Religious Liberals Doing Good

This via Chuck Currie's blog:

Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Prayer Breakfast Canceled

It is wonderful that so many people took the time to e-mail Mayor Drake to offer support for his decision. Hopefully, the Beaverton-Tigard Chapter of the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship & Concerned Citizens will use this experience to learn more about the Muslim faith and consider sponsoring interfaith events in the future if they intend to hold events with public officials.

Cracked Catholic Reporting

In a redemptive moment, Atrios and a reader did a great job of deconstructing Barbara Bradley Hagarty's crappy "Kerry and Catholicism" story on Morning Edition this morning (sniff, g'bye, Bob)>

(Reader k): In many ways a decent, straight-up piece of reporting, but her main "expert" was someone who contrasted Catholics who believe in "absolute truth" and follow all church teachings and vote overwhelmingly Republican, with those who feel that their morality is for them but don't see it as a universal standard to be applied to everyone, and of course he brought up the "cafeteria Catholic" label, conveniently ignoring that many of those in favor of "absolute truth" vote for pro-death-penalty politicians and pro-Iraq-war politicians, thus contradicting their spiritual leader. And I'm not in their bedrooms, but I'm guessing they're not all sticking to the rhythm method.

And, more generally, the reporter didn't bother to ask any questions about the numerous pro-Choice Catholic Republicans.

Charles Pierce in his Slacker Friday appearance at Altercation elaborates with a truism that I don't think I've heard mentioned in public before:

Speaking of whom, I continue to follow with interest the Papist issue in this presidential campaign, ever since the national political press began channelling Gregory VII a few weeks back.

There is a reason for this, although the R's don't like to mention it in polite society. It is because they depend so vitally -- especially in the South -- on the Christian fundamentalist community and, to those folks, the pope is pretty much still the "whore of Babylon." (Google up Bob Jones University and Papacy some time, just for a laugh.) A Catholic on a Republican ticket would quietly doom it in a lot of places where the ticket couldn't afford to be weakened. Now, the crowd at Crisis Magazine, and some conservative Catholic thinkers, have tried to make common cause with the political end of Protestant fundamentalism, but they look like idiots trying to do so. It is preposterous -- even in politics -- to pretend that there is a single "Christian" view on, say, taxation, when there isn't even a single "Christian" view on Jesus Christ, let alone to whom he entrusted his message.

OUTRAGE

What the US papers don't say

Michael Hann examines the air of secrecy and silence surrounding the US media's treatment of George Bush's 'war on terror'

Friday April 30, 2004

American contractors and soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners in a prison outside Baghdad? A huge story, by anyone's standards, surely, especially when pictures of the abuse were broadcast on the US TV network CBS.

So it was no surprise that newspapers around the world made huge, horrified play of the events at the Abu Ghraib prison. It was more of a surprise, however, that the story did not receive the same level of coverage in the US papers.

The Baltimore Sun, however, was damning in its verdict. "Television footage of the mistreatment of Iraqi war prisoners by their American captors was shockingly disturbing and hauntingly reminiscent of the horror stories from the regime of Saddam Hussein," it said. Punishment of those responsible, it added, would not on its own be sufficient response. "The Pentagon must be held accountable if the military failed to provide the training, staffing, supervision and leadership required to ensure that prisoners of war are treated humanely."

Perhaps the difference between the US coverage and that elsewhere should have been expected. CBS admitted it had come under severe pressure from the Pentagon not to broadcast the images, and the issue of what is and what is not fit for US public consumption has been an ongoing theme, applicable to events both domestic and foreign.

Tonight, for example, the ABC network's Nightline programme is to feature host Ted Koppel reading the names of all members of the American military killed in Iraq, while pictures of them appear on screen. But, as the New York Daily News reported, one local broadcasting group that controls eight ABC-affiliated stations has "angrily pulled" the show, claiming the naming of the dead "is a blatant anti-war ploy".

The White House reacted angrily last week to the publication of the flag-draped coffins of US soldiers who have died in Iraq. But Daniel Schorr, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, wondered why. "Considering that no individual identification is visible in the pictures, it is hard to understand the justification for clamping the secrecy lid on the solemn procession of flag-draped coffins being carried off the cargo planes," he wrote. "I cannot avoid the suspicion that President George Bush - who has yet to attend to a funeral service for any of the honoured dead that he has sent to war - has no interest in calling attention to the mounting number of casualties in a battle that was far from over last May 1, when the president declared 'major combat operations' in Iraq had ended."

The appearance yesterday of Mr Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks provided another example of the debate. "There was no press coverage allowed, no recording, no transcript to be made available later, no testimony given under oath - and no good reason for any of it," said the Boston Globe.

"Mr Bush, who pulled the nation together in 2001, might have done so again yesterday by displaying a willingness to be open - at least in transcript form - about what may have gone wrong on his watch ... [And] going public before the commission with that attitude might have won Mr Bush international respect."

As Alessandra Stanley put it in the New York Times: "On a day when viewers could watch American marines battling rebels in Falluja and see Jayson Williams squirm in his courtroom seat while awaiting a verdict on manslaughter charges, the blackout at the White House was striking; throughout the day, the torrent of words used on cable news shows to describe the meeting ('exceptionally rare', 'extraordinary', 'historic') clashed almost comically with the meagre visual images ... The nonvisual event was so anathema to television that at one point, the CNN anchor Daryn Kagan said it seemed as if 'the event took place in the 18th century'."

ITV in talks for Iraq torture report

Patrick Barrett
Friday April 30, 2004

ITV is hoping to broadcast tonight the American current affairs show that revealed to the world the shocking photographic evidence that US soldiers had tortured Iraqi prisoners held in a Baghdad jail.

The station is in talks with CBS, the US network that yesterday broadcast the 60 Minutes report containing disturbing images of abuse and torture, in a bid to secure the rights to show the full story today at 8pm, in place of Trevor McDonald's Tonight.

But talks centre on persuading CBS to relax the strict condition that if ITV buys the programme it must transmit it in its entirety, even though the report accounts for just 13 minutes of the hour-long show.

"We are negotiating with CBS but their policy does seem to have created some transmission difficulties, but we are trying to resolve them," said Steve Anderson, ITV's head of current affairs for ITV News.

The images of Iraqi prisoners humiliated by their American guards were shown on British news bulletins last night in a 40-second clip released by CBS on the condition that it was not edited.

CNN is broadcasting the Michael Jackson arraignment live. The Iraq prison story got 30 seconds. We are now well into 10 minutes on Michael Jackson.

UPDATE: The WaPo buries it on A24. Can't find anything in the NYT.

The Guardian further reports:

Amnesty International said today it had received numerous other reports of torture by coalition forces, of which "virtually none ... has been adequately investigated by the authorities".

The human rights organisation said: "Our extensive research in Iraq suggests that this is not an isolated incident. It is not enough for the USA to react only once images have hit the television screens."

"There must be a fully independent, impartial and public investigation into all allegations of torture. Nothing less will suffice."

This morning Mr Blair's human rights envoy to Iraq, Ann Clwyd, also branded pictures of American troops torturing Iraqi prisoners "absolutely terrible" - but insisted the abuses were "only a small number of cases".

General Disaster

LOU DOBBS: My next guest says the United States has failed in Iraq and it should leave immediately. General William Odom directed the National Security Agency under President Reagan, served on President Carter's National Security Council. He is the co-author of a new book called "America's Inadvertent Empire."

ODOM: Thank you.

Legionairies

Rebuilding Aid Unspent, Tapped to Pay Expenses

By Jonathan Weisman and Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 30, 2004; Page A01

Seven months after Congress approved the largest foreign aid package in history to rebuild Iraq, less than 5 percent of the $18.4 billion has been spent and occupation officials have begun shifting more than $300 million earmarked for reconstruction projects to administrative and security expenses.

Recent reports from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the CPA's inspector general and the U.S. Agency for International Development attest to the growing difficulties of the U.S.-led reconstruction effort. And they have raised concerns in Congress and among international aid experts that the Bush administration's ambitious rebuilding campaign is adrift amid rising violence and unforeseen costs.

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), chairman of the House Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, cited "bureaucratic infighting" and a "loss of central command and control" at a hearing yesterday as he sharply questioned top administration officials: "I have very serious concerns about the pace of assistance in Iraq and the management of those funds."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz pointed to successes in rebuilding and blamed contracting snafus for some of the delays. But Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary at the State Department, which will take over from the CPA this summer, refused to make what he called "excuses."

"Of course we're not satisfied," he said. "We feel the same sense of urgency that Paul feels to get on with it."

Of the $18.4 billion in Iraqi aid approved by Congress in October, just $2.3 billion had been steered to projects through March 24, the CPA told Congress this month. Only $1 billion has actually been spent, the authority's inspector general told congressional aides Monday. In January, the CPA had said it had planned to spend nearly $8 billion during the first six months of this fiscal year.
....
Administration officials said the money was taken from drinking-water projects because such projects have been allocated $2.8 billion through 2005, of which only $14 million has been channeled to projects. They said they felt it would be easier to take the full $184 million they were allowed to shift to CPA expenses from one place, rather than siphoning off smaller amounts from various accounts.

"We worked with Congress to develop a package of options to ensure the embassy would have needed resources," said White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton. "We are continuing to work with Capitol Hill as the process moves forward."

Attacks on foreign civilians have also made the CPA reassess its plan for rebuilding the Iraqi security forces. Some $93 million has been reallocated from facilities protection, border enforcement and the Iraqi Armed Forces to build a fortified police training facility in Baghdad, in addition to an $800 million training academy in Jordan. The reason is that international police trainers needed a secure place to work in the Iraqi capital, said Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee responsible for aid funding.

Almost since the very beginning, the reconstruction of Iraq has been set back by problems including the widespread looting in the country and competition between various U.S. agencies. "At its worst," Kolbe said yesterday, the infighting "has led to different parts of the U.S. government pursuing different policies in a given country."

The first set of contracts was awarded before the war ended, and occupation authorities reported significant progress in rebuilding schools and power plants by last fall. But turning the new round of congressional funding into visible projects and jobs has been hampered by continuing administrative and security problems.

Shortly after Congress approved the funds in mid-November, senior government officials became embroiled in a debate over who would manage the money and whether proper financial controls were in place. The Pentagon had set up a new entity called the Program Management Office to coordinate between the various contracting agencies. Some officials argued that the idea of the new office was too experimental and that it might be better for USAID or another agency to take over. The result was that the first major group of contracts were awarded in March, instead of February.

The Program Management Office Web site now says $1.5 billion in work is "under way" on 42 projects, and its director, David J. Nash, a retired Navy rear admiral, said in Iraq last week that $5 billion of the funds "will be committed to construction" by July 1.

Meanwhile, the deteriorating security situation has forced CPA officials to change some spending priorities.

USAID spokesman Luke Zahner said the shift of funds from "democracy building," electricity, education and water to agency overhead was a technical adjustment. Limited funds were allocated for operations by Congress because it was unclear last fall which agency would oversee which projects in Iraq, he said.

Most of the reallocation is for security, said Lu'ay Eris, deputy president of Baghdad City Council, which he called a reasonable decision.

Not water, not oil, not sewers. The money is going to the mercs. Just thought you'd want to know.

Early Handicapping

GOP Infighting Boosts the Odds for Democrats in Senate Races

BY JOHN FARMER
c.2004 Newhouse News Service

PHILADELPHIA -- Republicans face an unexpectedly stiff challenge this fall to their control of the U.S. Senate -- complicated by a bitter battle for the Pennsylvania GOP Senate nomination Tuesday and a sharp shift in political winds since the start of the year.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Although they hold a fragile 51-48-1 Senate majority (with the one independent aligned with the Democrats), Republicans seemed a safe bet only four months ago to hold that advantage and maybe even add to it. Not only were more Democrat-held seats on the ballot this year -- 19 to 15 for the GOP -- but five veteran Democrats in the now solidly Republican Southeast were calling it quits.

And for added insurance, there was the prospect of running with George W. Bush, a wartime president leading the fight against terrorism, at the top of the ticket.

But events have upset that rosy scenario. The war in Iraq has taken a nasty turn and Bush finds himself hard-pressed by Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. At the same time, incumbent Republican senators in Oklahoma, Colorado and Illinois have announced they're quitting, raising Democratic prospects in those states.

To add to the turnabout, Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, has been less than successful in persuading his top choices to seek Senate seats in some key states, while Democratic recruiters, according to Stuart Rothenberg, an independent Washington-based political analyst, have "gotten some terrific candidates."

Of the 34 Senate seats on this year's ballot, only 10 are considered truly competitive, six now in Democratic hands, four held by Republicans. But it is an 11th seat, the one held by Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Arlen Specter, 74, a 24-year incumbent, that's drawing the most early interest.

And with good reason. The outcome of the GOP primary in Pennsylvania could determine which party controls the Senate next January. Whoever is president will need Senate control to advance his agenda and control judicial and other appointments.

Specter's primary battle with U.S. Rep. Patrick Toomey of Allentown is a classic clash of ideologies and a microcosm of the war within the GOP between the dominant conservatives and a dwindling band of moderates.

This story moved on Monday, and, of course, we know Specter beat Toomey on Tuesday, but the rest of the speculation stands. I love the smell of hope in the morning.

"This is a national story and it has moderate Republicans scared to death. Who'd want to go through what Specter is going through?" Robb said, especially after Specter's 24 years of service and seniority that will make him chairman of the powerful Judiciary Committee if he's re-elected and Republicans retain control.

Jennifer Duffy, who monitors Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C., also says the battle for Senate control has changed markedly in the last six months from a slam-dunk for Republicans to one in which Democrats suddenly "have prospects."

Originally, the retirement of Democratic incumbents in five Southeastern states was seen as guaranteeing a hefty gain for Republicans. Now, Duffy said, only Georgia, where conservative Democrat Zell Miller is packing his bags, tilts clearly toward the GOP. In Louisiana, Florida and the two Carolinas, well-financed Democrats have made those races too close to call, she said. In addition, both North and South Carolina have suffered serious job losses to globalization, an issue Democrats have been exploiting.

"It could come down in those states to who has credibility on jobs and trade," Duffy said.

Resignations also have created some unexpected vulnerabilities for the GOP. Republican Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell in Colorado and Don Nickles in Oklahoma, both heavy re-election favorites, and Peter Fitzgerald in Illinois, who faced a tough fight, all opted to call it a day, allowing Democrats to lure fairly strong candidates into those races.

Then there's the issue of nepotism in Alaska.

The Republican incumbent, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, got her job through her father, Frank, who appointed her his replacement when he quit the Senate after being elected governor. Lisa Murkowski is an attractive, articulate candidate, according to Duffy, but the favoritism in her selection doesn't sit well with some Alaskans. To make matters worse, her father's administration has run into charges that he bought off some potential rivals to Lisa with state appointments. And his state chairman is under an ethics cloud.

"Lisa's biggest liability certainly is her father," says Andrew Halcro, a former Alaska GOP legislator.

In recent years, money has been a problem for Democrats in battles for the Senate and House of Representatives. But less so this time, according to Russell Hemenway of the National Committee for an Effective Congress, which raises funds for liberal Senate and House candidates. "They all appear to have enough," he said. " Maybe not enough to match Republicans, but enough to wage a real campaign."

The fact that so few Democratic Senate candidates face a primary fight also has helped, he said.

In contrast, Republicans are beset with primary contests. There are multiple candidates in most of the states considered close races, a sure drain on resources for November.

Despite the improved Democratic prospects, both Rothenberg and Duffy give the edge to Republicans in the fall. Rothenberg said the GOP should break even -- holding its slender majority -- "or even gain one seat."

"I'd make it 60-40 for the Republicans," Duffy said of the GOP's odds. "But six months ago I'd have made it 90-10."

New Meme: Profesionalism

Don Wycliff:
Bush reaping the benefits of journalistic professionalism
Covering an inarticulate president

Published April 29, 2004

Why is the press protecting George W. Bush?

You heard me right, Russ. And Larry. And Byron. And all the rest of you folks who pen those jeering notes to me every day about anti-Bush bias in the Tribune's news reports.

Why is the Democrat-loving, Republican-hating, pond scum-swilling, lower-than-the-rug-on-the-floor, biased, liberal [curl upper lip when pronouncing] press protecting George W. Bush?
....
I can't prove it, but I would bet that most of the editors and publishers went away from the speech wondering why Bush, who long ago proved that he is no extemporaneous speaker, hadn't ordered up an address for the occasion from his stable of White House speechwriters. I heard more than one of those in attendance say the same thing: "He wasted an opportunity."

But you didn't read about any of that, because the reporters, trained to seek meaning and the meaningful in any utterance by the president, focused on what could be understood.

Bush has benefited from this journalistic professionalism throughout his presidency. In a column almost two years ago, in July 2002, I quoted the complaint of a reader who claimed we had misquoted the president's statement in a press conference denying any "`malfeasance' in his business dealings prior to becoming president."

"The word that he actually used ... sounded to me something like `misfeance'--something which is not a word in any dictionary I've ever seen," the reader, Sean Barnawell of Chicago, wrote. "I feel the Tribune should not be in the business of `cleansing' what the president says in order to make him sound more articulate than he is."

I replied thus: "Ideally, we would have a president so articulate that we would never be in doubt as to what he said. In reality, we have one who regularly mispronounces. ... This confronts us with the question whether our purpose is to transmit to readers what the president means when he speaks out or to simply relate what he says. I have always felt that transmitting meaning is paramount. .."

And so "nuculer" becomes "nuclear" in the newspaper. And "misfeance," unknown to any dictionary, becomes "malfeasance," because an experienced White House reporter has learned to translate Bushspeak.

Bush benefits from the reporters' professionalism. And his cheering section jeers from the sidelines about journalistic "bias."

Wycliffe correctly identifies the syndrome==Bush apologetics==but chalking press whorage up to "professionalism" is just goofy. This is the same garbage that David Ignatius was peddling in the WaPo on Tuesday:

A Feb. 17 article in the Times about what could go wrong in Iraq included this haunting quotation from an unnamed senior official: "We still do not know how U.S. forces will be received. Will it be cheers, jeers or shots? And the fact is, we won't know until we get there." Even though it was a blind quotation, that should have been a red flag to every editor and columnist in America. But it wasn't.

The uniformed military privately had serious questions about the Iraq mission, but these only occasionally made their way into print. A rare example is a March 11, 2003, story in The Post by Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks, which began: "The U.S. Army is bracing for war in Iraq and a postwar occupation that could tie up two to three Army divisions in an open-ended mission that would strain the all-volunteer force and put soldiers in the midst of warring ethnic and religious factions, Army officers and other senior defense officials say." Again, that story should have been a red flag.

In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own. And because major news organizations knew the war was coming, we spent a lot of energy in the last three months before the war preparing to cover it -- arranging for reporters to be embedded with military units, purchasing chemical and biological weapons gear and setting up forward command posts in Kuwait that mirrored those of the U.S. military.

Bob Somerby deconstructs:

On what planet are these people found? According to Ignatius, because neither party was blast-faxing warnings, “journalistic rules” meant that scribes couldn’t raise concerns by themselves! (His claim that “policy analysts” weren’t voicing concern is so absurd that, as a courtesy, we’ll avert our gaze from the remark.) And by the way, can this astonishing “explanation” really appear in the Washington Post? We wonder if Woodward and Bernstein had heard of these rules—if they knew that journalists can’t report facts until the two parties have sent them a leaflet? Ignatius’ comment defies comprehension—except as a description of the repulsive, dinner-party “journalism” that has made a sick joke of our lives.

Heresy Condemned

Reader Janine (she's in Comments) sent me a link to this Episcopal News Service item, reported out of Jerusalem yesterday. Here is what Christian progressives are saying by to the Christian Right, since that has been an issue lately. If anybody can find this story picked up by the secular media, send me a link.

Jerusalem conference calls Christian Zionism a 'heresy'

by James Solheim
ENS 042804-3
Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Christian theologians, religious leaders and peace activists meeting in Jerusalem issued a stinging rebuke of "the heretical teachings of Christian Zionism" following the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center's conference "Challenging Christian Zionism: Theology, Politics, and the Palestine-Israel Conflict," held April 14-18.

The conference itself was bracketed by two new developments in the ongoing Mideast crisis: the memoranda of agreement between US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on April 14 that, according to the statement, moved the crisis "into a new phase of oppression of the Palestinian people"; and the targeted assassination of a second Hamas leader in Gaza, Abdul Aziz Rantisi.

For those of you in need of some scriptural exegesis (this article is quite scholarly):

Barbara Rossing of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago dealt directly and convincingly with the misuse of the New Testament book of Revelation in supporting Christian Zionist theology. "It is a highly political but deeply spiritual book," she said, "that helps us see empire differently." When Revelation was written, Rome had just reoccupied the region and the book's writer, John, looked at the situation and "addressed the issue of justice, giving us eyes to see our world."

But Revelation is not meant to be read literally, Rossing said. "It is one of the most daring critiques of empire" in the New Testament, one that "looks the powers in the face and says that 'Rome won't last, God will.'" Rossing said that Revelation offers "a vision of healing and renewal." But its prophecy is a wake-up call, a word of warning to the people, not a set of predictions. Fundamentalists never get to the last chapter that describes the New Jerusalem and God's renewed vision of community, she said. "It lays out God's vision for all time, not restricted to someone's time-line. It is also written from the underside, at a time more hopeless and violent than our own. The non-violent Lamb conquers by shedding its own blood," she said.

Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, mindful of controversies within his own communion, did not attend but sent a representative to give an address, which was poorly received. Janine provides us with a link.

I was disappointed with it because Rowan Williams is one of the sharpest minds kicking around liberal Christianity today (he's a fantastic systematic theologian ) and he sticks to a very narrow agenda in this speech. I understand some of the political and theological pressures on him these days and that he is treading carefully, but he hews to a single reading of Revelation (or Apocolypse, to Catholics). Williams is often a riveting speaker, but this speech feels like it was dashed off.

At any rate, the Saheel Center is one of the pre-eminent centers of ecumenical studies in the world. They are forever having conferences and issuing press releases that you never hear about. The religious left has a tough time getting the microphone.

Blowback

Firms rethinking partners' benefits

By Scott S. Greenberger and Kimberly Blanton, Globe Staff | April 29, 2004

The imminent arrival of gay marriage in Massachusetts is prompting some large private employers that offer domestic-partner benefits to same-sex couples to consider ending those benefits.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which currently provides benefits to the domestic partners of gay employees, but not the domestic partners of heterosexual ones, will restrict benefits to married couples, whether they are gay or straight, beginning next year. Babson College in Wellesley has made the same change. Harvard University and John Hancock Financial Services say they are examining their positions.

Complicating matters is the possibility that voters will amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage and establish civil unions for gay couples in 2006.

Though the situation is muddy now, some benefits specialists say the advent of gay marriage will lead to the demise of domestic-partner benefits, largely because they are an added expense. Many large Massachusetts employers began offering domestic-partner benefits to be fair to, and attract, gay employees. But once they can get married, the discrimination rationale disappears.

Robert Webb, a partner with the Boston law firm of Nutter, McClennen & Fish who advises companies on benefits, predicted that gay marriage may be "the death knell for domestic-partner benefits."

"The genesis of domestic benefits was that employers had gay and lesbian employees in longstanding relationships that were denied the benefits of their heterosexual counterparts," Webb said. "If you can get married, is there any reason to give domestic partner benefits? I think the answer is no.

"Many employers may simply say it's no longer necessary to give this expensive benefit to people who are unwilling to walk the aisle," Webb said.
....
In another gay-marriage development, Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday that his administration would "take a stab" at formulating detailed rules for gay and lesbian couples seeking to marry in Massachusetts after May 17, but that he would be looking to the courts and the Legislature to resolve some of the confusion stemming from the questions that will arise as the new rights are exercised.

Romney's administration is preparing detailed instructions for city and town clerks on how to issue marriage licenses for same sex couples.

"Our lawyers are going through line by line," Romney said. "We'll do our best to [apply] the laws as best we understand them."

Training sessions for clerks will begin on May 4. Since 1977, clerks have not been required to actively enforce the restrictions on marriage imposed by a 1913 law that makes Massachusetts marriages void for out-of-state couples if they would be void in their home states. Those clerks have been instructed to accept an oath of eligibility in lieu of evidence.

"One of the issues that was raised -- we'll have to put on our instruction sheet -- . . . raises the question of a couple that's joined by civil union in Vermont that comes here, has not been divorced of that civil union, and now wants to marry other parties, other people," Romney said yesterday, after an event at the Seaport Hotel. "What do we do then? We're going to take our best stab at these, but I would far prefer having legislative guidance on issues like these, so that we can follow the laws as best as we understand them."

With gay marriage comes gay divorce, Governor. It really isn't all that hard to figure this out.

"You can't buy love."

Poll: Iraqis out of patience
By Cesar G. Soriano and Steven Komarow,USA TODAY
BAGHDAD — Only a third of the Iraqi people now believe that the American-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them in greater danger, according to a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll. (Graphic: Iraqis surveyed)
By Khalid Mohammed, AP

The nationwide survey, the most comprehensive look at Iraqi attitudes toward the occupation, was conducted in late March and early April. It reached nearly 3,500 Iraqis of every religious and ethnic group.

The poll shows that most continue to say the hardships suffered to depose Saddam Hussein were worth it. Half say they and their families are better off than they were under Saddam. And a strong majority say they are more free to worship and to speak. (Related item: Key findings)

But while they acknowledge benefits from dumping Saddam a year ago, Iraqis no longer see the presence of the American-led military as a plus. Asked whether they view the U.S.-led coalition as "liberators" or "occupiers," 71% of all respondents say "occupiers."

That figure reaches 81% if the separatist, pro-U.S. Kurdish minority in northern Iraq is not included. The negative characterization is just as high among the Shiite Muslims who were oppressed for decades by Saddam as it is among the Sunni Muslims who embraced him.

The growing negative attitude toward the Americans is also reflected in two related survey questions: 53% say they would feel less secure without the coalition in Iraq, but 57% say the foreign troops should leave anyway. Those answers were given before the current showdowns in Fallujah and Najaf between U.S. troops and guerrilla fighters.

The findings come as the U.S. administration is struggling to quell the insurgency and turn over limited sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government by the end of June. Interviews this week in Baghdad underscored the findings.

"I'm not ungrateful that they took away Saddam Hussein," says Salam Ahmed, 30, a Shiite businessman. "But the job is done. Thank you very much. See you later. Bye-bye."
....
In Baghdad, which has seen the most change — good and bad — since the war, residents say they can feel the boost to the economy that has come from foreign aid and the opening of the country's borders. While many say that they are earning far more than they did before the invasion, they yearn for the safety and stability of the past.

"The freedoms they gave us are satellite television, Thurayas (satellite telephones) and mobile telephones. And you can drive a car without a license," says Resha Namir, 20, a computer science major at Baghdad University. But "I can't even go out because I'm afraid that any minute we will die. The war was not worth it."

Some are more positive. Lauran Waliyah, 46, a restaurant manager and Christian who supported Saddam, says her experience with the Americans has been good. Once, when a madman with a knife entered her business, soldiers came to help, she says.

"It is unfair to ask for the departure of the U.S. troops," she says.

But the hostility reflected in the poll is a message that the troops understand, says Monks, the Marine lance corporal. "They don't want us here," he says. "They want to rebuild their own country. We're trying to Americanize their life. You can't buy love."

Chronic Obstructionism

The President's Testimony,er, something else but not testimony

The strangest of the president's conditions is that he will testify only in concert with Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House has given no sensible reason for why Mr. Bush is unwilling to appear alone. (When asked at his recent press conference, the president gave one of his patented nonresponses: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.")

Given the White House's concern for portraying Mr. Bush as a strong leader, it's remarkable that this critical appearance is being structured in a way that is certain to provide fodder for late-night comedians, who enjoy depicting him as the docile puppet of his vice president.

Mr. Bush's reluctant and restrictive cooperation with the panel is consistent with the administration's pattern of stonewalling reasonable requests for documents and testimony and then giving up only the minimum necessary ground when the dispute becomes public. Today's testimony will be in private in the White House, away from reporters or television cameras. The session will not be recorded, and there will be no formal transcript. The president's aides have defended this excessive degree of secrecy with the usual arguments about protecting highly classified information and not wanting to establish dangerous precedents.

The idea that the panel may wring from Mr. Bush some comment that may endanger national security is ridiculous. The commission, led by the respected former Republican governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean, has already heard, in public, from the leaders of the nation's top intelligence agencies, the secretary of defense and Mr. Bush's national security adviser. It seems highly unlikely that the president knows secrets more sensitive than they do. If he did, he would certainly be free to go off the record while discussing them.

DO NOT spend any time trying to figure out what this farce is about. You will hurt yourself. You will ruin your day. Instead, have some strawberries with cream. Walk the dog. Kiss a kid.

Mornings Will Never Be The Same

Bob Edwards & the Remains of the Day
The Longtime Host of NPR's 'Morning Edition' Braces for Life After Dawn

By Jennifer Frey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 29, 2004; Page C01

"Good morning. U.S. troops battle in Najaf, south of Baghdad. I'm Bob Edwards. Today is Tuesday, April 27th. From NPR News, this is 'Morning Edition.' "

It begins, as always, with coffee. Coffee, a stolen cigarette, more coffee. Bob Edwards has been up since 1 a.m., when he poured his first cup in the quiet of his Arlington home, the house still, his wife and younger daughter still in the earlier stages of their slumber.

It is 3:50 now, and the pot is empty in the small pod that is home to the staff of "Morning Edition." Edwards emerges from his office, which is a bit barren, cardboard boxes on the floor, shelves holding just a smattering of books. For the last hour, Edwards has been composing copy on yellow paper he rolls into an old electric typewriter. He needs more caffeine, so he changes the filter, grinds the beans, watches, impatiently, as fresh coffee begins its drip, drip, drip.

"This is the most important thing I do all day," he says to no one in particular. It is meant for a laugh, but it comes out sounding wry. Perhaps a little sardonic. It is hard, after all. Hard not to be bitter.

He has been told, more or less, that he is a dinosaur. No one used that specific word, of course, but it's out there, the subtext to NPR's announcement that after nearly 25 years, Edwards, 56, is being removed from the "Morning Edition" anchor chair. The show, network executives have said, needs to move in a new direction, with dual hosts who also report from the field, a quicker response to breaking news and more diverse voices. To quote from an online chat by Jay Kernis, senior vice president for programming, the Edwards model "is no longer sufficient to bring the weight of credible, in-depth reporting that we are demanding of ourselves."

And so this particular morning -- "Tuesday, April 27th," as Edwards intones at the top of the hour -- is one of his last behind the microphone in the second-floor studio at NPR's Massachusetts Avenue headquarters. Tomorrow will mark his final show. After a three-month break, he will return to NPR in late July as a senior correspondent.

"My feeling is, you have people in the field and you have people here," Edwards says. "I thought they had it right. The childless and single would go out and cover wars, and the rest of us would be here at the microphone. But I guess that's not what they want anymore."

That's what he's been told?

"Yes, but that's the explanation of the week," he says.

He's gotten more than one?

"Well, yeah, haven't you?" he says. "You can follow them if you read the papers." The decision to remove Edwards -- whose deep, smooth voice draws 13 million early-morning listeners to NPR every week -- has been a publicity disaster for the network. Made on March 23, the announcement generated widespread criticism in the media and an avalanche of mail from angry listeners, many of whom felt that the network had proven itself to be out of touch with -- or, worse yet, indifferent to -- community opinion.

Bruce Drake, NPR's vice president for news, admits that the announcement was bungled.

"I think our first explanation of why we did it had too much of a 'corporate' tinge," Drake says, then struggles to explain. "People expect NPR to exhibit the values of public radio. . . . They expect that it is human, rather than corporate."

In the weeks since the announcement, NPR has tried to change that perception, but not the decision itself, which, Drake says, was never up for reconsideration. It was time, NPR executives were certain, for Edwards to go.

G'Bye, Bob. You'll be missed.

NPR really screwed this up.

Power to the People

Here is today's message from Anders Schneiderman of the SEIU's Justice at Work Project:

Putting Capital(ism) to Work for your Values

This is a little long, but keep reading, and I promise to be less wordy
tomorrow.

Any help you could give us in thinking about this would be great --
we're just getting started and we can use all the insights and creative
ideas we can get. Also, if you know anyone who works on Wall Street by
day but wants to be a Caped Crusader for Justice by night, ask them to
join the conversation.

Melanie here. I think this campaign by the SEIU is brilliant. Using the netroots to empower activists and garner support is a wonderful strategy. Here they are offering you the tools to take back your economic future from the oligarchs and corporatists who would turn us into a serf culture, and inviting your ideas. Click on the link to see their blog and offer your suggestions, or leave them in comments below and I'll make sure they get back to Anders.

Back to the Future

Envoy Details His Plan for Iraq
Despite the ongoing violence, a caretaker government can be in place a month before the transfer of power, the U.N. representative says.

By Maggie Farley, Tony Perry and Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff Writers

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Tuesday that despite the ongoing violence in Iraq, a caretaker government could be named by the end of May to prepare for the planned June 30 transfer of sovereignty from the U.S.-led authority.

Brahimi sketched his vision for Iraq's transitional government to the U.N. Security Council in New York on a day that news stations across the globe televised live images of an American warplane raining cannon fire on insurgents' positions in Fallouja and the U.S. reported the deaths of more than 60 militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric during battles near the holy city of Najaf on Monday.

Brahimi has called for peaceful solutions to the standoffs in Fallouja and Najaf, saying Tuesday that the U.S.-led forces know "better than everyone else that the consequences of such bloodshed could be dramatic and long-lasting."

But although the planned hand-over of power is bound to be difficult and dangerous, Brahimi argued before the Security Council that it remains "doable."

"Is it possible for the process to proceed under such circumstances? Will it be viable? Will it be credible?" he asked rhetorically. "There is no alternative but to find a way of making the process viable and credible."

Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister who was persuaded by the Bush administration and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to create a blueprint for the tricky political transition in Iraq, is due to return to Baghdad at the beginning of May. There, he will consult with leaders of the U.S.-led occupation and the Iraqi Governing Council and other leading Iraqis to identify a group of people who would be given the responsibility for day-to-day administration of the country until elections can be held, as scheduled, next January.

Meanwhile, in Washington on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John D. Negroponte underwent a three-hour hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on his nomination as ambassador to Iraq.

Negroponte, asked about the level of authority the U.S. will hand over to Iraq, said that Iraqis will have "a lot more sovereignty than they have right now," including control over the nation's ministries and its foreign policy. But Negroponte said that American-led military forces would continue to oversee Iraqi security. "They're going to be free to operate in Iraq as best they see fit," he told the Senate committee.

