJ

By William Wood | August 22, 2004

IN THE 40 years since Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater, no Democratic candidate for the presidency has carried the Old Dominion. During that time, every other Southern state has voted at least once for a Democrat, but not Virginia. This year, there's lots of talk that Virginia is "in play" -- that John Kerry could carry the state's 13 electoral votes. It's possible -- not probable, but possible.

A Democratic victory would start with the party holding its base: the Northern Virginia suburbs closest to the District of Columbia and the heavily African-American cities near Richmond and Norfolk. But that base is never enough, as 40 years of failure has shown. In 2000, George Bush beat Al Gore in Virginia by more than 220,000 votes.

However, Virginia Democrats see opportunity among the state's concentration of veterans -- the largest in the nation -- many of whom are dissatisfied with Bush's performance in Iraq and his lukewarm support of veteran's issues. Pair these voters with Virginians from economically disadvantaged rural areas and the numbers could add up.

Normally, the last place Democrats would look for a vote transfusion would be Virginia's Fifth Congressional District, known as Southside. This triangle of a district has the often-liberal university town of Charlottesville at its apex, but its base edges the North Carolina border, where the once "Solid South" has long voted Republican. Memories of the Confederacy linger in Southside, home to the tiny hamlet of Appomattox, where Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Ulysses S. Grant. So does bitterness over the civil rights movement; Prince Edward County preferred to shut down its public schools in 1957 rather than obey a federal court order to desegregate.

That doesn't sound like ripe pickings for a Northern liberal like Kerry. And, yet, the economy of that region is undergoing wholesale change, and economic change can predict political change.

For Virginians, this election is about two things: Iraq and the economy. There is a huge contingent of military and retired military in the State, between the Army bases in Northern Virginia, the Navy at Hampton Road and the Marines and quasi-military FBI academy at Quantico. Military votes will break in unusual patterns this year, ordinarily they go 80-20 in favor of the Rs. Hi-tech Northern Virginia runs left-libertarian and even the Republicans who get elected from this part of the world tend to be center-right moderates. Southside Virgina has suffered terribly from evacuation of factory jobs overseas. Parts of the state are still plagued with double digit unemployment numbers.

So, I'll agree with Wood: a Dem win is possible, not probable. The fact that the current governor is a well-like centrist Dem won't hurt, either.

If Virginia does go blue, look for a Kerry landslide elsewhere.

My Woebegone

David Talbot has a wonderful interview with Garrison Keillor in today's Salon.

You write that Richard Nixon was "the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor." What in God's name happened to the Grand Old Party?

The thrill of Naderism is in telling your Democratic pals that you're thinking about ralphing and seeing them get all flushed and earnest and wring their hands and roll their eyes and moan. Actually going into the voting booth and ralphing is no great pleasure, compared to the remorse you'll feel if Mr. Bush is elected and fresh horrors begin to unfold and the nadir is reached and the Bushies keep going down, down, down. I say, Stand tall for Ralph, wear his button, wave his flag, put on his cologne in the morning, be as ralphic as you like, but in that private sacred moment, make your X for the Man.

Overtime Disaster

Rules for Overtime Pay to Take Effect
Employers, Workers Confused by Regulations on Eligibility, Classification

By Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A08

After months of heated debate, a major revision, protests and an unsuccessful legislative assault, the most sweeping changes to the nation's overtime rules in more than 50 years take effect tomorrow.

Workers who earn less than $23,660 annually will become automatically eligible for overtime pay, a boost from the current threshold of $8,060, set in the 1970s. That change is "the most objective bright line standard" in the dense, complex regulations, said Tom Farmer, a senior consultant with Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm. He predicts thousands of workers will begin earning overtime immediately because of the higher threshold

But beyond that, interpreting the complicated, 154-page document still boggles many employers who must first understand the regulations and then translate the changes into new job classifications for employees.

"There is just going to be continued confusion," said Anita Raman, vice president of operations for PrO Unlimited Inc., which helps companies sort out employment regulations. "Employers really thought with the new law, 'I'll definitely be able to figure out who's exempt and who isn't.' They are still wandering around trying to figure out how to classify [employees] correctly."

Other than the higher threshold for automatic eligibility, every change in the new regulations means less overtime protection for workers, said a report released last month by John Fraser, Monica Gallagher and Gail Coleman -- three of the highest-ranking Labor officials under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. "More classes of workers, and a greater proportion of the workforce overall, will be exempt than we believe the Congress could have originally intended," they wrote.

Could you lose your overtime? Click on the link to take the quiz and find out.

Land of the Free

Bush Promises to Offer Detailed Plans at Convention
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: August 22, 2004

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 - President Bush will present what aides say will be a detailed second-term agenda when he is nominated in New York in 10 days, part of an ambitious convention program built on invocations of Sept. 11 and efforts to paint Senator John Kerry as untrustworthy and out of the mainstream.

Mr. Bush's advisers said they were girding for the most extensive street demonstrations at any political convention since the Democrats nominated Hubert H. Humphrey in Chicago in 1968. But in contrast to that convention, which was severely undermined by televised displays of street rioting, Republicans said they would seek to turn any disruptions to their advantage, by portraying protests by even independent activists as Democratic-sanctioned displays of disrespect for a sitting president.

The Politics Of Bullying
Paul Rogat Loeb
August 20, 2004

Examples abound of how bullying politics have shaped our country in the past four years. From the mob in Miami-Dade county to the jammed phone lines of a Democratic voting call center, manipulative tactics have become astoundingly commonplace. The challenge now, says Paul Rogat Loeb, is to make the issue of bullying the central theme of the election. Demanding that our leaders play fair isn't old-fashioned—it's democracy.

It’s hard to talk about such intimidation without sounding partisan or shrill, but we need to make it a central issue, because if it succeeds, it becomes impossible to discuss any other issues. Remember after the 9/11 attacks, when Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly declared that anyone who disagreed with administration policy was an ally of terrorism. We were still stunned and reeling at that point. Yet Democrats and honorable Republicans should have had the courage to say that this definition was unacceptable. Instead they capitulated to the tactics of Republican strategists like Grover Norquist, who proudly quotes Lenin’s motto, “Probe with bayonets, looking for weakness.” And a message of intimidation has dominated since, amplified through the endless echo chamber of O’Reilly, Rush, Hannity and Drudge.

Of all the tactics Bushco uses, I think this is the one that makes me the angriest. "Disrespect for a sitting president?" I have two words for that: Ken Starr. Let's review the First Amendment, shall we?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Economics 101

Not a Hooverville in Sight
By N. GREGORY MANKIW

Published: August 22, 2004

Washington — How is the economy doing? Some economists, pundits and politicians want you to think it's in terrible shape. This is "the worst economic recovery period in terms of job creation that the nation has experienced since the Great Depression," said Laura D'Andrea Tyson, who was chairman of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. So many other pessimists have echoed her in drawing analogies to the 1930's, you might think that millions of Americans are living in Hoovervilles.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Let's look at the facts. In 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression, the unemployment rate peaked at 25 percent. Now it is 5.5 percent, having fallen from 6.3 percent in June 2003. Today's unemployment rate is exactly the same as it was eight years ago, when Ms. Tyson's boss was running for re-election. It is also lower than the average rate in each of the past three decades.

Pathetic. The best Bushco can do is trot out the President of the Council of Economic Advisors to say, "Hey, it's not the depression?" What do other economists think? Let's go look:

GRETCHEN MORGENSON:
The Peril That Trails an Oil Shock

Published: August 22, 2004

TO many people, the drifting stock market and the sky-high United States Treasury market both seem to be signaling an economic slowdown. Stocks can't seem to rally even though corporate earnings have been stellar, and bonds can't seem to fall even though some economic data show strength.

Last week, however, a third market flashed red on the economy: oil. And according to Stephen S. Roach, economist at Morgan Stanley, oil shocks, like the one that may be developing, have an awfully perfect - and perfectly awful - track record. They are always followed by recession.

Last Friday, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil hit $48.95 a barrel, then settled back to $47.86 at the close of trading. That is up from around $33 a barrel at the beginning of the year.

A throng of strategists on Wall Street argue that rising crude prices do not hurt as much as they have in the past because the economy is not as energy dependent as it once was. The amount of energy needed to generate $1 in gross domestic product has fallen by roughly 50 percent in the past three decades, according to Morgan Stanley.
....
No one knows, of course, where oil prices could go. But Mr. Roach said that recent levels are approaching oil-shock territory. And that makes the United States economy especially vulnerable to a recession.

Mr. Roach said the price of oil must stay at current levels for between three and six months to produce a true energy shock. It may not. But if it does? In the past, Mr. Roach found that oil shocks have always been followed by recessions.

The shock that followed the first oil embargo led to the severe downturn of 1973 to 1975. The oil run-up after the 1979 embargo helped produce the recession of 1981-82. And the shock generated by the Persian Gulf war contributed to the relatively mild decline of 1990-91.

What all three events had in common, Mr. Roach said, was that the economy was stalling when the oil shock hit. In both 1973 and 1990, the economy was growing 2.2 percent annually. In the second half of 1979, growth was even weaker, averaging 0.6 percent, annualized. An oil shock, he said, "rarely comes at a time of economic strength and resilience when we can shrug it off and keep growing."

Steve Roach has been getting a lot of play on this site for a while. Readers have poiinted out that Roach has been bearish for a while, but I'm convinced that he's right, in no small part because a consensus is forming behind him.

More Dirty Tricks

Blair snubs Bush
22/08/2004 13:35 - (SA)

London - British Prime Minister Tony Blair is refusing to fly to the United States to receive a medal bestowed on him by the nation for his support over last year's Iraq war, a London newspaper reported on Sunday.

US President George W Bush has put huge pressure on his closest ally to pick up the Congressional Medal of Honor in person, the Sunday Mirror said, quoting a senior British government source.

Blair is immensely popular with large sections of the American public for his staunch support of the Iraq war and the White House believes a visit by the prime minister now would provide a much-needed boost to Bush's re-election campaign, the weekly said.

"There has been a lot of telephone traffic between the White House and Downing Street over the medal in recent week," the Sunday Mirror quoted a senior government source as saying.

"George Bush wants the prime minister to come to Washington and pick up the medal, which is the highest honour America can bestow on a foreigner.

"But he has refused for more than a year now and for good reason. He cannot possibly accept an award for the Iraq war when British and American troops continue to risk their lives there."

The Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award the US can bestow is being turned into a campaign tactic. This outrage alone should be enough to demonstrate that Bush is morally unqualified to be president.

UPDATE: Len notes in Comments that both News24 and I got caught out on this one. It's the Congressional Gold Medal, not the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Pillage

Bush Ad Causes Concern at the Olympics
USOC to Review Campaign Spot's Use of Brand; Iraqis Express Anger

By Sally Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A12

ATHENS, Aug. 21 -- The U.S. Olympic Committee, concerned that President Bush's reelection campaign is using the Athens Games for political purposes, will review a copy of a televised campaign ad that credits Bush with liberating athletes from Afghanistan and Iraq so they can compete here.

"In 1972, there were 40 democracies in the world. Today, 120," a narrator intones, over images of an Olympic stadium with flags flying and swimmers racing in a pool. "Freedom is spreading like a sunrise. At this Olympics, there will be two more free nations. And two fewer terrorist regimes."

The word "Olympic," as well as the brand and concept of Olympianism, belongs exclusively to the International Olympic Committee worldwide and to the USOC in the United States. The bylaws of both organizations prohibit the use of the Olympics for political ends, as does an act of Congress, which states that the USOC "shall be non-political and may not promote the candidacy of any individual seeking public office."

The Bush campaign, however, defended its usage of the ad and said it would continue to run through August. "We are on firm legal ground to mention the Olympics and make a factual point in a political advertisement," Bush spokesman Scott Stanzel told the Associated Press. The Bush reelection committee contends that the USOC technically only has exclusive rights to the Olympic brand to sell products or promote competition.

A USOC spokesman said the ad would be reviewed by the organization's director of government affairs, Steve Bull. "We're aware of it, but we haven't had an opportunity to review it," USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said. "We have contacted the reelection committee and asked for a copy, and once we've received [it], that will give us a chance to determine the extent to which marks and terms may be used."

Isn't this so typically Bush? The arrogance of we'll take what we want and use it as we see fit? Jenkins highlights some of the irony of this particular grab and nab: the Afghans haven't sent any swimmers and the Iraqi soccer team is protesting this use and noting that "freedom" doesn't mean much if you are shot at on the way to the stadium. The Iraqi soccer team has been training outside the country because of the lack of security.

Fake "Objectivity"

Cut-and-Paste Propaganda Infiltrates Opinion Pages

By Paul Farhi

Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A06

Reader, beware! Some of America's newspapers have become unwitting conduits for campaign propaganda.

Thanks to some nifty Internet technology, the campaigns of President Bush and John F. Kerry are making it easy for their supporters to pass off the campaigns' talking points as just another concerned citizen's opinion. Pro-Bush or pro-Kerry letters bearing identical language are flooding letters-to-the-editor columns.

The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., for example, ran a letter last month from a local reader that stated, "New-job figures and other recent economic data show that America's economy is strong and getting stronger, and that the president's jobs and growth plan is working."

The exact same phrasing also appeared in letters printed in about 20 other daily newspapers, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Idaho Statesman and the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.

It wasn't a remarkable coincidence. The letters -- known as "AstroTurf" for their ersatz quality -- were generated by a special cut-and-paste form on Bush's campaign Web site. In addition to providing helpful, ready-to-plagiarize phrases about the president's economic policies, the site also offers faux-letter fodder about such topics as homeland security, the environment, health care and "compassion" ("The President's compassion agenda is touching lives across the globe. . . .").

Kerry's campaign has a similar feature that entreats his supporters to "write" letters as part of his campaign's "MediaCorps." Both campaigns offer tips, such as the Bush campaign's advice to "keep your letters brief and to the point."

Newspaper editors tend to red-pencil outright campaign dogma in news stories. But a letter, ostensibly from a reader, can fly beneath the radar.

Problem is, editors -- like English teachers -- prefer that letter writers think for themselves. "Our policy is that everything published on our letters page has to be an original piece by the author who signs the piece," said Thomas Tobin, deputy editorial page editor of the Rochester paper. Tobin wasn't aware that his paper had printed the Bush-generated letter. In fact, the Democrat and Chronicle printed virtually the same letter twice, under different names, a week apart.

Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of The Washington Post, said, "We want letters that are actually written by the people who sign their names to them. I can't be sure we screen out every precooked missive, but we do our best."

Dishonest piece, Paul Farhi. The Bush campaign's astro-turf efforts have been well documented all over the blogosphere. The one piece you can cite by a Kerry supporter is an original letter mocking the Bush effort. That's hardly an example of both sides doing the same thing. This crummy piece might get a letter to the editor from me. There is "balance" and then there are the facts. What are the facts, Paul? Tell me that and I can figure what they mean.

Mirrors and Blue Smoke

Bush Health Care Plan Seems to Fall Short
Gap Grows Between Hard Data, Projections for Covering 10 Million Uninsured

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A04

If the Republican-controlled Congress enacted President Bush's entire health care agenda, as many as 10 million people who lack health insurance would be covered at a cost of $102 billion over the next decade, according to his campaign aides.

But when the Bush-Cheney team was asked to provide documentation, the hard data fell far short of the claims, a gap supported by several independent analyses.

Projections by the Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, academics and the campaign's Web site suggest that under the best circumstances, Bush's plans for health care would extend coverage to no more than 6 million people over the next decade and possibly as few as 2 million.

"There's little reason to expect that there would be any reduction in the overall numbers of Americans without health insurance," Brookings Institution health policy expert Henry J. Aaron said. "We're swimming against a rather swift current in our efforts to reduce the number of uninsured, and the power of President Bush's proposals to move against that current is, it seems to me, very, very limited."

In his bid for a second term, Bush is reprising much of the health care agenda he ran on in 2000, including tax credits for individuals who purchase insurance, and the formation of new, largely unregulated purchasing pools for small businesses called association health plans.
....
Since Bush took office, the number of Americans without health insurance has climbed by 4 million, to nearly 44 million. On its Web site and at news briefings, the Bush campaign says that through its actions overseeing Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, the administration has "expanded eligibility to more than 2.6 million people."

The statement gives the impression "they have extended coverage to 2.6 million more, and that is not really true," said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. "In reality, only 200,000 of them got coverage" because of Bush administration efforts.

Megan Hauck, deputy policy director for health care of the Bush campaign, did not have figures but said she thought the Kaiser data were "awfully low."

Total enrollment in the two government health programs did rise during Bush's tenure -- by about 7.5 million. But for the vast majority, coverage was required by law, not the result of any policy change.

"Part of the reason more people were covered is the economy got so bad that people lost income," Rowland said. "There were more low-income people under Bush than previously, so they became eligible for public programs."

Although Hauck generally touts the campaign's projection that the Bush proposals would expand coverage to 10 million Americans, she said it could be as few as 6 million. Of the 10 million, half will use the proposed $1,000 tax credit ($3,000 for families) to buy insurance. The estimate comes from congressional testimony by a Treasury Department official who speculated that the 10-year, $70 billion proposal could result in coverage for 4 million to 5 million people.

One year earlier, the Bush budget set aside $89 billion for the same credit, claiming it would cover 4 million. Analysts say it is impossible to see how spending $20 billion less, at a time when premiums are much higher, could achieve the same level of coverage.

Ceci Connolly partakes of a bit too much of the "he said, she said" in this piece, but the bottom line, that the Bushist proposal is yet more mirrors and blue smoke, is still discernable. Note once again the amazing consistency of Team Bush: when given the choice between substance and smoke, they always go with the latter.

Going Dark

Going Negative: When It Works
By JIM RUTENBERG and KATE ZERNIKE

Published: August 22, 2004

Every campaign cycle, in fact, seems to begin with the promise of an uplifting, mutually respectful debate of the issues, only to devolve into character attacks and distortions, and for good reason: negative ads work. Voters may say they want candidates to stay positive, but in truth, they respond more readily, more viscerally, to attack ads.

"People like a fight," said Roger Stone, a Republican strategist. "Put up an ad about the intricacies of the federal budget and people will turn the channel. Put up an ad like the Swift boat one, that creates an indelible image in the voter's mind."
....
Studies and focus groups have shown that people like ads that are based on policy, factually accurate and that forecast how a candidate would govern, giving them a reason to vote for a candidate - as well as a reason to vote against the opponent.

"Unless people think it's untruthful, you're not going to get a backlash out of it," Ms. Jamieson said. "If people think the source is credible, that the source is speaking out of a deep conviction, you don't get a sense of attack."

The infamous Willie Horton ad, for example, which portrayed Michael Dukakis as weak on crime in 1988, was based in fact and policy - namely, that, while Mr. Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts, felons were let out of prison on weekend furloughs.

And ads from a group calling itself Republicans for Clean Air that slammed Senator John McCain's environmental record and lauded that of Gov. George W. Bush before the crucial New York, California and Ohio Republican primaries in 2000 became the scourge of political watchdog groups. But that does not bother Rob Allyn, whose firm produced them - wholly independently of Mr. Bush's campaign, he adds.

"All I can say is that the day the independent advocacy effort was launched the media was reporting Governor Bush was 8 points behind in New York," he said. "And he won."

If this article is correct, Kerry's new ad (which I haven't seen yet) should be a blockbuster.

Pork, No Beans

Don't Mind If I Do
Congress Says It's Going All Out for the Troops. Here's $8.9 Billion in Pork That Says It's Not.

By Winslow T. Wheeler
Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page B01

We're in the middle of simultaneous wars against terrorism and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the outcomes are anything but certain. To help fight these wars, Congress passed a gigantic $416 billion appropriations bill for the Department of Defense in July, which President Bush signed into law on Aug. 5. The measure, the president declared, ensures that "our armed forces have every tool they need to meet and defeat the threats of our time."

Well, not exactly. If you look at the hidden details of the legislation, it's clear that Congress has failed dismally -- and deliberately -- to fulfill its constitutional mandates to "raise and support armies" and to "provide and maintain a navy."
The Post's opinion and commentary section runs every Sunday.

Legislators have amply demonstrated that what they're really interested in is raising and providing some home-state pork to impress voters in an election year. To that end, they have busied themselves with squeezing funds for war essentials such as training, weapons maintenance and spare parts -- things troops in combat need more, not less, of -- to send extra dollars their constituents' way. And it's equal-opportunity raiding: Both Republicans and Democrats have been fully engaged in this behavior. Even Capitol Hill's self-proclaimed "pork buster," Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who has made a regular practice of calling his colleagues on their gluttony, has essentially given the gorging a wink and a nod.

A pork-hungry Congress has long been with us, of course, but this year, with our armed forces engaged on two major fronts, Congress has pushed the pork in the defense budget to an all-time high, totaling $8.9 billion. And even as they did so -- and voted to fund wartime operations at only a fraction of what nearly all analysts agree is needed for the duration of 2005 -- conservatives, liberals and moderates alike have presented themselves as doing everything they can think of to support the troops in the field. Don't believe it.

A brief examination of how the Senate, where I worked for three decades for senators from both parties, handled the defense appropriations bill this summer illustrates the chasm between appearances and reality. On June 24, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Alaska Republican Ted Stevens, rammed the $416 billion bill through the Senate in just a few hours. Forty-two amendments, the majority of them involving small spending projects promoted by senators with an eye on bringing home the bacon, were adopted by unrecorded "voice" votes -- usually after cursory deliberation that failed even to explain the subject matter.
....
As usual, McCain performed the very useful task of highlighting many of the amendments, tallying up the cost and offering appropriately caustic remarks about his colleagues' penchant for "porking up our appropriations bills." Based on such revelations, a few journalists wrote articles about some of the foolishness, such as how Stevens and his fellow Alaska Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, had junked up the bill with help for their state's fisheries.

But both McCain and the press were just going through the motions. With Stevens in a big rush to push the defense bill through in just one day, McCain helped speed things along by not taking the time to actually deliver his speech. Instead, he simply had Stevens insert the text into the Congressional Record. Stevens was probably happy to extend McCain this courtesy. Not only did the unspoken speech not draw undue attention to the Senate's goings-on that day, but McCain was also helping out by taking no parliamentary action against the pork-laden bill. He didn't even throw up a speed bump by seeking recorded roll call votes, let alone any real debate, on the pork amendments. Roll call votes take at least 15 minutes each, and spending that much time on a few dozen amendments was apparently more inconvenience than McCain was willing to impose.
....
In parts of the bill that no one talked about, the Armed Services Committee raided the accounts that support combat readiness. Specifically, the committee cut Army depot weapons maintenance by $100 million (just when the repair backlog from the wars has grown to unmanageable proportions), and it removed $1.5 billion from the services' "working capital funds" for transportation and consumables (e.g. helicopter rotor blades, tank tracks, spare parts, fuel, food and much more). In one unseemly move, the committee also cut from one account $532 million for civilian repair technicians activated to support the deployed forces, claiming the money should have been credited elsewhere in the bill. But then it failed to add the money where it said it belonged.

In another feat of legislative trickery, the committee cut another $1.67 billion throughout the bill in anticipation of lower inflation in 2005 -- a pretense at a savings that OMB said in written comments to the committee "do[es] not exist." OMB concluded that "the practical effect of these reductions would be cuts to critical readiness accounts." In response, the Armed Services Committee did nothing and urged the Senate to endorse its bill, which it did by a vote of 97-0 on June 23.
....
And the media? Not for the first time, they were sound asleep. Using members' ready-for-publication news releases (or anonymous tips from their staffs) and fact sheets from the Appropriations Committee can help a harried journalist meet an impending deadline on long and complex legislation. But only part of the story will be told. Four hundred pages of legalese and small print tables in a bill and committee report can actually make some pretty interesting reading, but apparently no journalist seems to think so. I have looked for but failed to find even a single news article about the raids by the Armed Services and Appropriations committees on funding intended to help the armed forces fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's all there in the fiendish details, but they were ignored.

The consequences are serious. Extraordinarily expensive defense bills pass Congress, and the congressional authors are credited with being pro-defense heavies. Pork-busting reformers augment their already inflated reputations. The troops in the field think Washington is doing its best to help them, and the public believes no stone is left unturned to ensure that the nation's sons and daughters are being sent to war with all the training and other forms of support we would want for them.

In each case, the reality is quite different. Nonetheless, Congress is content; there's $8.9 billion in pork to impress the voters back home before the elections, and no one is the wiser about what is really being done to "raise and support armies" and "provide and maintain a navy" -- or not.

I was unaware of all of this. Were you?

Lou's Crusade

Outsourcing and Patriotism

By Bill Moyers, NOW. Posted August 21, 2004.

Lou Dobbs talks about how American businesses are putting their interests ahead of the national interest with the outsourcing of jobs.

Following is Bill Moyers inteview with CNN's Lou Dobbs on the PBS program NOW. Moyers starts the interview by discussing Dobbs' new book, "Exporting America : Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas."

Bill Moyers: This book is more than an economic argument, it's a political manifesto. Let me read you the opening paragraph. Quote, "The power of big business over our national life has never been greater. Never have there been fewer business leaders willing to commit to the national interest over the selfish interest for the good of the company over that of the company's they head." Are you saying that these companies are unpatriotic for outsourcing jobs?

Dobbs: The economist who is the father of the comparative and absolute advantage. He did not in any way suggest that you should have the middle class of any country competing with 30 million unemployed Chinese. He never dreamed about the portability of the factors of production, capital and labor, our knowledge base, our technological advantages, which are being exported and sent to these countries for no other reason than the fact that their labor is cheaper than ours. And the idea that we would put our labor force in competition with the labor force in the case of India that's basically double our size, most of whom speak English, and work for about a tenth of our wages, is a political judgment. It is not an economic judgment.

Reality Check

Two Power Brokers Collide in Iraq
By JOHN F. BURNS

If there has been one message written in all that the insurgents have done, whether Sunnis or Shiites, these Iraqis say, it is a rejection of the very idea that Iraq's future can be chosen under an American military umbrella - more broadly, of the idea that America and its notions should have any place in reshaping Iraq at all.

When they were done with their spinning, senior Western officials who briefed reporters on the developments in Najaf seemed to agree. Najaf, one said bluntly, represented as crucial a juncture as America has faced in Iraq: one from which Iraq could proceed, with the emasculation of Mr. Sadr's rebellion, to a new period in which Iraqi politicians, not gunmen, could begin to set the country's agenda; or, conversely, if the government became resigned to leaving Mr. Sadr's militia still rooted in the city, to a further slide into chaos.

"If the government takes a hit in Najaf, it would encourage the various armed groups to stand up and say, 'O.K., Najaf belongs to us,' 'Falluja belongs to us,' 'Ramadi belongs to us,' 'Samarra belongs to us,' " the official said. In that case, he said, what would be left would not be a country with an accepted constitution and elections, but a "Lebanon-ization," a fracturing into separate, warlord-ruled fiefs, with the gun supplanting the rule of law.

Retreating into the orotund language favored by diplomats, he suggested that this was hardly what America intended when it came here promising Iraqis something far better than Saddam Hussein. "With different militias controlling different cities, that obviously doesn't promise the political stability Iraq needs," he said.

John Burns has been one of the better reporters on the scene in country, but the first part of this article is simple stenography for CENTCOM. This leak from the conclusion of the article is correct, however, we are headed for the Lebanon-ization of Iraq and we are watching it happen in Fallujah and Najaf.

Tom Engelhardt in today's Asia Times has a brilliant deconstruction of the terrible press coverage of the Iraq war.

Last week, through a front-page reconsideration of its Iraq reporting written by media columnist Howard Kurtz ("The Post on WMDs: An inside story"), the Washington Post finally hung out a piece or two of its dirty laundry. This comes three months after the New York Times buried its Iraq mea culpa on page 10 (and then its ombudsman Daniel Okrent did a far more forthcoming consideration of the same).

You'll also find the following howler from executive editor Leonard Downie Jr: "We were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration [of President George W Bush] was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale," not to speak of Bob Woodward's claim that "We had no alternative sources of information" - at a moment when he knew from the horse's mouth, so to speak, that the Bush administration was intent on war with Iraq. (Of course, you didn't need insider sources to grasp this, just a pair of eyes and ears.) Imagine, though, that Washington's imperial paper of record was focused only on discovering what then couldn't have been more obvious to tens of millions of people around the world: that the Bush administration was hell-bent on and determined only to go to war, WMD (weapons of mass destruction) or no. So imagine, in turn, Kurtz is the best we can hope for a year and a quarter after Baghdad was taken, after a series of tsunami-like events that have sent the Bush administration reeling, long after every aspect of its WMD claims has gone down those "aluminum tubes" (doubts about which the Post admits to having back-paged) and into oblivion. And they say the president has a tough time acknowledging error!