Nominee Assures Senate on Iraq
Process of Transferring Power Is Going to Be 'Evolutionary,' Negroponte Says

By Walter Pincus and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 28, 2004; Page A15

President Bush's nominee for ambassador to Iraq, John D. Negroponte, said yesterday that Iraqis will have "a lot more sovereignty than they have right now" when an interim government takes over on July 1, but that the transfer of power will "be a work in progress and it's going to be evolutionary."

At a confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, panel members expressed confidence in Negroponte while voicing skepticism that the United States has a clear enough strategy in place for Iraq.

Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, sought to reassure the senators -- including a pledge that the U.S.-led command will retain control over military forces in the country even after July 1. But he acknowledged that many of the most basic details of who will assume power on behalf of Iraqis have yet to be determined.

"There are still unanswered questions about structure, composition and powers of the Iraqi interim government to which I will present my credentials," Negroponte said.

Translation: there is no plan. That's the Bushies in a nutshell.

Good Things

Per your many requests, I've been surfing the Web in search of some good news. The struggle has been arduous, but at long last, I've found some, courtesy of echidne of the snakes who enumerates the good things humans have done:

1. Chocolate. True, the ingredients are from nature, but people invented the formula for chocolate. It is food for goddesses and anyone else sane. It is said to contain chemical ingredients similar to those that are unleashed when one falls in love. It should be called 'the little orgasm', and it should be declared the national food of all countries. Eating chocolate is good for you, researchers have established (too lazy to find the link now but this is true). The only bad thing about chocolate is something called 'white chocolate'. It is an imposter and should be shunned. The best, absolutely the best chocolate is a home-made truffle. I make a mean chocolate truffle.

13. Siberian throat-singing, because it is so inexplicable, and sounds to me like an attempt to French-kiss oneself.

With echidne, I concur that French kissing should be restricted to those who know what they are doing.

Dirty Tricks

Prince Hal vs. King Henry

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, April 28, 2004; Page A21

In the course of the past week an odd double standard has emerged in the presidential campaign. Every sentence and gesture of the young John Kerry has been scrutinized -- and often deliberately misinterpreted -- for signs of insincerity, self-promotion, lack of patriotism and fledgling Francophilia.

The sentences and gestures of the young George W. Bush, on the other hand, remain shrouded in obscurity. You don't build a record if you don't show up, and that's exactly what Bush did during the Vietnam War.

The Republicans have subjected Kerry's time in Vietnam to the kind of going-over normally accorded war criminals. Did he really deserve that third Purple Heart? How big, exactly, was that piece of shrapnel that had to be removed from his left arm?

We could, I suppose, ask an equivalent question of Bush, but only if they awarded Purple Hearts for paper cuts incurred in the campaign headquarters of the Republican Senate candidate for whom Bush worked during the year he was supposed to be serving with the Air National Guard in Alabama.

Kerry's leadership of Vietnam veterans who opposed the war has also come under attack. Last week a gang of Republican congressmen took to the House floor to charge that Kerry had undermined the war effort and betrayed his comrades in arms. "What he did was nothing short of aiding and abetting the enemy," said Texas Rep. Sam Johnson, who then took to calling Kerry "Hanoi John."

What Kerry did, in actuality, was provide a forceful voice and prudent guidance to a movement of angry men who had sacrificed for their country in a war that, by 1971, no longer had a plausible purpose but nonetheless continued to rage. By the time Kerry appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and posed his memorable question -- "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" -- it was plain that no one in the Nixon administration really believed that the war could be won.
....
t was precisely because Kerry's impulses were so mainstream that the Nixon White House feared him. Nixon didn't sit around with his goon squad of Bob Haldeman and Chuck Colson plotting against Kerry because they thought Kerry was Hanoi John. On the contrary, Kerry had to be taken down because his patriotism was so glaringly obvious.

He had, after all, joined the service despite the grave doubts -- to which he gave voice in his Yale class oration in the spring of 1966 -- he harbored about the war. He had thrown himself in harm's way repeatedly while skippering "swift boats" in the Mekong Delta. He had worked to build an effective, law-abiding antiwar movement. Such men were dangerous.

There are days in this campaign when Kerry must think he's still up against Nixon and his thugs. The same slanders that Dick and his boys cooked up then -- Kerry as dangerous radical, Kerry as inauthentic liberal -- are being served up now by Nixon's ethical heirs.

Nixon's ethical heirs. I don't know that any other journalist has summed it all up so succinctly.

Lush Life

Suite Tooth

New ambassador-designate to Baghdad John D. Negroponte is sailing through his confirmation hearings en route to his new post. Normally, the White House wouldn't send the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a nomination without the receiving country's having agreed to accept the potential nominee as ambassador. This certification is called agrement, pronounced ahh-gray-maw, which Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) could tell you is French for "agreement."

But since there isn't an Iraqi government, it's unclear who granted agrement. Viceroy L. Paul Bremer? Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld? Revered Iraqi leader Ahmed Chalabi?

So Negroponte, nicknamed Negropotente during his ambassadorship in Honduras -- "potente" meaning powerful or potent -- is giving up the lovely $25,000-a-month Waldorf-Astoria suite in New York complete with the spectacular new kitchen renovated last year for only $600,000. At least he's going to a palace.

Negroponte's dark past is documented here.. W may be listening to his Higher Father, but he makes sure the friends of the Lower Father are well-cared-for.

The Violent Shall Bear It Away

Syrian capital rocked by blasts
It is not clear what the intended target may have been

A series of explosions and gunfire has rocked the Syrian capital Damascus during the last few hours.

The incidents took place on a road leading into central Damascus from the Lebanese capital Beirut.

Renewed clashes erupt in Falluja
The US says the shelling is not an all-out assault on the town

Heavy fighting is taking place in the Iraqi town of Falluja for the second night running.

But US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said Iraq would have to "give back" some power to the US in the early days amid the ongoing insecurity in the country.

Puffery

She's a better reporter than this puff piece would give you to think. Better editing would have demanded more of her.

Amid an Unseen Enemy, The Welcome Dog of War

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 27, 2004; Page C01

"So, what's your blood type?"

The young lieutenant's face was cheerful, but his bluntness took me aback.

In all my years of covering violence and conflicts abroad, no one had ever asked me that question before, and I frankly had no idea what the answer was.

I was headed into an urban war zone, surrounded by strangers who had little B+'s and O-'s marked on their helmets, their flak jackets, even their socks. The marks were both grim warnings and reassuring talismans. Out here, we all had a good chance of being wounded, but also of being saved.

For the next two weeks, I would live among a battalion of Marines in a deserted factory filled with thousands of crates of soda pop. Snipers and anti-rocket nets had been placed on the roof. Sandbags and barbed wire scrolls surrounded the gates.

Beyond lay Fallujah, the kind of gritty, turbulent city I had roamed on foot in a dozen countries, looking for human drama. But this time, I was an "embedded" journalist -- an extension of an occupying military force, for whom the entire city was enemy territory and every foray beyond the factory gates was a dangerous mission, carefully planned and heavily armed.

I resented the physical barriers and resisted making the mental leap -- until the first time I found myself on a scarred, barren block, crouching behind the nearest Marine and panting to keep up in my helmet and heavy vest each time he sprinted across an intersection to give the snipers less time to aim. When we made it back through the factory gates, I was flooded with relief.

Inside, my seven embedded colleagues and I quickly became part of an all-American military microcosm, soon learned Marines' names and faces and home towns. The Zuni sniper from New Mexico, the Jewish fireman from New York, the African American bagpiper from Detroit. The white sergeant major with his southern bark and cynical gaze, the young Salvadoran-born medic with his baby's snapshot inside his helmet.
....
There was nothing to do but work. Every day we waited for word that another convoy was leaving, scrambled into our boots and helmets and flak jackets, and climbed into the nearest Humvee to head for a command post or patrol.

After a week, my legs were covered with purple bruises from slipping on ammo crates, diving for cover and missing footholds on the heavy metal trucks.

Every evening, I wrote, ate and slept fitfully on the same couch in the factory manager's apartment, creating an imaginary private space in a jumble of journalists' backpacks and computer gear. I wore the same dusty clothes for 16 days and nights, except for an occasional shower in an open-air wooden stall beneath a palm tree, where I could blissfully close my eyes and think of "South Pacific."

Truth Telling, Part Deux

Moe Blues at Bad Attitudes cuts to the chase:

The Death of Discourse

Rational political discourse has died in this country, killed by a combination of ideology and fantasy. People can disagree over the interpretation and implications of facts. But when one side of the discussion bases their argument on falsehoods, misconceptions, and distortions — and makes up new “facts” when the foregoing have been proven false — rational debate is not possible.

Let Slip the Dogs of War

The Lasting Wounds of War
Roadside Bombs Have Devastated Troops and Doctors Who Treat Them

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 27, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- The soldiers were lifted into the helicopters under a moonless sky, their bandaged heads grossly swollen by trauma, their forms silhouetted by the glow from the row of medical monitors laid out across their bodies, from ankle to neck.

An orange screen atop the feet registered blood pressure and heart rate. The blue screen at the knees announced the level of postoperative pressure on the brain. On the stomach, a small gray readout recorded the level of medicine pumping into the body. And the slender plastic box atop the chest signaled that a respirator still breathed for the lungs under it.

At the door to the busiest hospital in Iraq, a wiry doctor bent over the worst-looking case, an Army gunner with coarse stitches holding his scalp together and a bolt protruding from the top of his head. Lt. Col. Jeff Poffenbarger checked a number on the blue screen, announced it dangerously high and quickly pushed a clear liquid through a syringe into the gunner's bloodstream. The number fell like a rock.

"We're just preparing for something a brain-injured person should not do two days out, which is travel to Germany," the neurologist said. He smiled grimly and started toward the UH-60 Black Hawk thwump-thwumping out on the helipad, waiting to spirit out of Iraq one more of the hundreds of Americans wounded here this month.

While attention remains riveted on the rising count of Americans killed in action -- more than 100 so far in April -- doctors at the main combat support hospital in Iraq are reeling from a stream of young soldiers with wounds so devastating that they probably would have been fatal in any previous war.

More and more in Iraq, combat surgeons say, the wounds involve severe damage to the head and eyes -- injuries that leave soldiers brain damaged or blind, or both, and the doctors who see them first struggling against despair.

For months the gravest wounds have been caused by roadside bombs -- improvised explosives that negate the protection of Kevlar helmets by blowing shrapnel and dirt upward into the face. In addition, firefights with guerrillas have surged recently, causing a sharp rise in gunshot wounds to the only vital area not protected by body armor.

The neurosurgeons at the 31st Combat Support Hospital measure the damage in the number of skulls they remove to get to the injured brain inside, a procedure known as a craniotomy. "We've done more in eight weeks than the previous neurosurgery team did in eight months," Poffenbarger said. "So there's been a change in the intensity level of the war."

Shortage of armor limits U.S.
Options in urban warfare hindered
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
By David Wood
Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON -- A shortage of armored combat vehicles in Iraq is pressing U.S. forces into a cruel dilemma: either advance stealthily on foot or hold up at a city's outskirts and use artillery, mortars and airstrikes.

The first exposes troops to immense risk.

The second course is safer. But shooting from a distance is less accurate than shooting at close range. It raises the potential for civilian casualties and collateral damage, which fuel anti-American fury.

Acknowledging the problem, senior U.S. military officers have said they did not anticipate the fierce urban combat encountered in Iraq this month. They are rushing in armor plate and considering sending additional tanks and armored personnel carriers.

On foot in Fallujah

On Monday, Marines advanced into Fallujah on foot and occupied a two-story building, which soon came under intense enemy attack from a mosque. It took repeated passes by helicopter gunships and jet fighters firing missiles before armored vehicles could approach to withdraw the Marines, according to press reports from the scene. The mosque was reported damaged in the counterattack.

A senior Sunni cleric, in remarks carried by the popular Arab network al-Jazeera, accused U.S. forces of carrying out a "bloodbath" and called for an investigation into American "war crimes."

In previous battles in Fallujah's crowded neighborhoods, U.S. forces have called in AC-130 gunships that spray lethal rounds over hundreds of square feet.

"Using bombs and AC-130s is a strategic defeat," given the political repercussions, said Kenneth Brower, a weapons designer and consultant to the U.S. and Israeli military. "But we've had to use them."

Slime

Stooping Low to Smear Kerry

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004; Page A21

....
Funny, isn't it? When Bill Clinton was running against Republican war veterans in 1992 and 1996, the most important thing to GOP propagandists and politicians was that Clinton didn't fight in Vietnam. Now that Republican candidates who didn't fight in Vietnam face a Democrat who did -- and was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts while he was there -- the Republican machine wants to change the subject.

Thus the shameful display on the floor of the House of Representatives last week as one Republican after another declared that what mattered was not Kerry's service but that he decided afterward that the Vietnam War was a terrible mistake for our country.

The decorated combat veteran was transformed from a hero to "Hanoi John," in the phrase of Rep. Sam Johnson, a Texas Republican. Johnson deserves our gratitude for his seven years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. But his agenda last week had election-year politics stamped all over it. Johnson declared that in speaking out against the war, Kerry showed "his true colors, and they are not red, white and blue." Kerry, Johnson said, was engaged in "nothing short of aiding and abetting the enemy."

Rep. John Kline, a Minnesota Republican who served as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, argued that Kerry's service "does not excuse his joining ranks with Jane Fonda and others in speaking ill of our troops or their service, then or now." Thanks for your service, Mr. Kline, but that "then or now" part is demagogic: Yes, Kerry criticized what our troops were asked to do in Vietnam. But have you ever heard Kerry speak ill of our men and women under arms in Iraq? The Republican agenda is obvious: to distract attention from the contrast of Kerry having served in a war theater while Bush and Cheney stayed home.

It seems to be a habit. When Bush faces a Vietnam War hero in an election, a Vietnam veteran perfectly happy to trash his opponent always turns up. In the case of Ted Sampley, the same guy who did Bush's dirty work in going after Sen. John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries is doing the job against Kerry this year. Sampley dared compare McCain, who spent five years as a Vietnam POW, with "the Manchurian Candidate." Now, Sampley says that Kerry "is not truthful and is not worthy of the support of U.S. veterans. . . . To us, he is 'Hanoi John.' " Is that where Sam Johnson got his line?

One person who is outraged by the attacks on Kerry is McCain. When I reached the Arizona Republican, I found him deeply troubled over the reopening of wounds from the Vietnam era, "the most divisive time since our Civil War." He called Sampley "one of the most despicable characters I've ever met." McCain said he hoped that in the midst of a war in Iraq, politicians "will confront the challenges facing us now, including the conflict we're presently engaged in, rather than refighting the one we were engaged in more than 30 years ago."

McCain recalled that he had worked with Kerry on "POW/MIA issues and the normalization of relations with Vietnam" and wanted to stand up for his war comrade because "you have to do what's right." Speaking of Kerry, McCain said: "He's my friend. He'll continue to be my friend. I know his service was honorable. If that hurts me politically or with my party, that's a very small price to pay."

Now that McCain has spoken, will Bush have the guts to endorse or condemn the attacks on Kerry's service? Or will he just sit by silently, hoping the assaults do their work while he evades responsibility? Once more, Welsh's words call out for an answer: "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

Telling the Truth

Interview with Gen. Anthony Zinni:

So what they did militarily and politically in Iraq, none of what you recommended happened?

Well, I'll give you my hopeful formula to get out of this. But every day and every decision makes it worse. The first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging. They seem to continue to dig. This 'stay the course' idea is wonderful except the course is leading us over Niagara Falls.

What would you recommend doing?

I would go to the members of the Security Council; France, Russia, China and others and ask what will it take to get a U.N. resolution that we need that will give cover, that will give the countries that might be willing to participate at least what they need back home to contribute in some way, to help share the burden on the ground.

What is the significance of June 30 as the date for handing over nominal sovereignty to the Iraqis?

Yeah, tell me. It's November, whatever election day is. It's to get this turned over with sufficient space to recover from any disasters by November, in my view. What is the significance of June 30? I have no idea.

Power goes from Bremer to the U.S. ambassador?

Well, in effect. But actually, what power? That's a good question. What powers do the Iraqis have? Whatever replaces the governing council? Whatever (U.N. representative) Brahimi is able to broker is going to be to whom power passes. Bremer leaves. Negroponte comes in with a 3,000-man embassy, another stupid decision; this big fortress America that we're going to put in this place. And what's his power compared to this entity who has not even been defined? And who trumps who? If all of a sudden there's a problem and the governing entity decides to deal with it in a different way than say the ambassador decides to deal with it, who overrules whom?

Aren't you describing a hopeless situation?

I'm describing a situation that got here because we didn't think this through in the beginning. This is the dog that caught the car here. And now we've got to figure out what to do with it. The way out gets tougher every day when we don't come to grips with these issues, admittedly. We can't leave. I'm not an advocate of pulling out. I think it would be disastrous. But I think we need to sit down and do some serious planning. We need to engage the international community. We need to engage the region. We need to be serious about things like reconstructing Iraqi security forces, not do it haphazardly and on the cheap. We need to be serious about political reconstruction and what it means.

Why would it be disastrous to pull out now when the situation already is disastrous?

Because first of all, I think as you pull troops out our troops become more vulnerable. As you start reducing troops it's a vulnerable stage unless there's some degree of stability. So when you make that decision, you start drawing down. At the point where you have, let's say, 30,000 U.S. troops in there, they may be far more vulnerable than they are obviously now. And it may be a critical (situation) when it is still unstable.

But you're saying exactly what Bush said, that if we pull out now there would be chaos and a bloodbath.

I agree. The optimist in me says the Iraqi people could pull this out if they had something to fight for. And what they don't have to fight for is something in Baghdad that represents a kind of governance system they can trust. What they don't have to fight for is an economic system that has a job for daddy. What they don't have to fight for is a security environment where their daughter can go to school and not get kidnapped. And until you at least give those fundamental basics to them, they aren't going to be able to stand up and take it on their own.

So we're going to solve this problem by staying there a few years?

Yes. Our only hope is to stay there a few years and try to solve it.

Branching Out

Earlier today, I received an invitation from Rev. Allen Brill to become a contributor to his excellent blog The Right Christians. I've just submitted my first post and invite you to follow the link and come over and visit. Allen's blog software has moderated content--rather like Scoop at Daily Kos--and you have to register to post comments. It is easy and free and only takes a moment.

My post today is a little exercise in autobiography. I hope you will enjoy it.

War News

Baghdad blast kills 2 U.S. soldiers
Coalition soldier killed in Fallujah

Monday, April 26, 2004 Posted: 11:56 AM EDT (1556 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two U.S. soldiers were killed in a massive explosion Monday in northeastern Baghdad during a raid in which they were looking for a shop-owner suspected of producing "chemical munitions," a military spokesman said.

Capt. Douglas Zembiec, a Marine company commander in Fallujah, said 10 Marines were wounded, four of them "pretty seriously."

The American military has maintained a cordon around the predominantly Sunni Muslim city for about three weeks in an effort to force a surrender by insurgents sequestered inside. The American authority has said that if rebels do not hand in their heavy weapons, the troops will invade.

Britain said today that it was discussing with the United States and other partners in the American-led coalition the possibility of sending more troops to Iraq, Reuters reported. Britain already has about 7,500 troops on the ground, but with Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic withdrawing their soldiers, and the coalition facing the stiffest resistance since the fall of Saddam Hussein, London and Washington are under pressure to consider increasing their troop levels.

"In light of recent events — the security situation and the anticipated withdrawal of the Spanish troops — we are in discussions with coalition partners," a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said, Reuters reported.

Australia may also send a small number of additional troops Prime Minister John Howard said today following his surprise visit to Iraq over the weekend. It was his first public admission that an increase in troops strength was a possibility.

"Obviously, if we did do more that would be appreciated but I had made it very clear all along that we did not have a capacity to have large numbers of additional troops," Mr. Howard said in an Australian Broadcasting Corp radio interview aired today, Reuters reported. Australia has about 850 troops in Iraq and neighboring states.

The Bulgarian Defense Ministry said the convoy of President Georgi Parvanov came under attack by gunmen late Sunday during a surprise visit to the city of Karbala in southern Iraq, Reuters reported today. The president was not hurt in the attack, which occurred as he traveled between two military camps.

"The president's car was shot up," the ministry's spokeswoman, Rumiana Strugarova, said. "The attack took about five minutes, and we suppose the attackers were Shiite militants. The president returned to Bulgaria in the early hours of the morning."

Mr. Parvanov's visit came a day after a Bulgarian soldier in Iraq was killed in an ambush. Bulgaria has a 450-strong light infantry battalion stationed in Kerbala.

Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness

Some Finding No Room at the ER
Screening Out Non-Urgent Cases Stirs Controversy

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A01

DENVER -- It's not the heart attacks or stabbings that alarm Norman Paradis. It's the minor maladies, the daily deluge of coughs, colds, toothaches and even hangnails that clog his emergency room.

As the provider of last resort, hospital emergency departments across America have for decades accepted thousands of truly non-urgent cases and swallowed the cost. For the most part, the patients have nowhere else to go, no insurance and no money.

That is starting to change. University of Colorado Hospital, where Paradis works, is leading the way on a controversial solution -- weeding out the people with bumps and scrapes so it can devote more time and resources to serious, life-threatening traumas and, also, to paying customers.

Officials here say its 15-month-old system of medical screening, or "triaging out," could go a long way in easing the financial strains that have forced hundreds of emergency departments to shut down in the last decade. But many in the health care profession call it a callous, greedy and shortsighted maneuver that puts a greater burden on neighboring clinics and hospitals -- all at the ultimate expense of the working poor.

Under the new policy, University hospital demands partial payment up front from non-emergency patients who seek treatment in the ER. For some, including Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, the fee is a small cash co-payment; insurance pays the rest. For the uninsured, however, the charge can be a few hundred dollars -- money many don't have. So they leave, toting a list of low-cost clinics in the area.

Rather than being a remedy, many argue, medical screening is a symptom of much of what ails America's health system.

"It's an incredibly mean, nasty time to be in medicine," said Mark Earnest, a general internist at University and vice president of the Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved. "There is not a consensus on how we are going to take care of people, and the result is everybody having to worry about their own survival."

The experiment at the Denver hospital and similar efforts in Indianapolis and Houston cut to the core of some of the thorniest problems in health care today. With about 44 million uninsured Americans, a record number of patients are flooding emergency rooms, a trend experts say is unwise from both a medical and economic perspective. ER care is both the most costly and least effective at treating the sort of chronic problems that claim the greatest number of lives each year.

In 2002, U.S. hospitals provided $22.3 billion in uncompensated care, up from $18.5 billion in 1997, according to the most recent data from the American Hospital Association. In the past, hospitals have made up some of the deficit by charging insured patients higher fees, a cost-shifting trick that in medical circles is dubbed the Robin Hood model. But that money is disappearing, too.

"We can't do everything for everyone, so what are we not going to do?" asked Paradis, who, as head of University's emergency department, implemented the screening policy in the fall of 2002. Other hospitals, clinics and private physicians find ways to limit care covertly, Paradis contends, while "we are overt. It's rational rationing."

Suffer the Children

But there's a catch. The irony of Brown is that over the course of half a century such a profound and far-reaching decision should have fallen so far short of its specific objective: the integration of the public schools.

The legal barrier to desegregation was removed, and over several tension-filled years many schools were integrated. But the trend now is in the other direction.

When it comes to schools, "we honor Brown more in principle than in practice," said Ted Shaw, who will soon take over as head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which led the Brown v. Board fight. "We live in an era now where school desegregation is all but done. We're resegregating. And no one really seems to care."

The resegregation has been under way for a while. In their 1996 book, "Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education," Gary Orfield and Susan Eaton documented the many evasive maneuvers used by whites, including a series of rulings by conservative courts, to undermine the impact of the Brown decision.

This insidious regression was part of the decades-long effort by political conservatives to roll back the historic civil rights advances of blacks and others. Richard Nixon, architect of the Republican Party's Southern strategy, appointed William Rehnquist, an ardent foe of desegregation efforts, to the Supreme Court. And Ronald Reagan elevated him to chief justice.

There's no secret to what's going on. The federal courts are still being gleefully packed with reactionaries.

So we have to look at Brown in two ways. It unlocked the door to a brief but glorious period of increased freedom and civil rights for all Americans. But its main goal has been thwarted by those who want nothing less than to slam the door shut and lock it once again.

It's not just a betrayal of Brown. It's a betrayal of America.

Perhaps now we can have a conversation about how public education is supposed to work and why, how it is funded and why. Our system makes no sense. It is past time to talk about it.

Using Imagination

Dubious Threat, Expensive Defense

By now it's common knowledge that before Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration's attention was focused not on terrorism but on other national security priorities -- most notably missile defense. The administration's more reasonable defenders argue that this was a forgivable miscalculation, and that after al Qaeda's attack on New York and Washington, President Bush utterly remade his agenda.

Only he didn't -- at least not in one large respect. The president may have declared war on terrorism and launched invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. But for the past 21/2 years, his Pentagon has quietly but implacably persisted in pursuing, without alteration, the previous No. 1 mission. The result is a breakneck, hugely expensive and quite risky attempt to build and activate a national missile defense before the November election.

There's been bipartisan agreement on developing missile defenses for some time in Washington. But the Bush enterprise is different. It's a project being pursued with a lack of safeguards that could be justified only by a national emergency. Its logic is that the greatest threat to this country is not a terrorist's smuggling of a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon but the possibility of a surprise missile attack by North Korea.

That threat looked somewhat plausible six years ago, when North Korea tested a missile possibly capable of reaching Hawaii and parts of Alaska with a heavy payload. But the regime of Kim Jong Il hasn't tested since then; it is currently negotiating about giving up its arsenal. Though the North probably has several nuclear weapons, no one believes it has built a miniaturized warhead capable of being placed on a long-range missile. No other hostile country has, or will have soon, a missile that can reach the United States.

The Bush policy nevertheless assumes that some kind of defense, however raw, must be put in place immediately -- and that's where the recklessness starts. Over three years, the administration has poured more than $25 billion into missile defense but has made only modest technological progress. According to experts both in and outside the Pentagon, a defense deployed this year could not be regarded as reliable by even the most basic standards. Yet Bush nevertheless has ordered 10 interceptor missiles to be installed at two U.S. bases, and plans to announce the system's activation by September.

Consider:

• The interceptor missile to be activated has never undergone a flight test with its present booster rocket. In fact, there have been no flight tests of the interceptor since December 2002 -- and the last one failed. Nine tests have been put off or canceled since then. The earliest test of the missile is now scheduled for August or September -- just as, or maybe after, Bush declares missile defense operational.

• The Pentagon's own chief tester, Thomas Christie, says he is not sure the new system could stop a missile from North Korea. At a Senate hearing last month, he was asked whether, even if it did work, the system's makeshift radar would allow it to protect Hawaii, the only state fully within range of the only missile North Korea has (once) tested. Answer: "We have not done a thorough analysis. At this point, I can't say one way or another."

• The General Accounting Office has issued four reports on the developing system in the past year, the latest last week. All have been highly critical of the Pentagon's failure to adequately test under realistic conditions. One recurring point: Even if the bare-bones interceptor Bush is shooting for could be made to work, it would be unable to overcome the simplest of countermeasures.

• For all its spendthrift zeal, the Bush administration has been unable to solve the problems with key pieces of the planned defense. The high-altitude satellite network that is supposed to detect missile launches has been delayed by another two years on Bush's watch and won't be in place until the end of the decade. The airborne laser that is to shoot down enemy rockets as they boost into orbit also has been put off by two years and is expected to have $2 billion in cost overruns. The new X-band radar system that is needed to accurately track missiles as they approach the United States won't be ready for on-site testing for at least another year.

But deficits don't matter, do they?

Don't Talk About the Thing I Don't want to Talk about

Mr. Higher Moral Order sends in his fax

"Clarification - "liberalish" definitely meant "roughly liberal but covering a wide spectrum of political beliefs" and not "Christian liberals aren't really liberal so I'll call them liberal."

But, aside from that, "eff you too."

Well, that was helpful. And tells me that the proprietor doesn't read this blog at all and is extremely defensive. Great. What a standardbearer going into November. Atrios, since you don't read the little people like me, what's your point in showing up to belittle? We were managing fine before you got here. Do you have a point?

Emerging Monstrosity

Killings May Make Hamas More Formidable
Group's Military Wing Is Seen in Ascendancy

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 25, 2004; Page A01

GAZA CITY -- In the wake of Israeli airstrikes that have decapitated the leadership of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian militant group may become even more fragmented and radicalized than before, leading to new dangers for Israel, according to Palestinian political leaders and analysts familiar with the internal operations of the organization.

"The worst thing is a headless Hamas," said Eyad Sarraj, a prominent Palestinian psychiatrist and human rights advocate who has closely monitored the role of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. "A headless Hamas means too many heads, too many agendas. Then you can't control exactly what happens."

With the assassination of the most influential leaders of Hamas, and raids that have killed or captured nearly the entire West Bank military command structure, the military wing in the Gaza Strip has become the most dominant faction of the organization, according to Israeli military officials and Palestinian officials.

Mohammed Deif and Adnan Ghoul, the leaders of the military wing -- known as the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades -- remain in command, and the ranks of disciplined and well-armed fighters are largely intact, Palestinian and Israeli officials said. The two leaders are among Israel's most wanted men: Ghoul has survived at least three Israeli assassination attempts, including one that killed his son on June 27, 2003, and Deif has escaped at least four assassination efforts by Israel, though he reportedly lost an eye during an attack last September.

"The new generation of leaders thinks in only one way -- the military wings," said Imad Falouji, a Palestinian legislator and former Hamas member who has authored a book about the organization. "The new policy is more dangerous for Israel than ever before. Now there is only a military policy; there is nothing political now."

This shift is significant because of a potential contest among Palestinians for control of the Gaza Strip if Israel goes ahead with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, pulling out all Israeli troops and Jewish settlers by the end of 2005.

If this monster emerges, it will be the creature of Bush and Sharon. They created it last week.

Behind the Curve

Here, There, WiFi Anywhere
Wireless Web's Spread Is Crossing Our Signals

By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 25, 2004; Page F01

Peter Kastner moved from the suburbs to an apartment in Boston last summer while his new home was under construction. As soon as he got set up in the temporary digs, Kastner -- chief technology analyst at the research firm Aberdeen Group -- set up his WiFi home network to enjoy some wireless Web surfing.

Everything worked fine, but in a few weeks he found that the airwaves started getting crowded.

"Around about Labor Day, when all the college students moved back to Boston, all of these [wireless] access points showed up around me," he said. Soon, his laptop started getting dizzy from all the conflicting networks and began dropping connections.

Kastner did a little research into the matter and now worries that WiFi technology will be undercut by its own success.

"The end of the WiFi world as we know it is imminent," he later wrote in a report, arguing that the boom of WiFi hardware sales compared with the available airspace in urban areas will lead this year to a wireless Internet traffic jam that in some places could be worse than the Beltway on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.

Now that WiFi access points can cost under $100, the technology has jumped quickly from esoteric to everyday. And as more consumers learn the convenience of untethered Internet access, they're also learning what things can stop WiFi from working.

Traffic jams are at the top of that list: When multiple WiFi access points, the hubs of individual wireless networks, sit near each other, WiFi receivers can see senseless noise instead of a clear data stream. This is what happened at the CeBIT computer trade show in Germany last year, where a maze of overlapping WiFi networks stopped many laptops from getting online.

Damn, yet another trend that will be over before I get a chance to sample it.

Unemployment

Why Did Bush Take My Job?

By Saeb Erekat
Sunday, April 25, 2004; Page B07

JERUSALEM -- President Bush apparently has taken my job.

Until the Bush-Sharon press conference on April 14, I was the chief negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization, the only internationally recognized entity that has a mandate to negotiate a permanent peace with Israel. But then Bush appeared on television, standing at the White House next to a beaming Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, and announced that he had accepted Israel's claim to illegally occupied Palestinian land. He further determined that Palestinian refugees would never be allowed to return to their homes in Israel and would instead have to be resettled in a Palestinian state, vast tracts of which he had just given away.

In so doing, Bush reneged on the 1991 U.S. Letter of Assurances provided to the Palestinians by his father's administration; the letter said that "no party should take unilateral actions that seek to predetermine issues" and that "the United States has opposed and will continue to oppose settlement activity in the territories occupied in 1967." Bush, as the self-appointed Palestinian negotiator, finally exposed the "Middle East peace process" for the charade that it has become -- a mechanism by which Israel and the United States impose a solution on the Palestinians.

In this era of unmatched and unchallenged U.S. power, Bush abandoned America's historical role as facilitator and mediator of Middle East peace and instead simply adopted the positions of an expansionist, right-wing government in Israel. It is mind-boggling that an American president, often citing the rule of law, would use the power of his position not to enforce international law against illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory but instead to legitimize them as "currently existing Israeli population centers," thereby giving Israelis an incentive to build even more. It is mind-boggling that a president who supports equality and non-discrimination would dismiss the rights of Christian and Muslim refugees to return to their homes in the "Jewish state" -- a term often repeated but never defined or even left to the parties to negotiate. And it is mind-boggling that the leader of the free world, the president of a nation whose very existence is based on liberty and justice, would act so callously to deny liberty and justice to the Palestinian people.

As I've said before, I'm uncomfortable posting on I/P issues. I know some of the history, but not all of it. But, I have to admit, this was my first reaction to the Bush/Sharon presser.

Game Meme

We'll play. Play is good and there hasn't been enough around here lately.

via TalkLeft:

"It was the best journey of his life."

The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, edited and translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

If you are blogless, you can play along in Comments.

Early Days of a Better Nation

The Wrong Debate on Terrorism
By RICHARD A. CLARKE

Published: April 25, 2004

One lesson is that even though we are the world's only remaining superpower — as we were before Sept. 11, 2001 — we are seriously threatened by an ideological war within Islam. It is a civil war in which a radical Islamist faction is striking out at the West and at moderate Muslims. Once we recognize that the struggle within Islam — not a "clash of civilizations" between East and West — is the phenomenon with which we must grapple, we can begin to develop a strategy and tactics for doing so. It is a battle not only of bombs and bullets, but chiefly of ideas. It is a war that we are losing, as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement.

I do not pretend to know the formula for winning that ideological war. But I do know that we cannot win it without significant help from our Muslim friends, and that many of our recent actions (chiefly the invasion of Iraq) have made it far more difficult to obtain that cooperation and to achieve credibility.

What we have tried in the war of ideas has also fallen short. It is clear that United States government versions of MTV or CNN in Arabic will not put a dent in the popularity of the anti-American jihad. Nor will calls from Washington for democratization in the Arab world help if such calls originate from a leader who is trying to impose democracy on an Arab country at the point of an American bayonet. The Bush administration's much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative, therefore, was dead on arrival.

We must also be careful, while advocating democracy in the region, that we do not undermine the existing regimes without having a game plan for what should follow them and how to get there. The lesson of President Jimmy Carter's abandonment of the shah of Iran in 1979 should be a warning. So, too, should we be chastened by the costs of eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein, almost 25 years after the shah, also without a detailed plan for what would follow.