Dirty Tricks

via The Agonist:

Kerry files FEC complaint against swift boat group
Accuses 527 of illegally working with Bush campaign

Friday, August 20, 2004 Posted: 9:14 PM EDT (0114 GMT)

(CNN) -- The Kerry presidential campaign filed a complaint Friday with the Federal Election Commission, alleging that ads from an anti-Kerry veterans' group are inaccurate and "illegally coordinated" with Republicans and the Bush-Cheney campaign.

The Kerry campaign has denied any collusion with those groups.

But if you want to find out what the substance of the complaint is, you have to go to the blogosphere and the redoubtable Digby:

I wonder if its appropriate for Ken Cordier, a member of the steering committee for Veterans For Bush-Cheney '04 to appear in the new nonaffiliated independent 527 Swift Boat Liars For Bush ad?

But some might think it doesn't look quite kosher. In fact, some might think it looks downright illegal.

Thumbs Down

Growing Perception World Public Disapproves of War

College Park, MD: A new PIPA/Knoswledge Networks poll finds that a large majority perceives the Bush administration making assertions about pre-war Iraq in sharp contrast to the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Eighty percent perceive the administration as "currently saying that Iraq, just before the war, had actual weapons of mass destruction" (60%) or that it had a major WMD program (20%). Similarly, 70% perceive the administration as currently saying Iraq "gave substantial support to al-Qaeda" (43%) or was directly involved in the September 11 attacks (27%).

(more here

What a relief! Here I was worrying that most of my fellow citizens were utter idiots.

For Thee and Me

3,000 Jobs; 500,000 Seekers
A tsunami of applicants at the ports here doesn't bode well for Bush.

Bush administration spin doctors won't be able to paint a happy face on the fact that an effort to fill 3,000 new jobs at the increasingly busy ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach led to a spectacular flood of applications, with half a million underemployed people seeking to fill the slots. This California gold rush — applications were mailed from across the country — is hard evidence of an unusually tough job market that continues to disappoint nearly three years into an economic recovery.

The port jobs, being filled after a lottery in which applicants' postcards were chosen from a giant bin, are part time and offer no benefits. Some could evaporate after crews process the wave of imported goods heading for store shelves in time for the holiday shopping season. Yet, as a labor union official put it, Thursday's job lottery clicked with Americans because "people are hungry for a decent job."

On that score, these jobs deliver. Pay ranges from $20.66 to $28 an hour, well above the average of $8.38 per hour that entry-level workers earn in Los Angeles County. And those whose names were drawn also fall in line for possible full-time employment and membership in the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union, with a pension and healthcare coverage. Contrast that promise with the frustrating reality facing many Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. California employers cut 17,300 jobs in July; nationwide, just 32,000 jobs were created, well below the 250,000 most economists had predicted. And many of the jobs being created look a lot worse than the jobs that have been eliminated.

Temporary workers remain in hot demand because employers question the economy's strength. Rising healthcare costs make hiring new workers prohibitively expensive for many businesses, while a growing outsourcing trend means some American companies are doing their hiring overseas. Even though corporate earnings have remained relatively strong throughout the recovery, the fruits of the economic rebound have been slow to trickle down to employees in the form of fatter paychecks. Employers don't need to dangle additional money to keep employees because so many Americans are looking for jobs.

Give President Bush credit for staying on message. The White House takes every opportunity to remind voters that this economic rebound comes courtesy of the administration's ill-advised and poorly timed tax cuts. No matter that the Congressional Budget Office recently confirmed that the tax cuts were skewed to benefit the richest Americans rather than middle-class taxpayers. The president is still calling on Congress to extend the cuts. So it's little surprise that a recent survey conducted by a financial services firm found upscale Americans more optimistic than at any time in the last two years.

The president undoubtedly will use the upcoming Republican convention to remind voters that the economy has "turned the corner." But photographs of port officials wading through half a million job applications are a stark reminder that, for many Americans, it's the wrong corner.

I believe I coined the phrase "bi-polar economy" earlier this year. That is what we have: one economy for the wealthy, another for the serf class, you and me. A decent job is something you get by lottery now, not by training, education and preparation.

BAH-AH-AH-AH

via the indispensible yankee doodle:

An antiseptic war
As American deaths near the 1000 mark, the horror is covered up with obfuscation, intimidation, and lies

We don’t see the flag-draped coffins of American soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base, thanks to the Pentagon’s rigid enforcement of a policy banning news photographers. And the media, either out of squeamishness or a desire not to be accused of being unpatriotic, have all but ignored those who have been seriously injured. In Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 there is a segment on soldiers who have lost limbs and who are undergoing slow, painful rehabilitation. What’s almost shocking is the realization of how little of this we’ve seen in the mainstream media. Young men and women are giving their lives and their limbs in a war that was launched under false pretenses, to ferret out weapons and terrorists that didn’t exist. And now those who actually paid the price for Bush’s war are being forgotten. The media must be held accountable for not showing the war’s true face, regardless of the obstacles. Their failure stands as yet another example of caving in to Bush and company.

The cover-up deepens. The American-installed puppet regime, led by the thuggish prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has recently taken to threatening journalists with death. Eager to crush the uprising led by the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr by any means necessary, the government has announced that it will shoot any foreign reporter who attempts to cover the fighting in the holy city of Najaf. Reuters quoted a police lieutenant as telling journalists, "We will kill you if you leave the hotel. I will put four snipers on the roof to shoot anyone who leaves."

New York Times reporter John Burns, interviewed earlier this week on PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, said, "It’s come to the point where it’s really too dangerous for journalists to even enter Najaf." Noting that the Iraqi government also shut down Al-Jazeera recently, Burns added, "It begins to look as though Dr. Allawi’s government, for all its profession that it wants to protect journalists, is not very keen on giving us too close a coverage to what’s going on down there."

On that, you can be sure that the Allawi regime and the White House see eye to eye.

JUST AS the Bush administration’s surrogates are crushing dissent in Iraq, so is it attempting to intimidate those who would speak out against its policies at home. This week comes the remarkable news that the FBI has been questioning dissidents across the United States in hopes of keeping them away from the Republican National Convention in New York later this month.

According to a report in the New York Times, the FBI claims its efforts are aimed at preventing crime, not stopping protest marches. Yet its heavy-handed tactics could very well persuade many activists to stay home. Sarah Bardwell, a 21-year-old intern for a Denver anti-war organization affiliated with the pacifist American Friends Service Committee, said she had been visited by six investigators.

In an even more chilling example of the FBI’s anti–First Amendment tactics, three young men from Missouri reportedly decided against traveling to both the Democratic and Republican conventions after they received subpoenas and were told they were targets of an ill-defined terrorism investigation — apparently because they had engaged in minor civil disobedience at protests. In fact, they couldn’t have come to Boston even if they had wanted to, since they were ordered to testify before a grand jury during the Democratic convention. Their ACLU lawyer, Denise Lieberman, was quoted as saying that the three "got the message loud and clear that if you make plans to go to a protest, you could be subject to arrest or a visit from the FBI."

Flag-draped coffins arrive in the United States under cover of a government-imposed media blackout. An American-installed regime threatens to kill journalists. The FBI terrorizes dissidents into not exercising their free-speech rights. If such things had taken place while Richard Nixon was president, they would have been added to the bill of impeachment against him. How have we come to this?

The media having become the shepherds, we are a nation of sheep.

What Buttonwood Said

Oil Prices Hit Record on Fears of Iraqi Insurgency
By JAD MOUAWAD

Published: August 20, 2004

ARIS, Aug. 20 — Oil prices reached a new high today, before retreating to close below Thursday's record level, after the Iraqi insurgency increased its pressure on the country's oil infrastructure and traders feared growing unrest might interrupt crude exports.

Crude futures for September delivery traded in New York rose at one point to $49.40 a barrel, up 70 cents, the highest level since the New York Mercantile Exchange opened in 1983. But by the end of trading this afternoon, the price had dropped to $47.60 a barrel, down $1.10 from Thursday's record close of $48.70.

Oil has gained 57 percent so far this year, reaching records every day but one since July 30.

In Basra on Thursday night, insurgents set fire to the headquarters of Southern Oil, the company that operates Iraq's oilfields in the south. Oil exports have been cut in half, to one million barrels a day, since Aug. 8, after insurgents forced the closure of one of two pipelines in the area.

The other main outlet for Iraq's oil production, a pipeline linking the country's northern oilfields to Turkey, has been repeatedly hit in the past year, forcing its partial shutdown.

Before the war, Iraq's oil production hovered around 2.2 million barrels a day.

The attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure come against the backdrop of fighting between the American military and Shiite militants in the city of Najaf and in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. There are conflicting reports today from news agencies about whether the Iraqi police had taken control in Najaf.

"The situation in Iraq has deteriorated. It's now like Murphy's Law: Everything that can go wrong, will," said Deborah White, an economist with SG Commodities in Paris. "Iraq is a war zone again."

Oil markets have been on edge in recent weeks, their concerns heightened by potential trouble in many of the world's largest oil regions. In Russia, it was pressure from the government against Yukos, the country's largest oil company. In Venezuela, it was a contested referendum on whether to oust President Hugo Chávez, though he did stay in office. In the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Charley forced the closure of oil installations. And in Iraq, the situation with Moktada al-Sadr, the cleric opposed to the interim Iraqi government and its American backers, is still unclear.

Since most countries are producing at their maximum levels, an interruption in exports from Iraq or elsewhere would not be easily matched. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which accounts for about a third of the world's oil production, has little spare capacity itself to make up for production shortfalls.

OPEC's 11 members are pumping 30 million barrels a day, the highest level since 1979. They can lift production to 30.5 million barrels next month, according to OPEC, which is based in Vienna.

Only Saudi Arabia, OPEC's most powerful member, can still increase its output. The world's biggest oil producer has already raised production by one million barrels a day in recent months and is currently pumping 9.3 million barrels a day. Saudi Arabia still has another 1.3 million barrels a day it could bring to the market if needed.

"Because the oil markets are fundamentally tighter, the threat of a disruption is a real one," said Irene Himona, an analyst with Morgan Stanley in London. "This is where the fears concerning Russia, Venezuela and Iraq are playing in" and are driving up prices.

At the same time, Chinese consumption has fueled global demand growth over the past year. Both the International Energy Agency, based in Paris, and OPEC have been caught short by the strength of global oil demand. Both raised their forecasts in recent days.

The I.E.A., an adviser to 26 industrialized nations, projects global oil demand at 82.2 million barrels a day this year and 84 million barrels a day in 2005, about 730,000 barrels more than previously forecast.

For its part, OPEC now expects global oil consumption this year to reach 81.18 million barrels a day, up 280,000 barrels from an earlier estimate.

Tol' ya. Hello, Buttonwood. See post below.

Oil and Economics

Buttonwood
Pouring oil on the flames
Aug 20th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda

How would financial markets react if the oil price stays stubbornly high?

Alas for oil consumers, the Middle East does not have a monopoly on instability: from Russia to Venezuela, fate has decided to hide oil under some pretty unsavoury countries. The oil price has climbed further of late as the troubles of these two countries in particular have bubbled to the surface.

If consumers do not pick up the full tab, companies will have to pick up some of it through lower margins. There is plenty of room for them to do so because profits are at record highs. Falling profits are unlikely to be anything but baleful for a stockmarket that is generously valued and under pressure from rising interest rates. Any industry heavily exposed to a high oil price and falling consumption would not seem the most toothsome of investments. Possibly, then, car companies and (especially) airlines might best be taken off the menu. Shares in both have already lost around 20% of their value this year, compared with a fall of some 4% in the S&P; 500.

For Your Retirement

Bush Opening Social Security Debate Without Saying Much

By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Even as President Bush has started telling voters that overhauling Social Security would be a key part of his second-term agenda, he is likely to avoid offering specifics before election day, according to Bush aides, lawmakers and privatization advocates.

Instead of getting into details, which would almost certainly embroil him in controversy, Bush is campaigning on broad principles for revamping the 70-year-old retirement system in a way that fits his vision for an "ownership society," the sources said.

Bush revised his campaign speech in recent weeks to include a push for changing the program to permit personal investment accounts, a proposal many conservative activists have been hoping for months he would spotlight.

"I'm worried about our Social Security system," he said Wednesday at a stop in Wisconsin. "I'm not worried about it for baby boomers like me. The system is solvent. But if you're a younger worker, I think it's important that you be allowed to have your own personal savings account that you can carry with you throughout your life…. "

Bush is promising to protect existing benefits for current retirees and others who will soon retire, while holding the line on the paycheck deductions that finance Social Security. But he is reiterating his desire to let younger workers begin using for private investment some of the money they pay to the government for the program.

Purposefully left unanswered are the most divisive questions — such as what fraction of a worker's payroll taxes could go into a private investment account instead of the Social Security trust fund, how the government would pay the estimated $1 trillion in transition costs, and how the government would protect retirees whose investments did not turn out well.

Many experts, including some conservatives, also think any meaningful privatization plan would eventually involve some combination of reduced benefits and higher worker contributions. Bush is expected to continue to skirt that issue as well.

Confronting such matters, Republican strategists fear, could make Bush and other GOP candidates vulnerable to attacks in key states such as Florida, where senior voters have a history of punishing candidates who talk of changing Social Security.
....
"Social Security faces a long-term deficit, but calling it a crisis is an exaggeration," said Peter Orszag, an economist at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank. "The scale of the problem is manageable. If your car has a flat tire, you don't get rid of the car."

Polls show a majority of voters back the creation of personal accounts, particularly when the question is posed without mention of potentially higher taxes or shrinking benefits.

A Gallup Poll last fall showed that more than six in 10 voters backed a shift to private accounts. But it also showed a stark generational divide — 82% of voters younger than 30 backed the privatization proposal, but support steadily declined among other age groups, to less than 30% among those at least 65.

"People who are into the system now have no interest in changing anything because they're worried about losing benefits," said Frank Newport, the poll's editor in chief.

As Comrade Max has taught us so many times, the "Social Security Scare" is just that, another GOP terror tactic. Social Security is fine with nothing more than a little tweaking. Further down the article, the LAT writers try to make the case that the solvency of SS is a partisan issue, which is silly, it's an accounting issue. Balancing numbers isn't a partisan process.

CYA in Boldface Italic

Every time I think Bushco has defined the outer limits of outrage, they push it a little further.

CIA Study on Iraq Weapons Is Off Course, Officials Say
The agency is trying to project what Hussein may have developed had the U.S. not invaded.

By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Having failed to find banned weapons in Iraq, the CIA is preparing a final report on its search that will speculate on what the deposed regime's capabilities might have looked like years from now if left unchecked, according to congressional and intelligence officials.