Other parts of the war of ideas include making real progress on the Israel-Palestinian issue, while safe-guarding Israeli security, and finding ideological and religious counter-weights to Osama bin Laden and the radical imams. Fashioning a comprehensive strategy to win the battle of ideas should be given as much attention as any other aspect of the war on terrorists, or else we will fight this war for the foreseeable future. For even when Osama bin Laden is dead, his ideas will carry on. Even as Al Qaeda has had its leadership attacked, it has morphed into a hydra, carrying out more major attacks in the 30 months since 9/11 than it did in the three years before.

The second major lesson of the last month of controversy is that the organizations entrusted with law enforcement and intelligence in the United States had not fully accepted the gravity of the threat prior to 9/11. Because this is now so clear, there will be a tendency to overemphasize organizational fixes. The 9/11 commission and President Bush seem to be in a race to propose creating a "director of national intelligence," who would be given control over all American intelligence agencies. The commission may also recommend a domestic security intelligence service, probably modeled on Britain's MI-5.

While some structural changes are necessary, they are a small part of the solution. And there is a risk that concentrating on chain-of-authority diagrams of federal agencies will further divert our attention from more important parts of the agenda. This new director of national intelligence would be able to make only marginal changes to agency budgets and interactions. The more important task is improving the quality of the analysts, agents and managers at the lead foreign intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency.

....
Finally, we must try to achieve a level of public discourse on these issues that is simultaneously energetic and mutually respectful. I hoped, through my book and testimony, to make criticism of the conduct of the war on terrorism and the separate war in Iraq more active and legitimate. We need public debate if we are to succeed. We should not dismiss critics through character assassination, nor should we besmirch advocates of the Patriot Act as fascists.

We all want to defeat the jihadists. To do that, we need to encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America about how that will best be done. And if there is another major terrorist attack in this country, we must not panic or stifle debate as we did for too long after 9/11.

Amen

Big is a State of Soul

The Great Cosmic Gentleman showed up last night to add his FU to Comments. Way to go, dude. That's how we build the Democratic Party.

That's how you got to be the Big Dog, by never thanking me for all the links I sent you and you used without attribution. And you like to be cute about Jayson Blair and Jack Kelly.

Rhetoric 101

Bush's Oratory Helps Maintain Support for War

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 25, 2004; Page A01

With skillful use of language and images, President Bush and his aides have kept the American public from turning against the war in Iraq despite the swelling number of U.S. casualties there.

Even with the loss of more than 700 U.S. troops in Iraq, recent uprisings against the U.S.-led occupation there, a dwindling number of allies and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, a majority of Americans still believe that going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do. By 52 percent to 41 percent, Americans trust Bush more than Democratic challenger Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) to handle the Iraq situation, according to last week's Washington Post-ABC News poll -- a double-digit improvement for Bush from a month before.

Political strategists and public-opinion experts say a good part of this resilience of public support for Bush and the Iraq war stems from the president's oratory. They say Bush has convinced Americans of three key points that strongly influence overall support for the war: that the United States will prevail in Iraq; that the fighting in Iraq is related to the war against al Qaeda; and that most Iraqis and many foreign countries support U.S. actions in Iraq.

At the same time, the administration has limited damaging images of the cost of war in Iraq. While the president has met privately with the families of many of the war victims, Bush has not attended any funeral for fallen service members, and until last week the administration barred the public release of images of flag-draped caskets.

Bush's opponents say he is building support for the Iraq war -- and himself -- by deceiving the public. "He has not leveled with the American people about the true cost of the war, how long we'll be there, or the number of troops that will be needed," said Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. "Americans would rather see sound policy rather than just positive rhetoric."

But others say that while support for the war has eroded, Bush deserves credit for keeping the bottom from falling out. "Administration rhetoric -- and more importantly, the reality that Bush is very resolved and is not afraid to show it -- has undoubtedly helped shore up public support," said Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who served on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council. "Moreover, administration rhetoric is tailored to address key features of public opinion -- not only the public's concern for success but even the specific indicators of success that resonate with the public."

Bush's chief campaign strategist, Matthew Dowd, said "it's hard to say" how much the president's rhetoric shapes public impression. But he said support for the war would definitely have slipped further if Bush had wavered.

"He shows resolve, and the public wants resolve," Dowd said.

Dowd also said Bush has been aided by a Kerry position on Iraq that mixes support for the war with criticism of Bush. "The public has decided [Iraq] has problems. But whose vision do we support?" he asked. "Kerry has supported either no viable or no acceptable alternative."

This is not to say support for war in Iraq (or for Bush) is robust. Although 51 percent say the war in Iraq was worth fighting, that is down from 70 percent in April 2003. And although they say Bush is handling Iraq better than Kerry would, 54 percent disapprove of Bush's performance.

Though the administration's words and imagery have helped to keep a majority from turning against the war, strategists say that could easily happen if Iraq's stability deteriorates further with the June 30 handover of power. War support could also fall sharply if Kerry were to sharpen his criticism, as he did in a television ad last week.

But so far, Bush has been able to convince the country of several key points that pollsters have identified as indicators of public support for the war. For example, Bush has never wavered in his confidence in the success of the war effort. "We're carrying out a decision that has already been made and will not change: Iraq will be a free, independent country," Bush said at an April 13 news conference.

Anybody who watches CNN can see the truth: Iraq is devolving into civil war. Dana Milbank may think that Bush is a great orator, but that doesn't make him so, and his words don't match the facts. Iraq is well on the way to being a failed state like Afghanistan, and home to terrorists because of Bush, whose neo-con foreign policy team doesn't seem to know anything about nation-building.

Having listened to six months of daily Bushspeak on the telly, I can only say that Milbank is flakking for a better chair at the rare press conference or press gaggle. Bush's oratory wouldn't pass muster at the 8th grade forensic matches I used to judge. The press corps is willing to settle for a leader whose rhetorical skills haven't made it out of middle school, but we don't have to.

The Next Round

At the end of a very long day, Susie Madrak has pulled together most of the links and threads. And I'm going to give her the last word, because I want to sleep on this before I say more. I'm feeling pretty raw at the moment, and that isn't the moment I want to project at this point. My day started at 4:30 AM with what felt like yet another assault, this time by Atrios himself, rather than his commentors, and the great man couldn't even spare a link to those of us who are so far beneath him that he can't bother to cite us. What a brave guy. I have taken years of abuse in those threads, and now the head guy has become a playa in party politics and he still doesn't have a clue: you build coalitions by not demonizing the others in the community of common interest. The right has been very successfull at doing this, and we are still playing circular firing squad. The Democratic Party needs to be a hospitable place to everyone from the center and leftward, including those whose religious commitments brought them to the liberal social agenda. For Atrios to say "screw you" to us is to retreat to the circular firing squad. A dear friend who watched Atrios melt the left down again remarked, "we're going to freakin' do it again," and hand W the next election if we don't change.

Yes, Atrios, you do need to make nice with religious centrists and center lefties. Your site is one of the premiere liberal sites in the center left blogosphere and it hosts some of the most hateful speech in the left blogosphere for religious people. Is that the vaunted liberal big tent? I thought liberals were big on "tolerence?" Where is yours?

Susie captured the moment. Susie said:

* Liberal atheists remind me, in some ways, of rabid libertarians. Not so much in the beliefs, but in their utter disdain for anyone who does not share them. Hey, guess what? I'm not stupid and I believe in God. Deal with it.

Bend over, boy, and squeal like a pig.

From a fellow blonde. Susie nails it. They think we aren't smart enough for them. They think that there is a "them" and an "us." No, there isn't. We either defeat the empire or lose the republic. The choices are stark.

Kiss that pig.

Are We Safer?

Commission Seen Ready to Fault 9/11 Air Defense
By PHILIP SHENON

Published: April 25, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 24 — The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is expected to offer sharp criticism of the Pentagon's domestic air-defense command in the panel's final report and will suggest that quicker military action on that morning might have prevented a hijacked passenger jet from crashing into the Pentagon itself, according to commission officials.

The performance of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, and its failure to protect Washington and New York City from attack on Sept. 11 will be a focus of the remaining public hearings of the 10-member commission, which is in the final weeks of its investigation.

Commission officials said interim reports that were expected to be released at the hearings would suggest that Norad had time on Sept. 11 to launch jet fighters that could have intercepted and possibly shot down American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., more than 50 minutes after the first hijacked plane struck the World Trade Center in New York. A total of 184 people died in the Pentagon attack, including 59 dead aboard the hijacked plane.

The commission is trying to establish a detailed timeline of how and when military pilots reporting to Norad were informed on Sept. 11 that President Bush had given the extraordinary order allowing them to shoot down passenger planes.

Norad officers have said previously that they did not learn of the order until about 10:10 a.m., a few minutes after the last of the four hijacked jets had crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. But White House officials have suggested that the order was made earlier in the morning and should have been communicated immediately to pilots.

The commission has repeatedly complained that Norad, a joint American-Canadian military command created at the height of the cold war in 1958 to defend air space over North America from Soviet missiles and bombers, has been uncooperative in the panel's investigation.

This one really is a mystery. Supposedly, the NORAD jets should have been in the air within five minutes of the Northeast Control's awareness of the hijackings. Why that didn't happen should scare the crap out of all of us.

Don't Like the Look of This

Decision on Possible Attack on Falluja Seems Near
By DAVID E. SANGER
and THOM SHANKER

Published: April 25, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 24 — Facing one of the grimmest choices of the Iraq war, President Bush and his senior national security and military advisers are expected to decide this weekend whether to order an invasion of Falluja, even if a battle there runs the risk of uprisings in the city and perhaps elsewhere around Iraq.

After declaring on Friday evening in Florida that "America will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers," Mr. Bush flew to Camp David for the weekend, where administration officials said he planned consultations in a videoconference with the military commanders who are keeping the city under siege.

But in interviews, administration and senior military officials portrayed Mr. Bush's choices as dismal.

"It's clear you can't leave a few thousand insurgents there to terrorize the city and shoot at us," one senior official involved in the discussions said on Saturday. "The question now is whether there is a way to go in with the most minimal casualties possible."

No decision to begin military action has been made yet.

The chief of the American occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III, visited Falluja on Saturday with Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, to consult with frontline commanders. They appeared to be making a last-ditch effort for a negotiated settlement, officials said.

But in Washington, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has expressed strong doubts that the Falluja political and business figures the Americans are talking to hold any sway over the insurgents.

In the WaPo this morning:

In prayers at another major mosque in Baghdad, a Sunni cleric warned U.S. commanders not to launch another attack on Fallujah.

"We warn you against another massacre in Fallujah," said Ahmed Abdul-Ghafoor Samaraie. "If there will be more bloodletting and more people killed in Fallujah, one hundred Fallujahs will stand against you."

The Left Christians

I want to address directly Atrios's ill-informed, bigoted rant of last evening. For that's what it is. This piece of bloviation was clearly pointed at Allen Brill and myself for taking on an LAT critique of his new pet radio network. He de-legitimates the liberalism of progressive religious bloggers, treats us as a group (that's called bigotry) and, in his ignorance, accuses us of not taking on the Christian Right. He makes ad hominem attacks against people he refuses to name or link to, which marks him as a coward in my book. He derides us as "liberalish," when, in fact, my politics are considerably to the left of his. He sets up a straw man by accusing the Christian Left of not doing what it has, in fact been doing for decades.

This spectacular incidence of mis-information is as dumb as the Biblical literalism of the far right. It's intellectually bankrupt, since it offers nothing to counter the Christian Right other than "nya-nya." We of the Christian Left have the theological and exegetical tools to take on the Right on their own terms, and we've been doing it consistently, but Mr. Radio Big Shot isn't interested in facts. Why he thinks his irrational intolerance is somehow of a higher moral order than that of the fundies is beyond me. I don't just tolerate his atheism, I embrace it. I don't know what sort of imaginary discrimination this privileged white male thinks he has suffered, and, frankly, I don't care.

In this political season, much has been made about some survey somewhere which alleges that an atheist can't get elected dogcatcher in this country. Give me a break. An angry atheist like Atrios is unlikely to get elected to anything. An indifferent one, like Kevin Drum, would probably have a decent shot at the Orange County Council, if he were so inclined. I have no problem with people who are indifferent to religion, and would be happy to vote for anyone whose politics and values are similar to mine, provided that they didn't tell me that my core commitments are ridiculous to them, which is what Atrios just did.

His knee-jerk reaction, and that of a lot of his readers, comes out of a culture of grievance and entitlement that I, frankly, don't find particularly attractive. As to the central point that both Allen and I made, that religious and secular lefties need to make common cause and demonizing each other is a bad idea, Atrios is not just indifferent, but openly hostile. This is the attitude which will keep the Democratic Party a permanent minority. He seems to hold Liberal Christians like Allen and myself personally responsible for the excesses of the Christian Right. Right. Somehow it's our fault that the Liberal Christians can't get a place at the microphone. What the hell does he think our blogs are if not a place to redress some of the imbalance in the public conversation on religion and politics in this country?

UPDATE: Allen has gathered together a summary of reactions from the Christian Left blogosphere.

Cross-Blog Conversation

Here's the text of an interesting email I received yesterday:

On Monday, SEIU kicks off the first phase in a new campaign, called
Justice at Work, to mobilize the power of the web to stop what
commentators have called the "Wal-Martization" of the American
economy. We're starting this campaign with a cross-blog discussion,
asking people to share their ideas about our strategy.

Help us use blogs to start the movement that will improve the lives of
working Americans and their families by fighting for a fair economy that
provides equal opportunity for everyone.

I'm going to be participating in the project along with quite a few of the other progressive bloggers. By comments and email and the SEIU blog, you get to play, too, if you wish to.

Another Bad Day

Iraq hit by lethal rocket strikes
US forces were involved in clashes in Sadr City

A series of explosions across Iraq has claimed the lives of Iraqi civilians, police officers and US soldiers.

"The second hit a gas canister and the explosion was huge. There was blood and bodies everywhere."

BBC cuts back Iraq staff

Claire Cozens
Friday April 23, 2004

Iraq: BBC will be left with just two reporters in Baghdad

The BBC has dramatically scaled back its staff in Iraq and banned programme-makers from organising any new trips there amid the deteriorating security situation.

Just two reporters, David Willis and Dominic Hughes, and a small team of technical staff remain in the corporation's Baghdad bureau after Caroline Hawley and Barbara Plett left the country.

The cutbacks mean the BBC's TV channels and radio stations will be severely restricted in their coverage of the crisis in Iraq, with the flagship 10pm news missing out on live coverage altogether.

The BBC will also have to rely on news agencies and local reporters and cameramen for anything outside Baghdad.

In an internal memo Jonathan Baker, the BBC's world editor, newsgathering, this week warned editors that the reduction in the size of the team would "clearly have effects on the service newsgathering is able to offer programmes and channels from Baghdad".

"As you are probably aware, in view of the increased threat faced by those working in Iraq at the moment, we have reduced our numbers in the Baghdad bureau," he wrote.

"For the next three to four weeks at least we will be served by two correspondents and limited technical support.

"The situation will be kept under constant review. No programme trips to any part of Iraq will be approved until further notice."

The Baghdad bureau is now working on a 12-hour day, starting with a two-way for Radio 4's Today programme at 6.30am.

Baker told editors that the team could be "activated" if a major story breaks overnight, although they should make sure staff in Baghdad had "reasonable downtime".

But the reporters' day will end at 7pm, meaning that unless a major story breaks, BBC1 will not be able to offer any live coverage of unfolding events on its flagship 10pm news bulletin.

A spokesman for the BBC said the health and safety of staff remained "paramount".

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

General Says He May Ask for More Troops
By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: April 24, 2004

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar, April 23 — The top United States commander in the Middle East suggested in an interview on Friday that he was likely to ask for another extension in the current troop levels in Iraq, now at 135,000, and might even ask for more troops beyond that.

The commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, said the security situation was liable to worsen as June 30 approached, and with it the return of self-rule to Iraq. He cited the likelihood of new insurgent attacks against American troops and doubts about the current reliability of Iraqi security forces. The next four months are critical, he said.

The Pentagon has already extended by 90 days the tours of 20,000 soldiers; they were to return to their home bases after a year in Iraq. The Pentagon has offered to find new troops to take their place, to keep the deployment at 135,000, if the military deems it necessary. General Abizaid gave the clearest indication yet that he would ask for those troops.

"If the situation stays about like it is, I will certainly ask that those forces be replaced," he said in an interview here at the regional headquarters of the United States Central Command in this Persian Gulf state. "We're going to make sure we have the right forces in place to do the job that needs to be done."

Moreover, if other nations withdraw their troops, as Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic have said they will, and if the training of most Iraqi security forces is not completed until as late as December, General Abizaid said it was possible that he would request an increase beyond the 135,000 troops.

"If the security situation worsens and we think it's appropriate to bring in more troops, or if countries decide to withdraw their troops, we'll see this thing through," he said. "We'll adjust to a combination of U.S. force levels, Iraqi readiness and steadiness, and coalition forces."

The general's assessment, coupled with the recent disclosure of the Pentagon's contingency plans for the summer, fall and beyond, appear to make even more remote the Bush administration's goal as recently as a month ago to reduce the forces in Iraq before the November election.

Werther on "the sunk cost fallacy":

As a glance the newspaper will reveal, politicians are now trying out new rationales to anesthetize public unease about the rising tab at the Great Mesopotamian Casino. The old bromides about WMD, a self-financing occupation, peace between Israel and Palestine, and the grateful acclaim of the liberated now elicit at best a polite cough behind the hand.

Fortunately for our governing class, the sunk cost argument lies ready: "We've come this far; there's no turning back." Taxpayers have committed $121 billion and military families a much heavier cost, but the U.S. government has not accomplished a single major prewar objective save deposing the senile Saddam Hussein. Nevertheless, marvelous benefits will accrue (no less than Changing the World) if we "stay the course" and don't "cut and run" - ominous slogans from Vietnam, another classic example of sunk cost rationales. Even more ominous, the president's 13 April press conference contains this: "As I have said to those who have lost loved ones, we will finish the work of the fallen." There, in embryo, is sunk cost - not in money, but in precious lives.

The Next

U.S., U.N. Seek New Leaders For Iraq
Chalabi and Others Coalition Relied on May Be Left Out

By Robin Wright and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 24, 2004; Page A01

The United States and the top U.N. envoy to Iraq have decided to exclude the majority of the Iraqi politicians the U.S.-led coalition has relied on over the past year when they select an Iraqi government to assume power on June 30, U.S. and U.N. officials said yesterday.

The latest shift in policy comes as the U.S.-led coalition has to resolve some contentious and long-standing issues before the transfer takes place. Earlier this week, the coalition moved to allow former Baath Party members and military officers to return to government jobs.

At the top of the list of those likely to be jettisoned is Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite politician who for years was a favorite of the Pentagon and the office of Vice President Cheney, and who was once expected to assume a powerful role after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials acknowledged.

Chalabi has increasingly alienated the Bush administration, including President Bush, in recent months, U.S. officials said. He generated anger in Washington yesterday when he said a new U.S. plan to allow some former officials of Hussein's ruling Baath Party and military to return to office was the equivalent of returning Nazis to power in Germany after World War II.

Chalabi has headed the committee in charge of removing former Baathist officials. In a nationwide address yesterday designed to promote national reconciliation, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said complaints that the program is "unevenly and unjustly" administered are "legitimate" and that the overall program has been "poorly implemented."

That criticism may curtail Chalabi's influence over the removal of former officials -- and his power over the employment and income prospects for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Washington is also seriously considering cutting off the $340,000 monthly stipend to Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National Congress, according to a senior administration official familiar with discussions. This would be a major change, because the INC has received millions in U.S. aid over the past decade as the primary vehicle for supporting the Iraqi opposition.

Chalabi is part of a wider problem, however. Polls indicate that most of the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council have little public support nine months after they were appointed. The lack of popular backing is the main reason the United States and United Nations are seeking a new body to govern Iraq before national elections are held in January 2005, U.S. and U.N. officials said.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is in charge of picking the new government in consultation with the U.S.-led coalition, made clear yesterday that the council should disband. "They have said twice, not once, in official documents they signed, that our term will end on the 30th of June," he said in an interview on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" to be aired Sunday.

"All opinion polls, and a lot are taken in Iraq, say that people want something different" than expansion of the council because they fear council members "will clone themselves. And why do you want to have that?" Brahimi asked.

U.S. and U.N. officials generally fear that the continued involvement of too many council members will contaminate efforts to create a credible Iraqi government, they said.

This is inside baseball, but both of these reporters are the pr wing of the CIA. Read with caution, and no small amount of interest. Know your sources.

You Are What You Eat

USDA vets: Documents falsified for years

By Steve Mitchell
United Press International
Published 4/23/2004 12:51 PM

WASHINGTON, April 23 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture has pressured its veterinarians into falsifying official documents for as long as 20 years, former agency veterinarians told United Press International.

The allegations come as a current USDA veterinarian and an attorney representing federal veterinarians have made similar charges about existing internal practices at the agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

The veterinarian -- who requested anonymity because of feared repercussions from the agency -- and the attorney, Bill Hughes of the National Association of Federal Veterinarians, allege the present FSIS management takes retaliatory actions against veterinarian inspectors who do not obey orders from superiors to sign certificates that falsely assert certain food items are safe for export.

These so-called export certificates declare a food item has been prepared in accordance with the safety inspection requirements of foreign countries. In some cases, Hughes and the veterinarian charge, even though food items may violate those export requirements, veterinarian inspectors still are expected to sign the documents.

Former veterinarians said the practice has been condoned in the agency for up to 20 years.

"We signed export certificates almost daily ... without ever verifying their accuracy," Tom D'Amura, a veterinarian who spent 12 years with the agency before leaving in 2000, told UPI.

"It probably still goes on," D'Amura said, and added he maintains contact with current USDA veterinarians.

Lester Friedlander, a former USDA veterinarian who worked for the agency from 1985 to 1995, said falsification of export certificates "has been ongoing for 20 years."

USDA spokesman Steven Cohen told UPI the FSIS was not aware of any current problems with its export certification process and "would launch an investigation" if it learned about management pressuring veterinarians to sign false documents.

Hughes currently is representing two agency veterinarians who were suspended for two weeks without pay when they balked at signing certificates they thought was inaccurate.

In one case, a veterinarian had cited a firm for infractions on two different days when employees were preparing poultry products for export to Russia. Because the infractions were specific violations of Russia's inspection requirements, the veterinarian refused to sign the export certificates for the poultry products processed during those two days.

Plant employees complained and the veterinarian's immediate supervisor and district manager ordered her to sign the export certificate. She again refused and ultimately was charged with improper conduct. The FSIS has rejected two of her appeals and Hughes recently filed a third appeal on her behalf on Feb. 20.

Just when you think you've heard it all.

More Bad News

Sharon: Arafat no longer immune to attack

The Associated Press
Published on: 04/23/04

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Friday that he was no longer bound by a promise to President Bush not to harm Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

It was the strongest signal yet that Israel could target Arafat, whom it has confined to his West Bank headquarters for two years.

In an interview with Israel TV's Channel Two, broadcast Friday, Sharon said he told Bush about his change of position in a Washington meeting last week.

Sharon accuses Arafat of supporting Palestinian militants, who have killed more than 900 Israelis during three and a half years of fighting.

Israel has killed scores of militants, including the leaders of the Islamic group Hamas, in targeted attacks. However, under U.S. pressure, it has refrained from killing or expelling Arafat.

"I told the president the following," Sharon said. "In our first meeting about three years ago, I accepted your request not to harm Arafat physically. I told him I understand the problems surrounding the situation, but I am released from that pledge."

Sharon declined to elaborate and would not say how Bush responded.

Palestinian officials have expressed concern that Israel might attack Arafat, especially after the killings of the Hamas leaders in recent months. On Thursday, Arafat expelled 20 militants who had sought shelter at his West Bank headquarters, fearing an Israeli attack was imminent.

This is so bad news that I don't even want to think about it. This is Sharon saying that Bush--and the US--is irrelevant. And Bush is because Sharon will pay no price for this. Sharon is being given carte blanche to pursue whatever he wants to. This is going to give Tony Blair nightmares this weekend.

Get Out the Vote

One vote for sending message

I have just read letters from the very disappointed wives whose husbands will be extended for another 120 days in country in Iraq.

Patricia Wilson
DeBary, Fla.

Honored Ground

Pentagon Ban on Pictures of Dead Troops Is Broken
By BILL CARTER

Published: April 23, 2004

The Pentagon's ban on making images of dead soldiers' homecomings at military bases public was briefly relaxed yesterday, as hundreds of photographs of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base were released on the Internet by a Web site dedicated to combating government secrecy.

The Web site, the Memory Hole (www.thememoryhole.org), had filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year, seeking any pictures of coffins arriving from Iraq at the Dover base in Delaware, the destination for most of the bodies. The Pentagon yesterday labeled the Air Force Air Mobility Command's decision to grant the request a mistake, but news organizations quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Defense Department photographers.

The release of the photographs came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. Her husband, a co-worker, was also fired after the pictures appeared in The Seattle Times on Sunday. The contractor, Maytag Aircraft, said the woman, Tami Silicio of Seattle, and her husband, David Landry, had "violated Department of Defense and company policies."

The firing underscored the strictness with which the Pentagon and the Bush administration have pursued a policy of forbidding news organizations to showing images of the homecomings of the war dead at military bases. They have argued that the policy was put in place during the first war in Iraq, and that it is simply an effort to protect the sensitivities of military families.

Executives at news organizations, many of whom have protested the policy, said last night that they had not known that the Defense Department itself was taking photographs of the coffins arriving home, a fact that came to light only when Russ Kick, the operator of The Memory Hole, filed his request.

"We were not aware at all that these photos were being taken," said Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times.

John Banner, the executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight," said, "We did not file a F.O.I.A. request ourselves, because this was the first we had known that the military was shooting these pictures."

The images are here. Be careful with this, they are quite powerful. Be prepared to spend some time, and some of your humanity.

from Church Going by Philip Larkin

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

News Comes Due

Stahl of ''60 Minutes'' says she regrets Iraq WMD stories

By KATE WILTROUT, The Virginian-Pilot
© April 22, 2004

VIRGINIA BEACH - Lesley Stahl has had her share of journalistic triumphs in the 14 years she has traveled the world interviewing newsmakers for “60 Minutes.”

But Wednesday night, the CBS news correspondent and “60 Minutes” co-editor also talked about work she’s less proud of: two pre-Iraq war reports casting doubt on Saddam Hussein’s claim to have rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.

“I look on those two stories as mistakes, journalistic mistakes,” Stahl told a crowd of about 1,000 gathered in the Princess Anne High School auditorium. “I made them, and I regret it.”

Stahl described a trip to Iraq in October 2001 , where she interviewed Iraqi officials, military leaders and scientists. They told her that Saddam had no ties to Osama bin Laden, that their secular Muslim country was just as much his enemy as the United States.

Stahl said she believed that.

They also told her that the country had gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction - the continued possession of such weapons was later cited by President Bush as justification for a pre-emptive war.

Stahl didn’t buy the Iraqis’ claims. Her instincts, she said, told her they were lying. “I didn’t believe anything the Iraqis were telling me about weapons of mass destruction,” Stahl said. “Nobody believed their denials.”

Stahl said she double- and triple-checked with lots of other sources.

No one had any doubts the weapons existed, she said - something she agonizes about now, but doesn’t know what she could have done differently.

This is the "handwringing" defense. The fact of the matter is that she joined a press corps eager for war, and one that would never have to serve in a war zone. Her behavior in the run-up was media whorish and hasn't been much better in the ensuing months. Blink-blink-bat-bat is such a lovely strategy for newsgathering.

When "Blackhawk Down" Comes Due

Follow the Leader
By JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL

Published: April 23, 2004

WASHINGTON

But the war in Iraq is unique. Rarely if ever have a foreign policy and a president's fate been so clearly linked. Former commanders in chief may have faced reverses in prosecuting the cold war — John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs, for example, or Ronald Reagan at Reykjavik. And Vietnam, of course, ended the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

But these presidents did not choose or create these conflicts. In contrast, America wouldn't be in Iraq today had President Bush not chosen to put us there.

If Americans decide that Iraq is a disaster, why do they not see him as the cause of the problem? Why has support for the president bounced back (up four points in one poll) even as approval of his handling of Iraq has fallen (down three points in the same poll)?

The pattern may not hold, and voters tend to react differently to the outbreak of a crisis than to sustained bad news. Still, there is a theory that might explain these apparently contradictory poll results. In wars abroad, Americans don't want their presidents to fail.

In part that's because a failure for the president is a failure for the nation. Indeed, the logic may apply with more force in cases like Iraq, in which the president has cast the nation on what is essentially a war of choice. To admit that the president blew it is to say the same of the public that followed him into the conflict. And like its leaders, the public not only doesn't like admitting it was wrong, but it will go to great lengths to avoid doing so.

The danger for President Bush is clear: the public's patience is not unlimited, and eventual failure in Iraq will almost certainly sink his candidacy. (Sometimes the conventional wisdom is actually right.)

For John Kerry, the risks are less obvious but no less real: running a campaign that focuses the voters' gaze solely on the president's manifest failures will probably run into resistance, especially with the voters he most needs to win over, those from the ambivalent middle. Mr. Kerry is far more likely to win if he has a plan to show how he — and thus the American people — can succeed rather than simply showing how President Bush — and thus they — have failed.

I don't disagree with Josh, but beg your indulgence in pointing to a disturbing trend: to the extent that Bush gets a pass because he is the "leader," Americans are passive consumers of news. "Support the President, support the troops" is lazy rhetoric. It is still early in the election cycle and most are still not paying attention, but a creeping awareness of US combat deaths is going to erode "support" numbers at some point. Since there still is no plan and no mission for the troops, this is only going to get worse.

File this under "Cold Comfort."

Call From Faith

Church group slams Bush on Clean Air Act

Thursday, April 22, 2004 Posted: 1:28 PM EDT (1728 GMT)

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- A national group of Christian leaders is sending a scathing letter to President Bush to coincide with Earth Day, accusing his administration of chipping away at the Clean Air Act.

"And we will in fact have dirtier air and less compliance," said Edgar, who served six terms in Congress in the 1970s and '80s, representing a suburban Philadelphia district. The council is urging ministers across the country to talk about the problems of air pollution during this week's services.

The other evening, we had a discussion about the tendency of some secular liberals to bash religion generally, without taking into account that they are needlessly alienating religious liberals and moderates who should be natural allies. As always happens, calls were made that it is the responsibility of religious liberals to counter the religious right.

In point of fact, faith groups and clerical associations do it all the time. Getting coverage is the problem, as Rev. Allen Brill of The Village Gate noted in the course of our earlier discussion. The media give the Christian right the bigger megaphone. So I was pleased to see this Earth Day story on CNN.

The NCCC, Clergy Leadership Network and other progressive religious voices do things like this all the time. The fact that you don't get to hear about it is not their fault.

GWOT Update

Poll: Americans Pessimistic on Terror War
Apr 22, 12:10 AM (ET)

By WILL LESTER

(AP) According to an Associated Press poll. half of the people questioned are concerned that terrorists...
Full Image

WASHINGTON (AP) - Half of Americans have concerns that terrorists might be winning the war on terrorism, and one in five feels strongly that way, according to an Associated Press poll that found many people pessimistic about their security.

Fears about an attack against this country are high. Two-thirds in the poll said it was likely terrorists would strike before the November elections. And a third said it was likely there would be an attack at one of the political conventions this summer.

More than 30 months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, two-thirds of Americans acknowledge some concern that terrorists may be recruiting faster than the United States can keep up. A third of those polled feel strongly this is the case, and another third say they have at least some worries.

"Terrorists are winning the war for the hearts and minds of the people in the Mideast," said Christine Wyatt, a 52-year-old church deacon in Clarkston, Mich.

Fears about the war on terrorism may be fueled by growing worries about the conflict in Iraq, which has been described by the Bush administration as a front line of the war on terror.

Those who think the military action in Iraq has increased the long-term risk of terrorism in the United States have increased from 40 percent in December to 54 percent now, according to the poll, conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs.

The people who say the Bush administration made the right decision to go to war in Iraq, 48 percent, are now about even with those who think the administration made a mistake, 49 percent. In December, two-thirds said the administration made the right decision.

So explain to me again why W's polling numbers are so stable?

A Beautiful Mind

As Wealthy Fill Top Colleges, New Efforts to Level the Field
By DAVID LEONHARDT

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — At prestigious universities around the country, from flagship state colleges to the Ivy League, more and more students from upper-income families are edging out those from the middle class, according to university data.

The change is fast becoming one of the biggest issues in higher education.

More members of this year's freshman class at the University of Michigan have parents making at least $200,000 a year than have parents making less than the national median of about $53,000, according to a survey of Michigan students. At the most selective private universities across the country, more fathers of freshmen are doctors than are hourly workers, teachers, clergy members, farmers or members of the military — combined.

Experts say the change in the student population is a result of both steep tuition increases and the phenomenal efforts many wealthy parents put into preparing their children to apply to the best schools. It is easy to see here, where BMW 3-series sedans are everywhere and students pay up to $800 a month to live off campus, enough to rent an entire house in parts of Michigan.

Some colleges are starting to take action. Officials long accustomed to discussing racial diversity are instead taking steps to improve economic diversity. They say they are worried that their universities are reproducing social advantage instead of serving as an engine of mobility.

"It's very much an issue of fundamental fairness," Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, said in an interview. "An important purpose of institutions like Harvard is to give everybody a shot at the American dream."

The University of Maryland recently said it would no longer ask students from families making less than $21,000 a year to take out loans, and would instead give them scholarships to cover tuition. Officials at Harvard, the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia all recently announced similar, even more generous policies.

Stanford and Yale have altered early-admission programs, partly out of a concern that they give an unfair advantage to students who do not need to compare financial-aid offers before they can commit to a college.

Over all, at the 42 most selective state universities, including the flagship campuses in California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan and New York, 40 percent of this year's freshmen come from families making more than $100,000, up from about 32 percent in 1999, according to the Higher Education Research Institute. Nationwide, fewer than 20 percent of families make that much money.
....
The advantages of campuses with increasingly wealthy student bodies are obvious, educators say: the colleges have more resources for research and student activities, more professors doing cutting-edge work and more students who received solid high school educations.

But they also have much steeper tuition bills than in the past, and this seems to have turned off many middle- and low-income families. Some students are not willing to take on the tens of thousands of dollars of debt that is often necessary. Others, studies show, underestimate the available amount of financial aid.

"We were founded on the principle of allowing larger numbers of students to go to college in an affordable way," Mr. Spencer, Michigan's admission director, said. "But having said that, the price of college has gone up, and many of the truly needy will not bother to apply."

That concerns people here and on other campuses because of what it could mean for the variety of campus life and for the broader economy.