The CIA plans for the report, due next month, to project as far as 2008 what Iraq might have achieved in its illegal weapons programs if the United States had not invaded the country last year, the officials said.

The new direction of the inquiry is seen by some officials as an attempt to obscure the fact that no banned weapons — or even evidence of active programs — have been found, and instead emphasize theories that Iraq may have been planning to revive its programs.

The change in focus has angered some intelligence officials and at least one key Democrat in Congress and has brought charges of political motivation.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) protested the decision in a sharply worded letter to acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin last week. Trying to forecast Iraq's weapons capabilities four years into the future would be, "by definition, highly speculative" and "inconsistent with the original mission of the Iraq Survey Group," Harman wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Times.

Such an effort would be a significant departure for a survey group whose primary mission when it was established last year was to locate and destroy stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that the CIA and other agencies believed were hidden across Iraq.

David Kay, who led the group before resigning in January, said that speculating on Iraq's future capabilities was never part of the team's mission.

"Absolutely not," Kay said in a telephone interview Thursday. "We were to search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. No one ever suggested to me in any of the discussions before I took the job, afterward, or even when I left, that [assessing Iraq's future capabilities] was a thing that should have been done."

Kay and others also questioned how such an assessment would be possible given the disarray that characterized President Saddam Hussein's government in recent years and external events that had altered the flow of illicit weapons technologies around the world.

Kay reported in January that Iraq's programs were dormant before the war. The country was still subject to United Nations sanctions and was facing a new round of inspections. Since then, authorities have cracked down on global weapons markets, most notably by unraveling the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Kay was replaced in January by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who is overseeing the production of the survey group's final report. A CIA spokesman declined to say whether the report would attempt to forecast what Iraq's weapons programs might have looked like if there had not been a U.S. invasion.

"Charles Duelfer's mission is to search for the truth, and he made clear when he took the job that he was absolutely committed to following the evidence wherever it takes us," CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said. "That is what he's doing, and that is what will be reflected in his report."

The failure to find stockpiles of banned weapons has been a source of embarrassment to the CIA, as well as to the Bush administration, which made ridding Hussein of illicit arms the main rationale for a preemptive war against Iraq.

For that reason, some officials familiar with the CIA's plans for the final report said they thought it was politically motivated and designed to focus the public's attention on hypothetical future threats.

"The case made by the Bush White House was that [Iraq] was an imminent threat that must be dealt with today," said a senior congressional official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Coming out later and saying [Hussein] would have had the weapons in 2006 or 2008 … is basically a way to justify preemption."

In other words, he might have had weapons of mass destruction related programs at some point in the future. Boys, I think this ship has already sailed.

Oil Threat

Oil Rises Above $49 a Barrel as Iraq Fighting Threatens Exports

Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil futures rose to a record, surpassing $49 a barrel in New York, on concern that fighting between U.S. forces and followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will cut shipments.

Crude oil for September delivery was up 58 cents, or 1.2 percent, at $49.28 a barrel at 10:01 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices reached $49.33 a barrel, the highest since oil began trading in New York in 1983. Futures were 59 percent higher than a year earlier.

As Oil Prices Boil . . .

By David Ignatius
Friday, August 20, 2004; Page A19

You wouldn't know it from the running-on-empty rhetoric of the U.S. presidential campaign, but crude oil prices hit an all-time high this week of more than $48 a barrel. Some economists are warning about a full-blown energy crisis, with prices rising to $65 or more until they bring on a global recession that finally slows demand.

The oil market right now is a sort of inverse bubble, propelled by its own momentum of anxiety and bad news. Wherever analysts look for reliable sources of oil, they see trouble -- in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, in Russia, in Venezuela. And on the demand side, they see the inexorable rise of the Chinese economy and its new hunger for oil imports. So traders bid up the price of crude.

It's a one-way market at the moment, with prices crashing through the previous barriers. "The $50 level is acting like a magnet," energy consultant Peter Beutel told the Associated Press on Wednesday, after prices for U.S. light crude topped $47 per barrel.

No market goes up forever. But Philip Verleger, a respected energy economist, warns that over the next several years, the price pressure will probably get worse. "Prices may rise to $50 per barrel, or $60 per barrel, or even $70 per barrel," he writes in a recent report to clients. "They will likely remain there until growth in petroleum demand slows down enough to match available refining, logistical and productive capacity."

Verleger says the situation reminds him of 1973, when James Akins, who later became U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs titled "The Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf Is Here." Soon after the article appeared, oil prices spiked -- to double even what Akins had predicted. "I have that ghastly feeling that we are about to repeat that cycle," Verleger worries.
....
So with a severe energy crisis just over the horizon, what do the U.S. presidential candidates have to say? Not much that's helpful. The Kerry and Bush campaigns both have energy policies, of course. In fact, they're actually quite similar -- calling for more investment in coal and other alternatives to oil. But there's no sense, in either camp, that the country is facing a severe threat to its economy.

Both candidates attack each other for once favoring new taxes on energy. The Bush Web site even has a gizmo that allows you to calculate, with spurious precision, how much the gasoline tax increase that Kerry advocated years ago would cost you -- depending on the make and model of your car, where you live, and how many miles you drive each week. The Kerry Web site, not to be outdone in the cheap-shot department, denounces a proposal Vice President Cheney made in 1986 to tax oil imports -- claiming that if enacted, it would by now have cost consumers $1.2 trillion.

What makes these taxophobic attacks especially outrageous is that many economists believe new taxes on oil are one of the few ways that the United States might regain control of its energy destiny -- and move from the crazy oil-anxiety bubble of today toward something more stable and secure.

The non-debate over energy illustrates what's depressing about this campaign. The country is in serious trouble -- with record-high oil prices and the threat of a new energy crisis just one example of our global problems. But rather than the serious debate the country needs, we're hearing platitudes. George Bush and John Kerry evidently would rather play it safe and avoid politically controversial proposals, which in today's world is downright dangerous.

The Dark Side

Doctors implicated in abuse of Iraqi prisoners

00:01 20 August 04

NewScientist.com news service

The medical community is calling for an investigation into the role of US medical staff in the prisoner abuse that took place in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, according to two new journal articles and appeals from physicians' groups.

Miles, along with the journal's editors, is calling for a full investigation of the role of medical staff after he scoured news reports and available government documents on the abuse.

Abu Ghraib Probe Points to Top Brass

By Josh White and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 20, 2004; Page A01

An Army investigation into the role of military intelligence personnel in the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison reports that the scandal was not just caused by a small circle of rogue military police soldiers but resulted from failures of leadership rising to the highest levels of the U.S. command in Iraq, senior defense officials said.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report has not yet been completed, said the 9,000-page document says that a combination of leadership failings, confounding policies, lack of discipline and absolute confusion at the prison led to the abuse. It widens the scope of culpability from seven MPs who have been charged with abuse to include nearly 20 low-ranking soldiers who could face criminal prosecution in military courts. No Army officers, however, are expected to face criminal charges.

Officials also said that the report implicates five civilian contractors in the abuse, and that Army officials plan to recommend that their cases be sent to the Justice Department for possible prosecution in civilian courts.

The investigation, shepherded by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, is one of several into the abuse, which became widely known after hundreds of photographs surfaced depicting detainees in mock sexual positions, in a naked human pyramid and being intimidated by unmuzzled dogs. While the Pentagon and the White House have consistently blamed the abuse on what they have called a rogue band of MPs acting on their own, officials said this new report spreads the blame and points to widespread problems at the prison.

The findings, elements of which were reported by other news organizations, appear to support contentions by defense attorneys for the charged MPs that the problems at the prison were pervasive and were exacerbated by a lack of leadership. The lawyers have asserted that their clients were acting on orders when they stripped detainees and kept them awake using stress positions and humiliating poses. Officials said the Fay report will stop short of saying that soldiers were ordered to abuse detainees.

One senior defense official said the investigation specifically decries the fact that many soldiers saw or knew of the abuse and never reported it to authorities. Concerns are also raised about the vague instructions from high-ranking officials about what was allowed during interrogations at the prison, which led military intelligence and military police soldiers to misapply them, the official said.

"The interrogation policy was misunderstood, and it was one of a few policies that failed," the official said. "There was total confusion about the military intelligence tactics, techniques and procedures."

Another defense official said the Army study would be "a comprehensive report, a thorough look at another aspect of Abu Ghraib, to include up to the CJTF-command level," a reference to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who until recently was the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Others said the report criticizes the leadership but softens its assessment by noting that top officers were focused on the insurgency that erupted last summer.

Officials said the probe criticizes commanders for essentially failing to pick up the strong signs of abuse as they rose through the chain of command and for all but ignoring reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross detailing the abuse.

The top command "shares responsibility for not ensuring proper leadership, proper discipline and proper resources," one defense official said. "Command should have paid more attention to the issue. Signals, symptoms of abuse weren't fully vetted to the top."

Military officials said Fay's report is expected to be presented to the public early next week. An independent investigative panel appointed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld plans to issue its report on Tuesday. The Senate Armed Services Committee announced yesterday separate hearings set for Sept. 9 to deal with both reports.

In the medical journal the Lancet, an American physician and bioethicist called for an investigation of the role medical personnel may have played in enabling and overlooking the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

"The U.S. military medical system failed to protect detainees' human rights, sometimes collaborated with interrogators or abusive guards, and failed to properly report injuries or deaths caused by beatings," Steven H. Miles of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota wrote in the issue published today.

The Lancet requires fairly intrusive registration for limited access for non-subscribers. Here is an excerpt from Miles article:

Confirmed or reliably reported abuses of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan include beatings, burns, shocks, bodily suspensions, asphyxia, threats against detainees and their relatives, sexual humiliation, isolation, prolonged hooding and shackling, and exposure to heat, cold, and loud noise.1,14,19,24,33,34 These include deprivation of sleep, food, clothing, and material for personal hygiene, and denigration of Islam and forced violation of its rites.19 Detainees were forced to work in areas that were not de-mined and seriously injured.34 Abuses of women detainees are less well documented but include credible allegations of sexual humiliation and rape.13,14,35

US Army investigators concluded that Abu Ghraib's medical system for detainees was inadequately staffed and equipped.8,11,13,16,17 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) found that the medical system failed to maintain internment cards with medical information necessary to protect the detainees' health as required by the Geneva Convention; this reportedly was due to a policy of not officially processing (ie, recording their presence in the prison) new detainees.16,34 Few units in Iraq and Afghanistan complied with the Geneva obligation to provide monthly health inspections.17 The medical system also failed to assure that prisoners could request proper medical care as required by the Geneva Convention. For example, an Abu Ghraib detainee's sworn document says that a purulent hand injury caused by torture went untreated. The individual was also told by an Iraqi physician working for the US that bleeding of his ear (from a separate beating) could not be treated in a clinic; he was treated instead in a prison hallway.20

The medical system failed to establish procedures, as called for by Article 30 of the Geneva Convention, to ensure proper treatment of prisoners with disabilities. An Abu Ghraib prisoner's deposition reports the crutch that he used because of a broken leg was taken from him and his leg was beaten as he was ordered to renounce Islam. The same detainee told a guard that the prison doctor had told him to immobilise a badly injured shoulder; the guard's response was to suspend him from the shoulder.21....

Legal arguments as to whether detainees were prisoners of war, soldiers, enemy combatants, terrorists, citizens of a failed state, insurgents, or criminals miss an essential point. The US has signed or enacted numerous instruments including the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights,45 the UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment,46 UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners,36 the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,47 and US military internment and inter-rogation policies,8-10 collectively containing mandatory and voluntary standards barring US armed forces from practicing torture or degrading treatments of all persons.

For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."45 The Geneva Convention states: "Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction . . . The following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; . . . Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment . . . No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."48 Furthermore, the US War Crimes Act says that US forces will comply with the Annex to the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War both of which bar torture or inhumane treatment.48-50

Pentagon leaders testified that military officials did not investigate or act on reports by Amnesty International and the ICRC of abuses at Abu Ghraib and other coalition detention facilities throughout 2002 and 2003.1,24,33,34 The command at Abu Ghraib and in Iraq was inattentive to human rights organisations' and soldiers' oral and written reports of abuses.51 After the ICRC criticised the treatment of Abu Ghraib detainees, its access to detainees was curtailed.1

The role of military medicine in these abuses merits special attention because of the moral obligations of medical professionals with regard to torture and because of horror at health professionals who are silently or actively complicit with torture. Active medical complicity with torture has occurred throughout the world. Physicians collaborated with torture during Saddam Hussein's regime.52 Physicians' and nurses' professional organisations have created codes against participation in torture.25-26,31,53,54 Physicians in Chile, Egypt, Turkey and other nations have taken great personal risks to expose state-sponsored torture.25,26,55 Health professionals have created organisations including Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International's Health Professionals Network. Numerous non-medical groups have asserted that healers must be advocates for persons at risk of torture.25,26,31,32,56

This is what was done in our name. If we are not outraged, we are the moral equivalent of the monsters which inflicted this abuse.

Same Old

Voting While Black
By BOB HERBERT

Published: August 20, 2004

The smell of voter suppression coming out of Florida is getting stronger. It turns out that a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation, in which state troopers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando in a bizarre hunt for evidence of election fraud, is being conducted despite a finding by the department last May "that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud."

State officials have said that the investigation, which has already frightened many voters and intimidated elderly volunteers, is in response to allegations of voter fraud involving absentee ballots that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March. But the department considered that matter closed last spring, according to a letter from the office of Guy Tunnell, the department's commissioner, to Lawson Lamar, the state attorney in Orlando, who would be responsible for any criminal prosecutions.

The letter, dated May 13, said:

"We received your package related to the allegations of voter fraud during the 2004 mayoral election. This dealt with the manner in which absentee ballots were either handled or collected by campaign staffers for Mayor Buddy Dyer. Since this matter involved an elected official, the allegations were forwarded to F.D.L.E.'s Executive Investigations in Tallahassee, Florida.

"The documents were reviewed by F.D.L.E., as well as the Florida Division of Elections. It was determined that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud concerning these absentee ballots. Since there is no evidence of criminal misconduct involving Mayor Dyer, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement considers this matter closed."

Well, it's not closed. And department officials said yesterday that the letter sent out in May was never meant to indicate that the "entire" investigation was closed. Since the letter went out, state troopers have gone into the homes of 40 or 50 black voters, most of them elderly, in what the department describes as a criminal investigation. Many longtime Florida observers have said the use of state troopers for this type of investigation is extremely unusual, and it has caused a storm of controversy.