"We're very worried," said William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's director of undergraduate admissions. "There are some very, very talented kids in the bottom quartile who aren't even going to college. It's a huge waste of talent."

I'm scanning a batch of "education" stories today and wondering about the assumptions behind them. This is a subject that we don't take seriously.

There needs to be a national conversation about the role of education in the life of the nation, about how we fund it and what we think we are accomplishing with it. What's a college education for?

Waiting it Out

Violence in Iraq Forces 2 Big Contractors to Curb Work
By JAMES GLANZ

Published: April 22, 2004

The insurgency in Iraq has driven two major contractors, General Electric and Siemens, to suspend most of their operations there, raising new doubts about the American-led effort to rebuild the country as hostilities continue.

Spokesmen for the contractors declined to discuss their operations in Iraq, citing security concerns, but the shutdowns were confirmed by officials at the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, the Coalition Provisional Authority and other companies working directly with G.E. and Siemens in Iraq.

"Between the G.E. lockdown and the inability to get materials moved up the major supply routes, about everything is being affected in one way or another," said Jim Hicks, a senior adviser for electricity at the provisional authority.

The suspensions and travel restrictions are delaying work on about two dozen power plants as occupying forces press to meet an expected surge in demand for electricity before the summer. Mr. Hicks said plants that had been expected to produce power by late April or early May might not be operating until June 1.

"While it's being affected, it's not shutting down," he said of the work. "I think we're still in good shape as far as getting our equipment back up before the summer really hits us."

Several government and company officials said reconstruction work had rebounded recently after the intense violence of the past few weeks, but experts said they were concerned the delays might affect ordinary Iraqis.

"What worries me is that, are the insurgents, the terrorists, are they winning the battle this way?" asked Isam al Khafaji, an Iraqi who is director of Iraq Revenue Watch, an initiative of the Open Society Institute, an organization backed by the billionaire George Soros.

Electricity, he added, "is the most important sector for the Iraqis after security."

"This will be affecting, really, people's everyday lives," he said.

The Coalition Provisional Authority regards the rehabilitation of the Iraq's water, sewage, transportation, oil and electrical infrastructure as a linchpin in the effort to create a functioning democracy and convince Iraqis of America's good will.

A spokeswoman for the authority said discussions involving security issues with General Electric had led to an agreement that could result in a resumption of operations. The spokeswoman said Siemens and the authority were "working out their differences," but she said she had no information about whether the company would resume work.

General Electric booked $450 million in orders in 2003 in Iraq, mostly for subcontracts to the large primary contractors in Iraq, said Gary Sheffer, a company spokesman.

Neither General Electric nor other companies working in Iraq would say how many employees they had in the country, citing security concerns.
....
But the lockdowns by General Electric in particular have led to delays on power projects that involved its huge turbine power generators, in some cases forcing other companies to slow or stop work.

The delays are slowing work on a $50 million project to refurbish a large power plant north of Baghdad, said Robert Spaulding, an operations vice president for Fluor, a major contractor in Iraq.

About 70 Iraqis and a dozen non-Iraqi managers are taking apart three General Electric turbines, but G.E. has declined to send technical advisers and has been slow to ship new parts, Mr. Spaulding said. He said he might be forced to seek technical help from other companies that have experience with the G.E. units.

"Tell me what's different about having an American construction superintendent at this site," Mr. Spaulding said, referring to his own employees there, "but G.E. won't send an American tech guy?"

The article is a mess, obviously filed in haste with little or no editing, but it does give a portrait of the chaos in Iraq, seen through the eyes of the contractors trying to make a buck, or at least the ones trying to actually get something done. As opposed to just sucking up kickbacks and other graft, which is apparently quite spectacular. More information on that here.

Al Qaeda Votes

OP-ED: Al Qaeda will want Bush back —Muqtedar Khan

It would be naïve to assume that Al Qaeda will not vote in the coming American elections in November 2004. The issue that we must ponder is how it’s going to cast its ballot? To understand how Al Qaeda will vote, we must try to figure out whom it will prefer in the White House, Bush or Kerry?

If John Kerry wins in November he will probably make the following changes in American foreign policy:

1. He will roll back American unilateralism and seek more international cooperation from Europe, South Asia, Middle East and the UN. Instead of a coalition of the coerced, Kerry will seek a truly international coalition. Coalitions built through a multilateral process will present fewer fissures in the anti-terror campaign for Al Qaeda to exploit.

2. Most probably John Kerry will be interested in reducing rather than expanding the scope and objectives of counter-terrorism. Neocon goals such as reshaping the Middle East, reforming Islam, reconstituting the United States defence doctrines and redefining old Europe, will be abandoned and under Kerry the US will concentrate more on eliminating Al Qaeda and associates than anything else.

3. Much of soft anti-Americanism worldwide is a result of anti-Bushism. Regardless of what Americans think, most of the world finds President Bush uncouth, obnoxious, arrogant, crude and a bully. His defeat itself will reduce anti-Americanism globally and will increase American prospects for victory in this war on terror.

Will Al Qaeda be happy with these developments? I doubt it. Anti-Bushism has helped them divide the world and the growing anger in the Muslim world as a result of George Bush’s policies has helped them gain recruits, clones and support. If Bush loses in November they will lose an important asset. Al Qaeda will become the sole target of US energies and surely that must be a disturbing thought to even those who relish the idea of dying while fighting America.

Republican Finishing School

The Bible college that leads to the White House
The campus is immaculate, everyone is clean-cut and cheerful. But just what are they teaching at Patrick Henry College? And why do so many students end up working for George Bush?
By Andrew Buncombe

Yet these things alone do not make the college special. There are, after all, a number of Christian establishments across the United States that enforce such a strict fundamentalist code for their students.

No, what makes Patrick Henry unique is the increasingly close - critics say alarmingly close - links this recently established, right-wing Christian college has with the Bush administration and the Republican establishment as a whole. This spring, of the almost 100 interns working in the White House, seven are from Patrick Henry. Another intern works for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, while another works for President George Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove. Yet another works for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Over the past four years, 22 conservative members of Congress have employed one or more Patrick Henry interns. Janet Ashcroft, the wife of Bush's Bible-thumping Attorney General, is one of the college's trustees.

And this is no coincidence. Rather, it is the very point. Students at Patrick Henry are on a mission to change the world: indeed, to lead the world. When, after four years or so of study, they leave their neatly-kept campus with its close-mown lawns, they do so with a drive and commitment to reshape their new environments according to the fundamentalist, right-wing vision of their college.

Critics say that Patrick Henry's system cannot help but produce narrow-minded students with extremist views, but the college's openly stated aim is to train young men and women "who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values".

Nancy Keenan, of the liberal campaign group People for the American Way, says: "The number of interns [from Patrick Henry] going into the White House scares me to death. People have a right to choose [where their children are educated], but we are concerned that they are not exposed to the kind of diversity this country has. They are training people with a very limited ideological and political view. If these young people are going into positions of power, they have to govern with all people in mind, not just a limited number."

I know about this place because this is a local story for me. The founder/president is a protege of Tim LaHaye, one of the authors of the Christian Dominionist Left Behind novel series. Even in Evangelical Christian circles, this is wingnuttery.

These kids are being groomed for the Republican power structure. We have a whole lot of institution building to do on our side.

Bloody Day

Blast Destroys Saudi Security Headquarters

Compiled From Wire Reports
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; 11:17 AM

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Two car bombs blasted the Saudi national police headquarters Wednesday, killing at least nine people and wounding 125 others, just days after a U.S. warning of a possible terrorist attack.

Facades were torn off buildings near the explosions, revealing rooms still ablaze. Cars parked nearby were smashed by debris. Clouds of dust and black smoke rose from the building and settled over the neighborhood. The two car bombs were parked about 50 feet from the building, a police official told The Associated Press, adding that "a number of charred bodies" were carried away from the scene.

A Reuters report said only one bomb detonated in the attack.

Nine people were killed, including policemen and civilians, and 125 were wounded, according to officials at three hospitals.

Police had said earlier that one body was identified as that of a suicide attacker. It was not immediately known if his body was among those counted by the hospital officials.

Among the wounded were police, some in critical condition, and at least three children.

Five Car Bombs Leave Scores Dead in Basra
More Than 200 Injured in Attacks; Marines Come Under Attack in Fallujah

By Karl Vick, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; 12:09 PM

BAGHDAD, April 21 -- Five car bombs exploded at Iraqi police facilities in and around the southern city of Basra early Wednesday, killing at least 60 people and wounding an estimated 200 more, including 4 British troops.

The dead included a number of school children traveling in a pair of minibuses that happened to be passing by one of the three police stations where bombs exploded almost simultaneously at 7:30 a.m., the morning rush hour.

An hour later, at 8:30 (12:30 EDT) another vehicle exploded at the police training academy in Zubair, eight miles south of the city. Just an hour after that, another blast hit the academy, according to Basra's governor Wael Abdul Latif.

He told the Associated Press that two more car bombers were captured before they could attack.

There were conflicting estimates of the number of children dead, ranging from 5 to 28.

"Today another crime, a massacre, has been committed," said Interior Minister Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumaidy. "They killed another group of innocent children to reach their victory. The terrorists want to leave Iraq in chaos."

Basra is Iraq's second largest city. Compared to the north, it's been relatively calm. Tensions rose, but the peace largely held, during the insurgency that flared earlier this month in other parts of the south, where Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority is concentrated.

Lunch Scene

In the WaPo this morning, Al Kamen clarifies something I wrote about last week:

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Iraq

So what was CIA Director George J. "Slam Dunk" Tenet, recipient of some unflattering press of late via Woodward's new book, doing having lunch at the Hay Adams last week with outgoing Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti?

Valenti's still looking for a successor, but that was not on the table, we were told. Still the origin of their relationship was unclear. Fortunately, Valenti faxed a helpful note over after Friday's item appeared.

"Because I don't want the Post and you to be in the dark about the provenance of my friendship with George Tenet" Valenti wrote, "it goes back to the Senate days of my old friend, David Boren of Oklahoma. When he was chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, his staff director was a fellow named George Tenet. My wife's and my friendship with George and his wife, Stephanie, dates back to that time.

"There you are. That information void is now filled," Valenti said.

We Own It

Witnesses: No quick end to Iraq burdens

By BOB DART
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/21/04

WASHINGTON — Expert witnesses told a Senate committee Tuesday that U.S. troop levels and spending in Iraq will remain high for three to five years after Iraq becomes self-governing.

"My own experience from Bosnia, from Kosovo, from Haiti is that it takes a great deal of time to build an army or to build a police force — three to four to five years," Samuel Berger, national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "I think we're talking about another $200 billion at least in the next three years."

Richard Perle, until February an adviser to the Bush administration, said, "If we could only get others to share it, it would significantly diminish the burden we have to carry. I think as a practical matter, that's highly unlikely."

Committee leaders were upset the Bush administration sent no Defense Department witnesses to the hearing. They said they were concerned that the administration, which intends to hand over power to the Iraqis on June 30, had not been sufficiently forthcoming about future costs there.

The administration has sometimes failed to "communicate its Iraq plans and cost estimates to Congress and the American people" and "must recognize that its domestic credibility on Iraq will have a great impact on its efforts to succeed," said Chairman Richard Lugar.

Sen. Joseph Biden, the committee's top-ranking Democrat, said U.S. forces in Iraq "may soon be confronted by an untenable situation . . . caught between hostile Iraqi populations that they were sent to liberate and an increasingly skeptical American public." He added, "No foreign policy can be sustained in this country without the informed consent of the American people, and there has not been an informed consent yet because we have not leveled with them."

In another hearing Tuesday, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee expressed concern about what the handover of power would mean to the control exerted by U.S. forces in Iraq.

Questioning Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) warned of possible questions of authority between American combat forces and the interim Iraqi government.

"Say there's a major insurrection that occurs early on in July and our military commanders have to decide to the extent that force must be applied," said Warner. "If you're going to give them sovereignty, and at the same time our military commander . . . has the authority to make those decisions as to how to apply force, I see a basic conflict of interest."

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking minority member, echoed Warner's concerns.

"A gap in the ability to do what is required militarily is unacceptable," he said.

But Wolfowitz said U.S. forces would remain under U.S. command, right up to the commander in chief. He added it was unlikely the United States would persuade more allies to commit troops to Iraq as long as the fighting continued, even if it got a new U.N. resolution on Iraq. "I do think there are quite a few countries who aren't going to come in until it's safer to come in," he said.

Wolfowitz appeared with Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Marc Grossman, undersecretary of state for political affairs,.

Myers said the situation in Iraq would be similar to that in Afghanistan and Bosnia, where U.S. troops operate under their own commanders in a sovereign country. Should U.S. troops face a combat situation in Iraq, he said, "we're going to have to do what we have to do."

Neither of these hearings were on C-SPAN yesterday (WTF?) Juan Cole said, "This was an uprising!" His testimony is here.

Marketplace

I caught this on the radio in the car last night. Holy crap!

The spoils of war add up to more than capturing expansive palaces and luxury cars. As Marketplace reporters have discovered, not all of the $22 billion being spent to rebuild Iraq is going where it should. Who's watching the money as it streams through Baghdad? Just about no one, and bribes and black marketeering are rampant, witnesses say. A leading anti-corruption group claims as much as 90 percent of U.S. money spent in Iraq is being lost to corruption. From Halliburton subsidiaries charging double for gas, Iraqi officials and Arabic translators unrestrained from pocketing millions of dollars, or even members of the interim governing Council accusing each other of taking tens of millions in bribes. Trouble is, the root of the problem can't be found anywhere near the Green Zone. Try the White House, and Capitol Hill, where oversight of Iraqi construction crews and U.S. contractors like Halliburton has only just begun to be assigned… more than a year after the war began.

The Buck Stops Here:
There is a lot of anger in Iraq right now towards the US occupation of the country. Some of the bitterness comes from frustration over the slow pace of fundamental change in the country. And central to change was snuffing out corruption.. Many had pinned their hopes on the Americans to take care of things. But in three months of investigating the story, Marketplace found that the problem is as deeply embedded in Washington as it is in Baghdad. Mark Schapiro, of the Center for Investigative Reporting, picks up the story on Capitol Hill.
Broadcast Date: Friday, April 23, 2004

Sometimes, You Have to Laugh

via Nathan Newman:

Pottery Barn faults Powell's breaking point

Company says quote from official misstates policy on merchandise

09:11 PM CDT on Monday, April 19, 2004

By MICHAEL PRECKER / The Dallas Morning News

Pottery Barn would like to make one thing perfectly clear: If you break it, you don't have to buy it.

The 174-store home furnishings chain unexpectedly found itself in the news over the weekend as author Bob Woodward released his new book about the Iraq war, Plan of Attack, and began talking about it.

Mr. Woodward quotes Secretary of State Colin Powell as warning President Bush that invading Iraq would produce a "Pottery Barn rule" – which Mr. Powell defined as "you break it, you own it."

The term was news to Williams-Sonoma, the San Francisco-based retailer that owns Pottery Barn.

"The policy is completely incorrectly represented by the secretary of state," said Leigh Oshirak, director of public relations for the company. "I can't imagine you would ever hear that at any retailer at our level."

Completely out of touch with ordinary retail policy.

Shooting Self in the Guts

via GetReligion:

Media Matters:
All-left radio is lacking the right stuff for success

The first time I turned on Air America, the new liberal radio network, I heard a commentator arguing that Republicans did not initiate impeachment proceedings against President Clinton because of Monica Lewinsky, Whitewater, lying or obstruction of justice. No, the man said, Republicans knew Clinton had committed no impeachable offenses, but they pursued impeachment anyway, in a diabolically clever ploy designed specifically to make the general public so disenchanted with the very idea of impeachment that they would not tolerate impeachment against the next (Republican) president — who, of course, deserves to be impeached immediately.
....
In a country in which 64% of the public say they attend weekend worship services at least once a month, mocking religion might not be the most effective way to win converts — and yet, on Good Friday no less, that's exactly what the various Air America hosts repeatedly did.

Two of the hosts gratuitously announced that they're Jewish, and one — Marc Maron of the network's "Morning Sedition" program — went on to make fun of Easter and Christmas rituals. Then, in a segment he called "morning devotional," Maron began his prayer for divine guidance on behalf of President Bush by saying, "Dear Lord, what the hell is going on up there?"

Another host — I think it was Rachel Maddow on "Unfiltered," though I couldn't always distinguish her voice from that of co-host Lizz Winstead — called Easter "an odd celebration" and said that a taxi driver had told her that "someone in a Jesus suit" would carry a cross along 42nd Street in New York in a reenactment of the events of Good Friday, "but in this case, he'll stop to buy a fake Louis Vuitton bag."

Here you have the exact reason I started Bump in the Beltway, because this is the kind of stuff which will cost us the next election. A substantial fraction of religious people of any stripe--Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Baha'i, whatever--will be interested in hearing the social justice agenda of the center-left, but not if it includes a substantial dose of religion bashing. I'm much further left than the other poli-bloggers, but this kind of rhetoric offends me. A lot of my politics comes out of my reading of my faith. Don't bash it.

If we truly are a fifty-fifty nation, we are going to need to gather in every possible sympathetic voter. That means making common cause with them rather than making fun of them.

Faith-Based Foreign Policy

'Unprecedented Hatred' for Americans in Arab World, Mubarak Says
The Associated Press
Published: Apr 20, 2004

PARIS (AP) - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a major Arab ally of the United States, said in published remarks Tuesday that hatred of Americans in the Arab world was stronger now than ever because of the war in Iraq.

Mubarak also said Arab opinion of the United States had grown more negative because of Washington's continuing support for Israel.

"At the start, some believed that the Americans were helping them," Mubarak said in comments published Tuesday by French daily Le Monde. "There wasn't any hatred toward the Americans."

"After what has happened in Iraq, there is an unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it," he added. "There exists today a hatred never equaled in the region."

Mubarak, whose country is among the biggest beneficiaries of U.S. foreign aid, said U.S. missteps in Iraq had made the situation worse.

"In Iraq, they said: 'We are not going to allow the creation of an Islamic state.' Result: people are attached even more to the idea of religion," Mubarak said.

Many Arabs feel a sense of "injustice" in the way the United States has offered strong backing for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Mubarak said.

"What's more - they see Sharon act as he wants, without the Americans saying anything," Mubarak said.

The Egyptian leader met with French President Jacques Chirac in Paris on Monday, on his way home from a trip to the United States to meet with President Bush at his Texas ranch.

I wonder if Bush even cares? Moral certainty is a dangerous thing.

Dollars and Little Sense

Krugman comes on board with a warning Bumped here last month:

If the economy fully recovers — or even if investors just think it will — interest rates will rise sharply. In its World Economic Outlook report, to be issued tomorrow, the International Monetary Fund urges the Federal Reserve to prepare the economy for higher rates to "avoid financial market disruption both domestically and abroad."

But how far will rates rise? Let's not get into Greenspan Kremlinology, parsing the chairman's mumbles for clues about the Fed's next move. Let's ask, instead, how much rates will rise if and when normal conditions of supply and demand resume in the bond market.

My calculations keep leading me to a 10-year bond rate of 7 percent, and a mortgage rate of 8.5 percent — with a substantial possibility that the numbers will be even higher. Current rates are about 4.3 and 5.8 percent, respectively; you can see why the I.M.F. is worried about "financial market disruption."

Why 7 percent? Well, in the past 20 years the average yield on 10-year bonds has, in fact, been about 7 percent. Why shouldn't we think of that as the norm?

Some people say that unlike past interest rates, future interest rates won't include a premium for expected inflation. Indeed, over the past 20 years the average inflation rate was 3 percent, considerably higher than recent experience. But in the first three months of 2004, prices rose at an annual rate of more than 5 percent. That number included soaring gasoline prices, but even the "core" price index, which excludes food and energy, rose at a 2.9 percent rate.

More to the point, investors expect considerable inflation over the next 10 years. The spread between "inflation protected" bonds, whose payments are indexed to the Consumer Price Index, and ordinary bonds indicates an expected inflation rate of 2.5 percent during the next decade.

So you can't claim that interest rates will be far below historical levels because inflation is gone. And on the other side, we need to think about the impact of budget deficits.

That last sentence will send the deficit apologists to battle stations (sorry, I can't avoid politics completely). For many years, advocates of tax cuts have insisted that the normal laws of supply and demand don't apply to the bond market, and that government borrowing — unlike borrowing by families or businesses — doesn't affect interest rates. But there's no argument among serious, nonideological economists. For example, a textbook by Gregory Mankiw, now the president's chief economist, declares — in italics — that "when the government reduces national saving by running a budget deficit, the interest rate rises."

The Congressional Budget Office estimates this year's structural budget deficit — what the deficit would be if cyclical factors like a depressed economy went away — at 3.9 percent of G.D.P. That's almost twice the average during the past 20 years. Standard estimates say this should push up 10-year interest rates by around one percentage point.

Finally, there's the upside risk. As I've pointed out before, the twin U.S. budget and trade deficits would set alarm bells ringing if we were a third world country. For now, America gets the benefit of the doubt, but if financial markets decide that we have turned into a banana republic, the sky's the limit for interest rates.

Now for the obvious point: many American families and businesses will be in big trouble if interest rates really do go as high as I'm suggesting. That's why the I.M.F. is urging the Fed to get the word out.

And one suspects that the fund, which, like Alan Greenspan, tends to convey messages in code, is firing a shot across Mr. Greenspan's bow. A number of analysts have accused Mr. Greenspan of fostering a debt bubble in recent years, just as they accuse him of feeding the stock bubble during the 1990's. Just two months ago, Mr. Greenspan went out of his way to emphasize the financial benefits of adjustable-rate, as opposed to fixed-rate, mortgages. Let's hope that not too many families regarded that as useful advice.

Kash at Angry Bear has more.

From our friends

Jordanian King Puts Off Meeting Bush Over Israel
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, April 19 — King Abdullah of Jordan dealt a rebuff to President Bush on Monday, abruptly putting off his visit to Washington scheduled for later this week. Jordanian officials said the visit had become impossible in light of Mr. Bush's recent support for Israel's territorial claims in the West Bank.

A statement from Jordan said the king, who was in California on Monday and went home rather than to Washington, would not meet with Mr. Bush this week as planned.

It said the meeting would wait "until discussions and deliberations are concluded with officials in the American administration to clarify the American position on the peace process and the final situation in the Palestinian territories, especially in light of the latest statements by officials in the American administration."

A Jordanian official said the statement, in deliberately cool tones, was meant to send a message of displeasure.

For their part, administration officials said that the visit had to be put off because of "developments in the region" and that it would be rescheduled for May.

Jordanian officials made clear that King Abdullah, who was in California meeting with technology and entertainment industry figures, had been irked by Mr. Bush's declarations in his meeting last week with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and would therefore bypass Washington.

After his meeting with Mr. Sharon a week ago, Mr. Bush broke with American policy and supported Israel's ultimate retention of some settlements in the West Bank and also rejected the longtime Palestinian demand for a right of return to family homes abandoned in 1948 in what is now Israel.

The Jordanian statement followed by a week a protest by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

The problems with Egypt and Jordan came as the administration faced another round of difficulties in its plans for Iraq, especially after the abrupt announcement by Spain that it would quickly withdraw its forces there in the face of a deteriorating security situation.

Honduras announced Monday night that it would withdraw its 370 troops, which have been operating in Iraq as part of the Spanish contingent.

Administration officials also said that Poland faced a decision on whether to renew its commitment to keep troops in Iraq, and that it was far from clear whether it would renew its pledge. The Polish commitment is to expire in September. Poland has 2,460 troops in Iraq.

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue, an Egyptian official said that Mr. Mubarak and his aides had been talking with American officials for several weeks about the possibility of an American endorsement of Israeli aspirations, and that each time the Egyptians had made their opposition clear. Mr. Mubarak described himself as shocked by Mr. Bush's statements in his meeting with Mr. Sharon, although Egyptian officials said he had been apprised of the statements when he met with Mr. Bush in Texas before the Sharon visit.

Administration officials said that despite their difficulties with Egypt and Jordan, they still expected both nations to try to help with security in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, from which Israeli forces and settlers are to be withdrawn under Mr. Sharon's plan.

King Abdullah is one of the moderating forces in the ME. Bush's backing of Sharon earlier this week was araised middle digit to the folks who have been working the peace process for years and I'm hardly surprised that Abdullah is pissed. The margin in which he got to work is very small and he was never given much credit.

Has the Swirly Started?

Barry Ritholtz, who seems to be everywhere on the web these days, has a letter to Eric Alterman (and a plug for his blog. Note to self: get Alterman's attention) today. I'm not nearly as certain as he is that what we are seeing is definitive, but I've noticed the same shift.

Doc A.,
While you were out: There has been the radical shift in Media coverage of all things War, Terrorism and White House related. It's been gradually accelerating, and finally burst into view last Tuesday during the President's Third (only 3?) prime time news conference. Here's a thorough vetting of the changes:

This is extremely significant, at least from an election campaign perspective. The media has been complicit in much of what has happened during this administration. A lack of vigorous fact checking, and little challenges of outright falsehoods has enabled much of what the Bush White House has accomplished in their first term. With few exceptions (The New York Time's Paul Krugman, and the Kansas City Star come to mind), the Press has been mostly AWOL during most of President Bush's term.

What will be definitive, and here I agree one-off with Barry, is the coverage of Plamegate. In other words I'm pro-spective about this shift. I don't think the press will start to do any critical thinking until they are confronted by a felony originating in the West Wing. This will also be driven by a corresponding sense of outrage by the congressional Dems--if they have awakened from their slumber. Plame will be the test case for finding out. This is a whole lot bigger deal than the third rate burglery which was at the guts of Watergate. Let's find out if the Fourth Estate and the Dems can summon up a little historical perspective. Since the popular culture is deeply ahistorical, cutting through the Simpson's culture we live in won't be easy, but I don't recall that the popular culture was a whole lot deeper or more sophisticated in 1973.

At Long Last

Leaders in Falluja Urge Rebels to Halt Attacks on U.S. Forces
By KIRK SEMPLE

Published: April 19, 2004

A delegation of local leaders joined with American officials today in calling for rebels in the besieged town of Falluja to surrender their weapons and permit the resumption of American and Iraqi patrols, an American official said.

The bilateral appeal is the first hint of a breakthrough in a two-week-old standoff between American troops who have encircled the town and rebel fighters inside.

But the success of the agreement will largely depend on the influence that the local leaders will have over the Sunni Muslim insurgents there, and American officials admitted today that they were uncertain if the agreement would succeed in bringing a peaceful end to the standoff.

Dan Senor, the spokesman for the chief American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, said that while the American authorities were "hopeful about the intentions of the Falluja delegation," they "also recognize that there is a big question about whether or not they can deliver, and that remains to be seen."

"We remain hopeful about their intentions," he repeated, "but we also are going to monitor closely about whether or not they are followed up with real deliverables."

Should the agreement fail to work, he added, American-led coalition troops would "reinitiate operations." The Americans announced a cease-fire in Falluja 10 days ago, but sporadic fighting has persisted.

The first good news in a long time, and, by golly, I'll take it

publius of Legal Fiction has a thoughtful reflection on Woodward's appearance on 60 Minutes and what we learned about Bush's decision making process:

Which brings us to Bush. Regardless of what people think about the wisdom of invading, I think we can all agree that the process Bush employed to reach that decision is very troubling. It was the opposite of “information-producing.” According to Woodward, Bush never even asked several important people in his cabinet (such as his Secretary of State – the only one with any combat experience in the whole cabinet) about whether he should go to war. According to the Post, the only war cabinet member whom Bush asked was Rice. He explained that he knew what everyone else thought so there was no need to ask them. NO NO NO NO!!

And now our troops are paying the price.

Half-baked Democracy

Iraqi leaders choose mayor of Baghdad
Coalition administrator expected to give his OK
By ROBERT MORAN
Knight-Ridder Tribune News

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In a scene that coalition officials must have dreamed about for months, Iraqis lined up Sunday to cast their ballots for the next mayor of Baghdad -- sort of.

But rather than a general election open to all eligible residents of this city of 5 million, 49 local government representatives assembled in a heavily guarded municipal building to choose who'll lead them in tackling the problems that plague this fabled and unwieldy metropolis.

Outside, a dozen U.S. Army Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles kept a protective watch.

The final approval of his selection will be made by L. Paul Bremer, the American administrator of the coalition. However, officials said Bremer is expected to give his OK after a background check.

The Iraqi representatives, members of the Baghdad City Council and other local leaders, picked a resident of the United Arab Emirates, Alaa al-Tamimi, an Iraqi native who promises to return to his homeland and begin to address Baghdad's horrendous traffic, overflowing garbage and inadequate water and sewage systems.

"It is my duty to come back to my country," said al-Tamimi, an engineer and academic in his mid-50s.

The last mayor of Baghdad was handpicked by Saddam Hussein. He disappeared during the war last year.

Anybody besides me think this stinks? Yet another emigre.

Invisible Armies

Bush Plans Aid to Build Foreign Peace Forces

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 19, 2004; Page A01

Facing a chronic shortage of foreign troops for peacekeeping missions, President Bush has decided to launch an international drive to boost the supply of available forces -- a move that if successful could relieve some of the pressure on U.S. soldiers to join such operations, defense officials said.

A plan approved by Bush earlier this month calls for the United States to commit about $660 million over the next five years to train, equip and provide logistical support to forces in nations willing to participate in peace operations.

The campaign, known as the Global Peace Operations Initiative, will be aimed largely at Africa by expanding the peacekeeping skills of African forces and encouraging international military exercises in the region, where U.S. officials said much of the need exists.

But African forces developed under the program could be used in peace operations anywhere in the world, officials said. And the program also sets aside some assistance for armies in Asia, Latin America and Europe to enlarge their peacekeeping roles as well.

Pentagon officials who briefed The Washington Post stressed that the plan, which Bush has yet to formally announce, is not meant as a unilateral U.S. effort. They said Bush intends it to be a broad, multinational push, with other countries contributing trainers and additional resources, although consultations with potential partner nations remain at an early stage.

Talk about your PR offensive! It might be front page news in the post but this is right up there with the Mars shot in its unreality. Why do they even bother with this stuff?

The Lawrence of Arabia Fantasy

The Wrong War
By BOB HERBERT

Published: April 19, 2004

American troops are enduring the deadliest period since the start of the war. And while they continue to fight courageously and sometimes die, they are fighting and dying in the wrong war.

This is the height of absurdity.

One of the things I remember from my time in the service many years ago was the ubiquitous presence of large posters with the phrase, in big block letters: Know Your Enemy.

This is a bit of military wisdom that seems to have escaped President Bush.

The United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, by Al Qaeda, not Iraq.

All Americans and most of the world would have united behind President Bush for an all-out war against Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The relatives and friends of any troops who lost their lives in that effort would have known clearly and unmistakably what their loved ones had died for.

But Mr. Bush had other things on his mind. With Osama and the top leadership of Al Qaeda still at large, and with the U.S. still gripped by the trauma of Sept. 11, the president turned his attention to Iraq.

Less than two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to Bob Woodward's account in his new book, "Plan of Attack," President Bush ordered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to have plans drawn up for a war against Iraq. Mr. Bush insisted that this be done with the greatest of secrecy. The president did not even fully inform his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, or his secretary of state, Colin Powell, about his directive to Mr. Rumsfeld.

Thus began the peeling away of resources crucial to the nation's fight against its most fervent enemy, Al Qaeda.

Gen. Tommy Franks, who at the time was head of the United States Central Command and in charge of the Afghan war, was reported by Mr. Woodward to have uttered a string of obscenities when he was ordered to develop a plan for invading Iraq.

President Bush may truly believe, as he suggested at his press conference last week, that he is carrying out a mission that has been sanctioned by the divine. But he has in fact made the world less safe with his catastrophic decision to wage war in Iraq. At least 700 G.I.'s and thousands of innocent Iraqis, including many women and children, are dead. Untold numbers have been maimed and there is no end to the carnage in sight.

Meanwhile, instead of destroying the terrorists, our real enemies, we've energized them. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has become a rallying cry for Islamic militants. Qaeda-type terror is spreading, not receding. And Osama bin Laden is still at large.

Even as I write this, reporters from The Times and other news outlets are filing stories about marines dying in ambush and other acts of mayhem and anarchy across Iraq. This was not part of the plan. The administration and its apologists spread fantasies of a fresh dawn of freedom emerging in Iraq and spreading across the Arab world. Instead we are spilling the blood of innocents in a nightmare from which many thousands will never awaken.

Afghanistan's Descent

Monday, April 19, 2004; Page A18

THE FIGHTING in Iraq has kindled hopes of sharing the burden with allies, perhaps by involving NATO. Meanwhile Afghanistan, where NATO assumed peacekeeping responsibility last August, is not progressing well. NATO's European members have failed to contribute sufficient troops to extend the peacekeeping presence much outside the capital, and the resulting power vacuum has been filled by warlords. Last week the leading northern strongman, Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum forced the flight of a provincial governor and demanded that President Hamid Karzai fire two ministers; two weeks before that, fighting in the western city of Herat killed a cabinet minister. Most disturbing, the power vacuum has made possible a dramatic resurgence in the opium trade, which now accounts for around two-fifths of the country's economic output. Unless NATO's peacekeepers and the American military contingent grow more assertive, the drug monster will destroy all hope of stabilizing the country.

Nation-building is hard at the best of times. You have to build institutions and overcome habits of lawlessness, factionalism and corruption that are self-reinforcing. But building legitimate institutions becomes almost impossible if illegitimate ones are earning millions of dollars -- from drugs, as in Colombia, or from gems, as in Angola, Sierra Leone or Congo. In Afghanistan, a warlord with a militia of 1,000 can take over a slice of country and start growing and processing poppies. Pretty soon, that warlord can afford to hire another 1,000 followers. Meanwhile, the job of training Afghanistan's national army and police force is proceeding at a snail's pace. The army has around 9,000 troops, compared with an estimated 45,000 militia members in the country.

If we were keeping our eye on the ball, the balance would be different.

Fallujah

Riverbend with some advice for the CPA:

To lessen the feelings of anti-Americanism, might I make a few suggestions? Stop the collective punishment. When Mark Kimmett stutters through a press conference babbling about "precision weapons" and "military targets" in Falloojeh, who is he kidding? Falloojeh is a small city made up of low, simple houses, little shops and mosques. Is he implying that the 600 civilians who died during the bombing and the thousands injured and maimed were all "insurgents"? Are houses, shops and mosques now military targets?

I hate American foreign policy and its constant meddling in the region... I hate American tanks in Baghdad and American soldiers on our streets and in our homes on occasion... why does that mean that I hate America and Americans? Are tanks, troops and violence the only face of America? If the Pentagon, Department of Defense and Condi are "America", then yes- I hate America.