The officers were armed and in plain clothes. For elderly African-American voters, who remember the terrible torment inflicted on blacks who tried to vote in the South in the 1950's and 60's, the sight of armed police officers coming into their homes to interrogate them about voting is chilling indeed.

One woman, who is in her mid-70's and was visited by two officers in June, said in an affidavit: "After entering my house, they asked me if they could take their jackets off, to which I answered yes. When they removed their jackets, I noticed they were wearing side arms. ... And I noticed an ankle holster on one of them when they sat down."

Though apprehensive, she answered all of their questions. But for a lot of voters, the emotional response to the investigation has gone beyond apprehension to outright fear.

"These guys are using these intimidating methods to try and get these folks to stay away from the polls in the future,'' said Eugene Poole, president of the Florida Voters League, which tries to increase black voter participation throughout the state. "And you know what? It's working. One woman said, 'My God, they're going to put us in jail for nothing.' I said, 'That's not true.' "

State officials deny that their intent was to intimidate black voters. Mr. Tunnell, who was handpicked by Gov. Jeb Bush to head the Department of Law Enforcement, said in a statement yesterday: "Instead of having them come to the F.D.L.E. office, which may seem quite imposing, our agents felt it would be a more relaxed atmosphere if they visited the witnesses at their homes.''

When I asked a spokesman for Mr. Tunnell, Tom Berlinger, about the letter in May indicating that the allegations were without merit, he replied that the intent of the letter had not been made clear by Joyce Dawley, a regional director who drafted and signed the letter for Mr. Tunnell.

"The letter was poorly worded,'' said Mr. Berlinger. He said he spoke to Ms. Dawley about the letter a few weeks ago and she told him, "God, I wish I would have made that more clear." What Ms. Dawley meant to say, said Mr. Berlinger, was that it did not appear that Mayor Dyer himself was criminally involved.

Coming into people's homes wearing sidearms is somehow less intimidating than what? And under what law would you haul them into the local FBI office? This is blatant intimidation and why are learning about it on the Op-Ed page? Where are the news reporters?

Broke the Mold

Mastering the Art of Julia Child
By ALEX PRUD'HOMME

A few days before Julia Child died, we sat together in her compact, fragrant garden in Montecito, Calif., talking about her life. She was about to turn 92. Although she was thin and pale, she seemed stronger and more acute that day than she had been in weeks. She had always loved to work, and, as usual, she corrected my French accent and added little soupçons of information to the book we were writing together, a series of reminiscences from the years 1948 to 1954, when she and her husband Paul, my great-uncle, lived in France. Julia sometimes had difficulty remembering a conversation from the day before, but she could recall events from 50 years ago with surprising clarity.

She had arrived in France in November 1948 not speaking the language or knowing how to cook. "I had never even heard of a shallot," she said. "I was there as Paul's extra baggage." Ten years older than Julia, he ran the visual presentation department at the United States Information Service. By the time they left for other postings six years later, Julia was fluent in French, ran a cooking school and was co-authoring a comprehensive cookbook that would later make her famous.

She learned many things in Paris, she said, one of the most important of which was how to shop like a Parisian. "It was life-changing," she said, "because shopping in France taught me about human relations." Through daily excursions to the outdoor market on the Rue de Bourgogne, or into the organized chaos of Les Halles, she learned that the French are highly attuned to social nuance. If a tourist enters a food stall thinking she will be cheated, the salesman will happily oblige, Julia explained. But if he senses that his customer took a genuine interest in his produce, then he will just "open up like a flower."

With a smile, she added: "I quickly learned how to communicate. If I wasn't willing to spend time to get to know the sellers and what they were selling, then I wouldn't go home with the freshest head of lettuce or best bit of steak in my basket. They really made me work for my supper. But what a supper - yum! And it was such fun."

It was this spirit, her vigorous curiosity and joie de vivre, that made Julia so appealing to so many people. And it is one of the things that sets her apart from many of today's celebrity chefs and lifestyle entrepreneurs. While the sale of her books - starting in 1961, with "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I'' - provided her with a very good living, she was never in it for the money. She refused to endorse products or restaurants, and turned down many lucrative commercial television projects in favor of public television. She was motivated by a deep enjoyment of food and its preparation, and would happily spend hours tinkering in the kitchen by herself or, preferably, with others.

In her garden that day the flinty side of Julia was also on display. This is an aspect of her personality that people tend to overlook or ignore, but it was just as much a part of her as the fun-loving "ham" and "hayseed" that was her television persona. She was not simply a funny tall lady who dropped food on the floor and appeared to swig wine intemperately. (In fact, she was privately irritated by such caricatures.) She was a driven and rigorous technician, a well-trained and hard-working cook who loved French cuisine in part because it had what she called "rules."

Steve Gilliard wrote a loving and accurate appreciation of how Julia changed American food and touched off the boom in American restaurants and the food we eat in our own kitchens, and the ingrediants we find in our grocery stores. He was correct in all of this and I remember the change well. She taught us to cook with fresh food in an era when everything was canned or frozen.

I grew up in those canned and frozen 1950's and it took an effort to learn to use the produce department of the grocery store, but I did. And from there learned to grow it. I no longer have the space for an extensive garden, but I have room for growing herbs, another thing I learned from Julia Child. Fresh herbs spike a dish like nothing else, and I grow them three steps from the back door. I shop at the local Farmer's Market and have learned the value of a heritage tomato and artisan breads. All of these things seem ordinary now, but we owe Julia Child a great debt in having learned to appreciate them from her. When I head out to the market tomorrow morning, in search of some perfect sweet corn, heritage tomatos and buffalo mozzarella, she'll be on my mind. Bon appetit, Julia, and I hope they have sweet Deleware melons in heaven.

Fighting Resumes

Iraqi Prime Minister Issues 'Final Call' to Sadr
Violence Continues in Najaf Between U.S. Forces and Mahdi Army

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 19, 2004; 3:13 PM

BAGHDAD, Aug. 19 -- Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi Thursday issued a "final call" for an end to the rebellion led by Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, saying he wanted to hear from Sadr personally that the cleric will dissolve and disarm his militia.

While Allawi said "the door is still open" for Sadr's compliance with the government's conditions, the prime minister's comments were followed by declarations from his ministers that they were ready for an armed confrontation with Sadr's forces.

Sadr spokesmen have over the past two days provided sometimes conflicting responses -- at times positive, at times bellicose -- about the cleric's willingness to cooperate in defusing the crisis in the holy city of Najaf.

Allawi's statement was the latest chapter in an increasingly complicated arms-length exchange aimed at preventing a violent showdown at the sacred shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, where Sadr's militia is holed up. The shrine is considered holy to Muslims across the globe.

While U.S. forces have cordoned off the shrine and are responding to attacks from Sadr's militia, Allawi has told U.S. commanders he wants Iraqi forces, not foreign troops, to attack the shrine if necessary.

And while various officials of the interim government, as well as U.S. military officers, have repeatedly said they were on the brink of a major offensive in Najaf, none has occurred.

Meanwhile, the violence continued in Najaf Thursday with fighting between U.S. forces and Sadr's Mahdi Army in the vicinity of the shrine. The Reuters news agency reported that late in the evening U.S. aircraft pounded militia positions in the vast cemetery adjoining the shrine.

CNN's Matthew Chance is reporting heavy fighting in the city at 5 PM EDT.

As of today: 49 coalition troops killed in August, 111 since the handover of "sovereignty, 800 since the end of "major combat operations," 1083 since the beginning of the war.

Economy Potpourri

Leading Indicators and Jobless Claims Dip
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: August 19, 2004
Filed at 3:00 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Offering more evidence that the nation's economic recovery is losing steam, a closely watched gauge of future business activity fell in July for the second consecutive month.

The Conference Board said Thursday that its Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators dropped by 0.3 percent in July to 116.0, following a revised decline of 0.1 percent in June. Last month was the first time in more than a year that the index had lost ground, and the July decline was larger than the 0.1 percent dip forecast by analysts.

The index is closely followed because it is designed to forecast the economy's health over the coming three to six months. Economists said the new reading, taken together with a mixed batch of other recent data, points to slower growth in the months ahead.
....
Ken Goldstein, an economist with the Conference Board, said the continued decline in the index reflects the effect that a host of factors -- from energy prices to worries about terrorism -- are having on the economy.

``The latest decline in the Leading Index reflects a loss of forward momentum,'' Goldstein said. ``There are growing concerns about the high cost of gasoline and milk, as well as worries about where economic growth will come from now that tax refunds have been spent and short-term interest rates are rising.''

The New York-based Conference Board said six of the 10 indicators that make up the index declined in July. They included vendor performance, the interest rate spread, stock prices, average weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance, real money supply and manufacturers' new orders for nondefense capital goods.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment insurance dipped by 3,000 to 331,000 last week. That marked the third consecutive week of decline in claims. The four-week moving average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations in the often-volatile figures, fell to 337,000 from 339,500 in the previous week.

Components of the Leading Indicators index that rose were building permits, the index of consumer expectations, average weekly manufacturing hours and manufacturers' new orders for consumer goods and materials.

The decline in the index means there is less wind in the economy's sails. But some of the factors driving down the index are temporary, leaving open the question of whether it points to anything more than a moderation of growth, said Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pa.

WaPo is running a competing AP story which is considerably sunnier--odd that two opposing stories would run on the same wire service.

N.Y. Crude Oil Rises Above $48 as Iraqi Fighting Cuts Exports

Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil futures jumped above $48 a barrel in New York on concern that Iraqi exports may drop further because of clashes in southern Iraq between U.S. troops and fighters loyal to Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Crude oil for September delivery was up $1.43, or 3 percent, at $48.70 a barrel at the 2:30 p.m. close of floor trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices reached $48.75 a barrel, the highest since oil began trading in New York in 1983. Oil has set an intraday record all but one day since July 30.

Pension Shock

United Likely to Terminate Pension Plans
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: August 19, 2004

Filed at 2:27 p.m. ET

CHICAGO (AP) -- Cash-strapped United Airlines said in a bankruptcy court filing Thursday that it ``likely'' will be necessary to terminate and replace its employee pension plans.

The carrier cited the size of further cost cuts and the need to find bankruptcy-exit financing as reasons for such a drastic move.

The filing came a day before a federal bankruptcy court hearing on United's pension plans, which the company announced last month it would no longer contribute to while in Chapter 11. That action has been assailed by United's unions and challenged by the government's pension-protection agency as violating federal pension law.

In its court filing, United cited the government's recent decision to reject its bid for a $1.6 billion loan guarantee along with sky-high jet fuel prices. The Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based airline said it ``must have the cash flow and liquidity that the financial markets are willing to finance.''

``We have taken every effort to restructure our business without affecting accrued pension benefits, and will continue to explore every other option,'' the company said in the 26-page filing. ``However, given the magnitude of further cost reductions needed to create a viable business plan and attract exit financing, termination and replacement of all our defined benefit pension plans likely will be required.''

If United ends its four employee pension funds, it would represent the largest pension default ever by an airline. The action would dump billions of dollars in future pension obligations onto the already-strapped Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

The agency said last week that United's pension plans are underfunded by $8.3 billion.

Yikes, this is hugely bad news, both for the employees and for the economy. If they do decide to default, the government will sue and the whole thing will be wrapped up in court for years with the employees paying the price. Additionally, as I think has been more than adequately demonstrated here, the economy ain't in all that grand of shape and this isn't going to help. United (and a couple of the other airlines) are looking at substantial layoffs, up goes the unemployment rate, down goes consumer spending.

Sorrows of Empire, Pt.XII

The new Caesars
The Bush administration's empire building is trampling on who we are and were always meant to be -- a republic.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Gary Hart

Why should we care one way or the other? The answer is simple. The United States cannot be simultaneously republic and empire. For evidence, see Rome (circa 65 B.C.). We salute the flag of the United States of America "and the Republic for which it stands." Since the time of the Greek city-states, republics have shared certain immutable qualities: civic virtue or citizen participation, popular sovereignty, resistance to corruption (by special interests) and a sense of the common good. Empires consolidate power in the hands of the few; seek expanded influence, by force if necessary; export centralized administrations to foreign lands; dictate terms to lesser powers, and manage foreign occupied peoples for their own political and commercial advantage.

The imperial project is in direct contradiction to America's constitutional principles. We are a republic, not an empire, and we are a republic much in need of restoration, as the erosion of the quality of resistance to corruption and the erosion of the exercise of civic virtue testify. America's 21st century project should be restoring our republic, not projecting imperial power into venues we are, by our very nature, unequipped to dominate.

This will be the task of the next couple of administrations. It is going to take time to undo the anti-republican legislation and regulation promulgated by the Bushies and their congressional accomplices. Empire has really gone to the heads of the neocons and it has caused them a rush which obscures reality. This kind of power is addictive and we need to clear the addicts out.

The Next Wave

Report on Iraq Abuse Will Widen the Blame
Intelligence soldiers and civilian contractors at Abu Ghraib are implicated, but military brass outside the prison are not, officials say.

By John Hendren, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — A long-awaited report on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal will implicate about two dozen military intelligence soldiers and civilian contractors in the intimidation and sexual humiliation of Iraq war prisoners, but will not suggest wrongdoing by military brass outside the prison, senior Defense officials said Wednesday.

The report will recommend disciplinary action against two senior prison officers: the colonel in charge of the military intelligence brigade that oversaw interrogations at the compound near Baghdad and a general in charge of a reserve military police brigade in charge of the prison.

It also will recommend that the intelligence soldiers face criminal abuse charges similar to those lodged earlier against seven reserve military police soldiers, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But in the end, Defense officials said, the report implicates no one outside the prison.

"The report is going to say responsibility for Abu Ghraib stops at the brigade level," a senior official said.
....
Some on Capitol Hill said they were dismayed that the investigation failed to implicate more senior military officers or Bush administration officials. The administration has portrayed the abuses as isolated incidents committed in disregard of established procedures. But critics have questioned whether administration policies favoring more aggressive interrogations contributed to a climate in which abuses occurred and whether Fay's findings might be part of a lax Pentagon response.

"I'm a little shocked, I guess, that it doesn't go higher than that," a senior congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said when told of the initial news reports, adding that the findings weren't dramatic. "It's not big stuff."

However, others said the prison scandal was fueled in part by the political season.

"It's an election year. This is going to go on and on until November," said Dana Dillon, a military analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

"Unless there is demonstrable evidence that somebody ordered these things carried out — and that seems pretty incredible — I don't think it will go beyond" the military police brigade general, Dillon said.

Another military investigation into prison problems drew criticism when it was released last month.

The investigation, a review of the detention system by the Army's inspector general, concluded that instances of misconduct were "aberrations," a finding that was widely denounced as a whitewash.

This is silly. We already know from earlier investigations (at least here, here, here, and here) that there is considerable evidence that this was policy rather than aberration.

Delicious

Bush Campaign Adviser Quits as Sexual Misconduct Case Is Recalled
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: August 19, 2004

Deal W. Hudson, the publisher of the conservative Roman Catholic journal Crisis and the architect of a Republican effort to court Catholic voters, says he is resigning as an adviser to the Bush campaign because of a Catholic newspaper's investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct involving a female student at a college where he once taught.

"No one regrets my past mistakes more than I do," Mr. Hudson wrote in a column posted yesterday on the online edition of National Review announcing his resignation.

"At the time, I dealt with this in an upright manner, and the matter was satisfactorily resolved long ago," he wrote, without specifying the accusations. Mr. Hudson, 54, said he had been happily married to his current wife for 17 years. Called for comment, he declined.

Mr. Hudson did not name the publication. Others who said they had been contacted by a newspaper doing an investigation said it was The National Catholic Reporter.

Thomas Roberts, editor of The National Catholic Reporter, declined to comment.

At Fordham University, a Jesuit school in New York where Mr. Hudson taught from 1989 to 1995, a university spokeswoman confirmed that the episode had led to Mr. Hudson's resignation. The spokeswoman, Elizabeth Schmalz, said: "Fordham followed its policy rigorously in this matter and initiated an investigation upon receipt of the student complaint. The professor later surrendered his tenure at Fordham." A person involved with the university's investigation said that a freshman in one of Mr. Hudson's classes reported to the university that, after she had become drunk at a bar, Mr. Hudson made sexual advances toward her. After a period of weeks, she charged him with sexual harassment. The accusations were made near the end of a school year, and Mr. Hudson left academia.

Mr. Hudson, a former Southern Baptist who converted to Catholicism at the age of 34, has been an influential adviser to President Bush and a close friend of the White House political strategist Karl Rove since the late 1990's. Mr. Hudson first caught Mr. Rove's attention by publishing a study in Crisis in 1998 arguing that Republican candidates could make inroads among traditionally Democratic-leaning Catholic voters by focusing on regular churchgoers, a strategy that dovetailed with Mr. Bush's emphasis on "compassionate conservatism."

Mr. Hudson signed on as an adviser to Mr. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. For the last four years, he has been a prominent participant in a weekly conference call held by the Republican National Committee each Thursday with influential Catholic supporters.

Another moralizer caught. The National Catholic Reporter is the voice of the left side of the Church and is published bi-weekly. The next edition goes up on the web on August 27.

Talking Out of Turn

U.S. General Violated Rules with 'Satan' Speeches
Wed Aug 18, 2004 11:06 PM ET

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Army general violated Pentagon rules by failing to properly clear speeches in which he described the war on terror as a Christian battle against Satan and should be punished, according to an inspector general's report obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

The Department of Defense's watchdog agency said Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a top-ranking intelligence officer, used official data in some of the 23 religious-oriented speeches he gave after January 2002 which should have been cleared.

Boykin touched off a firestorm last October after giving speeches while in uniform in which he referred to the war on terror as a battle with Satan and said America had been targeted "because we're a Christian nation." He said later he was not anti-Islam or any other religion.

Boykin was obliged to clear the speeches, given "the sensitive nature of his remarks concerning U.S. policy and the likelihood that he would be perceived by his audiences as a DOD spokesman based on his official position and his appearance in uniform," the report said.

Boykin, an evangelical Christian, violated other rules by failing to issue a required disclaimer at the speeches that he was not representing official Pentagon policy, it said.

He also failed to report his receipt of one travel payment exceeding $260 from a non-government source, said the report, which was submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The report said Boykin did make "good faith efforts" to consult legal advisers about his speaking activities and that should be considered when the Army Secretary assessed the seriousness of the violations.

"We recommend that the Acting Secretary of the Army take appropriate corrective action with respect to Lt. Gen. Boykin," the report said.

The investigation did not focus on whether the substance of Boykin's remarks was appropriate for a senior Pentagon official or whether it compromised his fitness for performing his duties.

A Pentagon spokeswoman had no comment on the report, or what type of punishment the general would face. "That report has not been released. At this point it would be inappropriate for me to comment," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell.

It tells you something about how far we've fallen into theofascism that this guy is still wearing the uniform.

Energy Moves

Deal to Ship Russian Gas to U.S. Is Said to Be Close
By JAMES BROOKE

TOKYO, Aug. 18 - Russian liquefied natural gas would be shipped across the Pacific to help power California under a contract that is in "very, very advanced" negotiations, according to a corporate executive on Sakhalin Island, Russia's new energy production center in the Pacific.

The gas would go to a terminal in Northern Mexico from a plant on Sakhalin that is to open in 2007, becoming Russia's first plant to chill natural gas for shipping, according to Andy Calitz, commercial director of the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company, a production consortium led by Royal Dutch/Shell.

Although occasional tankers of oil have crossed the Pacific this summer, sailing from Sakhalin to Hawaii and Alaska, the new deal would give a big lift to faltering efforts by Russia and the United States to cooperate on energy.

"We are prepared to ship gas and oil directly to the United States," Alexander Losyukov, Russia's ambassador to Japan, said Tuesday, alluding to the gas contract, which received official Russian approval last month. "We want to be a reliable supplier, probably more reliable than the Middle East."

The buyer, a Shell- Sempra Energy joint venture, is expected to give final approval to the contract in September. By December, this group expects to break ground on a $600 million regasification plant in Mexico. The plant in Ensenada, about 80 miles south of San Diego, would turn superchilled liquid into gas to be moved by pipeline to Northern Mexico and Southern California. The plant is to be ready in 2007, the year that the Sakhalin plant would be ready on the Asian side of the Pacific.
....
"Rivalry for energy, especially oil, between China and Japan on a global scale is unavoidable," Zhang Kexi, a commentator, wrote last month in The China Daily, a state-controlled publication. "It is likely that China will forever encounter Japan's global energy rivalry, just as the ongoing pipeline route dispute between China and Japan shows."

Indeed, it looks as if China has lost one round on a major oil pipeline. Russia appears to want to build a pipeline to the Pacific to export Eastern Siberian oil. Fearful that a pipeline to China would make Russia captive to a single buyer, Moscow wants to take oil to its Pacific port of Nakhodka, where it could then go to a wide range of markets, including the United States. The Bush administration favors the Pacific port approach as Eastern Siberia could become a new source of oil for the West Coast of the United States.

"The whole project is in the final stages of preparation," the Russian ambassador said, referring to what could be a 2,500-mile, $12 billion pipeline to the Sea of Japan, largely financed with Japanese money. "The final decision will be announced in early fall, probably September or October."

Oil shipments are to start from Perevoznaya, a port near Nakhodka, in 2006, four years earlier than originally planned, according to an announcement made last month by Transneft, Russia's state oil transport company. Next year, work is to start near Lake Baikal on the first 600 miles of this pipeline.

To help fill the pipe, Japan advanced $75 million to Russia this summer to help measure oil reservoirs along the rail route.

This is the future: competition for energy between the West and the East. There will be competition for water, as well, but those tensions break out more North/South..

The Worker Worthy of Hire

Rising Cost of Health Benefits Cited as Factor in Slump of Jobs

By EDUARDO PORTER

Published: August 19, 2004

A relentless rise in the cost of employee health insurance has become a significant factor in the employment slump, as the labor market adds only a trickle of new jobs each month despite nearly three years of uninterrupted economic growth.

Government data, industry surveys and interviews with employers big and small indicate that many businesses remain reluctant to hire full-time employees because health insurance, which now costs the nation's employers an average of about $3,000 a year for each worker, has become one of the fastest-growing costs for companies. Health premiums are sapping corporate balance sheets even more than the rising cost of energy.

In the second quarter, the cost of health benefits rose at a 12-month rate of 8.1 percent - more than three times the inflation rate and the rate of increases in wages and salaries.

"Health care is a major reason why employment growth has been so sluggish," said Sung Won Sohn, the chief economist at Wells Fargo.

Although the economy emerged from recession long ago, posting 11 straight quarters of growth, there are still about a million fewer jobs in the United States than there were at the beginning of 2001, just before the country sank into recession.

A spurt in job growth between March and May raised hopes that employment would emerge from the doldrums. But job growth slowed sharply again in June and came to a virtual standstill last month. In July, businesses added a mere 32,000 jobs, and for the first time this year more businesses let workers go than hired new ones.

Because of the cost of health insurance, "we are making decisions not to hire people," said Steve Hayes, the owner of Custom Electronics in Falmouth, Me., which installs electronic systems like home theaters and communications networks in homes and offices. "Before, we hired based on workload," he added. "Now it's a question of affordability."

Mr. Hayes said his health insurance premiums had risen by 22 percent a year in the last four years. He now pays $4,150 a month in health insurance premiums for his 33 employees, and the workers contribute an equal amount from their own pockets. The company's revenue - less than $5 million annually - has been growing briskly, he said, but outlays for health benefits are growing even faster, eating into the company's profits.

The increase in health insurance premiums reflects the rising cost of health care, which is being driven by expensive new drugs, many of them heavily advertised to consumers; medical advances including diagnostic tests that require costly new machines; and a reaction to past restrictions in managed care health plans that sought to rein in costs.

My student insurance went up 27% last year. This year, I simply can't afford it. I haven't calculated the increased costs in deductibles and copays. I just stopped going to the doctor.

Businesses, meanwhile, are trying all kinds of coping strategies. Some companies have responded by shifting part of the health insurance burden onto their workers or by ratcheting up premiums and deductibles. Some have eliminated coverage for dependents, while others have canceled their medical plans altogether. Many have frozen or reduced wages to compensate for ever bigger health insurance bills.

"Our health care costs are rising at three to four times the rate of increase of our revenues," said Michael Stoll, vice president for corporate benefits at the Kroger Company, a supermarket giant that owns several retail chains, including Ralph's, Food 4 Less and King Soopers, and employs 290,000 people around the nation.

Kroger, one of the targets of the five-month supermarket workers' strike in California that ended in March, reached an agreement with unions in that state to retain existing health benefits for current workers but to allow the company to offer new employees significantly curtailed health plans.

Trotter Machine, a small maker of parts for hydraulic valves in Rockford, Ill., has taken a different approach. In the last year, the company has doubled the employee's deductible on the company health plan, to $1,000 a year, and it has slowed wage increases - all in response to the company's escalating health care premium, which has risen to $18,000 a month from less than $10,000 five years ago.

Trotter's business has picked up after two flat years, and the company has responded by adding 12 full-time jobs since last November, bringing the total to 65 full-time workers and 5 temporary positions. But health care inflation has instilled a new level of caution in the hiring process: 9 of the 12 new workers started off as temps, achieving full-time status only after three or four months on the job.

"In the past we would hire people right out of the gate, and they could get on the health plan in 60 days," said Skip Trotter, the company's vice president for operations. "Now we use temp services. I can keep a temp for 90 to 120 days, and the agency pays for the health benefits."

I temped for years. I've yet to meet a temp service where you qualify for benefits before six months on the job, and can rarely afford the premiums after. Mr. Trotter's temp workers are uncovered. Beyond the hourly premium he pays to the temp firm to use them, he will pay extra in illness absences by workers who can not afford to go to the doctor. Of course, they are just temps and if they get strep and can't afford a doctor, the agency can send someone else, someone you'll have to train again. New employees are expensive and there is an agressive curve of cost to bring them up to speed and you are going to pay it one way or the other.

UPDATE: Economist Kash, writing at Angry Bear, posted some charts this morning which show 1.) the employers' cost of providing health and disability insurance from 1986-2003, and 2.) wages as a fraction of total compensation. The numbers are pretty scary. In commentary, Kash adds:

The health care problem in the US is big, and getting bigger. While one aspect of that is that more and more people must go without health care, an equally important aspect is the fact that "after-health care" disposible income will continue to fall, as health care costs eat up more and more of individuals' compensation. I don't see any good solution to this incessant march in health care costs without a major, MAJOR overhaul of how this nation provides health care to its citizens. When the situation gets bad enough in the US, there will probably be political pressure to enact such changes, maybe in another 5 to 10 years. But until then, we'll have to deal with what we have.

I think we don't have 5 years. This is going to have to be fixed during the next presidential term. The employers will start demanding it.

The Changing Data

War and Security May Trump Economy in Election

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; 1:00 PM

Iraq is likely to be the "trump card" that most sways swing voters in the presidential election, which will be generally determined more by foreign policy and national security issues than at any time since the 1970s, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center[ed.- internals here] for the People and the Press and the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Barring a sizable shift in public opinion over the next few months, the 2004 election will be the first since the Vietnam era in which foreign affairs and national security issues are a higher priority than the economy," according to the Pew Research Center's analysis of the survey data.

Like much of the electorate, swing voters in battleground states -- such as Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin and Iowa -- are split over which candidate is stronger on foreign policy and the war on terrorism. Swing voters come closer to Democrats on foreign policy, but closer to the Republican position on combating terrorism, on which Bush gets "strong marks," the poll found. So the pivotal issue is Iraq, and swing voters are closer to the Democrats on Iraq, the survey concluded.

On eight of 11 foreign policy issues in the poll, "opinions of swing voters are closer to those of Kerry supporter than to those of Bush voters," said the Pew center's analysis. The Council on Foreign Relations, in a separate commentary on the poll, said swing voters are "more likely to see blue than red."

The poll was conducted among 2,009 adults from July 8-18, with an update on Iraq conducted Aug. 5-10 among 1,512 adults. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.5 percent for the entire survey and 3.5 percent for questions based on answers from just one of the two survey periods.

More than a month after the transfer of political power from the U.S.-led occupation to an interim Iraqi government, the poll found that just over half of American voters surveyed (52 percent) disapprove of the president's management of Iraq policy. And almost six out of 10 adults (58 percent) said the Bush administration does not have a "clear plan" for bringing Iraq to a "successful conclusion."

"Dissatisfaction with Iraq is shaping opinions about foreign policy as much, if not more than, Americans' continuing concerns over terrorism," said the survey analysis. "Continuing discontent with the way things are going in Iraq underlies public criticism of the Bush administration's overall approach to national security."

The survey also found a "sharp increase" in the number of Americans who have doubts about whether the Iraq campaign has helped curtail the war on terrorism. Only 45 percent say it has helped, down from 62 percent in February.