Over at The Left Coaster, blogger paradox surveys the web and finds:

Snipers

Because of sniper stories like this the threat level of every citizen in the United States has gone permanently up. As surely as the sun will rise today, there will be payback. Some day, somewhere in the future, US citizens and soldiers will be killed and horribly maimed in retribution for a war and deaths of innocents that all has made us all dramatically less safe.

Thanks, Ralph

Thanks to reader pol:

Rice: U.S. bracing for attacks before election
Former Spanish PM warns Bush of possible plots
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:14 a.m. ET April 18, 2004

WASHINGTON - The United States is bracing for possible terrorist attacks before the November presidential election, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who succeeded Aznar over the weekend, was holding his first cabinet meeting on Monday.

We've all thought it, but somehow hearing her say it fills me with dread because we know these folks are incompetent in the War on Terra.

And Thanks for Your Public Service

9/11 commissioner: 'I've received threats'
Gorelick says she won't step down; FBI investigating

Sunday, April 18, 2004 Posted: 4:20 AM EDT (0820 GMT)

Jamie Gorelick says she will not resign her post on the commission investigating the attacks.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Jamie Gorelick, a member of the commission investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, said Saturday that she received death threats this week after a number of conservatives alleged that her former work in the Justice Department may have contributed to failures leading to the attacks.

ABC News first reported the story Saturday.

We've become a vile people.

Facts are Stubborn Things, Part XXI

The blunders of a president who doesn't know he made them

By Ellen Goodman, Globe Columnist | April 18, 2004

MAYBE I SHOULDN'T be hard on the president for flunking his pop quiz on foreign policy. After all, it wasn't a take-home exam and he didn't have Dick Cheney by his side. But when a reporter at the prime-time news conference asked what errors he'd made and what lessons he learned, the president was stumped. "I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet," he said.

After another golly-gee-whiz stumble, he added, "you just put me under the spot here and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."

Of course, if he needs a little help, I'm happy to share a few of the greatest hits from his bloopers reel. Mistakes? Howsabout them weapons of mass destruction? Howsabout the persistent links to nuclear weapons? Howsabout the connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Howsabout the "Mission Accomplished" speech or the idea that Iraqis would see us as liberators not occupiers? Anyone hear an "oops"?

In the aftermath, many called the president's refusal to admit mistakes a savvy political strategy: Strong men never say they're sorry. But I think there's something much more chilling going on. He truly doesn't believe he made any mistakes.

Last year, we launched a preemptive, unilateral war (OK, there are 60 New Zealanders, 230 Nicaraguans, and 27 soldiers from Kazakhstan, etc.) on the explicit grounds that Saddam was an imminent threat to our nation. Now the moral justification for this war has simply, seamlessly and without explanation morphed from defending ourselves to "changing the world."

The president said that even if he'd known then what he knows today, he would still have invaded Iraq. In an honest, passionate moment he proclaimed, "Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom. . . . That is what we have been called to do, as far as I'm concerned."

But is that what the Senate felt called to do when it gave him the chit for war? Or the country?
....
Historian Alan Lichtman says the Bush vision "combines Teddy Roosevelt's triumphalism and Jerry Falwell's moralism. If you are on a moral crusade you cannot admit you are on the wrong path. If you are doing the good moral work you cannot apologize." Right and wrong are not facts; they're ideals.

The terrible irony is that Iraq has -- now -- become a front line on the war on terror and a training ground for terrorists. We can't declare victory and leave, as was famously said of Vietnam. It is indeed unthinkable to depose a tyrant and see him replaced by civil war or a religious despot. We are left seeking a pragmatist to lead us out of Bush's ideological mess.

The other day, a 20-year-old corporal fighting in Fallujah said, "I just hope we end up improving this country. Otherwise, I'll figure this was a waste of time."

These young men and women are left to correct the mistakes of a president who doesn't even know he made them. So much for the vision thing.

The Cost of 'Arrogant Daydreams'

Chas W. Freeman Jr., U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, assistant secretary of Defense (1993-94) and current president of the Middle East Policy Council, sent this message about the Iraq war to an e-mail discussion group of foreign affairs experts earlier this month after visiting Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The following excerpts appear with his permission.

The view in the region, from which I have just returned, is that by destroying the Iraqi state the U.S. made it almost impossible to accomplish regime change, as opposed to regime removal, in Baghdad. No one regrets the end of Saddam's tyranny, but Iraq over the past year is viewed as an Arab zone of anarchy under foreign occupation. No one believes that what will be transferred to the Iraqi Governing Council on July 1 is "sovereignty."

Thus the mid-summer situation will be one in which an Iraqi native civilian authority with little or no legitimacy is asked to coexist with an intensely unpopular foreign occupation force over which it has no control. Few believe this dysfunctional arrangement will be up to managing an increasingly dangerous situation.

Many believe that the only thing now saving Iraq from civil war is the increasing unity of ordinary Iraqis against the occupation. This unity increasingly transcends religious schisms. It is drawing religious fanatics into alliance with secular nationalists. ("My brother and I against my cousin; my cousin and I against a stranger.") A new crop of home-grown Iraqi jihadis is, many fear, forging anti-American alliances with trans-regional and possibly global reach. (Shia with Hezbollah; Sunnis with Hamas; both, somewhat warily, with al Qaeda and its affiliates.)

Negotiations with Oneself

Blair has lost his grip

Charles Kennedy
Sunday April 18, 2004
The Observer

The Prime Minister seems genuinely frustrated that we don't share his analysis and complains that it is 'not easy to persuade people of all this'. Perhaps the message is wrong?

In the year since the invasion of Iraq we have seen public opinion in the UK and the rest of the world swept aside, the UN sidelined, allies spurned. The US President has ignored advice from the CIA, the State Department and even the Pentagon. When respected former UN ambassadors and Foreign Secretaries such as Sir Crispin Tickell and Douglas Hurd have joined the ranks of the critics, the criticism should not be taken lightly.

The gravest error is the continuing insistence that Iraq is the front line in an uncompromising 'war' against terrorism. The Prime Minister lumps together all the elements of resistance and calls them 'fanatics and terrorists', while praising moderate members of the Iraqi Governing Council. But if members of the IGC are resigning in protest at the way the occupation is being handled they must be sensing a shift in the public mood.

Not everyone who opposes the coalition is a terrorist. If Iraq is a haven for Islamic terrorists it is because of the invasion; there was no proven link with al-Qaeda before. We cannot expect Iraqi society to quietly wait for democracy to be delivered according to the coalition's timetable. We should not confuse nationalism with Islamic terrorism. The perpetrators of the Madrid bombs are not the same as nationalists in Iraq, as the Prime Minister seems to believe.

There can be no negotiation with al-Qaeda, and bin Laden's truce offer was repellent. But the principal battle in Iraq is about winning hearts and minds not eliminating fanatics. The 600 dead in Falluja, including women and children, cannot all be fanatics but such carnage will breed fanaticism. Britain's reluctance to criticise US strategy in Iraq will be seen as complicity and will reduce our credibility in the Arab world and our opportunities for acting as a restraining influence.

You have to wonder what Tony is thinking. Every political calculation partakes of a substantial amount of self-interest, and I can't for the life of me understand what he gets out of his catering to W.

To Get the Right Answer, Ask the Right Question

Hamas Appoints New Leader After Killing
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 18, 2004

Filed at 7:39 a.m. ET

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Hamas secretly appointed a new Gaza Strip chief early Sunday, but refused to reveal his identity after Israel assassinated two Hamas leaders in less than a month.

Israel killed Abdel Aziz Rantisi in a missile strike on his car on Saturday, part of its declared campaign to wipe out the Islamic militant group's leadership before Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Two of Rantisi's bodyguards were also killed in the attack.

Palestinians demonstrated Sunday throughout the Gaza Strip and West Bank calling for attacks to retaliate for the assassination. In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian boy in a riot against the killing, hospital officials said.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians filled the streets of Gaza City on Sunday in Rantisi's funeral procession. Hamas supporters chanting ``God is great'' and ``revenge, revenge,'' threw flowers at the three men's stretchers as they carried them from the hospital.

About 200 armed Hamas militants lined both sides of the road and gave the bodies a military salute as they approached a large blue and green mourning tent set up outside Rantisi's house. Armed men fired into the air and many in the gathered crowd raised their fists in anger.

Green Hamas flags and black mourning flags hung from nearby homes.

``Hamas will move ahead and will continue the resistance march,'' said local Hamas leader Ahmad Sahar, a friend of Rantisi's.

Hamas posted a statement on its Web site pledging ``100 unique retaliations'' that will shake Israel. It said it had declared a state of emergency in the West Bank and Gaza Strip until revenge was complete.

I heard about this on NPR last night as I was driving to the airport to pick up an old friend. My heart sank. It is the natural next step to Bush's cave to Sharon, and it isn't good news for Israelis or for us.

Political problems don't usually have military solutions. Trying to apply military solutions only deepens tragedy.

UPDATE: Juan Cole's Informed Comment:

With al-Anbar province tense and US troops surrounding Najaf, one could not imagine a worse time for Bush to give a green light to Sharon for further provocations. One can only conclude that neither Ariel Sharon nor Bush and his Neocon advisers give a fig about the lives of US and Coalition servicemen in Iraq. Otherwise, they'd stop with the theatrics. If the Israelis had wanted to arrest Rantisi, they could have. They pulled off Entebbe. This extra-judicial murder of political opponents is just showing off, and it is of course ethically despicable and a war crime for which one only wishes Sharon could be made to stand trial in the Hague. If Rantisi could have been proved to have committed an act of terrorism, he should have been arrested and tried in Gaza for murder. I condemn violence by Palestinian leaders just as I do that done by Israeli ones, and do not have a problem with terrorists being punished for killing innocent people. I do have a problem with political rivals whacking one another unnecessarily, especially when it is likely to get some of my friends killed.

Anyone who doubts that events in various places of the Muslim world are related should consider that the siege of Fallujah even appears to have provoked a firefight between Jordanian and US peacekeepers in the UN contingent at Mitrovica, Kosovo. So much for the UN saving the US in Iraq. Who's going to keep peace among the peace keepers?

Riding to the Rescue

The husband of a friend of mine was among those who were badly injured in the UN bombing in Iraq last August. You must understand that they will never have a meaningful presence in Iraq until the security situation is under control. However, their very presence is one of the many factors that will irritate the security situation.

Recast in Key Iraq Role, U.N. Envoys Are Wary
By WARREN HOGE

Published: April 18, 2004

NITED NATIONS, April 17 — The United Nations, once snubbed and excluded from the task of shaping Iraq's future that is at the center of world attention, suddenly finds itself pressed to play the major role in that effort, but it is taking up the task with some foreboding.

"There is a mixture of vindication on the one hand and great apprehension on the other," said Edward Mortimer, a senior aide to Secretary General Kofi Annan. Mr. Mortimer contrasted this week's calls for assistance from President Bush to the disparagement he said the United Nations had become used to from the administration.

"It's quite nice when you've been generally dissed about your irrelevancy and then suddenly have people coming on bended knee and saying, `We need you to come back,' " he said.

"On the other hand, it's quite unnerving to feel you're being projected into a very violent and volatile situation where you might be regarded as an agent or faithful servant of a power that has incurred great hostility."

With time running out on the June 30 deadline for transfer of power, the United Nations is being looked to, even by its enemies, as the only institution that can confer immediate global legitimacy on the American goal of bringing representative government to Iraq.

That common view barely disguises the animosity felt toward the United Nations by many who view it as starchy, bureaucratic and distant and others who disdain it as a meddlesome and corrupt form of world government seeking to impose itself on individual preferences and distinct states.

United Nations officials are wary of being seen as a replacement occupying power in Iraq. They are conscious of lingering resentment in Iraq from the days when the United Nations oversaw sanctions. They are fearful of taking on ill-defined responsibility and being blamed for any subsequent failure, and they face mounting criticism at home over the scandal-ridden United Nations oil-for-food program that investigators say enabled Saddam Hussein to pocket more than $10 billion.

In addition, Mr. Annan's aides say that what is uppermost in his mind is a resolve to make sure that any United Nations staff members who return to Baghdad have proper protection. He told members of the Security Council this week that he would delay sending people back in force until he had that assurance.

Bottom line: there is no guarantee that the UN is going to be able to solve Bush's little problem, even if they decided they'd like to try.

9/11 Commission on Offense

This piece from tomorrow's NYT is quite long, but worth it. Richard Clarke is vindicated and the 9/11 Commission is demonstrating that they will not be buried. As with all decent journalism on a story this complex, there are mutiple themes, too much to give justice to in a mere blog post.

9/11 Files Show Warnings Were Urgent and Persistent
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JIM DWYER

Published: April 18, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 17 — Earlier this year, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks played four minutes of a call from Betty Ong, a crew member on American Airlines Flight 11. The power of her call could not have been plainer: in a calm voice, Ms. Ong told her supervisors about the hijacking, the weapons the attackers had used, the locations of their seats.

At first, however, Ms. Ong's reports were greeted skeptically by some officials on the ground. "They did not believe her," said Bob Kerrey, a commission member. "They said, `Are you sure?' They asked her to confirm that that it wasn't air-rage. Our people on the ground were not prepared for a hijacking."

For most Americans, the disbelief was the same. The attacks of Sept. 11 seemed to come in a stunning burst from nowhere. But now, after two weeks of extraordinary public hearings and a dozen detailed reports, the lengthy documentary record makes clear that predictions of an attack by al Qaeda had been communicated directly to the highest levels of the government.

The threat reports were more clear, urgent and persistent than was previously known. Some focused on al Qaeda's plans to use commercial aircraft as weapons. Others stated that Osama bin Laden was intent on striking on United States soil. Many were passed to the Federal Aviation Administration.

While some of the intelligence went back years, other warnings — including one that Al Qaeda seemed interested in hijacking a plane inside this country — had been delivered to the president on Aug. 6, 2001, just a month earlier.

The new information produced by the commission so far has led 6 of its 10 members to say or suggest that the attacks could have been prevented, though there is no consensus on when, how, or by whom. The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, has described failures at every level of government, any of which, if avoided, could have altered the outcome. Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat, said, "My conclusion is that it could have been prevented. That was not my conclusion when I went on the commission."
....
Over an intense two-week stretch this month, the commission pried open some of the most closely guarded compartments of government, revealing the flow and details of previously classified information to two presidents and their senior advisers, and the performance of intelligence and law enforcement officials.

The inquiry has gone beyond the report of a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committee in 2002, which chronicled missteps at the mid-level of bureaucracies. Urged on by a number of families of people killed in the attacks, the Kean commission has used a mix of moral and political leverage to extract presidential communications and testimony. Among the new themes that have fundamentally reshaped the story of the Sept. 11 attacks are:

¶Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, did not blindside the United States, but were a threat recognized and discussed regularly at the highest levels of government for nearly five years before the attacks, in thousands of reports, often accompanied by urgent warnings from lower-level experts.

¶Presidents Clinton and Bush received regular information about the threat of al Qaeda and the intention of the bin Laden network to strike inside the United States. Each president made terrorism a stated priority, failed to find a diplomatic solution and viewed military force as a last resort. At the same time, neither grappled with the structural flaws and paralyzing dysfunction that undermined the C.I.A. and F.B.I., the two agencies on which the nation depended for protection. By the end of his second term, Mr. Clinton and the director of the F.B.I., Louis J. Freeh, were barely speaking.

¶Even when the two agencies cooperated, the results were unimpressive. Mr. Kean, the chairman, said that he viewed the reports on the two agencies as indictments. In late August 2001, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, learned that the F.B.I. had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui after he had enrolled in a flight school. Mr. Tenet was given a memo titled, "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." But he took no action, he testified, and did not tell President Bush about the case.

No one comes off looking very good, except, perhaps, Richard Clarke.

Relationships and Open Thread

There are many, many sub-narratives to take from Bob Woodward's new book. I'm going to follow only one here: a government at war with itself.

Bush Began to Plan War Three Months After 9/11
Book Says President Called Secrecy Vital

By William Hamilton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A01

Beginning in late December 2001, President Bush met repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on Iraq even as he and administration spokesmen insisted they were pursuing a diplomatic solution, according to a new book on the origins of the war.

The intensive war planning throughout 2002 created its own momentum, according to "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, fueled in part by the CIA's conclusion that Saddam Hussein could not be removed from power except through a war and CIA Director George J. Tenet's assurance to the president that it was a "slam dunk" case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
....
By early January 2003, Bush had made up his mind to take military action against Iraq, according to the book. But Bush was so concerned that the government of his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, might fall because of his support for Bush that he delayed the war's start until March 19 here (March 20 in Iraq) because Blair asked him to seek a second resolution from the United Nations. Bush later gave Blair the option of withholding British troops from combat, which Blair rejected. "I said I'm with you. I mean it," Blair replied.

Woodward describes a relationship between Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that became so strained Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms. Cheney engaged in a bitter and eventually winning struggle over Iraq with Powell, an opponent of war who believed Cheney was obsessively trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and treated ambiguous intelligence as fact.

Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" office -- had established what amounted to a separate government. The vice president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned with his own popularity and told friends at a dinner he hosted a year ago celebrating the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and "always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."

Before the war with Iraq, Powell bluntly told Bush that if he sent U.S. troops there "you're going to be owning this place." Powell and his deputy and closest friend, Richard L. Armitage, used to refer to what they called "the Pottery Barn rule" on Iraq: "You break it, you own it," according to Woodward.

But, when asked personally by the president, Powell agreed to make the U.S. case against Hussein at the United Nations in February 2003, a presentation described by White House communications director Dan Bartlett as "the Powell buy-in." Bush wanted someone with Powell's credibility to present the evidence that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, a case the president had initially found less than convincing when presented to him by CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin at a White House meeting on Dec. 21, 2002.

Woodward will appear on CBS's 60 Minutes Sunday night. I'm itching to get my hands on the book. From this brief excerpt in the WaPo today, I've already generated dozens of questions. I'm extremely curious about all of these relationships. I'm hearing all over town that one of the reasons Bush's "evolving" Iraq policy is so incoherent is that the executive branch is frozen due to feuds between cabinet secretaries and agency heads. Elsewhere in the WaPo excerpt it is revealed that George Tenet appears to have given Bush a virtually steel-clad guantee on the WMDs. To my mind, he is the most interesting and elusive figure in this tableaux. It is not at all clear to me today where his allegiances lie, and because of the nature of the Agency we may never find out. Suffice it to say that he is a prime mover in the next few months.

Oh, and General Tommy Franks, cited in the first graf of the WaPo article? He's the one who told Cigar Afficianado magazine that another terrorist attack would mean the suspension of the Constitution and imposition of martial law.

I'll be away most of the day. Consider this an open thread.

Completely Wrong

Powell leads offensive to placate Arabs

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Barry Schweid

April 16, 2004 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell led a diplomatic offensive Thursday to placate Arab leaders outraged by President Bush's support for Jewish settlements on the West Bank and opposition to Palestinian refugees returning to Israel.

But the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, said after meeting with Yasser Arafat that he was considering resigning. He said Bush had undermined the negotiating process.

Feeling safer?

Feeling Drafty?

Fewer soldiers re-enlist Army sees dip as war increases need

By Dave Moniz
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- The number of soldiers staying in the Army is falling just as the demand is increasing in Iraq.

Through March 17, nearly halfway through the fiscal year, the Army fell about 1,000 short of meeting its goal of keeping 25,786 soldiers whose enlistments were ending or who were eligible to retire. That works out to a 96% retention rate.

Last year, the retention figure was 106% because more soldiers stayed than the Army had planned. The retention goal assumes that not all eligible to stay will remain.

Military personnel experts have warned that full-time soldiers and members of the Guard and Reserve could begin leaving this year because of the strains of service, including longer and more frequent overseas missions. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged Thursday that the Defense Department will extend duty in Iraq beyond one year for 20,000 soldiers. Their time in Iraq will grow as much as 90 days.

''We regret having to extend those individuals,'' Rumsfeld said. ''The country is at war, and we need to do what is necessary to succeed.''

Steve Gilliard started his blog day with a well-reasoned, nuanced and principled argument that posits that a draft is both unneccesary and unwise, but I'm not so sure. If the Army, in particular, starts falling beneath enlistment and re-enlistment targets, even a President Kerry might have to restart the draft. Steve is, of course, correct that raising salaries would make the services more attractive, but I don't know where the money is going to come from when we've got deficits as far as the eye can see.

God and Blog

Democrats Are Risking Political Damnation
Voters relate to Bush's religiosity. A different critique is needed.

By Ronald A. Klain
Beware the temptation to snicker, because therein lies defeat.

Yes, there is much to criticize in the president's statement. Is he hypocritical to embrace a broad view of God-given rights when, during the 2000 campaign, he scoffed at Clinton-Gore efforts to promote freedom around the world? You bet. Is he myopic in seeing these issues only in some disfavored regimes, while ignoring the thirst for freedom in so many other countries? Absolutely. Is it wrong for the president to have sold the war to the American people on one basis (the search for weapons of mass destruction) and now defend its prosecution on a different basis (the promotion of human freedom)? Undoubtedly.

But at the same time, progressives should not belittle the notion that American foreign policy will support the objective of promoting God-given freedoms around the world. There is plenty of intellectual elitism in both parties, but in political terms, it's an arrogance that the Democrats would be well-advised to resist.

Rather than laughing at the president's invocation of the notion of natural rights to justify his policies in Iraq, Democrats should make it abundantly clear that they share the president's view that all humans are created free and are entitled to enjoy the benefit of that innate freedom. After all, wasn't the idea of an "unalienable" right to liberty put into writing in 1776 by the father of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson? And more recently, haven't these been the ideals that Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Gore pursued around the world — often with great derision from conservatives?

Instead of belittling the president's reliance on the Almighty, Democrats should make clear that we share the president's goals but think that his methods have been deeply flawed. The mission may be from above, but the planning has been from someplace else.

I'll take Klains general claim. But there is a danger in here for Kerry, as well.

Unless you've done the crossover, most Americans, whether Catholic or Protestant, are unaware that they are both possessed of very different worldviews. They may use similar religious language but they mean very different things. Kerry will need to be careful when using religious language that he doesn't confuse or offend Mainline Protestants.

And, for your amusement, this morning I found a blog devoted to the Kerry Communion Controversy (by way of GetReligion.

And here's a link to The Pew Center on Religion and Media's report on "Faith Online" by way of The Revealer, who asks, "Do you believe in blog?" and solicits your suggestions for the discussion they are hosting on religion blogs at the Bloggercon at Harvard this weekend. Jeff Sharlett, The Revealer's editor, has a bunch of interesting questions.

Leaky Langley

Here comes the pushback. I've been waiting for it.

CIA Warned of Attack 6 Years Before 9/11

By JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA warned in a classified report that Islamic extremists likely would strike on U.S. soil at landmarks in Washington or New York, or through the airline industry, according to intelligence officials.

Though hauntingly prescient, the CIA's 1995 National Intelligence Estimate did not yet name Osama bin Laden as a terrorist threat.

But within months the intelligence agency developed enough concern about the wealthy, Saudi-born militant to create a specific unit to track him and his followers, the officials told The Associated Press.

And in 1997, the CIA updated its intelligence estimate to ensure bin Laden appeared on its very first page as an emerging threat, cautioning that his growing movement might translate into attacks on U.S. soil, the officials said, divulging new details about the CIA's 1990s response to the terrorist threat.

The officials took the rare step Thursday of disclosing information in the closely held National Intelligence Estimates and other secret briefings to counter criticisms in a staff report released this week by the independent commission examining pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures.

That commission report accused the CIA of failing to recognize al-Qaida as a formal terrorist organization until 1999. It characterized the agency as regarding bin Laden mostly as a financier instead of a charismatic leader of the terrorist movement.

But one senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the 1997 National Intelligence Estimate "identified bin Laden and his followers and threats they were making and said it might portend attacks inside the United States."
....
"There was no comprehensive estimate of the enemy," the commission report alleged.

But the senior intelligence official said the commission report failed to mention that CIA had produced large numbers of analytical reports on the growth, capabilities, structure and threats posed by al-Qaida throughout the late 1990s and those detailed reports were distributed to the front lines of terror-fighting agencies.

The CIA most frequently provided these individual and highly detailed analyses to the White House Counterterrorism Security Group charged with formulating anti-terrorism policies and responses, the official said.

Nominations for "senior U.S. intelligence official" are now open.

Bump Goes Wonkette

I've heard your pleas for some lighter fare in these dark days.

Luncheon Perhaps Distracted CIA Chief

By Al Kamen

Friday, April 16, 2004; Page A19

It's not at all like CIA Director George J. Tenet to forget not one, but two, conversations with President Bush in the critical month before Sept. 11, 2001. But there's one possible explanation for his distraction when he testified Wednesday morning to the Sept. 11 commission: He was thinking about his luncheon plans.

Tenet was spotted around 12:30 at the Hay-Adams, sitting at a window table for two with none other than Jack Valenti, outgoing head of the Motion Picture Association of America. Other diners couldn't help but speculate that perhaps Valenti, still looking for a replacement after being stiffed by Rep. W. J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), might be offering the job to Tenet.

Or maybe Valenti was looking into a movie about Tenet's time at the CIA? (How much weight would George Clooney have to put on for the role?)

But we're told no to the MPAA job. Valenti and Tenet are just "old friends," our source said, although it was unclear when and how that friendship developed.

Up is Down

WaPo's Sewell Chan takes Orwellian dictation from the Pentagon.

General Calls Insurgency in Iraq a Sign of U.S. Success
Political Achievements Are Cause of Uprising, Myers Says

By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 16, 2004; Page A10

BAGHDAD, April 15 -- The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that the deadly insurgency that flared this month is "a symptom of the success that we're having here in Iraq" and an effort to undermine the country's transition to self-government.

Asked at a news conference here whether the military had failed to counter insurgents' attacks in Iraq, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers said guerrillas want to undermine several political successes, including the creation of the Iraqi Governing Council, the signing of a bill of rights and efforts by the United Nations to devise an interim government that would assume power on June 30.

"I think it's that success which is driving the current situation, because there are those extremists that don't want that success," Myers said. "They see this as a test of wills, a test of resolve against those who believe in freedom and self-determination against those who prefer a regime like we saw previously in Afghanistan, or perhaps a regime like we saw previously in Iraq."

Flanked by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. ground commander in Iraq, Myers also said the Marines were ready to resume combat in the besieged city of Fallujah because insurgents have repeatedly violated a five-day-old cease-fire.

"We have to be prepared and prepare ourselves that there may be further military action in Fallujah," Myers said. "It's a situation where you have clearly some foreign fighters, former regime element members who -- again, while the cease-fire is ongoing -- are attacking our Marines. The Marines are obeying the cease-fire but they're being fired upon."

Meanwhile, on the second front of a two-pronged insurgency that has killed more than 80 U.S. troops since April 1, Shiite Muslim clerics tried to broker a deal to end a standoff between occupation forces and a radical cleric, Moqtada Sadr.

A delegation from predominantly Shiite Iran has joined the talks with Sadr in the southern city of Najaf, but U.S. officials said its presence was not welcome.

The U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, was not in contact with the Iranians and did not invite them, said a spokesman, Daniel Senor. Senor repeated U.S. demands that Sadr surrender to face trial on a murder charge and disband his black-clad militia, known as the Mahdi Army.

It just pains me to see people like Myers do this to themselves. "It is success which is causing our failures." This whole "test of wills" rhetoric we've been listening to for the last couple of week belies the fact that we don't have enough soldiers and Marines in the theater. Period. The theory that if Americans just get "steely-eyed" enough that we can do anything is part of the national myth. If you don't have the resources, you can't do the job. Your will is about as useful as what it can put in its hands.

I see that Whiskey Bar decided to close for a few days to get some relief from "up is down." I can't say that I blame him. Bump will go on a lighter schedule tomorrow for the weekend, but that's just because I'm busy with meetings.

Pathology

David Sirota:

Pseudomaniac: One Who Has a Morbid Impulse to Falsify or Lie

This is an incredible example...he's now pathologically lying not only about policy, but about mundane details. As the Washington Monthly noted earlier, Bush apparently has an obsession with polling.

Today in Iraq

Sean-Paul just put this up at The Agonist:

Baghdad Warning

(Name of source withheld)

This fills me with dread.

Veteran Correspondant

Countless bad decisions and 681 deaths

By Joseph L. Galloway

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Well, a funny thing happened to the Iraq army on its way to join their American buddies in the dirty street fighting in Fallujah last week: The battalion stopped the trucks, turned around and went home, saying as they went, "We won't fight other Iraqis."

So much for that.

The fast-talking Rumsfeld hasn't been talking nearly as fast or as often lately. Neither has his deputy. Not much seen or heard from Douglas Feith of the Office of Special Plans - of the Office That Didn't Plan - either. Instead, the bad news is allowed to trickle out of briefings in Baghdad that surely will soon be nicknamed, like the ones in Saigon a few wars back, "The Five O'Clock Follies."

The hunt for a scapegoat must have begun by now, which may explain the rush away from the cameras in the Pentagon briefing room. The civilians will certainly want a general or two to fall on their swords. The uniforms would love to see an arrogant civilian or two hanged, drawn and quartered.

We have a modest nomination for the first head to roll: Ambassador L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer, the American demi-proconsul of Baghdad, head of the Civilian Provisional Authority charged with installing Jeffersonian democracy and turning on the lights, water and sewers. Virtually every major decision he had made in Iraq has been wrong, poorly timed or just plain dumb.

Beginning with his decision to demobilize the real Iraq army and send them home with their AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, no paychecks, no future and heaps of anger. Followed by his decision to purge everyone who ever held a Baath Party card from public life and public employment, thus abandoning many Sunnis to hopelessness and anger. Followed by his latest decision to close down Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr's newspaper and provoke him to anger - without any plan to deal with that anger when it spilled over into the streets and inflamed the Shiite community.

Any one of those flawed decisions ought to be a firing offense. Just as the Feb. 27, 2003, testimony of Wolfowitz to the effect that Iraq was going to be easy to occupy ought to have been a firing offense. Just as the testimony of the deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, that the Pentagon did not do any planning for post-war Iraq because the act of planning might have contributed to starting the war ought to have gotten him fired.

I am reminded by these situations, these quotes, these people that there are three human characteristics which taken in combination are almost always fatal: If he is arrogant, ignorant and in charge, someone is going to get killed. The fatalities are seldom among those who get it so wrong.

War President

Blumenthal:

A revolt within the military against Bush is brewing. Many in the military's strategic echelon share the same feelings of being ignored and ill-treated by the administration that senior intelligence officers voice in private. "The Pentagon began with fantasy assumptions on Iraq and worked back," one of them remarked to me.

As the iconic image of the "war president" has tattered, another picture has emerged. Bush appears as a passive manager who enjoys sitting atop a hierarchical structure, unwilling and unable to do the hard work a real manager has to do to run the largest enterprise in the world. He does not seem to absorb data unless it is presented to him in simple, clear fashion by people whose judgment he trusts. He is receptive to information that agrees with his point of view rather than information that challenges it. This leads to enormous power on the part of the trusted interlocutors, who know and bolster his predilections.

At his press conference, Bush was a confusion of absolute confidence and panic. He jumbled facts and conflated threats, redoubling the vehemence of his incoherence at every mildly sceptical question. He attempted to create a false political dichotomy between "retreat" and his own vague and evolving position on Iraq, which now appears to follow senator John Kerry's, of granting more authority to the UN and bringing in Nato.

The ultimate revelation was Bush's vision of a divinely inspired apocalyptic struggle in which he is the leader of a crusade bringing the Lord's "gift." "I also have this belief, strong belief that freedom is not this country's gift to the world. Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the earth we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom." But religious war is not part of official US military doctrine.

Children's Crusade

Richard Cohen on the Boy Emperor's presser:

America's Ayatollah

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A25

Like a kid who has been told otherwise, Bush persists in believing in his own version of Santa Claus. The weapons are there, somewhere -- in a North Pole of his mind.

What matters more is the phrase Bush used five times in one way or another: "We're changing the world." He used it always in reference to the war in Iraq and he used it in ways that would make even Woodrow Wilson, that presidential personification of naive morality, shake his head in bemusement. In Bush's rhetoric, a war to rid Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction, a war to ensure that Condoleezza Rice's "mushroom cloud" did not appear over an American city, has mutated into an effort to reorder the world.

"I also know that there's an historic opportunity here to change the world," Bush said of the effort in Iraq. But the next sentence was even more disquieting. "And it's very important for the loved ones of our troops to understand that the mission is an important, vital mission for the security of America and for the ability to change the world for the better." It is one thing to die to defend your country. It is quite another to do that for a single man's impossible dream. What Bush wants is admirable. It is not, however, attainable.

Shortly after Sept. 11, Bush used the word "crusade" to characterize his response to the attacks. The Islamic world, remembering countless crusades on behalf of Christianity, protested, and Bush quickly interred the word in the National Archives or someplace. Nonetheless, that is pretty much what Bush described in his news conference -- not a crusade for Christ and not one to oust the Muslims from Jerusalem but an American one that would eradicate terrorism and, in short, "change the world." The United States, the president said, had been "called" for that task.

Some people might consider this religious drivel and others might find it stirring, but whatever it is, it cannot be the basis for foreign policy, not to mention a war. Yet it explains, as nothing else can, just why Bush is so adamantly steadfast about Iraq and why he simply asserts what is not proved or just plain untrue -- the purported connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, for instance, or why Hussein was such a threat, when we have it on the word of David Kay and countless weapons inspectors that he manifestly was not. Bush talks as if only an atheist would demand proof when faith alone more than suffices. He is America's own ayatollah.

Several investigative commissions are now meeting in Washington, looking into intelligence failures -- everything from the failure to detect and intercept the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to the assertion that Iraq was armed to the teeth with all sorts of awful stuff. But what really has to be examined is how a single man, the president, took the nation and part of the world to war because, as he essentially put it Tuesday night, he was "called" to do it.

If that is the case, and it sure seems so at the moment, then this commission has to ask us all -- and I don't exclude myself -- how much of Congress and the press went to war with an air of juvenile glee. The Commission on Credulous Stupidity may call me as its first witness, but after that it has to examine how, despite our vaunted separation of powers, a barely elected president opted for a war that need not have been fought. This is Bush's cause, a noble but irrational effort much like the one that set off for Jerusalem in the year 1212. It was known as the Children's Crusade.

This is foreign policy by theology.

Sacramental Distraction

Putting Kerry on the 'wafer watch'

By Ellen Goodman, 4/15/2004

WHAT NEXT? Will we have a political reporter to cover John Forbes Kerry at each Sunday Mass from now to November? Will there be a Holy Communion beat? A wafer watch?

One of the more unseemly stories of the Easter weekend hovered around the controversy over Kerry and Catholicism. The intra-church debates about whether a prochoice, pro-civil union Kerry could consider himself a good Catholic ratcheted up into a public spectacle about whether he would step up to the altar and whether a priest would offer him the sacrament.