Six in ten Americans (59 percent) believe Bush has been "too quick" in wielding military force, while only a third now say Bush made sufficient attempts to achieve diplomatic solutions before the Iraq war. That is almost half the number who thought Bush's diplomatic efforts had been sufficient early in the war, in the spring of 2003, the poll found.

Yet Sen. John F. Kerry, Bush's Democratic challenger, has not yet convinced swing voters that he provides a viable alternative vision, the poll found.

"Iraq could be the tipping point. But even though things are bad in Iraq and the public evaluates President Bush poorly on Iraq, Kerry hasn't made the sale on Iraq either," Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said in an interview. "People are not more likely to say they have confidence in him than they have confidence in Bush, whom they disapprove of."

The survey included some striking opinions. Despite the bloody tribulations of U.S. policy on Iraq, more than half of Americans polled (54 percent) favor staying in Iraq until the situation has stabilized. And six in 10 Americans support Bush's controversial policy of preemptive strikes against perceived threats, even if the United States has not been targeted.

Despite the wide backlash after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq, 64 percent of Americans believe there are at least some circumstances when torture is justified against suspected terrorists, the poll found.

Alarm over weapons of mass destruction, which peaked as a top priority after the Sept. 11 attacks, has now settled down to the same level of concern Americans felt in the mid-1990s, the survey showed.

And despite recent oil price hikes, American concern about U.S. dependence on imported oil is actually "somewhat lower" than earlier polls.

Public priorities have also shifted "significantly" in the three years since Sept. 11, settling down into concern about issues beyond national security to focus on social issues such as the AIDS pandemic, narcotics trafficking and global hunger, the survey found.

Most striking is the influence of foreign crises on this election, however. In 1996, only 5 percent of voters sampled by similar polls made their decisions based on foreign policy or national security, which rose to 12 percent in 2000, Kohut said. In contrast, four in ten voters (41 percent) now say international and defense concerns are the most crucial issues, while only a quarter (26 percent) cite economic issues as the top priority, the poll found.

Add this to the AP-Ipsos poll reported this morning. I'm looking for the internals on both, as well as the Quinnipiac Pennsylvania poll [ed. internals]. I'll post them when I've found the links. I'm not usually so iinterested in horse-race data, but watching the way the public tracks this issue is going to be the best predictor of the outcome in November. As the polls change, the pols will, too, and look for more congresscritters to have a "conversion" over their support for Bush's war as we get closer to the election.

Retiring Congressman Says War Unjustified
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: August 18, 2004

Filed at 11:39 a.m. ET

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- A top Republican congressman has broken from his party in the final days of his House career, saying he believes the U.S. military assault on Iraq was unjustified and the situation there has deteriorated into ``a dangerous, costly mess.''

``I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action,'' Rep. Doug Bereuter wrote in a letter to his constituents.

``Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action,'' he said.

Bereuter is a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He is stepping down after 13 terms to become the president of the Asia Foundation effective Sept. 1.

Emerging

via The Revealer:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Christian Evangelical movement, overwhelmingly but not completely conservative, politically and theologically, underpins the "megachurch" phenomenon. It was only a matter of time before it sprouted a reaction.

These Christians Radically Rethink What a Church Is
In the emerging movement, small is beautiful and creativity in worship is key.

By K. Connie Kang, Times Staff Writer

The 1-year-old church in Orange County has no name, no building and no set time to meet.

For its members, church can be spending an afternoon at a Costa Mesa park, where they share lunch and conversation with the down and out.

Sometimes, church for them entails an excursion to Los Angeles, where the mostly white group worships at an African American church. And, sometimes, they visit a Buddhist gathering in Fountain Valley and talk and write about the experience afterward.

Shepherded by Spencer Burke, a former pastor at the 10,000-member Mariners Church in Irvine, a small band of men and women belong to this highly movable congregation.

They're part of a new phenomenon — "emerging churches" — growing out of evangelical Christianity.

The movement was started over the last six years or so by Christian leaders disillusioned with churches that they complained were run like big corporations, stressing celebrity preachers, glitzy services and huge budgets. The movement aims to bring churches closer to people, with small communities of prayer and learning — mostly fewer than 50 people.

Although varying widely in membership and practices, emerging churches shun hierarchy, emphasize outreach to the poor and worship creatively.

"Our goal is to be there for each other and try to find activities [through which] we can service our community," said Matt Palmer, a Newport Beach graphic designer who belongs to the no-name church.

"Our tithe is to buy a bucket of chicken for people at the park instead of [contributing to] some pot of money where I don't know where it's going," he said.

On a recent Sunday, the group spread out chicken, salad and fruit on picnic tables at Lions Park in Costa Mesa and invited everyone there to join them. More than 30 did. They also gave out small cardboard cameras, with self-addressed envelopes, and invited people to take "pictures in celebration of life," then mail them to Burke's 700-square-foot Huntington Beach "shack," his garage that serves as the church's office.

At its next meeting in the park, church will be an "art gallery" with easels and exhibited photos, said Burke, author of 2003's "Making Sense of Church: Eavesdropping on Emerging Conversations About God, Community and Culture."

Six years after leaving his well-paid job at a mega-church, disillusioned at "contemporary Christianity as an institution," Burke said he now finds church "an adventure every week."

Like many leaders of emerging churches, he receives no pay. The son of the late state Assemblyman Robert Burke (R-Huntington Beach), he said he and his wife manage on her salary in public relations and money from his writing and speaking. The couple have two young children.

"Church for us isn't just for us. It's for everybody," he said. There is something "very beautiful" about eating with strangers in a park and getting to know them. "Their stories are as rich as any Bible story. You wouldn't believe the amazing rags-to-riches and riches-to-rags stories."

The Rev. Eddie Gibbs, professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, says Burke is an "influential thinker" in the emerging-church movement.

Burke's influence stems in part from his website, TheOoze, which discusses issues facing the church today, said Gibbs, who, with another Fuller theologian, Ryan Bolger, is writing a book on emerging churches.
....
The group is one of more than 100 emerging churches in the country, experts say.

Emerging-church leaders such as Burke believe the institutional church is no longer relevant to the younger generation.

"We can't go to church; we are the church," said the Rev. Dan Kimball, pastor of Santa Cruz's emerging Vintage Faith Church, which he started in February. "Churches get stuck in the tradition and lose sight of why they are there," said Kimball, author of "The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations."

Kimball's group has grown to 400. Members are organized into small groups called "home communities" to maintain a sense of family, he said.
....
A recent study found that weekly church attendance remained steady over the last decade, at about 40% of Americans. But another survey showed that Bible reading outside church within the previous week climbed to 44% of adults from 37% in 1994. Among Protestants the rise was greater, from 47% in 1994 to 59% this year. And the increase was most striking on the West Coast, where Bible reading outside church among residents rose from 29% in 1994 to 44%. Both studies were by Barna Research Group of Ventura.

President George Barna said the findings reflect people "piecing together the different activities that are important to them in ways that fit their unique needs, as opposed to fitting into the schedules of religious institutions."

He predicts that "within the next 20 to 25 years, there is going to be a significant decrease in the number and influence of the congregational churches and a substantial rise of and influence of the new model churches."

I know a few leaders in the "emerging church." Their upbringing may have been conservative Christian, but they are all liberals now.

Left Behind

Effort by Bush on Education Faces Obstacles in the States
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

Four years ago, No Child Left Behind served as candidate George W. Bush's banner domestic issue, showcasing his claim to "compassionate conservatism." At campaign stops, Mr. Bush attacked the "soft bigotry of low expectations" in public schools, and once in office, No Child Left Behind became his legislative initiative. It aimed for nothing less than ending the achievement gap between whites and minorities, by threatening public schools with dire punishments unless they improved the academic performance of all students. The law is intended to ratchet up the quality of teachers at high-poverty schools, steadily raise student achievement in reading, math and science, and use student test scores to dictate whether a school should survive. It also promises students in underperforming schools a way out, through transfer to better schools or private tutoring.

Faced with the challenge of raising all students to academic proficiency by 2014, however, some states simply lowered their standards, while many others came up with statistical devices to exclude whole groups of children from the law's umbrella.

Critics and supporters alike agree that since Mr. Bush signed No Child Left Behind in January 2002, the law has imposed deep, undeniable changes on public education.
....
Critics contend the law gives schools dozens of ways to fail, but does little to help them tackle the causes of low achievement among poor, minority and disabled children. Others complain that the law's reliance on standardized tests is unsound, that its strict rules conflict with existing state efforts and that its remedies for struggling schools are largely punitive. As a result, in the two and half years since Mr. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law, a political backlash has curtailed its reach.

Though the law passed with strong bipartisan support, Democrats, civic groups and teachers' unions complain that federal spending consistently falls short of the amounts authorized when they signed on - an accusation that Republicans reject, saying that spending on the nation's poorest schools has risen by more than 50 percent on Mr. Bush's watch.

Earlier this year, opposition to the new law spread to the right, as Republican lawmakers in a dozen or so states passed anti-No Child Left Behind resolutions. The discontent first boiled over in Utah, where the House attacked the law as an infringement of states' rights. A team of federal officials turned up in Salt Lake, reminding Republicans that the state stood to lose $100 million in federal education aid if they followed through, lawmakers recalled.

Here is how that is working out around Chicago:

Top suburb schools hit by `No Child' sanctions

By Jodi S. Cohen and Stephanie Banchero, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporters Darnell Little and Grace Aduroja contributed to this report
Published August 18, 2004

Students at a number of well-regarded suburban schools will have the right to transfer out, as the number of Illinois public schools facing federal sanctions ballooned again this year.

Just days before the beginning of school, the Illinois State Board of Education on Tuesday released a preliminary list of 694 schools around the state that will have to offer students the choice to move to better performing schools, and in some cases, receive tutoring and other services.

Although the numbers could change in coming weeks as school districts review state data, the list currently includes 360 Chicago public schools that have failed state achievement tests for at least two years in a row, the period that triggers sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
....
Many suburban schools found themselves labeled as failures for the first time last year, when they were judged not only on schoolwide scores but on the performance of different racial, economic and special education subgroups.

Those that had one or more subgroups fail to meet state standards again this year now are subject to penalties.

Although many of the suburban schools on the list are associated with affluent bedroom communities, educators say the test results underscore the growing economic and racial diversity of their student bodies.

And though some of the schools continue to perform well overall, bringing every subgroup up to the same level--the stated goal of No Child Left Behind--remains a daunting task.

"The more subgroups you have, the more likely you are to not make [testing goals]," said Phil Prale, assistant superintendent of Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200, with a student body that is 66 percent white, 27 percent African-American and 4 percent Latino. Prale said that while the school's overall test scores improved last year, low-income students did not reach state goals in math.

"These are top-notch schools," he said. "When they land on these lists, I suppose we could reexamine what are the criteria and goal of the legislation."

I believe that last line says more than that entire, lengthy NYT piece.

A Dangerous Intersection of Faith and Politics

Pastors Issue Directive in Response to Reelection Tactic

By Alan Cooperman
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A04

Ten teachers of Christian ethics at leading seminaries and universities have written a letter to President Bush criticizing his campaign's outreach to churches, particularly its effort to gather church membership directories.

The Aug. 12 letter asked Bush to "repudiate the actions of your re-election campaign, which violated a fundamental principle of our democracy." It also urged both presidential candidates to "respect the integrity of all houses of worship."

The letter's signers included evangelical Christians who teach at generally conservative institutions, such as the Rev. George G. Hunter III of Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky and Richard V. Pierard of Gordon College in Massachusetts. Other signers included the Revs. Paul Raushenbush of Princeton University, Walter B. Shurden of Mercer University in Georgia, James M. Dunn of Wake Forest Divinity School in North Carolina and Ronald B. Flowers of Texas Christian University.

"When certain church leaders acceded to the request of the Bush/Cheney campaign to hand over the names and addresses of their congregants, they crossed a line," the letter said. "It is proper for church leaders to address social issues, but it is improper, and even illegal, for them to get their churches to endorse candidates or align their churches with a specific political party."

The Bush-Cheney campaign has defended its outreach as a "peer-to-peer" effort rather than an attempt to enlist churches in partisan electioneering, which would violate Internal Revenue Service rules. Bush supporters also charge that some African American churches routinely support Democratic candidates.

The campaign has come under growing criticism since The Washington Post reported July 1 on an instruction sheet for Bush's religious "coalition coordinators." It listed 22 duties, beginning with: "Send your Church Directory to your State Bush-Cheney '04 Headquarters" and "Identify another conservative church in your community who we can organize for Bush."

The ethicists' letter said that "Christians, individually, should prayerfully seek God's direction when voting, but when any church leaders contend that they speak for God and have the right to tell congregants how to vote, such leaders have assumed prerogatives to which they have no right."

BC04 ran right up to the edge of election law, and the clerics who cooperated are in violation of the tax code and should lose their tax exempt status. There is an egregious error in the headline of this story: not every Christian ethicist (also known s moral theologian) is ordained and they are rarely "pastors." That word is properly used to designate the senior minister or priest of a parish or congregation. Seminary professors who are ordained (I have not Googled the list above to check to see if they are listed on the respective websites as Rev. Dr., which is how they should have been named if the Post knew what it was doing, since tenured seminary professors are always PhDs) rarely have the time or inclination for that sort of work, although the ordained ones frequently "help out" at local congregations.

This is sloppy work by the Post headline department.

UPDATE: I wrote a letter to the editor. If it gets printed I'll put up a link.

Fantasies

I'm listening to Blitzer's noon program. He's giving as much time to the troop redeployment non-story as to the Peterson trial! Here's the deal: it isn't going to happen. It will cost billions that we clearly don't have. It is purely a political tactic, and Kerry is right to answer because it is a political tactic. As a practical matter, it isn't ever going to happen, this is all theoretical.

Rumsfeld is talking about putting a light mechanical "Stryker" brigade into Germany as a rapid reaction force. That isn't going to happen, either.

GAO Calls Stryker Too Heavy for Transport
Weight of Armored Vehicle Cuts Flying Range of C-130 Aircraft, Congress Is Told

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page A04

The Army's new medium-weight armored vehicle, the Stryker, weighs so much that it curtails the range of C-130 military cargo aircraft that carry it and under certain conditions make it impossible for the planes to take off, a new report for Congress found.

"The Stryker's average weight of 38,000 pounds -- along with other factors such as added equipment and less-than-ideal flight conditions -- significantly limits the C-130's flight range and reduces the size force that could be deployed," said the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress.