The whole thing, fumed Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice, turned us into a nation of "eucharistic Peeping Toms": "I hope the bishops are satisfied that the sacraments of the church are now the subject of a media frenzy."
....
What happened between Kennedy and Kerry was Roe v. Wade. When the church took an absolutist stand against abortion, it took special umbrage at politicians who identify themselves as pro-choice Catholics.

Twenty years ago, the bishops were annoyed by Mario Cuomo and apoplectic at Geraldine Ferraro when she spoke as a Catholic, a vice presidential candidate, and a woman. "I'm a weekly communicant," she says, remembering 1984. "But I have to tell you, every time I went up to the altar I was in a little bit of a panic about who might give you Communion and who might refuse."

Since then, if anything, the church has hardened its stance against prochoice Catholic politicians and turned against those who favor gay unions. A "doctrinal note" from the Vatican last year warned politicians not to oppose "the fundamental contents of faith and morals."

Now a church task force is working on guidelines for American bishops on relationships with Catholic politicians. Meanwhile there are scattered reports of one bishop who told Tom Daschle not to call himself a Catholic and two others who promised to refuse Communion to Kerry.

"What happens when the pope says you are obliged to vote against anything that supports homosexuality or abortion?" asks Kissling. "The church itself creates the climate in which prejudice can and will reemerge."

Many theologians tell you that not even the pope can say a baptized Catholic is no longer a Catholic. Many believe it's up to the individual to decide whether to take the sacraments.

But if the church sets up a litmus test for politicians, what about for Supreme Court justices? What about for lay people who dissent?

In polls, Catholic opinions on abortion are in line with the rest of the country. Among churchgoers are those who beg to differ on civil unions or married priests, over abortion or women in the priesthood.

"What do the bishops really want?" asks Kissling. "Would it be a good thing if John Kerry stopped going to Mass and Communion? Would it be a good thing if Catholics who disagree on abortion not go to church? The churches would be empty. What exactly are they looking for?"

By putting Kerry on wafer watch, conservatives in the church are running the Kennedy tape backward. Ferraro reminds them: "Kerry's not running for pope. He's running for president. There's only one time when we find out if we've done this thing right that we call living. It's when we meet our Maker."

On that day, there will be no reporters on hand.

This kind of garbage amazes me. The future of the republic is at stake and we are allowing ourselves to get side-tracked by THIS?

Hostile Work Environment

Some U.S. Workers Say the Risk Is Too Great

By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A01

With new violence erupting in many parts of Iraq, it is increasingly challenging for U.S. contractors to continue working on thousands of reconstruction projects.

More than a few have fled their jobs without notice. At the urging of their governments, many citizens of Russia, France and South Korea are preparing to leave. Some contractors and aid organizations have packed up and moved workers to neighboring countries.

Some among those who remain say it has been difficult to do their jobs as movement around the country has come to a virtual standstill. For most of the past two weeks, the U.S.-led occupation government has been on "lockdown," meaning that personnel were prohibited from leaving the Green Zone, the fortified area in central Baghdad that is the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

"We can't work. We can't go outside. We live like in a jail," said Luma Mousawi, director of Nurses-Doctors Care Organization, which is working on the rehabilitation of Iraq's health care system.

Death Lurks in the Groves On the Road Toward Najaf

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A01

ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq -- The nighttime ambush had left one soldier dead, another wounded. When it was over, Sgt. James Amyett calmly lit a cigarette, leaned over, and in a stage whisper drawled, "Don't be alarmed, but somebody here is trying to kill us."

The thousands of troops who moved south to the Najaf area this week didn't need to be told.

In the biggest Army operation in central Iraq since last spring's invasion, dozens of convoys made up of hundreds of tanks and trucks moved into an area where Shiite Muslim militias had battled with occupation troops several times this month. Along the way, nearly every convoy was fired on, weary soldiers said afterward. Iraqi insurgents blew up bridges on the convoy routes, doubling or tripling the duration of trips scheduled to take six to 12 hours. And the U.S. military operation in Iraq began to feel less like a troubled occupation and more like a small war.

For one convoy, the journey began just before midnight Sunday at the U.S. base outside Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad. Amyett, 23, a 1st Infantry Division scout in charge of a two-Humvee section that would make up the rear of the 44-vehicle convoy, assembled his men for a quick and intense briefing.

"There's a 99 percent chance we're going to get hit," said Amyett, from Searcy, Ark., sitting on the hood of a Humvee and facing a cluster of soldiers who stood around him in the dark. "If they shoot, kill them. Shoot them in the face."

He looked at the two soldiers who would man the .50-caliber machine guns atop the two Humvees. "Gunners, controlled bursts," he ordered, meaning they should not fire indiscriminately and should conserve ammunition. "If a gunner gets hit, roll out of the way so a guy can jump up and keep it rocking."

Playing to the Base

Bush Also Appears to Back Sharon on 'Right of Return' Issue

By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune

Published: April 14, 2004

President Bush, in a significant shift in American policy, told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today that the United States would not object if Israel retained some West Bank settlements under a future peace accord.

Mr. Bush, answering reporters questions after a White House meeting with Mr. Sharon, called the prime minister's proposals to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank "an opportunity" that would help accelerate moves toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

The president also offered a second concession sought by Israel. He said that in future, Palestinian refugees should immigrate to a new Palestinian state, not to Israeli lands they say their families were forced to flee in the fighting of 1947-1948.

Mr. Bush thus condoned the notion of a larger Israel than Palestinians have said they are ready to accept

Together, the announcements seemed sure to anger many Arabs and Muslims, many of them already deeply resentful of the United States occupation of Iraq.

Anticipating the United States-Israeli agreement on these points, both Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian president, and Ahmed Qurei, the prime minister, issued powerful denunciations earlier today, saying that any such United States. assurances would destroy prospects for an eventual peace accord, news agencies reported.

I seldom blog I/P news because I think there is plenty of sin on every side and Bush's incoherence on Israel up until now doesn't make for interesting stories. But I have to comment on this. This is Bush being tonedeaf as hell in the world of geopolitics. We've already inflamed the "Muslim Street" with our unneccesary war in Iraq, this is going to encourage more terrorism--the real deal, the kind that flies airplanes into buildings, not the indicriminate usage of the word to tack after the phrase "evil-doers" in Bush's constant propagandizing. Forbidding return to Palestinians is morally wrong and makes a lie of the premise of Israel: that Jews who may have had no ties to the Holy Land for generation have an absolute right to return to their ancestral homeland.

In the weeks to come, we may begin to hear about American atrocities coming out of Fallujah, and, perhaps, Najaf. How do you think that's going to play on Al Jazeerah? There you go, W, fan those flames some more.

Dropping Like Flies

W. has lost The Cato Institute:

At no point has the president or his advisers accepted responsibility. At worst, they appear to be conscious liars. At best they seem deceitful and manipulative.

Trust, once squandered, is hard to regain. That is why the administration risks losing its high-stakes showdown with Clarke -- and the election in November.

Link via The Stakeholder, the DCCC's snarky new blog.

Preznit giv me no attention

I'm listening to the IX/XI commission hearings today. My jaw dropped when I heard George Tenet speak the line bolded below. Talk about Presznit Disengaged!

C.I.A. Chief Defends Agency but Allows `We Made Mistakes'
By TERENCE NEILAN

Updated: 11:35 a.m.

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, testified today that the threat posed by Al Qaeda was passed along to senior policymakers in mid-2001, ``even if the timing and method of attacks were not.''

He told the independent, bipartisan commission investigating the 9/11 attacks planned by Osama bin Laden that the intelligence community's actions had no doubt saved lives.

``However,'' he acknowledged, ``we never penetrated the 9/11 plot overseas,'' adding, ``We made mistakes.''

``We all understood bin Laden's attempt to strike the homeland, but we never translated this knowledge into an effective defense of the country,'' he said.

Mr. Tenet also conceded in an answer to a panel member, Timothy J. Roemer, a Democrat, that while other C.I.A. personnel had briefed President Bush during the summer of 2001, he himself did not talk to the president during August 2001. That was the same month that Mr. Bush received a controversial briefing prepared by the C.I.A. on domestic threats posed by Al Qaeda to the United States.

Mr. Tenet, who became the director of central intelligence in 1997, said that intelligence agencies had spent considerable time and energy during his tenure transforming their ability to collect and act on information, adding that in the mid-1990's the agencies were in disarray because new analysts were not being hired or given the tools they needed.

"Ripped Our Hearts Out"

Let them come home

My name is Hollie Mitchell. I’m the wife of a soldier in the 1st Armored Division, 1-501 Aviation, stationed in Iraq. We’re based out of Hanau, Germany. My husband was due to come home next week after serving a year in Iraq. He was on his way home when his unit was told to turn around and go back to Iraq.

After a year of nervous waiting and living without my husband, we’ve been looking forward to April 2004 with great anticipation. He left for Iraq on April 29, 2003. We were told he could be gone for 365 days. The welcome home parties have all been planned, and some of the troops from the unit are already back in Germany. I am four months pregnant, a gift my husband left for us when he was on rest and recuperation leave in December. Now I’ve been told at the last minute that the day I’ve been looking forward to for a year was just a tease.

This is the kind of reward the Army is giving its soldiers and family members. They have ripped our hearts out. We have given up a year of our lives and were expecting to be with our loved ones this month. Instead, they slap us in the face and tell us it will be up to another 120 days, which they think sounds better than four more months.

These soldiers have lived in substandard living conditions, put their lives on the line every day and been separated from their families for a year now. It’s time to return them home. They have replacements in Iraq. They’re very tired and worn out, mentally and physically. They need to come home. Morale is at an all- time low.

Imagine being separated from one’s family for a year and living under great stress. Then a week before returning, on the way home, you’re told that you’ll be staying for another four months. That’s a total of 16 months away, working under very high stress levels every day of that 16 months, except for two weeks of rest and recuperation. This is irrational to ask of anyone, let alone the men and women who serve this country.

The children who were expecting their fathers home are now crying and wondering where they are. The wives, husbands, sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers were all expecting them home. The soldiers were expecting to come home. Let them come home.

Publicity is the only thing that politicians listen to. We can’t sit and be quiet and take this laying down. The promises have to stop being broken. President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have to start living up to their word. They said our troops would be home in a year. Now they’ve changed that to 16 months. When is this going to end?

Hollie Mitchell
Hanau, Germany

Decisive Force

Army Girds to Confront Radical Cleric
Four Bodies Found Near Where Civilian Convoy Was Attacked

By Sewell Chan and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, April 13 -- A force of 2,500 troops from three U.S. Army divisions massed Tuesday on the northern outskirts of the Iraqi holy city of Najaf and readied for a confrontation with Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr, who defiantly declared that he was prepared to die for his cause.

In Washington, the State Department said four mutilated bodies were found west of Baghdad, near the spot where seven American civilians employed by Halliburton Co. disappeared Friday during an attack on a supply convoy. A department spokesman said that the bodies had not been identified and that the U.S.-led occupation authority was investigating.

The State Department has been in constant contact with relatives of the missing civilians since they were abducted, and the families were notified of the discovery of the four bodies Tuesday, the spokesman said. Halliburton said in a statement that it could not confirm that the bodies were those of the missing workers.

The occupation authority said 40 hostages from 12 countries were known to be held by Iraqi insurgents -- at least 15 more than the number publicly reported by individual employers and foreign governments.

On Tuesday, a French television reporter and four Italian security guards were reported abducted, and eight employees of a Russian energy company were released one day after they were seized from their house in Baghdad. The French, Russian and Czech governments urged their citizens to leave Iraq.

Meanwhile, insurgents in the besieged western city of Fallujah fired on an Army transport helicopter, wounding three crew members and forcing it to make an emergency landing. The Sikorsky H-53, one of the largest in the military's fleet, with a capacity of 55, was the second helicopter to be downed in Iraq in three days.

The persistent kidnappings, the combat preparations outside Najaf and the resurgence in fighting in Fallujah underscored the level of tension in Iraq, where the U.S. military is battling a two-front insurgency that shows few signs of abating.

Near Fallujah, one Marine was killed and seven were wounded, a spokesman said. In addition, a soldier with the Army's 1st Infantry Division was killed and another soldier and a civilian contractor were injured in a roadside bombing south of Baghdad early Tuesday as their convoy headed for Najaf.

via Juan Cole:

In the message, Ayatollah Sistani warned the U.S. that in case the occupying forces attack the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf the Shia cleric would use their last weapons at hand to defend the Shia’s rights.

The clerics emphasized the necessity for civil and political methods to accelerate the process of the establishment of a democratic government in Iraq while announcing displeasure over the occupying forces’ presence in the country.

For Our Time

If you haven't already run across it here is a link to the weblog of Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance. He's on the ground in Iraq.

The Center for American Progress's David Sirota does some fact checking of W's news conference last night. These are welcome resources.

The Nut of the Situation

For once, I agree with Big Media Matt:

The problem, in a nutshell, is that Shiites consider the TAL [Transitional Administrative Law] far too friendly to Kurdish interests. The plan calls for the integration of the three Kurdish-majority provinces into a superstate that will be empowered to nullify acts of the federal government and will be permitted to maintain armed forces for the purposes of internal security. Worse, from the Shiite point of view, is the procedure laid out in the TAL for the ratification of a permanent constitution. The document will require ratification by two-thirds of the voters in 16 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Thus, an extraordinarily small minority will be able to block the TAL's successor. Functionally, the purpose is to create a Kurdish veto over the future of Iraq -- Kurds are, coincidentally, a majority in exactly three provinces. While laudable in spirit, this concession to minority all but ensures that the permanent constitution will only become more pro-Kurdish. There is, moreover, no guarantee that anything will be able to attract the sort of overwhelming public support the ratification process requires, threatening to throw the situation into limbo.

Under the circumstances, a simplistic debate between staying the course and bringing the boys home is unenlightening. If a broadly supported interim government can be found, then staying in force to support it against extreme elements is preferable to allowing the situation to devolve into chaos. If not, however, then the aims of the occupation -- however laudable -- are simply infeasible, and we should look for a way to extricate ourselves from a futile enterprise undertaken on dubious pretenses. The approach offered thus far by the Bush administration -- long on bravado, but short on actual plans to improve the situation -- threatens to bring the worst of both worlds.

Hostile Environment

Foreign workers told to quit Iraq
Seven Chinese were freed - but other foreigners are still being held
Foreign nationals are being urged to flee Iraq as governments and private companies react to growing insecurity and a wave of kidnappings.

Coalition civilian spokesman Dan Senor said 40 hostages from 12 countries were currently being held in Iraq.

In the latest development, the French foreign ministry confirmed a French journalist had been taken hostage.

Earlier, al-Jazeera television showed a video of four Italian men who have been abducted, surrounded by armed men.

We are making it clear that there will be no negotiations with hostage-takers
Dan Senor
Coalition spokesman

Italian officials said four Italian employees of a private US security agency, DTS Security, were missing.

France has followed Germany in issuing a formal warning urging its citizens to leave, calling the kidnappings "unacceptable".

The British Foreign Office said it continued to advise against all but the most essential travel to Iraq.

Russia's biggest contractor in Iraq, Tekhpromexport, is pulling its 370 staff out of Iraq amid security concerns.

Meanwhile, the US-led coalition says the alleged leader of al-Qaeda operations in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, is believed to be in the area around Falluja, where clashes have continued despite a ceasefire in the town.

About 10 Bulgarian soldiers ask to leave Iraq

SOFIA (Reuters) - About 10 Bulgarian soldiers based in the flashpoint city of Kerbala in southern Iraq have asked if they can go home, officials said on Tuesday, the latest example of the troops' unhappiness with conditions in Iraq.

On Monday, soldiers' parents appealed to President Georgi Parvanov to have Bulgaria's 450-strong battalion withdrawn from the city, where it came under repeated attack last week from militiamen loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

"Around 10 servicemen of the Bulgarian contingent in Kerbala have asked to be relieved," defence ministry spokeswoman Roumyana Strugarova said.

The conditions facing the new NATO member's troops in Iraq have become a sensitive issue in this Balkan country since last week's attacks, but had already caused concern previously.

Historical Precedent

Blind in Baghdad

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A19

Here are the reasons Iraq is not Vietnam: It is a desert, not a jungle. The enemy is not protected and supplied by major powers such as the Soviet Union or China, not to mention a formidable front-line state such as North Vietnam. The Iraqis are not, like the Vietnamese, a single culture fighting a long-term war of liberation from colonial masters. They are fragmented by religion and language, and they have been independent ever since the British left lo these many years ago. In almost every way but one, Iraq is not Vietnam. Here's the one: We don't know what the hell we're doing.

This is the most important finding you can take from the debacle of the past two weeks. The sudden uprising of the Shiite militia loyal to Moqtada Sadr took U.S. forces by surprise. For now, it does not matter that this uprising is containable or that Sadr may well be little more than a thug. What matters is that he was able to organize an insurrection right under our noses and put up a more than credible fight. Calling him a thug, as we are wont to do, does not change matters.

This remarkable fact, to use the current argot, is sooooooo Vietnam. Once again, we are feeling our way in the dark. We have 130,000 troops in Iraq. We have 77,000 Iraqi police officers on our side, supposedly with their ears to the ground. We have the supposed loyalty of all those Iraqis who tell pollsters that they are grateful for what Americans have done for their country and how much they want the United States to stay. Still, somehow, not a one of them blew the whistle when Sadr was issuing orders and patting his fighters on the back as they were heading out the door.

Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Iraq, is by all accounts an admirable and incredibly industrious man, "tasked," in Condi-speak, to do the impossible. But on the Sunday talk shows, he seemed right out of central casting, some actor playing the clueless American, down to his striped tie and button-down shirt. When asked who he was going to turn power over to on June 30, he replied, "That's a good question," but supplied no answer. He simply does not know. He does know, though, that the "majority view" among Iraqis is hardly anti-American. The polls tell him so. This is Vietnam all over again.

In the first place, minorities make revolutions, not majorities. Most people simply do as they are told. Second, polls -- even in Iowa, for crying out loud -- are notoriously unreliable. Last, Bremer and the rest of us are simply going to have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we will never know what is happening in Iraq. It's a different culture.

The question isn't is this Viet Nam or Algeria or Gallipoli. The question is weather or not this is a disaster.

Personalizing War

Krugman continues to point at the emperor's lack of clothes. How shrill.

Events should have cured the Bush team of its illusions. After all, before the invasion Tim Russert asked Dick Cheney about the possibility that we would be seen as conquerors, not liberators, and would be faced with "a long, costly and bloody battle." Mr. Cheney replied, "Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." Uh-huh.

But Bush officials seem to have learned nothing. Consider, for example, the continuing favor shown to Ahmad Chalabi. Last year the neocons tried to install Mr. Chalabi in power, even ferrying his private army into Iraq just behind our advancing troops. It turned out that he had no popular support, and by now it's obvious that suspicions that we're trying to put Mr. Chalabi on the throne are fueling Iraqi distrust. According to Arnaud de Borchgrave of U.P.I., however, administration officials gave him control of Saddam's secret files — a fine tool for blackmail — and are letting him influence the allocation of reconstruction contracts, a major source of kickbacks.

And we keep repeating the same mistakes. The story behind last week's uprising by followers of Moktada al-Sadr bears a striking resemblance to the story of the wave of looting a year ago, after Baghdad fell.

In both cases, officials were unprepared for an obvious risk. According to The Washington Post: "One U.S. official said there was not even a fully developed backup plan for military action in case Sadr opted to react violently. The official noted that when the decision [to close Sadr's newspaper] was made, there were very few U.S. troops in Sadr's strongholds south of Baghdad."

If we're lucky, the Sadrist uprising will eventually fade out, just as the postwar looting did; but the occupation's dwindling credibility has taken another huge blow.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush, who once challenged his own father to go mano a mano, is still addicted to tough talk, and still personalizes everything.

Again and again, administration officials have insisted that some particular evildoer is causing all our problems. Last July they confidently predicted an end to the insurgency after Saddam's sons were killed. In December, they predicted an end to the insurgency after capturing Saddam himself. Six weeks ago — was it only six weeks? — Al Qaeda was orchestrating the insurgency, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the root of all evil. The obvious point that we're facing widespread religious and nationalist resentment in Iraq, which is exploited but not caused by the bad guy du jour, never seems to sink in.

The situation in Falluja seems to have been greatly exacerbated by tough-guy posturing and wishful thinking. According to The Jerusalem Post, after the murder and mutilation of American contractors, Mr. Bush told officials that "I want heads to roll." Didn't someone warn him of the likely consequences of attempting to carry out a manhunt in a hostile, densely populated urban area?

And now we have a new villain. Yesterday Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez declared that "the mission of the U.S. forces is to kill or capture Moktada al-Sadr." If and when they do, we'll hear once again that we've turned the corner. Does anyone believe it?

When will we learn that we're not going to end the mess in Iraq by getting bad guys? There are always new bad guys to take their place. And let's can the rhetoric about staying the course. In fact, we desperately need a change in course.

Responsibility

Will Bush Own Up?

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A19

"We stand for a culture of responsibility in America. We're changing the culture of this country from one that has said, if it feels good, do it, and if you got a problem, blame somebody else, to a culture in which each of us are responsible for the decisions we make in life."

Maybe President Bush should reread his own words, offered last week at a fundraiser in Charlotte. They explain why his response to the disclosure of the now famous Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily brief (PDB) is maddening to so many and why his refusal to say plainly that he now wishes he had done some things differently before Sept. 11 is so disturbing.

To take responsibility straightforwardly would be a sign of strength, not weakness. Instead, the president is sticking to a strategy of denial.

Bush told reporters on Sunday that "as the president, I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence. And I looked at the August 6 briefing, I was satisfied that some matters were being looked into. But that PDB said nothing about an attack on America. It talked about intentions, about somebody who hated America -- well, we knew that."

But the PDB did talk about attacks on the United States. It talked about al Qaeda members who "have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks." It spoke of FBI information on "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." It referred to a call to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May "saying that a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives."

Surely we don't want to start arguing about how it depends on what the meaning of "attack" is, do we?

Yet the president was not at all uneasy with others being assigned responsibility. Asked if he was satisfied that "each agency was doing everything it should have been doing," Bush replied: "Well, that's what the 9/11 commission should look into and I hope it does. . . . I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America -- at a time and a place, an attack." Is the commission supposed to look at failures all across the federal government, but apparently not at the White House?

I love the way editorialists and commentators of the left give the White House the benefit of the doubt. E. J., my brother, Bush is going to take responsibility for anything at approximately the same time as he acheives flying to the moon.

Eddie

A couple of readers asked by email about Eddie. He's missing a couple of teeth, but he is home now and doesn't seem the worse for wear. He still runs the house, that was always his job. He tells me when to get up, but not when to go to sleep. His paw on the can opener is pretty much law around here. And he is back to his old self. Giving him antibiotics, which he'll need for another 10 days, is the outer reaches of hell, I'm good at this kind of vet care and dread it. He hates it. And, therefore, so do I. I have to wrap him in a towel for this procedure and neither of us likes the other much when it is over.

But he is going to be fine. That's what matters.

Bowing to the Inevitable

U.S. Military Seeks Additional Forces for Iraq
Commanders Disappointed With Performance of Iraqi Forces; 2 U.S. Soldiers, 7 Contractors Missing After Convoy Attacked

By Sewell Chan and William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 12, 2004; 5:26 PM

BAGHDAD, April 12 -- Top U.S. military commanders expressed disappointment Monday with the performance of Iraqi security forces in countering an intensifying insurgency and said they were requesting thousands of additional U.S. forces to meet the threat.
....
Abizaid said he has requested reinforcements in the form of two U.S. combat brigades, but he declined to specify where they would come from and how many troops they would include.

Military analysts in Washington said the two brigades would probably amount to about 10,000 troops, allowing commanders to maintain U.S. troop strength in Iraq at about 125,000 in the coming months. The military had planned to draw the forces down to about 115,000 from the current level of about 135,000, a number that officers have said is unusually high because of an overlap of new and departing units.

This is like putting a bandaid on gangrene. The only way they can get those troops is to call up more Guard and Reserves. A political price will be paid for that.

In order to have impact in the theater, they would need to put in at least another 100-k -300k. It sounds like the Pentagon civilians continue to run the show.

Blair Blowback

Blair pleads to disaffected as membership plummets

Kevin Maguire
Monday April 12, 2004
The Guardian

A collapse in the number of Labour party members is jeopardising the party's election prospects, amid claims that the total has hit a 70-year low.

The latest published figure of 248,294 is equivalent to fewer than 390 members per parliamentary constituency but Save the Labour Party, a party group formed by activists concerned at plummeting numbers, argues that that figure has been inflated by including lapsed members, and does not take account of many who left in the wake of the Iraq war.

A shortage of volunteers to put up posters, stuff envelopes, deliver leaflets, canvass and knock on doors to get people to vote threatens to undermine the campaign in June's local and European contests as well as next year's general election. As a result Tony Blair is to write to more than 40,000 who have left since the 2001 poll to urge them to rejoin.

The loss of tens of thousands of £24 annual subscriptions, or the £12 reduced rate, is also hit ting party coffers when unions are cutting donations in the run-up to what will be a series of expensive political battles.

A survey of membership secretaries in eight constituency Labour parties found that nearly 12% of those counted as members were more than six months in arrears, barring them under party rules from voting in internal elections.

Poor Tony! I wonder if he understood that he hooked his political future to that of the worst president in American history.

Miserable Failure

Terrific overview piece by David Remnick in The New Yorker:

Does anyone—save, perhaps, a small core of conservative zealots—still believe that there will be an easy solution to the crisis in Iraq? Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of all this is that, at least until January 20, 2005, George W. Bush is in charge of Iraq’s future and America’s. Through sheer lack of humility and competence, he has squandered the good will of vast numbers of Iraqis and Americans and American allies, and it is difficult to imagine him acquiring the skill and wisdom to regain it.

John Kerry has yet to present a clear set of ideas about this crisis. As a candidate, he is a sterling biography in search of a coherent language. He must find one. At a moment when Bush is on the defensive as never before--with Iraq, the 9/11 commission, and the critiques of insiders like Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill--Kerry has seemed to recede. In many respects, the fusillade of attack ads produced by Karl Rove and company are patently unfair and intellectually dishonest, but Kerry has made it too easy for the White House to make him seem vague on Iraq.

Kerry faces a real dilemma. Bumper-sticker clarity is not an option for him. Compared with Bush’s simplicities, Kerry’s views have been complex. The nuances and conditions of both his original support for authorizing force and his later critique of how that authority was used suggest that he recognizes that Iraq is an American responsibility, not just a Republican one. It falls to Kerry to disprove the conservative zealots’ favorite canard: that subtlety of vision is inconsistent with strength and cogency of action.

This is a genuine dilemma for an honest man. The reality of the situation is that both NATO and the UN are pretty much overstretched in terms of forces available. "Internationalization" under such circumstances will mean more about administration, rather than force commitments, and I seriously doubt that will make much difference to the Iraqis. There is no love lost between Iraq and the UN.

All of the options are bad. This is a perfect failure, the hallmark of 43's administration.

Financial Planning

In My Opinion (no permalinks, scroll down)

March 27, 2004…

The U.S. stock market’s bear market rally that started in October 2002 seems to have topped at about 10,700 on the Dow Jones Industrial Index. The rally extended about 10% further than I had anticipated because in the low interest rate and U.S. dollar devaluation environment stocks became an option of last resort. The current account and trade deficits are out of control. No amount of stimulation by the Federal Reserve is creating jobs. The Fed seems to be ‘pushing on a string.’ The real estate bubble has given consumers a false sense of confidence. When that bubble bursts the U.S. will be plunged into the second phase of the bear market cycle. I haven’t figured out whether or not the real estate bust will manifest itself in deflation. I still feel that the best strategy is to develop a bipolar portfolio to protect oneself against inflation or deflation or a blending of both. China’s boom is dependent on the U.S. consumer’s confidence and their insatiable appetite for cheap offshore goods. The big retailers are only able to maintain profitability by increasing the amount of Chinese goods in their product mix. The U.S. government is fudging the inflation numbers. It has its hands full with terrorism, IRAQ and Afghanistan. Senator John Kerry is likely to be the next President of the United States. While Senator Kerry may be perceived as a breath of fresh air after the rather draconian Bush regime, it is unlikely that the stock market will shake off ‘the bear.’ Pensions and endowments have enjoyed a reprieve but 2005 will retest their metal, and in some cases solvency. I believe that to thrive and survive you need a bipolar portfolio…

This is pretty much the same advice I've been giving friends for a while.

The Last Acceptable Prejudice

Kerry Attends Easter Services and Receives Holy Communion
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: April 12, 2004

BOSTON, April 11 — Despite the growing anxiety of several national Roman Catholic leaders, Senator John Kerry took communion here on Sunday at Easter services at the Paulist Center, a nontraditional church that describes itself as "a worship community of Christians in the Roman Catholic tradition" and which attracts people drawn to its dedication to "family religious education and social justice."

Mr. Kerry's decision to receive communion amounts to a challenge to several prominent Catholic bishops, who have become increasingly exasperated with politicians who are Catholic but who deviate from Catholic teaching.

Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, supports abortion rights and stem-cell research, both of which are contrary to church teaching. He and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, are regular worshipers at the Paulist Center, which is near their home in Beacon Hill.

Some of the other lefty Catholic bloggers have taken this one on.

Here is the way Kit Seelye put it yesterday:

— Rejecting the admonitions of several national Roman Catholic leaders, Senator John Kerry received communion at Easter services today at the Paulist Center here, a kind of New Age church that describes itself as "a worship community of Christians in the Roman Catholic tradition" and that attracts people drawn to its dedication to "family religious education and social justice."

Mr. Kerry's decision to receive communion represented a challenge to several prominent Catholic bishops, who have become increasingly exasperated with politicians who are Catholic but who deviate from Catholic teaching.

MMkay. Catholic bashing just never goes out of style, does it?

A few points: the Paulist Center in Boston is neither New Age or "nontraditional," whatever the hell she means by that. As a worship center, it is not tied to a geographical parish, but that's not all that unusual. The Paulists are the only indigenous American Catholic male religious order, founded in 1858 by Isaac Hecker. From the time of their founding, the Paulist fathers have been ecumenically friendly, while remaining Catholically orthodox. The Paulist Center in Boston has as its mission the education of the faithful, and outreach to non-Catholics. That's pretty standard missionary activity, hardly New Age.

By way of context, Seelye fails to mention that such Catholics as Antonin Scalia, Robert Bennet and Robert Novak are out of step with church teaching on the death penalty, for example. Yes, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops have inserted themselves into the political process by suggesting that Catholic politicians who don't support criminalizing abortion could be denied the sacraments. That they haven't made equally as big a stink about the death penalty is one of the things that drives progressive Catholics batty.

Shaking the Trees

A Long Look at Response to Brief
The 9/11 panel to probe how Bush and FBI dealt with report. President says he saw no specifics.

Experts fiercely debated Sunday whether the report — titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." — constituted a substantial warning of the attacks to come or was, in the words of national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, little more than a "historical memo."

Largely lost in the charges and countercharges was how the president and the FBI, the agency principally responsible for protecting Americans from terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, reacted to the information in the CIA-drafted report, which was declassified and released Saturday.

But that is about to change. The bipartisan commission investigating the events leading up to the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is expected to make the once-classified document — and the Bush administration's reaction to it — a prime focus of its hearings Tuesday and Wednesday. Top FBI and Justice Department officials in the Clinton and Bush administrations, along with CIA director George J. Tenet, are scheduled to testify.

"The 9/11 commission is going to want to know what was the White House's reaction to the analysis and judgment of the CIA and the FBI about the threats," said Roger W. Cressey, who served as a deputy White House counterterrorism official in both administrations and now heads a security consulting firm.

The president and his top aides have acknowledged there were mounting signs during spring and summer 2001 that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network were planning new attacks on U.S. interests. But they have argued that the information was not specific enough for them to take steps that might have prevented the airliner assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

On Sunday, Bush reiterated that argument, saying that at no time did he receive specific warning about the sort of attacks that Al Qaeda ultimately carried out.

"I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America — at a time and a place, an attack," he told reporters accompanying him on a visit to Ft. Hood, Texas. "Had I known there was going to be an attack on America, I would have moved mountains to stop the attack….

"I can't say it as plainly as this: Had I known, we would have acted. Of course we would have acted," Bush said. "Any administration would have acted. The previous administration would have acted. That's our job."

Critics contended Sunday that with its insistence that it could not have done more to thwart the attacks without further details of the terrorists' plans, the administration displayed a disturbing passivity in the weeks leading up to Sept. 11. The critics include Bush's former counterterrorism expert, Richard Clarke; Democratic members of the Sept. 11 commission; and the president's presumptive Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

Rand Beers, a former Bush administration counterterrorism official who is now Kerry's top advisor on national security matters, said on CNN's "Inside Politics" Sunday: "With all the information of that summer [2001], certainly … someone should have been out shaking the trees to find out what more we knew and what we could do about it."

The critics say the Aug. 6 report is a case in point of the problem with the administration's actions in advance of the attacks. Although the report was strikingly thin in places, some people familiar with such documents said it should have set off alarm bells in the White House.

Allrighty, then. Here is what to look for this week: the IX/XI Commission is going to be looking to "the principals," Tenet, Mueller and Ashcroft, for evidence that they were "shaking the trees." Tenet will probably look fine on this one, but Mueller and Ashcroft are going to have problems. I'm personally looking forward to Ashcroft having to hear hard words from the commissioners.

Continuing to Lose

U.S. Chopper Shot Down in Iraq; 2 Killed
Cease-fire in Fallouja is interrupted by a gunbattle that wounds two Americans.

From Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Gunmen shot down a U.S. attack helicopter near Baghdad on Sunday, killing two crewmembers. A fragile cease-fire held between Sunni insurgents and Marines in the city of Fallouja, while the U.S. military suggested it's open to a negotiated solution in its showdown with a radical Shiite cleric in the south.

More than 600 Iraqis, mostly women, children and elderly, have been killed in a week of fighting in Fallouja, Rafie al-Issawi, the director of the city hospital, told The Associated Press. But a Marine commander said most of the dead were probably insurgents.

Fallouja residents took advantage of the lull in fighting to bury their dead in two soccer fields. One of the fields had rows of freshly dug graves, some marked on headstones as children or with the names of women.

The Fallouja violence spilled over to the nearby western entrance of Baghdad, where gunmen shot down an AH-64 Apache helicopter. As a team moved in to secure the bodies of the two dead crewmen, a large force of tanks and troops pushed down the highway outside the Iraqi capital, aiming to crush insurgents.

Gunmen have run rampant in the Abu Ghraib district west of Baghdad for three days, attacking fuel convoys, killing a U.S. soldier and two American civilians and kidnapping another American.

The captors of Thomas Hamill, a Mississippi native who works for a U.S. contractor in Iraq, threatened to kill and burn him unless U.S. troops end their assault on Fallouja, west of Baghdad, by 6 a.m. Sunday. The deadline passed with no word on Hamill's fate.

Insurgents who kidnapped other foreigners this week began releasing some captives. A Briton was freed, and other kidnappers said they were freeing eight captives of various nationalities. Other insurgents who kidnapped two Japanese men and a woman said Saturday they would free their captives within 24 hours, but they had not been freed by Sunday evening.

The U.S. military on Sunday reported eight more U.S. soldiers killed in fighting on Friday and Saturday. The deaths brought to 50 the number of American soldier killed since the new fronts of violence erupted April 4. Nearly 900 Iraqis have been killed in the same period. At least 649 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

How long are we going to allow these wearying stories? The level of incompetence everywhere is mind boggling. If Proconsul Jerry hadn't had a snit about an insulting article in a tiny broadsheet, something else would have set this off. It was only a matter of time. The level of brutality that we have visited on this country was bound to provoke a reaction. Even the Brits are complaining. They tried the same kinds of tactics early on in The Troubles and learned they didn't work.

End Game

As fighting continues, quest to bring democracy to Iraq nears failure

By Warren P. Strobel

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - President Bush invaded Iraq hoping to spread democracy across the Middle East, but after the worst week of violence since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, he's now struggling to avoid a costly, humiliating defeat.

"It was going to transform the Middle East, remember? Now all we want to do is save our butts," said former U.S. ambassador David Mack, vice president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan research center that concentrates on Arab states.

The president, like many of his predecessors in the White House, faces competing pressures over the course of a war. Polls show that Americans, while not demanding immediate withdrawal, are growing discontented with Bush's handling of Iraq and the rising tide of casualties. At least 45 Americans - soldiers, Marines and an airman in a mortar attack reported Saturday - were killed this week in spreading rebellions by a Shiite militia and Sunni Muslims.

Yet backing away now could leave Iraq worse off than it was before, many government officials and private experts believe. They fear a failed state, like Afghanistan was in the early 1990s, would spawn terrorism and destabilize its neighbors. Those neighbors could include pivotal U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf, such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia, where instability could pose troubling implications for the global economy.

In his weekly radio address to the nation Saturday, President Bush denounced the Iraqi insurgents as "a small faction" and "a band of thugs" who are "attempting to derail Iraqi democracy and seize power." Bush vowed to defeat them and insisted that sovereignty will be turned over to an as yet unidentified Iraqi government as scheduled on June 30.

Bush emphasized as well that U.S. forces will remain in Iraq "as long as necessary" to help restore stability there. "America is fighting on the side of liberty," Bush said, "liberty in Iraq and liberty in the Middle East." Ultimately that will make the lives of people there better and thus make America and the world more secure, he said.

But senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were casting doubt on administration policy, say they are growing concerned about the American public's long-term patience with the war.

Polls show a majority of Americans continue to believe that invading Iraq in March 2003 was the right thing to do. But a survey by the Pew Research Center, taken after last week's grisly killing and mutilation of four U.S. security contractors in the city of Fallujah, found that 44 percent favored bringing American troops back from Iraq, up from 32 percent in January. Fifty percent favored keeping the troops in Iraq.

What will happen, of course, depends on Rove's political calculation.

Open Thread

It is Easter Day. I'll be away for the day for dinner with my family, and I hope you Christians out there will have some family time, as well. It is also the end of Passover, and I hope the Jewish members of the community have a seat at a Seder Table with family and friends. Here is a meditation on the season and an Open Thread so that you have someplace to talk.

T. S. Eliot
Little Gidding from Four Quartets

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Mythmaking

Iraqi Battalion Refuses to 'Fight Iraqis'

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 11, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, April 10 -- A battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to go to Fallujah earlier this week to support U.S. Marines battling for control of the city, senior U.S. Army officers here said, disclosing an incident that is casting new doubt on U.S. plans to transfer security matters to Iraqi forces.

It was the first time U.S. commanders had sought to involve the postwar Iraqi army in major combat operations, and the battalion's refusal came as large parts of Iraqi security forces have stopped carrying out their duties.

The 620-man 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi Armed Forces refused to fight Monday after members of the unit were shot at in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad while en route to Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold, said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who is overseeing the development of Iraqi security forces. The convoy then turned around and returned to the battalion's post on a former Republican Guard base in Taji, a town north of the capital.

Eaton said members of the battalion insisted during the ensuing discussions: "We did not sign up to fight Iraqis."

He declined to characterize the incident as a mutiny, but rather called it "a command failure."

The refusal of the battalion to perform as U.S. officials had hoped poses a significant problem for the occupation. The cornerstone of the U.S. strategy in Iraq is to draw down its military presence and turn over security functions to Iraqis.

Paul Bremer is on MTP spouting the party line: we've got these people out here who are anti-democratic. Tinkerbell had a closer line on reality than Bush and Bremer. The insurgents don't hate democracy, apple pie or mom. They want us gone. We haven't heard the stories yet, but we've done a pretty find job of brutalizing people who, unfortunately, know a hell of a lot about brutality. There is a price

Body Politic III

For Singles, April Really Is the Cruelest Month

By John O. Fox
Sunday, April 11, 2004; Page B01

You've all heard about the tax system's so-called marriage penalty, which discourages a couple with good incomes from marrying because their combined income taxes would be greater than if they remained single. Congress heard so much about it that, through legislation in 2001 and 2003, it addressed that problem for most couples by increasing their standard deduction and broadening their tax brackets. But a great injustice remains in our tax system: the "singles penalty." The annual income tax deadline arrives this week, and there's no getting around it -- most of us who are married and also have young kids are going to fare a lot better than most of those who haven't tied the knot or had any children.

Don't know anything about this? Well, you should, especially if you are among those single taxpayers who don't itemize their deductions. That's roughly 80 percent of all singles -- a total of about 48 million individuals, if you're counting. While the singles penalty is harshest on lower- and moderate-income earners, it affects all 48 million. Here's why.

Consider first our nation's official poverty thresholds. The threshold for single people last year was about $9,600; but single people who claim a standard deduction on their 2003 returns are expected to begin to pay a tax if their income exceeds a mere $9,300 -- that is, before what they earn has, by the government's own definition, lifted them out of poverty. (The $9,300 tax threshold results from the sum of the personal exemption plus the standard deduction, and the benefit of a small earned income credit.)

So many singles, with modest incomes and modest expenses, depend on the standard deduction -- a measly $4,750 in 2003 -- because it is larger than the sum of what they might itemize. (By contrast, more than half of all joint returns claim itemized deductions.) These singles include many young people and many seniors, but also nearly all people who earn not a whole lot more than the minimum wage and may work two or even three jobs. Many are renters, but Congress prohibits them from deducting any of their rent, even though it often consumes a disproportionate share of their income.

By contrast, Congress views the $19,000 poverty threshold for a working married couple with two young children and typical child care costs as woefully inadequate for purposes of setting their tax threshold. Congress believes that this couple should not begin to pay a penny of income taxes until its income exceeds $47,700, or about 21/2 times its poverty threshold. (To calculate their tax, subtract $12,200 for four personal exemptions and $9,500 for their standard deduction, which leaves $26,000 of taxable income. Taxes tentatively owed: $3,200. Then subtract their tax credits: $2,000 in child credits ($1,000 for each child) and $1,200 in child care credits ($600 for each child), for a total of $3,200. Taxes finally owed: zero.)

That certainly seems reasonable, so single people shouldn't object. But they have every right to ask Congress: Where's your compassion for us?

To understand the harshness of the tax threshold imposed on most singles, let's consider one who earns $9,600 and see what it's like for her to try to live on that amount. Well, it isn't really $9,600, because 7.65 percent is withheld for Social Security and Medicare taxes, and, thanks to Congress, she has to pay a small income tax. That leaves $8,835, or about $740 a month.

Our taxpayer -- let's call her Meg -- lives by herself in an efficiency apartment, doesn't own a car and takes the bus to work and on personal trips. In a typical American city such as Baltimore or Cleveland, she might get that apartment for $350 to $600 a month. Say her rent is $440, which leaves her with $300 to pay for everything else -- food, clothing, furniture, household and personal supplies, telephone, utilities, laundry, sales taxes, public transportation, and much more. (Heaven forbid she should actually buy a magazine or go to a movie.) Health insurance alone -- she doesn't qualify for Medicaid because she doesn't have a dependent child -- would consume much of the $300, so she goes without it and crosses her fingers. It isn't really a choice anyway: Meg runs out of money before she finishes paying her other bills.

Now consider Fran and Bill, a hypothetical married couple with two preschool children. Both work full-time and earn a combined income of $47,700. We'll assume they pay $7,000 for child care ($30 a day, five days a week), and $3,650 in Social Security and Medicare taxes. This leaves about$37,000 (still nearly twice the poverty threshold), or about $3,100 a month, to pay all other expenses. We don't have to elaborate on the details to reach an obvious conclusion: It's a lot easier, given economies of scale, for Fran and Bill to meet their family's basic living expenses on $3,100 a month than it is for Meg to cover her basic living expenses on $740 a month.

Moreover, at their income level, Fran and Bill are more likely than Meg to receive benefits at work, such as paid health insurance premiums or contributions to a retirement plan, none of which count as income on their tax return. This means that their actual income may be greater than $47,700, yet they still don't owe any income tax. Meg probably has only her $9,600 because jobs at her salary level usually offer no benefits.

If the scandal here were limited to Meg's income tax of $30 on the difference between her $9,300 tax threshold and the $9,600 poverty threshold, our outrage would be limited. But if Congress is going to recognize, as it should, that a family of four needs income far in excess of its poverty threshold before it can afford to pay an income tax, simple tax justice requires that the same principle be extended to a single person. We may debate the income level at which the change should be made, but I believe the starting point of the discussion should be no less than $1,200 to $1,500 a month ($14,400 to $18,000 a year), from which the federal government will subtract 7.65 percent for Social Security and Medicare taxes. With these new thresholds, we're talking about roughly 8 million to 11 million additional single people who would be protected from being taxed; and in their cases, the tax savings would range from a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000 a year -- amounts vitally important to them.

But I would go further. The injustice is not limited to singles who should be spared paying any tax. The initial tax threshold for all singles, including those with higher incomes, should be set so that not one of them pays a tax until their income exceeds a level we regard as necessary to meet basic living expenses. This is what Congress does for that family of four; this is what voters should insist it do for the household of one. Until that time, the great majority of singles in this country can legitimately argue that, at least for tax purposes, they are treated like second-class citizens.

Singles know this is a big election year. They also should know that, in the past, they have had a poor voting record, which no doubt goes far toward explaining their treatment under the tax laws. If singles were to let their candidates for Congress and the White House know that they are going to vote in droves this year, and that they expect to vote for candidates who promise to fix these tax injustices, I'm betting plenty of those candidates would listen up.

Hellooo single women. It is time to wake up to the fact that we could be a political force, if we cared to pay attention. It is long past time to start paying attention

Blog Stuff

Some observations from a media-heavy day:

If you want to look at the PDB, it's up on every news website. Kos has posted CNN's analysis.

I read the thing and didn't find it particularly illuminating, that is, it didn't really advance the ball much beyond what we already know on the IX/XI story (I like the Roman numerals better, the Arabic digits make this all look way too much like a civic phone number that has saved my life a couple of times.) It didn't prove Condi wrong or Clarke right. It's an intelligence product, which means it is pretty hedged all the way around. Had I read it on August 6 in isolation from all the other intel, it wouldn't have spoken to me particularly. I mean, I knew going back to the embassy bombings that Osama had it in for us, and that he liked both big symbols and the WTC. And I'm just an ordinary person. When the second jet hit the Trade Center, and before the Pentagon was hit, I knew who did it. So did you.

And that's the place the press is falling down on this story, because this is not the kind of story the press tells well. They want the quick hit, and the story of IX/XI isn't that kind of story. They want Elmore Leonard, but it's more a British novel, and I'm not talking Bridget Jones' Diary. I'm put more in mind of John le Carre's work, psychological and dense with apparently unrelated facts that you can't put together until you know all the players. One of the great services of the Commission on the National Terrorist Attacks is that we are beginning to get to know some of the players. This, too, is a mixed blessing: when the cameras roll on Capitol Hill, we are getting a lot of the ego and very little of the id. Never stand between a political figure and a camera if you value your physical safety. All of them, witnesses and comissioners, are playing to the camera. It's just a fact of life. People around here have TV coaches. I'm one of them.

The other startling media piece I ran into today speaks to my own biases. When the White House announced that it was releasing the PDB, CNN and MSNBC were each airing one of their weekend hour-long personality pieces. I knew the tube would have the story faster than the print media so I clicked around and landed on Fox. I've never really been there before. Oh. my. god. I thought CNN sucked. Wolf Blitzer looks like Woodward and Bernstein in the days of yore. The panel of "journalists" was discussing the ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam as if this were an accepted fact. And that was the LEAST egregious crap I heard. No wonder we are in such bad shape. Howard Stern is beginning to look like a god to me.

Now, I'm going to finish watching Men in Black. This is my favorite movie. I'll be away most of the day tomorrow for Easter. You'll get an open thread, and a meditation on the season.

Patchy Intelligence

Inquiry Into Attack on the Cole in 2000 Missed 9/11 Clues
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN

Published: April 11, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 10 — The American investigators probing the October 2000 terrorist attack against the Navy destroyer Cole came tantalizingly close to detecting the Sept. 11 plot, F.B.I. and C.I.A. officials now say. But the government missed the significance of a series of clues because some investigators believed that the evidence fit narrowly into their case against the ship bombers and, others say, they did not have access to all the information.

The lost opportunity, described by the officials for the first time in interviews this week, involved two of the eventual Sept. 11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, who fell under suspicion by the C.I.A. early in 2000 but were not put on a watch list of foreigners barred from entering the United States until August 2001, after they were already here.

A reconstruction of events shows that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency failed to recognize the significance of the two men and to act in concert to intercept them because of internal miscommunications and legal restrictions on the sharing of C.I.A. intelligence information with criminal investigators at the F.B.I. Problems developed even though F.B.I. agents and C.I.A. officers were assigned to each other's operational and analytical units.

The reconstruction also shows that the importance of the two men, who have figured centrally in examinations of the government's failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, was misunderstood before the attacks because investigators thought the two were associated with only the Cole bombing. They were not linked with a plot to strike targets within the United States until after Sept. 11, 2001.

"You have to go back to that time and get rid of all your guilty knowledge about what happens later," one C.I.A. official said. "At the time, it was looking more like Alhazmi and al-Midhar were involved in ship bombings."

The government's failure to effectively pursue leads about Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi after they first came to the attention of the C.I.A. in Malaysia in January 2000 will be a focus of hearings next week by the independent commission studying the government's response to terrorist threats before Sept. 11, commission members said.

The performance of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. in dealing with Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi has led to years of recriminations and finger-pointing between the organizations. Officials from both agencies, while still in disagreement over critical details, now say the evolution of the Cole investigation is critical to understanding the miscues before Sept. 11. The story opens in Malaysia in January 2000, when Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi attended a meeting of terrorists in Al Qaeda.

This is a fairly graphic example of the kinds of problems inherent in trying to share data between our foreign intelligence operation and our domestic one. The problems are actually larger than this article portrays: there are redundant intel shops scattered all over the executive branch and each is jealous of their own specially picked intel. There is still no coordination between these agencies, and they are all governed under different laws and enabling legislation.

God, This Is Awful

Iraqi Insurgents Threaten to Kill Foreign Hostages
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

Published: April 11, 2004

AGHDAD, Iraq, April 10 — A group of armed Iraqi insurgents, their faces masked, claimed on Saturday to be holding 30 foreigners hostage and threatened to kill them unless the United States halted its offensive in Falluja, the Sunni city west of Baghdad.

In a film from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that was shown repeatedly on Arabic television, a masked man representing the group said: "We have Japanese, Bulgarian, Israeli, American, Spanish and Korean hostages. Their numbers are 30."

He added: "If America doesn't lift its blockade of Falluja, their heads will be cut off."

The tape did not show any hostages, however, and it was not possible to confirm that such a group was being held. But several foreigners are known to be missing, putting intense pressure on Japan and other American allies.

In another tape broadcast on television, a man speaking with an American accent was shown being held in the back seat of a car by a masked gunman. He said his convoy had been attacked, and in the background black smoke blossomed thickly into the air.

The gunmen, their faces covered with Arab head scarves, jumped into the vehicle's seats around him and sped off, one of them saying into the camera: "We swear to God, we are not afraid of death. We are going to heaven."

PUSHBACK

Disputing Rice testimony

BY KNUT ROYCE AND TOM BRUNE
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- The FBI on Friday disputed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony that it was conducting 70 separate investigations of al-Qaida cells in the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Rice, testifying before the Sept. 11 commission Thursday, said that those 70 investigations were mentioned in a CIA briefing to the president and satisfied the White House that the FBI was doing its job in response to dire warnings that attacks were imminent and that the administration felt it had no need to act further.

But the FBI Friday said that those investigations were not limited to al-Qaida and did not focus on al-Qaida cells. FBI spokesman Ed Coggswell said the bureau was trying to determine how the number 70 got into the report.

The Aug. 6, 2001, memo was prescient in its title, which she divulged for the first time as "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

She said the briefing memo disclosed that the FBI had 70 "full-field investigations under way of cells" in the United States. And that, Rice said, explained why "there was no recommendation [coming from the White House] that we do something about" the flurry of threat warnings in the months preceding the attacks.

But Coggswell Friday said that those 70 investigations involved a number of international terrorist organizations, not just al-Qaida. He said that many were criminal investigations, which terrorism experts say are not likely to focus on preventing terrorist acts. And he said he would "not characterize" the targets of the investigations as cells, or groups acting in concert, as was the case with the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In addition to these investigations, Rice told the panel that FBI headquarters, reacting to alarming but vague intelligence in the spring and summer of 2001 that attacks were imminent, "tasked all 56 of its U.S. field offices to increase surveillance of known suspected terrorists" and to contact informants who might provide leads.

That, too, is news to the field offices. Commissioner Timothy J. Roemer told Rice that the commission had "to date ... found nobody, nobody at the FBI, who knows anything about a tasking of field offices." Even Thomas Pickard, at the time acting FBI director, told the panel that he "did not tell the field offices to do this," Roemer said.

Two and a half years after the terrorist attacks, it remains unclear why the FBI, given the general but dire warnings that preceded the attacks, did not go on full alert.

The agency clearly believed something was afoot. On July 12 of that year, Assistant FBI Director Dale Watson, chief of the counterterrorism division, told the National Governors Association that a significant terrorist attack was likely on U.S. soil. "I'm not a gloom-and-doom-type person," he said. "But I will tell you this. [We are] headed for an incident inside the United States."

The Aug. 6 CIA memo, called the president's daily brief, includes this passage: "The FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking." This line was read into the record by Commissioner Bob Kerrey, but the memo itself remains classified. The White House said it may declassify it as early as next week.

This looks like something less than a robust response.

Consistently Asleep at the Switch

Bush's Low Profile Questioned as Violence Flares in Iraq

By Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 10, 2004; Page A01

Explosive violence in Iraq and persistent questions about the administration's handling of terrorist threats before Sept. 11, 2001, have plunged President Bush into one of the most difficult moments of his presidency, as he seeks to maintain public confidence in his leadership while facing what experts say are mostly unattractive options to put U.S. policy on track.

In the face of these challenges, Bush has yielded the stage, remaining largely out of sight at his Texas ranch as others in his administration explain his policies. Bush's silence in the face of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq and concerns about the administration's timetable for transferring power to the Iraqis has brought criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

"If it were I in charge over there, I would have him out early next week to explain this whole thing," said a Republican strategist close to the Bush team who demanded anonymity as a condition of speaking freely about the administration. "He should restate what we're doing over there. He needs to provide a bigger picture to give voters more confidence that we know where we're going."

"It is not helping them for the president to be out of the picture," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, national security adviser in the Clinton administration. "If they think the American people are not troubled with what they see every day, starting with [the killing of four U.S. contract workers in] Fallujah, and then dead Marines and then the hostages -- if they think that is not roiling the waters, they're sadly mistaken. . . . We have too much at stake in Iraq to lose the American people."

Bush's advisers expect political damage to the president, at least in the short term, given what has happened in Iraq in the past 10 days. "I think the American people know the president is resolved in this matter to complete our work," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said yesterday. "We have nothing to suggest that they don't support him on the war on terror. . . . I think you can expect polls to drop during this very difficult period."

"Steady leadership in a time of change."

He Knew

Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: April 10, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 9 — President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.

The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford.

The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders.

Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks have asked the White House to make the Aug. 6 briefing memorandum public. The A.P. account of it was attributed to "several people who have seen the memo." The White House has said that nothing in it pointed specifically to the kind of attacks that actually took place a month later.

The Congressional report last year, citing efforts by Al Qaeda operatives beginning in 1997 to attack American soil, said that operatives appeared to have a support structure in the United States and that intelligence officials had "uncorroborated information" that Mr. bin Laden "wanted to hijack airplanes" to gain the release of imprisoned extremists. It also said that intelligence officials received information in May 2001, three months earlier, that indicated "a group of bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives."

Also on Friday, the White House offered evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation received instructions more than two months before the Sept. 11 attacks to increase its scrutiny of terrorist suspects inside the United States. But it is unclear what action, if any, the bureau took in response.

I find it interesting that they de-classified this so fast. Do they think this vindicates them? Are these people that stupid? Perhaps.

The Failings of the Modern Cheerleader

Read this. Just go, don't argue. It is the best deconstruction of modern neoconservatism I have ever read. The psychological takedown is one of those things that must be savored over coffee. You will be emailing this one to your buds and family.

The Howling Wilderness of Pseudoconservatism

....Pseudoconservatives' theoretical devotion to free market economics is exceeded only by their practical adherence to crony capitalism. Most of the panjandrums of the pseudoconservative network, beginning with Henry Kissinger, have almost zero connection with true entrepreneurial activity. Instead, their government positions prepared them for lucrative employment in archetypal crony capitalist enterprises: defense corporations, financial services, CIA-influenced "security" firms, K Street influence peddlers, and oil companies (the latter commodity is noteworthy in being exempt from free-market dogma: it is the only known substance demand for which does not automatically create a market; on the contrary, supplies have to be militarily conquered periodically.)

The pseudoconservative propaganda network, which never fails to strike populist "man of the people" note about the sorely tried, overtaxed, and overregulated common man, somehow manages to avoid mentioning the true correlation of power in the most fundamental aspect of politics: who gets what. We are supposed to believe the middle class taxpayer is beset by welfare queens, college professors, foreign aid recipients, and other straw men from the Limbaugh demonology, rather than Enron, Halliburton, or MCI/Worldcom. Do the promoters of family values seriously believe the United States will remain a middle class nation with middle class mores if the income structure more nearly resembles Regency England?

Unmasking the Facade

Two U.S. soldiers missing near Baghdad
Several civilian contractors also unaccounted for

Friday, April 9, 2004 Posted: 9:21 PM EDT (0121 GMT)

Baghdad firemen try to douse blaze after a mob set a supply truck on fire.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Two U.S. soldiers and an unknown number of civilian contractors are unaccounted for after a fuel convoy was attacked Friday near Baghdad International Airport, a senior Pentagon official said.

Another 13th Corps Support Command soldier and an Iraqi driver were killed in the incident, and 12 people were wounded.

The contractors' nationality was not immediately known.

The official said "unaccounted for" means that U.S. troops are looking for the soldiers and contractors. The senior Pentagon official said a search is under way.

The four-truck convoy was hit with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades and exploded into flames, the official said.

Meanwhile Friday, in the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah, where the insurgency has been most fierce, the U.S.-led coalition halted its offensive to allow Iraqis to bury the dead and aid supplies to be brought in.

Iraqi Governing Council members also met with Fallujah leaders and leadership of the anticoalition forces to try to bring calm.

U.S. Marines were allowing only women and children to leave the city, while allowing humanitarian supplies, such as food and medical supplies, to enter.

But even as the offensive was paused, sporadic fighting continued that left at least one Marine dead.

Los Angeles Times reporter Tony Perry told CNN he saw insurgents attack a Red Crescent aid convoy.

Another time, the 1st Marine Division said at least 16 insurgents opened fire on Marines and retreated to a cave.

An AC-130 gunship was called in to attack the cave, and two 500-pound, laser-guided bombs were dropped on it.

"We will fight the enemy on our terms. May God help them when we're done with them," said Maj. Gen. James Mattis, the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division.

Earlier in the day, Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, said the cessation in Fallujah was a halt only in the offensive there in recent days, not a halt in all military action.

"We certainly will take whatever military action we need to defend ourselves and to prevent the enemy from taking advantage there," said Abizaid, who visited Fallujah.

He also said he was not surprised by the resistance in Fallujah, which had been the military and special intelligence center for the former Iraqi regime.

Fallujah also is the city where four American contractors were killed last week, their bodies mutilated and dragged through the streets.

Here's the problem. It's not our country, it is theirs and they get to define the terms of engagement. Rummy and Abizaid think that it is their theater to control but they don't have enough troops to make that possible. What they will do is what they are allowed to do. The Iraqis will decide. Fools. How long this charade will continue, and how long we will allow our people to kill and be killed, will be decided at the ballot box. This angers me. Congress should have prevented this in the first place. Cowards.

Reality vs. Spin

The Phantom Sovereign

By Jonathan Schell, The Nation and TomDispatch.com
April 9, 2004

The Iraqi struggle for independence from American rule has begun in earnest. US forces there now face a double insurrection-one part Sunni Muslim, the other Shiite Muslim-that threatens at the same time to turn into a civil war. Only the Kurdish north is quiet. With these events, US policy for Iraq has taken leave of reality as thoroughly as America's claims regarding weapons of mass destruction did before the war. The policy was declared on November 21, when Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, announced that on June 30 of this year the "occupation of Iraq will end," and Iraq will then enjoy "sovereignty."

5. "June 30, 2004." Among political observers, it is widely and believably said that this date is geared not to any events in Iraq but to the 2004 US presidential election. The Bush Administration wants to bolster the President's campaign by creating an impression of progress in Iraq, and is staffing the CPA's office of strategic communications with GOP operatives including Rich Galen, former press spokesman for Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle.

The Bushies may have succeeded in fooling the American people with this nonsense. The Iraqis are not fooled, however.

Lousy Job

In Slate, Fred Kaplan came to the same conclusion I did.

Condi Lousy
Why Rice is a bad national security adviser
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, April 8, 2004, at 3:17 PM PT

A poor adviser
One clear inference can be drawn from Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission this morning: She has been a bad national security adviser—passive, sluggish, and either unable or unwilling to tie the loose strands of the bureaucracy into a sensible vision or policy. In short, she has not done what national security advisers are supposed to do.

Bob Kerrey was blunter still. "One of the first things I learned when I came into this town," he said, "was that CIA and FBI don't talk to each other." It has long been reported that regional agents deep inside the FBI wrote reports about strange Arabs taking flight lessons and that analysts inside the CIA were reporting that Arab terrorists might be inside the United States. If both pieces of information were forced up to the tops of their respective bureaucracies, couldn't someone have put them together? "All it had to do was be put on intel links and the game's over," Kerrey said, perhaps a bit dramatically, the conspiracy "would have been rolled up."

I was absolutely astonished at the questions she couldn't answer yesterday, at how academic and wooden the answers she could give were. She came across as a third rate academic. It reminded of the university faculty meetings I used to go to.

Hostage Crisis

Iraq Abduction Puts Japan Gov't in Crisis
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 9, 2004

Filed at 12:54 p.m. ET

TOKYO (AP) -- The abduction of three Japanese in Iraq plunged Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi into his deepest crisis since taking office three years ago, as relatives of the hostages and thousands of protesters pressed the government Friday to withdraw Japanese troops from Iraq.

Ruling party officials vowed not to give in to terrorists and reiterated that Japanese soldiers would continue their humanitarian mission in Iraq. Koizumi denounced as ``cowardly'' the Iraqi captors' threat to burn the three civilian hostages alive unless Tokyo gives in.

Thousands massed near the prime minister's official residence and held a candlelight vigil for captive aid workers Noriaki Imai, 18, and Nahoko Takato, 34; and photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama, 32.

``As a parent, it would be just unbearable to see my child being burned alive, if that really happens,'' Koriyama's mother Kimiko said at a news conference.

``Time is running out,'' said Ayako Inoue, Takato's younger sister. ``My uneasiness and anxiety grows as the time passes.''

In a video obtained by Associated Press Television News, four masked men threaten the blindfolded captives with guns and knives. The Arab TV network Al-Jazeera also received the video and said it was accompanied by a statement saying the hostages would be burned alive if Japan's troops were not pulled from Iraq within three days.

Koizumi pushed forward with the deployment of 1,100 troops to Iraq this year despite deep public reservations about sending Japanese soldiers to a combat zone for the first time since World War II.

This is a horrible situation. Koizumi has already been stung by a financial scandal, which has caused him to say that he will not run for re-election in two years. Further down in the AP piece, the writer says that this crisis is affecting the Tokyo markets. My question is what is this going to do with US-Japan relations.

Shorthanded

US commander will not take blame for unrest
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 09/04/2004)

America's top commander in Iraq has warned Washington that he will not be "the fall guy" if violence in the country worsens, it emerged yesterday, as word leaked out that US generals are "outraged" by their lack of soldiers.

America's generals consider current troop strengths of 130,000 in Iraq inadequate, reported the columnist Robert Novak, a doyen of the old-school Right in Washington.

Iraqi militants fire on US marines during clashes in Fallujah

Gen John Abizaid, commander of Central Command, told his political masters earlier this week that he would ask for reinforcements if requested by the generals under him. His words overrode months of public assurances from the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other civilian chiefs that more troops are not necessary.

As violence flared across the Sunni triangle and the Shia-dominated south of Iraq on Wednesday, Mr Rumsfeld indicated that troop numbers would be bolstered at least temporarily, by leaving in place units that had been earmarked to return home as part of troop rotation, while still sending replacements.

But officers who will not speak out in public let it be known that major reinforcements might be impossible to find. US forces are so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that "there are simply no large units available and suitable for assignment", Novak wrote in his column in The Washington Post.

The leaks have revived memories of the bitter debate that raged in Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war, as uniformed chiefs clashed with Mr Rumsfeld and his aides, who predicted that US forces would be welcomed as "liberators", allowing troop numbers to be reduced rapidly.

Relations between the uniformed military and the Pentagon's civilian chiefs are currently worse than at any time in living memory, Novak wrote, citing a former high-ranking national security official who served in previous Republican administrations.

Many still in uniform bitterly recall the public dressing-down earned by the then army chief of staff, Gen Eric Shinseki, when he told Congress a month before the invasion, in February 2003, that "several hundred thousand troops" might be needed to occupy Iraq.

I'm not hearing this reported in US media, nor am I seeing Novak anywhere.

In Other News

Good News From Iraq: Put 'Em Up

By Al Kamen
Friday, April 9, 2004; Page A17

The news these days from Iraq has been downright awful, what with the fighting and kidnappings and all. You'd think things were not going well over there if you believed the papers and television.

But that's hardly the whole story. It's time to heed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's pronouncements that the "jaded" press is obsessed with reporting only bad news out of Iraq and simply refuses to report abundant good news.

And here's a fine story, pretty much ignored by the negative nabobs of the media, that should put things in a better perspective.

"The Iraqi national boxing team creates 'Iraq Is Back' official merchandise website," says the headline of a press release Wednesday from Iraqi viceroy L. Paul Bremer's public affairs shop. (Wednesday must have been a quiet day over there.)

Yes, "available on the website [www.nociraq.org] are t-shirts, hats, coffee cups and posters" that are "emblazoned with their now-famous boxing cheer, 'Iraq is Back!' "

"We're excited by our first commercial internet venture," the news release quotes National Olympic Committee of Iraq (NOCI) President AhmedSamarrai as saying. "It's very important to find creative ways to fund our Olympic movement." All profits will go to "support the dreams of Iraqi boxers," the release says.

"This cheer has become our daily motivation," says the team's coach, Maurice "Termite" Watkins, an exterminator and car salesman from Houston who is a former Golden Gloves champion. A recent wire service story noted that Watkins went to Iraq nearly a year ago as a pest-control specialist with Kellogg, Brown & Root. His family had such a business, thus his nickname.

"We start and end every training session by chanting this slogan as we do a little dance," Watkins said, according to the release we got from Catherine Cauthen of the Office of Strategic Communications. "As soon as people heard it, they asked if we had anything printed with this slogan," he said. "I'm thrilled to know that we finally have the ability to sell this gear and help support these inspirational fighters."

NOCI is hoping to send about 28 Iraqi athletes, including one boxer, to the Summer Olympics in Athens in August. The baseball hats are only $14.99; the mugs, large and small, are $15.99; and the mouse pad is $14.99. There's also a beautiful yellow-and-black messenger bag for $24.99. Remember, these are not available in stores. Operators are standing by! That's www.nociraq.org!

You can't make this stuff up.

Body Politic

The Empty Room
By BOB HERBERT

Published: April 9, 2004

Condi Rice was in Washington trying to pass her oral exam before the 9/11 commission yesterday, and the president was on vacation in Texas. As usual, they were in close agreement, this time on the fact that neither they nor anyone else in this remarkably aloof and arrogant administration is responsible for the tragic mess unfolding in Iraq, and its implications for the worldwide war on terror.

The president called Ms. Rice from his pickup truck on the ranch to tell her she had done a great job before the panel.

It doesn't get more surreal than that.

Mr. President, there's a war on. You might consider hopping a plane to Washington.

It's hard to imagine that the news out of Iraq could be more dreadful. After the loss of at least 634 American troops and the expenditure of countless billions of dollars, we've succeeded in getting the various Iraqi factions to hate us more than they hate each other. And terrorists are leaping on the situation in Iraq like rats feasting on a mound of exposed cheese.

The administration has no real plan on how to proceed. It doesn't know how many troops are needed. It doesn't know, in the long term, where they will come from. It doesn't know whether it can meet the June 30 deadline for turning over sovereignty to the Iraqis. (It doesn't know what sovereignty in this context even means. June 30 was an arbitrary date selected with this year's presidential campaign in mind.) It doesn't have a cadre of Iraqi leaders to accept the handoff of sovereignty. And so on.

When you open the door to get a look at the Bush policy on Iraq, you find yourself staring into an empty room.

Meanwhile, people are dying.

When the president challenged Iraqi militants last summer with the now-famous taunt "bring 'em on," he betrayed a fundamental lack of understanding of the horror of war in general, and the incredible complexity of the situation in Iraq.

Instead of behaving as though he is responsible, as commander in chief, for the life of every man and woman who is sent into combat, Mr. Bush has behaved on more than one occasion as though he's at the controls of a video game. He does not appear to be taking this great tragedy nearly as seriously as he should.

Perhaps if he went to a few fewer fund-raisers and a few more funerals . . .