Indeed, the report said, a C-130 with an average-weight Stryker wouldn't even be able to take off from higher elevations in Afghanistan, such as Bagram or Kabul, during daylight hours in summer.

The findings support the claims of critics that the eight-wheeled Stryker -- now in use in Iraq -- won't be able to meet the original goal of being able to roll into a C-130, be flown 1,000 miles and leave the plane immediately able to engage in combat. When 2,000 pounds of associated equipment such as ammunition is loaded into the aircraft with the typical Stryker vehicle, the report said, the C-130's range is about 500 miles -- and if heavier equipment is loaded it's much less. The report noted that the Army subsequently has dropped that 1,000-mile range requirement for the system.

So, all this talk of "modernising" the force structure and fast, light forces is just political kabuki. None of these things actually exist.

Dead Cats

Ignoring History In Iraq

By George F. Will
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A19

These excavations from America's rhetorical record are from John Judis's new book, "The Folly of Empire," a sobering read during Iraq's current wallow. Iraq's condition is not quite anarchy, but it does point to a double peril of producing democracy.

Democracy, loosely -- very loosely -- defined as government responsive to gusts of public passions, might fail. Or it might succeed ruinously. A government that is all sail and no anchor might produce popular choices that lead through anarchy to civil war, or national fragmentation, or fragmentation forestalled by Bonapartism, Francoism or some other variant of authoritarianism.

The Bush campaign is pelting John Kerry with dead cats because of his promise to wage a more "sensitive" war on terrorism -- Democrats tend to think in the vocabulary of the therapeutic society and its "caring professions." But the Bush administration is simultaneously struggling to balance the competing imperatives of economizing American lives and waging a war sensitive to the religious sensibilities at stake in the struggle for control of Najaf.

In all this, the concept of sovereignty is being pounded shapeless. Preemptive war was waged, in part, to notify enemies of the United States that U.S. sovereignty could not be paralyzed by world opinion or the noncooperation of international institutions. And one measure of progress in Iraq was the June 28 transfer of sovereignty.

But in a New York Times story from Najaf, readers learn, regarding the problem of Moqtada Sadr and his militia, that a Marine spokesman says, "We'll continue operations as the prime minister [Ayad Allawi] sees fit." And readers learn that U.S. commanders "curbed a broader national amnesty proposal announced by Dr. Allawi earlier this week, limiting its terms to exclude any rebels who have taken part in actions killing or wounding American troops."

So does sovereignty reside with the prime minister whose will evidently commands U.S. commanders? Or with those commanders who curb the prime minister's will?

A house so divided cannot stand. If it is the prime minister's will, or that of Iraq's embryonic democratic institutions, to conduct with insurgent factions negotiations that strip the Iraqi state of an essential attribute of statehood -- a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence -- the U.S. presence will become untenable.

Untenable even before what may be coming before November: an Iraqi version of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. To say that the coming offensive will be by "Baathists" is, according to one administration official, akin to saying "Nazis" when you mean "the SS" -- the most fearsome of the Nazis. Such an offensive could make Sadr's insurgency seem a minor irritant. And it could unmake a presidency, as Tet did.

Some Voters Grow Skeptical of Iraq War

Aug 18, 10:18 AM (ET)

By WILL LESTER

WASHINGTON (AP) - Public opinion favored President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq about 2-to-1 soon after Saddam Hussein's capture, but months of chaos and casualties have taken a heavy toll on public support for the war. Now the public is evenly divided on whether the war was the right thing to do or whether it was a mistake.

Among those increasingly skeptical about the war are older people, minorities, people with lower incomes, residents of the Northeast and Catholics, according to Associated Press polling.

The shifts in overall public sentiment reflect the difficulties in Iraq - including a death toll nearing 950 U.S. soldiers, the violent insurgency against the new Iraqi government and U.S. forces and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, which was among the central justifications for Bush's decision to go to war.
....
Even among those who maintain their support for going to war, urban battles and roadside bombs have caused a shift in perspective.

For Jim Adams, a 42-year-old Republican from Plymouth, N.H., the decision to use force in Iraq was right and he still supports Bush, but he says the follow-through in Iraq was lacking.

"I don't think it was a mistake to go there," Adams said. "But we've gone down a slippery slope.

"We had good reason to go based on the evidence at the time, but we've gone in a direction we never intended to go," he said. "We've alienated the population. We wanted the population to embrace our values, and we've done exactly the opposite."

Almost nine in 10 Republicans still say it was the right thing to do. But Democrats and independents lost enthusiasm for the war during the period since Saddam was captured in December.

Overall, about half in an August AP-Ipsos poll said they think the war in Iraq was the right thing to do.

About six in 10 feel Bush does not have a clear plan for bringing the Iraq situation to a successful solution, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll.

With Saddam in custody, U.S. military commanders expected, or at least hoped, that Iraqi insurgents would be less inclined to fight. Instead, a flare-up of violence in southern towns in April led to increased combat operations. A cease-fire with one militant group recently fell apart, leading to more clashes in Najaf.

Despite the handover of political power to an Iraqi interim government on June 30, the U.S. forces continue to lead the military fight in Iraq. In addition, U.S. weapons inspectors continue to search but have found no weapons of mass destruction.

In the August poll, those most likely to say the Iraq war was the right thing to do were Republicans, Southerners, those who earn more than $50,000 a year and young adults.
....
Yet among many different groups of Americans, a majority of people now say the war was a mistake. Those groups include minorities (65 percent), Northeasterners (60 percent), Democrats (80 percent), people who make less than $25,000 a year (57 percent) and Catholics (51 percent).

In December, support for the war was widespread among most groups, although minorities even then were about evenly split on the question.

Last December, for example, 56 percent of seniors said the war in Iraq was the right thing to do and 40 percent disagreed. Now, six in 10 say the Iraq war was wrong.

Looked at in terms of the presidential campaign, almost nine in 10 Bush supporters say going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do, while almost nine in 10 supporters of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry say it was a mistake, according to polls conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs.

While the number dubious about the Iraq war has grown over the past eight months, support for U.S. troops remaining in Iraq until the job is done remains fairly constant. Since spring, just over half in various polls have said they support staying in Iraq until it is stabilized.

The most recent AP-Ipsos poll of 1,001 adults was conducted Aug. 3-5 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, larger for subgroups like older Americans.

A Record of Failure

Rumsfeld: Troops Are "Fungible"

by Clarence Page

Every so often, a high-profile Washington figure gets himself or herself into trouble by inadvertently revealing what he or she really thinks. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld knows. In a town where candor can be a crime, he's a repeat offender.

His latest score came in a Pentagon news conference Thursday when he revealed a new Rummy-ism: "People are fungible." My dictionary says "fungible," which is pronounced with a soft "G" as in "sponge," refers to something that can be satisfactorily replaced, either in part or in whole, with some other part or quantity of similar value.

"Oil is fungible," experts say, in arguing why no country or cartel can quite corner the market on it. If the price is too high in one place, you can buy it someplace else and the price in the first place will come down in order to compete.
Now, Rumsfeld wants you to know, our troops are fungible, too. His bold pronouncement came during an exchange with a reporter in a news conference during which Rumsfeld announced that about 20,000 American troops are about to have their tours in Iraq extended for at least three months.

The reporter wanted some clarification about the rosy scenarios of Iraqi success that Rumsfeld painted in his opening statement: "You said that the challenge in Fallujah is being contained and that the situation in the South is largely stabilized," the reporter said.

"And I wonder, if that is the case, why ... is it necessary to keep extra troops in Iraq for 90 days?"

"Well, it is - the reason it is contained is because we have the extra troops there. That is self-evident," Rumsfeld said, showing a little irritation. "Come on, people are fungible. You can have them here or there. We have announced the judgment. It is clear. You understand it. Everyone in the room understands that we needed additional - the commander decided he'd like to retain in-country an additional plus or minus 20,000 people and that is what we are doing."

People are fungible? Like so many replaceable parts? Perhaps in Rumsfeld's former-corporate-CEO mindset they are. But, in the world where most of us live, this ranks as his least fortunate comment since, oh, early last year.

That was when he said during another news conference that the 11 million Americans (including me) who were drafted during the Vietnam years "added no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time, because (of) the churning that took place. It took (an) enormous amount of effort in terms of training - and then they were gone."

Yup, we were "gone," all right. Some of us left in better shape than others. Of the more than 58,000-plus Americans who died in Vietnam action, more than 20,000 were draftees. Rumsfeld, who served three years on active duty as a Navy aviator in the 1950s, later apologized for the slight. Poor Rummy. People keep tripping him up by actually paying attention to what he says.

His vocabulary seems to reveal the mindset of a corporate efficiency expert, focused in an era of "downsizing" on reducing the "head counts" of "full-time equivalents" and their pesky benefit packages.

Now he is under more pressure. He admits that the fighting and casualties in Iraq are much higher in recent weeks than he expected a year ago. President George W. Bush says the administration will send enough troops to "get the job done," but our troops are getting stretched mighty thin as it is. To their everlasting credit, our troops are putting a brave public face on their private heartache, although a popular graffiti in Iraq these days proclaims an uncensored version of "'One weekend a month,' my (rear end)!" a pointed reference to the well-known promise made by National Guard recruitment ads.

Ambush in Ramadi

On April 6, a company of Marines on patrol in Ramadi, Iraq, was ambushed. Ten died that night and two more in the days that followed. These are their stories, as told by their families, friends, girlfriends, teachers and ministers.

This deeply affecting multi-media package (needs Flash and Real, downloads available at the link) is reported by Knight Ridder's Joe Galloway with photos by the Philly Inky's David Swanson. It is an eloquent repudiation of Rumsfeld's off-hand and honest remark--honest, in that it reveals the way he really feels about the soldiers, sailors, mariners and marines whose lives he commands. The lack of planning for the post- "Major combat operations" -period should have Rummy impeached for its casual indifference to the loss of life, American, coalition and Iraqi.

For another perspective, here is an after-action paper Intel Dump:

Effectiveness of Stability Operations During the Initial Implementation of the Transition Phase for Operation Iraqi Freedom, which discusses in great detail the Army's failure in the period right after the fall of the Saddam statue. In a less bizarre world, Rummy would be impeached, hauled off to the War Crimes Tribunal and spend a non-trivial amount of time in prison.

And here is the transcript of Jim Lehrer's softball interview with Rumsfeld on PBS's Newshour last night. An excerpt:

JIM LEHRER: But, speaking of today as I just reported in the News Summary, we have got a real problem in Najaf with Muqtada al-Sadr, a guy that early on was being dismissed by American officials as a thug, nobody followed him. And now here he is holed up in this holy city, and is there a peaceful solution?

And the question is: If you can't get it, what do you do? Can you have this fellah running around killing innocent Iraqis and firing off mortars and artillery pieces and rocket-propelled grenades and taking over a city indefinitely? I think probably the Iraqi government will decide not.

You can make up your own mind about what's true and who is responsible.

In his Sunday WaPo Op-Ed, Juan Cole demonstrates how out of touch with Iraqi reality Rummy's remarks are:

The Marines' campaign in Najaf against the Mahdi Army will succeed militarily, since the latter more resemble American ghetto gangs like the Crips and the Bloods than they do a genuine military force. But in the course of destroying Sadr and his followers, the Americans will inevitably create a host of martyrs, and the blood of martyrs has been the seed of more than one church. The American desecration of sacred Najaf and its cemetery makes the blood boil among Shiites throughout the world. There is likely to be a violent reaction from them at some point down the road.

All the Mahdi Army clansmen have cousins who will step forward to avenge them. The Sadr movement itself survived Saddam, despite his assassination of Sadr's father. The movement will throw up new leaders, as long as the vast Shiite slums of the south offer no more attractive political or cultural opportunities.

In the meantime, the Allawi government is discrediting itself with the religious Shiites by calling on the Marines to do a job that should have been undertaken by Iraqis. Even the cautious and long-suffering Sistani will eventually lose his patience if the holy sites are too brutally trampled and if the Americans overstay their welcome. Several potential successors to the ailing Sistani will likely be less patient with the Americans than he has been.

As for Sadr, he desperately wants the Iraqi people to toss the United States out of their country, as the Iranians did in 1978-79. He seems to think that if his life cannot convince them to do so, his death might. Long-time expatriate secularist politicians in Iraq -- and U.S. Defense Department officials who know almost nothing about Iraqi culture and society -- are gambling that he is wrong.

Juan also makes the catch this morning from the NYT that the whole confrontation in Najaf was an operational decision made on the ground by the local Marines without direction from the Pentagon. Unbelievable. These clueless young men are risking a world-wide Shiite uprising over the Shrine of Imam Ali without having the barest idea of the forces they risk putting in motion.

In recent interviews, the Marine officers said they turned a firefight with al-Sadr's forces on Aug. 5 into a eight-day pitched battle -- without the approval of the Pentagon or senior Iraqi officials. It was fought out in bloody skirmishes in an ancient cemetery that brought them within rifle shot of the Imam Ali Mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine. Eventually, fresh Army units arrived from Baghdad and took over Marine positions near the mosque, but by then the politics of war had taken over and the U.S. force had lost the opportunity to storm al-Sadr's troops around the mosque.

Now, what the Marines had hoped would be a quick, decisive action has bogged down into a stalemate that appears to have strengthened the hand of al-Sadr, whose stature rises each time he survives a confrontation with the U.S. military. Just as seriously, it might have weakened the credibility of the interim Iraqi government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, showing him, many Iraqis say, to be alternately rash and indecisive, as well as ultimately beholden to U.S. overrule on crucial military and political matters.

As a reconstruction of the battle in Najaf shows, the sequence of events was strikingly reminiscent of the battle of Fallujah in April. In both cases, newly arrived Marine units immediately confronted guerrillas in firefights that quickly escalated. And in both cases, the U.S. military failed to achieve its strategic goals, pulling back after the political costs of the confrontation rose.

Fallujah is now essentially off-limits to U.S. ground troops and has become a haven for Sunni Muslim insurgents and terrorists menacing Baghdad, U.S. commanders say.

The Najaf battle also has raised fresh questions about an age-old rivalry within the U.S. military -- between the no-holds-barred, press-ahead culture of the Marines and the slower, more reserved and often more politically cautious approach of the Army. In Iraq, Army-Marine tensions have surfaced previously, notably when Marine units opened a major offensive in Fallujah this spring, vowing to crush rebels entrenched there before they, too, were ordered to pull back.

As they replay the first days of the Najaf battle, some commanders are wondering if a more carefully planned mission would have had a better chance to succeed.

But the hospitals and schools are open....