One Good Month
By PAUL KRUGMAN

At last, a favorable surprise on jobs: estimated payroll employment rose 308,000 in March, above almost everyone's expectations. You can't blame the administration for trying to play up the good news, and for being dismayed when the sound of popping Champagne corks was drowned out by the crackle of gunfire. But has the economy, after so many false starts, finally started to deliver?

For perspective, it helps to remember what solid job growth looks like. During Bill Clinton's eight years in office, the economy added 236,000 jobs per month. But that's just an average: a graph of monthly changes looks like an electrocardiogram. There were 23 months with 300,000 or more new jobs; in March 2000, the economy added 493,000 jobs. This tells us not to make too much of one month's data; payroll numbers are, as economists say, noisy. It also tells us that by past standards, March 2004 was nothing special.

And we should be seeing something special, because our economy should be on the rebound. Bad times are usually followed by big bouncebacks; for example, last year long-suffering Argentina had the fastest growth rate in the Western Hemisphere (8.7 percent!), not because of the excellence of its economic policies, but because it was recovering from a severe slump.

America hasn't had an Argentine-level slump, but we have a lot to recover from. After three years of lousy job performance, we should be seeing very big employment gains — and even after last month's report, we're not. It would take about four years of reports as good as the one for March 2004 before jobs would be as easy to find as they were in January 2001.

Of course, we can hope that the March numbers are just the beginning of a torrent of good news. But the straws in the wind aren't wildly encouraging. Weekly first claims for unemployment insurance are down — but they're still above the 2000 average, and job growth in 2000 barely kept up with population. Average weekly hours, sometimes a clue to future hiring, fell in March — in fact, they fell so much that total hours worked declined even as the work force increased.

These indicators suggest that the odds are less than even for job growth between now and the election that will match or beat the Clinton-era average, let alone deliver the job boom we both need and have a right to expect after three bad years. Which brings us to politics.

Leaving the details for another day, it's pretty clear what John Kerry's economic philosophy will be. He's surrounding himself with advisers closely tied to Bill Clinton, and even more closely tied to Robert Rubin, the legendary former Treasury secretary. In office, we can surmise, Mr. Kerry would follow a Rubinesque strategy of bringing long-term budget deficits under control through a mixture of tax increases for upper-income families and spending restraint. No doubt he would move slowly on deficit reduction as long as the economy remained weak, but his advisers would tell him, as Mr. Rubin told Mr. Clinton, that responsible long-run budget policies are good in the short run, too, because they help keep interest rates low.

George Bush has, of course, tried to be the anti-Clinton in all things. His advisers rejected Rubinomics and hearkened back to Reaganomics, insisting that long-run tax cuts, never mind the effect on the budget deficit, are the key to growth. For three years, they've had nothing but red ink to show for their efforts. Now they've had one good but not great month.

In short, this year's election will be a contest between a candidate who advocates a return to economic policies that were associated with eight years of very solid job growth, and one who advocates continuation of policies that have, after three years, yielded exactly one good monthly jobs report. I know: Mr. Clinton doesn't deserve all or even most of the credit for the good times on his watch, and Mr. Bush doesn't deserve all the blame for the bad times on his. Still, on the face of it there's nothing to recommend Mr. Bush's approach. But will voters see it differently?

Erm, Paul, most of us unemployed are still unemployed. I'm guessing that you know that. Pass it on. BTW, I could do a better job than Condi and most of the people under her. Tell me where to present my resume. I've actually gotten things done.

Even the Hawks are Turning

Trish Durkin in the New York Observer (Trish was a hawk):

Yes, it is dangerous here—and never more so than it is right now. And it would be folly to lay the entirety of that fact at the feet of administration bungling. Even a perfect postwar plan, perfectly executed, would leave this place vulnerable to true terrorists. Nonetheless, it is a plain fact that the coalition has helped to make the bed in which it is now so uneasily lying. Having declined to control the borders, imprison criminals or undertake any major policy initiatives in any of the areas—housing, employment, public works—that would enhance social stability, the C.P.A. has aided in the creation of bubbles of discontent. And when those bubbles come to a predictable boil, the C.P.A. has one solution: concrete blast walls, armored Humvees and lockdowns to keep the grateful Iraqi people at a safe distance from their liberators.

Apologies, hats off and hosannas to the C.P.A. exceptions, who do exist and who deserve nothing but praise. Even they, however, cannot help but be caught up in the rapidly spinning hamster-wheel of illogic on which their institution runs. It is, for instance, treated as an article of faith that for any C.P.A. employee to venture out of the Green Zone is for that employee to lay his life on the line. Thus, most employees do so with great caution and little frequency. In the many cases of jobs that depend upon verification or inspection or interaction with any Iraqi who does not work for the C.P.A., this means that they are paid serious money for jobs that they are strongly advised not to do.
Meanwhile, to the cost of these employees’ salaries and living expenses is added the cost of protecting them with security that, no matter how expensive for Americans or offensive to Iraqis, is invariably deemed inadequate. As a result, the team that America has sent to put to the Herculean task of building Iraq a democracy is basically divided between those who realize that they have no idea what is going on outside their gates, and those who don’t realize that they have no idea what is going on outside their gates.
....
It is to be hoped—but should not be assumed—that at least one participant in this debate has met someone who has met someone whose mother has a cousin who knows Moqtada from a frittata. But you can bet your bottom dinar that no one is asking: Why is there so much rabble for this kid to rouse? Why, a solid year into America’s self-congratulation on having removed the brute oppressor of the Shi’ite majority, does an at-least-unsettling segment of that majority have the time and the inclination to go forth and menace? Didn’t anyone get the memo that, when you take over a country that is bursting with unemployed and angry young men, it’s just not smart to leave them with nothing to lose?

Here is where the official explainers will explain, as they explain so well: This isn’t as easy as it looks; these problems are much more complicated than they seem; these are matters for the Iraqis to decide; and the all-time favorite, it takes time. Granted, in the abstract, these explanations sound eminently fair. But if you go someplace like the Al Rashid army camp, you can see the degree to which they are not explanations at all. They are excuses, and lame excuses at that.

......
It could have been different. It should have been different. And if the lights were on and somebody were home in the future-of-Iraq department, it would have been different.

Could-a, would-a, should-a. Set it to music, and at least the new Iraq will have a national anthem.

In fairness, that’s not all the new Iraq will have. It will also have a house-proud government, and bona fide employment opportunities for those who wish to keep it that way. Just this week, one could see blue-jumpsuited workers, waxing and polishing the marble floors inside the palace that is home to the C.P.A., and pruning the palm trees on the great lawn outside. A lot can happen between now and the June 30 transition of power to the Iraqi people. But you can bet on this: The palace will look mahvalous.

Beggers, not Choosers

U.S. courts war opponents for Iraq force
1,500 troops wanted to guard U.N. operations

Appeal made to nations that opposed invasion

ROBIN WRIGHT
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

WASHINGTON—The United States has asked more than a dozen countries that did not take part in last year's invasion to join a new international military force to protect United Nations operations in Iraq, U.S. State Department officials said.

Such a proposal would be critical to persuading the U.N. to return after two massive suicide attacks against its Baghdad headquarters last year, and enlist nations that opposed the war because it lacked the imprimatur of the world body.

Washington has approached France, which led opposition to the war in Iraq, as well as India, Pakistan and other nations that were reluctant to join the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq, U.S. and European officials said. The list includes "a good global mix," said a U.S. State Department official familiar with the proposed force.

No Arab countries or neighbours of Iraq are on the list; NATO ally Turkey is notably absent.

Officials in the Prime Minister's Office in Ottawa were unable to confirm or deny last night whether a request had been made for Canadian troops, the Star's Susan Delacourt reports.

Some countries have made "favourable noises," while others have asked for time to "do some homework," the U.S. State Department official said. "For the most part, no one has slammed the door in our face."

Washington considers the new force essential to the return of sovereignty to Iraqis because the Bush administration is relying on the United Nations to return to Iraq to help organize elections after the occupation ends on June 30.

The administration, aware that it is unlikely to secure more troops from the 33 countries already in Iraq, is defining the new mandate as exclusively for U.N. protection and distinct from the current coalition's military goal of stabilizing postwar Iraq, U.S. officials said. But the new force would technically come under the broader coalition umbrella and co-ordinate on security, especially if there are attacks or unrest after June 30, but many of the details must be worked out, they said.

The United States is hoping to win commitments for at least 1,500 new troops, U.S. officials said. The number will depend on the size of the U.N. staff, which could vary from 150 to 500, depending on which phase of the election process is under way, they added. The initial approaches were made by U.S. embassies in the capitals of the respective countries.

I think we can officially start using the word "desperation."

...the Pooch

Americans rethink course of war

Pam Belluck/NYT

Thursday, April 8, 2004

The barrage of violence that has seized Iraq over the last few days has jolted many Americans, causing deep anxiety and prompting many people to re-examine their positions on how the United States is handling the war.
.
In dozens of interviews around the country, many people said they worried that the United States had become trapped in a conflict much more complicated than the Bush administration envisioned.
.
But there was little consensus on what should be done, and much confusion about how to interpret the events of the last week - the killing and dismembering of four contract workers in Falluja, the raid that killed 12 marines in Ramadi, the eruption of violence in half a dozen cities.
.
Some people who had supported the war from the outset said they now felt it was a bad decision or said they had serious questions about the way it was being conducted.
.
Others, including liberals who were against the war, argued that the United States now needed to send in more military force to make sure that U.S. soldiers and contractors were adequately protected.
.
A few argued for withdrawing troops altogether, while others said that the United States should reconsider the June 30 deadline that President George W. Bush has set for transferring ruling power to the Iraqis.
.
Few people who were interviewed said they were satisfied with the status quo.
.
"It was a clear mission in Iraq to begin with: Get Saddam Hussein out of power and find weapons of mass destruction," said Katherine Farina, 28, a legal secretary from Denver, who had backed the war. "With all of this new violence, just recently I have become opposed to the presence in Iraq." With a heavy sigh, Farina added: "It's really hard. The poor Iraqis are living a life I would never want to live. And then we have our own soldiers dying needlessly."
.
"If it was up to me," she said, "I'd leave whoever is appropriate in charge and get out as soon as possible."
.
....
"It was good to go in, to overthrow Saddam, to capture him," said John Zimmer, 36, a software salesman from Minnesota who was eating lunch in Milwaukee. "But now the whole thing keeps trickling on, no end."
.
In Seattle, Dave Ross, a popular radio host with a middle-of-the-road call-in program, said callers who previously supported the war had increasingly been expressing apprehension.
.
"More and more," he said, "I get people who call up and say, 'Dave, I'm one of your more conservative listeners and I'm beginning to realize this was a mistake.' Or, 'I voted for Bush before and I'm certainly not going to vote for him again because he misled us on the weapons.' I think there are cracks even amongst Republicans."
.
To be sure, not everyone was questioning the course of the war.
.
"That's war," said Gene Carlucci, 75, a retired city sanitation worker, from New York City. "They're soldiers. That's their job." He added: "Let Bush continue the way he planned everything out. Going against him is what's wrong here."
.
But the anxiety of many Americans was captured well this week in an online poll by the Caledonian-Record of St. Johnsbury, Vermont. The newspaper has been asking visitors to its Web site what the United States should be doing in Iraq, in light of the Falluja atrocities.
.
As of Wednesday evening, 369 people had voted "get tough," 190 had voted "get out." Only 59 people cast a vote for "stay the course."
.
The barrage of violence that has seized Iraq over the last few days has jolted many Americans, causing deep anxiety and prompting many people to re-examine their positions on how the United States is handling the war.
.
In dozens of interviews around the country, many people said they worried that the United States had become trapped in a conflict much more complicated than the Bush administration envisioned.
.
But there was little consensus on what should be done, and much confusion about how to interpret the events of the last week - the killing and dismembering of four contract workers in Falluja, the raid that killed 12 marines in Ramadi, the eruption of violence in half a dozen cities.
.
Some people who had supported the war from the outset said they now felt it was a bad decision or said they had serious questions about the way it was being conducted.
.
Others, including liberals who were against the war, argued that the United States now needed to send in more military force to make surehat U.S. soldiers and contractors were adequately protected.
.
A few argued for withdrawing troops altogether, while others said that the United States should reconsider the June 30 deadline that President George W. Bush has set for transferring ruling power to the Iraqis.
.
Few people who were interviewed said they were satisfied with the status quo.
.

"Whoever is appropriate" is something of an open question, isn't it?

All over the blogosphere, in the last 24 hours bloggers and policy wonks have been posting their ideas about "what we should do now." Absent a substantial policy change at the top, we are, frankly, screwed.

via Billmon:

John Mearsheimer on NewsHour last night:

No, the United States is basically in a situation where it's damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. If we get tough on the Iraqis as we're doing now, tough on the insurgents, it's likely to backfire on us. What it's going to do, is it's going to enrage more of the population and make them more sympathetic to the [insurgents]. And even if we shut this down in the short-term, we still have the long-term problem that we have no political institution inside Iraq that we can turn power over to on July 1. We also suffer greatly from the fact that the Iraqi security forces that we have been building up over the past year are effectively melting away and many of those forces are joining insurgents.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I don't think you can combine the two. I think you have to either be tough, you have to increase the number of forces there and get tough, or you have to keep force levels regards low and back off. Those are the two broad choices. And the problem that you face is no matter which one you do, you lose. It's just a matter of choosing your poisons here.

While Condi Spins

9/11 Panel: Bush White House Withheld Papers
Commission Is Demanding Terrorism-Related Documents From Clinton Era

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 8, 2004; Page A04

The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks announced yesterday that it has identified 69 documents from the Clinton era that the Bush White House withheld from investigators and which include references to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and other issues relevant to the panel's work.

The White House turned over 12 of the documents to the commission yesterday, officials said. But 57 others, which were not specifically requested but "nonetheless are relevant to our work," remain in dispute, according to a commission statement. The panel has demanded the documents and any similar ones from the Bush administration.

Yesterday's announcement came just 14 hours before national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to testify publicly in front of the 10-member bipartisan panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The commission has feuded for months with the White House over access to documents and witnesses, and Rice's agreement to testify came after weeks of refusals from White House lawyers.

The discovery of the documents came as a result of a staff review this week of about 10,800 pages of material from the Clinton archives, including about 9,000 pages that the White House had not given to the commission despite the conclusion of federal archivists that they may be relevant. The administration had not notified the panel about the records, which Clinton attorney Bruce R. Lindsey discovered in February.

The commission said in its statement that "more than 90 percent of the material had already been produced, was irrelevant to our work, or was duplicative." The review team, including chief counsel Daniel Marcus, also concluded that "any errors in document production were inadvertent."

But Democratic commissioner Timothy J. Roemer, a former Indiana congressman, said: "We continue to have document problems with this White House. . . . Access to documents is absolutely crucial for this commission to be able to do its work."

Another Democrat, former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, said that although the review team did not find any "blockbusters," the remaining records "could be significant" and deal with al Qaeda, bin Laden and other terrorism-related issues.

"The commission is very strongly of the view that they need to give us a yes as soon as possible, and I'm hopeful they will," Kerrey said, referring to the 57 documents still in dispute.

White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said, "We are cooperating with the commission, and we will continue to cooperate."

"We are cooperating with the commission, and we will continue to cooperate."

I guess it depends on how you define "cooperate."

War Fog

Under Fire, Security Firms Form An Alliance

By Dana Priest and Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 8, 2004; Page A01

Under assault by insurgents and unable to rely on U.S. and coalition troops for intelligence or help under duress, private security firms in Iraq have begun to band together in the past 48 hours, organizing what may effectively be the largest private army in the world, with its own rescue teams and pooled, sensitive intelligence.

Many of the firms were hired by the U.S. government to protect its employees in Iraq. But because the contracts are managed by the Coalition Provisional Authority and the coordination between the CPA and the U.S. military is limited, and by their accounts inadequate, the contractors have no direct line to the armed forces. Most of the firms' employees are military veterans themselves, and they often depend on their network of colleagues still in uniform for coordination and intelligence.

"There is no formal arrangement for intelligence-sharing," Col. Jill Morgenthaler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. military command headquarters in Baghdad, said in an e-mail in response to questions. "However, ad hoc relationships are in place so that contractors can learn of dangerous areas or situations."

The demand for a private security force in Iraq has increased since the war ended, said officials with the CPA, the U.S.-led authority that is running the occupation of Iraq. There are about 20,000 private security contractors in Iraq now, including Americans, Iraqis and other foreigners. That number is expected to grow to 30,000 in the near future when the U.S. troop presence is drawn down after the June 30 handover to Iraqi authorities.

The presence of so many armed security contractors in a hot combat zone is unprecedented in U.S. history, according to government officials and industry experts.

In the past, "we've been careful about where and when we arm civilians who accompany the troops because we don't want to inadvertently turn them into soldiers, even by what we have them wear," said Col. Thomas McShane, an instructor at the Army War College.

As the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated in recent days, the security contract workers have been exposed to some of the same dangers U.S. soldiers face -- and have defended their posts as soldiers would, but without the support of the military with which they share the battlefield.

While U.S. and coalition military forces fought rebellions in a half-dozen cities yesterday, the body of a contract worker, employed to guard the power lines of the Iraqi ministry of electricity, was extracted from a rooftop in Kut by his firm's Iraqi interpreter after he bled to death, according to government and industry officials.

The dead man, a Western employee of London-based Hart Group Ltd., had been pinned down on the rooftop of the house he and four colleagues had been occupying Tuesday night when insurgents overran the house. The other four were wounded.

"We were holding out, hoping to get direct military support that never came," said Nick Edmunds, Iraq coordinator for Hart, whose employees were operating in an area under Ukrainian military control. Other sources said Hart employees called U.S. and Ukrainian military forces so many times during the siege that the battery on their mobile phone ran out.

That same night, armed employees of two other firms, Control Risk Group and Triple Canopy, were also surrounded and attacked, according to U.S. government and industry sources.

In all three instances, U.S. and coalition military forces were called for help but did not respond in a timely manner, according to U.S. government and industry accounts. The private commandos fought for hours and eventually were able to "self-evacuate," said one U.S. official, who asked not to be named.

Asked last night to explain why U.S. and coalition forces had not responded to requests for help, a Pentagon spokesman referred the question to commanders in Iraq, who could not be reached for comment because of the time difference.

....

The U.S. military does not have enough specially trained troops or Iraqi police officers to guard its civilian employees, said defense and CPA officials. As a result, the U.S. government has turned increasingly to private firms. Blackwater even provides personal security to U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer.

The Bremer detail, said Peter W. Singer, a private military expert at the Brookings Institution, illustrates the extent to which the military is breaking new ground, even amending its long-held doctrine that the "U.S. military does not turn over mission-critical functions to private contractors," Singer said. "And you don't put contractors in positions where they need to carry weapons. . . . A private armed contractor now has the job of keeping Paul Bremer alive -- it can't get much more mission-critical than that."

Some Defense Department officials are concerned that private commandos are not subject to adequate oversight. There is no government vetting of contract workers who carry weapons. "The CPA has let all kinds of contracts to all kinds of people," said one senior Defense Department official who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject. "It's blindsided us."

The CPA's program management office has sought bids for a project to coordinate security among the 10 largest prime contractors and their subcontractors working on U.S.-backed reconstruction projects worth $18.4 billion. But the bids are still under review. In the meantime, the office is "trying to get at least some level of intelligence sanitized from the military that could be given to contractors," said Capt. Bruce A. Cole, spokesman for the program management office in Baghdad. That has not happened yet.

The firms, stunned by the casualties they suffered this week and by the lack of a military response, have begun banding together to share their own operations-center telephone numbers and tips on threats, as well as to organize ways to rescue one another in a crisis.

"There is absolutely a growing cooperation along unofficial lines," Edmunds said. "We try to give each other warnings about things we hear are about to happen."

"Each private firm amounts to an individual battalion," said one U.S. government official familiar with the developments. "Now they are all coming together to build the largest security organization in the world."

Rotation Reassessed as Toll Spikes

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 8, 2004; Page A01

U.S. forces have suffered their bloodiest week in Iraq since just before the fall of Baghdad a year ago, reporting 40 combat deaths in the seven days from March 31 to April 6.
,,,,

While plans have called for the U.S. troop level to drop to 115,000 by June, about 135,000 are now in Iraq as arrivals overlap with those due to leave.

"We're taking advantage of that increase, and we will likely be managing the pace of the redeployments to allow those seasoned troops with experience and relationships with the local populations to see the current situation through," Rumsfeld said.

Another senior defense official said later that no decision had been made to extend tours, which would break a Pentagon commitment to limit troop stays in Iraq to one year. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf region, is reviewing options for bolstering emergency response forces, focusing initially on shifting some units closer to trouble spots, the official said.

The recent surge in violence has involved both a rise in attacks by Sunni insurgents and a new militant campaign by Shiite forces loyal to cleric Moqtada Sadr. At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disputed characterizations of the violence as a popular uprising. They said battles have involved relatively small numbers of militants, estimating the size of Sadr's militia at 1,000 to 6,000 fighters.

"There's nothing like an army or large elements of hundreds of people trying to change the situation," Rumsfeld said. "You have a mixture of a small number of terrorists, a small number of militias, coupled with some demonstrations and some lawlessness."

Rumsfeld also rejected the notion that the intensified fighting represented "a turning point." But he called it a "test of will," saying the militants were engaged in a "power play" before the planned June 30 handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi government.

If you think these two stories are unrelated, you haven't been paying attention. Is this what we want? A world of private armies?

Rumsfeld may reject the idea that this is a turning point, but he rejects a lot of things which are just plain good sense. This isn't a test of wills, it is a test of strategies. We don't have one. Bush's rhetoric lately has been all about "firm resolve." That's all well and good, but does he have a plan? I prefer that to "firm resolve." He may have missed this in his years as a cheerleader, but beating people up is different from actually accomplishing something.

The Baghdad Spin

Josh Marshall has been blogging up a storm the last few days--he's got sources in Iraq--but he also has deadlines to meet. This is from his new column inThe Hill today:

Iraq should not be the Mideast HQ for Bush-Cheney ’04>

Yesterday, I spoke to a highly credible source who recently returned from Baghdad, where he works with the U.S. and international media.

“{CPA Information Director Don] Senor lies so often and so easily most media just stopped trying to use him as a source, unless forced to,” he said. “Some of the junior reporters, lacking in-house research services, have no choice. But many of the major media represented in Baghdad found themselves spending too much time trying to sort out fact from fiction, and out of necessity developed other sources. … While [Senor] appears to represent White House interests, his handling of the media turns off so many that he is doing the president more harm than good.”

Were Senor’s partisanship just an odd exception, it would be one thing, but he’s closer to the rule.

GOP spinmeister Rich Galen, a former spokesman for Vice President Dan Quayle and onetime head of Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC, headed to Iraq last October and told the New York Post that his job would be “to help reporters on the ground find interesting stories that they can use. If there’s a civil-affairs unit out of Manhattan that rebuilt a school, it might be of interest to Channel 5 but not to a network.”

Others who’ve cycled through the CPA have included veteran GOP lobbyist Tom Korologos and GOP fundraiser Tom Foley.

The chief adviser to the Iraqi Agriculture Ministry was Dan Amstutz, a Reagan administration veteran who’d just finished up as head of the North American Export Grain Association.

The original trio advising the Education Ministry was made up of vouchers advocate Williamson Evers, Washington-based Republican education-policy wonk Leslye Arsht and Jim Nelson, President Bush’s education commissioner when he was governor of Texas.

Many of those folks have since returned stateside. But as the concerns of the British suggest, they’ve been replaced by new people who aren’t simply ideologically conservative but are increasingly focused on making sure that “events are orchestrated and information controlled with the American political agenda uppermost in mind.”

Let’s be frank: Any commentary on the politicization of the CPA is a delicate matter, since any Americans serving in Iraq today — whatever their political connections, their level of experience or their priorities — are clearly running grave risks by serving in what has become a war zone.

But with the situation in Iraq degenerating daily, we need more than just brave people running the American occupation.

We need the most qualified people and people who put the highest priority on a good long-term outcome for America and Iraq rather than making sure the news from Iraq helps the president’s reelection campaign.

There is a moral to the story: this is what happens when you don't have a functioning professional civil service. Yes, there are GSA schedule employees in Iraq, but most are appointees chosen more for partisan allegiance than professional skill, and Senor is the poster boy. Go take a look at the Information Office section on the CPA website. This is not the work of a public relations professional, this is the work of a propagandist, and not a very good one. A PR pro understands that you have to acknowledge bad things, even if you are going to spin them. Ignoring uncomfortable circumstances will usually get you killed by the press (of course, under the current peculiar operating circumstances, that situation no longer obtains.)

I've watched Senor taking questions at press gaggles from Baghdad over the last few days. The guy stinks. The way he talks about it, you'd think that the "hand over" of "sovereignty" on the 30th of June actually will mean something of substance to the Iraqi. As I demonstrated earlier today, it doesn't. It will mean substantial administrative changes, mostly for the US, but no real changes in power. (I hear John Negroponte, currently US Ambassador to the UN, is within hours or days of being handed the largest embassy in the world in Baghdad, which will also be the largest CIA station in the world. Funny, I thought we needed some of those folks in Afghanistan.)

In the opening of this column--I've given you the last half--Josh mentions that a big part of the Bush-Blair huddle next week is about Tony's concern about the politicization of the CPA (it's not called the Republican Palace for nothing.) What this means is that the blatantly Bush spin coming out of the CPA media shop is causing Blair problems at home, both with the public and within the Labour Party. He's not holding on by much these days and doesn't need additional trouble from Bush's spinmeisters. My prediction: he'll get told to suck it up.

Attention Deficit II

At his ranch near Crawford, Texas, President Bush held a 20-minute telephone conference call to discuss the fast-breaking events in Iraq with top Cabinet officials including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleeza Rice and Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bush "received an update about the offensive military action" in Fallujah and other parts of Iraq and was told that U.S. and coalition troops were "performing well," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

He said Bush, who is scheduled to stay at his ranch until Monday, would receive updates "as warranted."

Pentagon delays U.S. troops' trip home

By Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — A decision by the Pentagon to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is a reversal of its plan to steadily reduce the U.S. force level there.
....

With the 24,000 remaining and others who have arrived as intended replacements, there are 134,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

The senior official spoke to reporters at the Pentagon by phone from Central Command in Tampa. He gave the briefing on the condition that he not be identified.

Defense officials did not say how much beyond a year some troops would stay, but they discussed the deployment in the context of reducing the current violence in Iraq in the weeks leading up to June 30, when Iraqis will regain their sovereignty from the United States. The United States will maintain a military presence after Iraq resumes self-rule.

New Boss:Old Boss

My neighbor has some questions:

U.S. Role in Iraq: Definitions, Please

Wednesday, April 7, 2004; Page A30

Can anyone explain what "turning over the reins of government to the Iraqis" really means?

It appears that after the turnover, U.S. forces will remain at current levels in Iraq and that most of the additional forces from the coalition of the willing will also stay on. So what does amending the status of the military forces from occupying power to invited occupiers change?

If the new Iraqi government moves to take some action that we see as not in our interest, do we retain veto power? For example, if it favors an Iranian-style theocracy rather than democracy, do we have the authority to block that move?

If it orders the departure of all foreign occupying forces, can we refuse to go?

If it decides to split into three countries led by each majority -- Shiite, Sunni and Kurd -- how do we respond?

If it elects a majority Shiite government to the exclusion of the minorities, what can we do?

I hope that before June 30, we have the answers to these questions.

GERALD S. ROSE

Falls Church

Well, Mr. Rose, the answers are still confused, but the nut is that the changeover will be largely symbolic, with the US retaining control. Here are last week's answers:

US will tell Iraqi council to pick a PM

As transfer of power looms, Bush sets hopes on Shia technocrat, in third strategy shift in six months

Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Saturday March 27, 2004
The Guardian

The United States will transfer power in Iraq to a hand-picked prime minister, abandoning plans for an expansion of the current 25-member governing council, according to coalition officials in Baghdad.

With fewer than 100 days before the US occupation authorities are due to transfer sovereignty, fear of wrangling among Iraqi politicians has forced Washington to make its third switch of strategy in six months.

The search is now on for an Iraqi to serve as chief executive. He will almost certainly be from the Shia Muslim majority, and probably a secular technocrat.

As a practical matter, US operational control will be passed to General David Petraeus, currently commander of the 101st Airborne, and whoever emerges as ambassador out of the blood fued currently being waged between the State and Defense Departments. New puppet, same old shft.

Operation Ignore

Crisis? What crisis? is Bush message to voters
By Alec Russell in Washington
(Filed: 07/04/2004)

President George W Bush is throwing baseballs and focusing his speeches on love and jobs - almost anything but the turmoil in Iraq - as Washington insists that talk of a crisis is overblown.

But a new poll suggested that scepticism is growing over his Iraq policy, a reminder of the need for a sign of success there by the late summer when many voters are expected to make up their minds before November's presidential election.

Following last week's gruesome killing of four civilian security contractors in Fallujah, 53 per cent of people disapprove of Mr Bush's policy in Iraq, up from 37 per cent in January, according to the poll by the Pew Research Centre.

Crucially for the White House, backing for the decision to go to war has not changed. The poll concluded that 57 per cent think America was right to invade Iraq. But Mr Bush's job approval was down to 43 per cent, a low point of his presidency. It was about 56 per cent in January.

Mr Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney donned baseball shirts to deliver a clear message of: "Crisis? What crisis?"

Throwing a near-perfect pitch from the mound in a stadium in St Louis and brimming with his trademark homespun good cheer, Mr Bush formally opened the 2004 Major League season.

At the same time, Mr Cheney threw the first pitch in Cincinnati, where the local team was playing the highly favoured Chicago Cubs.

At Busch Stadium

A somewhat hostile crowd complained mightily about the problems the presidential motorcade caused with regular fans trying to get into the park. A Cards employee tipped moi that the team was so concerned about Bush being booed that they piped in fake applause when he strode out to the mound. Lamping flatly denied it.

Now What?

Spend a little time with this one.

In Iraq, Without Options

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, April 7, 2004; Page A31

So now the president's war of choice has led to an occupation with no good options.

The Bush administration's plan is to hand over control of Iraq to the Iraqi Governing Council on June 30. Just how that council will sustain itself in power, however, is increasingly unclear after the upheaval of the past few days. Its own police force, which the United States has spent time and treasure recruiting and training, all but collapsed during the uprising of Moqtada Sadr's Shiite militia.

In Kufa, Najaf and Baghdad's own Sadr City, the government's new cops handed over police cars and police stations to the militia without any reported resistance. In some instances, the cops actually joined forces with Sadr's militants.

So much for our thin blue line.

Within Iraq, there are thousands of current and potential gunmen willing to fight for their people and their creeds -- Kurdish automony, Sunni hegemony, Shiite control, an Islamic republic. But the force charged with defending a pluralistic, united Iraq just went AWOL under fire.

It's not that there aren't lots of Iraqis committed to a democratic, relatively nonsectarian nation. But that is just one faith among many in post-Hussein Iraq. And by keeping sole control of the occupation, the White House has ensured that the cause of pluralistic nationhood has become disastrously intermingled with support for the U.S. occupation.

That intermingling will only get worse after June 30. The provisional government will assume power knowing that its security will depend entirely on U.S. forces. That's not likely to work wonders for its popularity, its legitimacy or, well, its security.

In the events of the past week, Sadr has emerged as Iraq's version of Lenin at the Finland Station. In the months after the overthrow of the czar, the Russian left largely agreed to cooperate with the provisional government within an emerging parliamentary democracy. Until, that is, Lenin's sealed train pulled into Petrograd, and the once-exiled leader told his astounded followers that they would not work with the provisional government and that they would, in fact, work to overthrow it.

I'm not predicting that Sadr will succeed in evading U.S. forces and in time set up an Islamic republic as extreme as Lenin and Stalin's Soviet republic -- much as he may wish to. But, like Lenin, he has tapped into a popular sentiment that is far broader than the size of his own narrow legion might suggest. It's also clear that the civil authority that is supposed to take power June 30 will have few reliable domestic forces to defend it -- a situation remniscent of the one confronting Alexander Kerensky, the leader of the Russian provisional government who had no loyal forces at his disposal when the Bolsheviks seized power.

What the Iraqi provisional government will have is the Americans. It would be far better off if it had a force under the U.N. banner, with troops from nations that had opposed as well as supported the war, troops from Arab nations in particular.

But the time to have built such a force, I fear, has come and gone. The administration's utter failure to envision the problems that a U.S.-controlled occupation would encounter kept it from going to the United Nations until the situation on the ground was barely tenable. It's still worth trying to get a U.N. high commissioner to supplant Paul Bremer, but it grows harder to imagine why the U.N. would sign on at this late date.

In any event, the administration still shows scant desire to surrender its control of the growing chaos. Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's commissioner in Iraq, has just given up his post in reported frustration over his inability to affect any of Bremer's decisions. And rather than internationalize control, it's increasingly apparent that we've opted to privatize our force -- relying on private security guards to supplement our official force on the ground. The decision epitomizes much that's wrong with the Bush presidency -- in particular, its desire to evade responsibility and accountability for its actions. If the bodies of the security guards killed in Fallujah had not been mutilated, how many American voters would have noticed? One recent poll shows that near-plurality of Americans now favors our leaving Iraq. But precisely because this was not a war we had to fight, just up and leaving would be politically and morally duplicitous. We wrested control of Iraq when we did not have to, and leaving it to its own devices as sectarian violence grows worse would be a dismal end. The only unequivocally good policy option before the American people is to dump the president who got us into this mess, who had no trouble sending our young people to Iraq but who cannot steel himself to face the Sept. 11 commission alone.

Bush's war of choice has left him--and us--without a lot of choices. Except for the one in November which dumps the rest of the issues into the lap of someone we hope has a few better ideas.

Uh, John Kerry, we need to start hearing something more specific out of you than "turning it over to the UN."

For Holy Week and Passover

Reader Xan reminded me that I wanted to blog a bit about E.J. Dionne's OpEd in Tuesday morning's WaPo. Events overtook me and I didn't get to it until now. E.J. is my co-religionist and someone I usually like. This is re-printed under the ordinary standards of Fair Use.

'God Bless Atheism'

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, April 6, 2004; Page A21

On Monday, our family asked why this night was different from all other nights as we celebrated Passover at the home of Jewish friends.

There was nothing unusual in this. In Seders of their own, millions of Jews around the world did exactly the same thing. But we are not Jewish. We are Catholics who are celebrating Holy Week.

Our story might typically be used to tell a self-congratulatory American tale about the triumph of religious liberty and pluralism. But some serious believers, and also some principled atheists and agnostics, might view our evening differently.

I could imagine an orthodox believer -- Christian, Jewish or Muslim -- wondering how committed we really were to our own faith. I could imagine the atheist pointing to our shared celebration as evidence that religious faith is, for many, not a matter of genuine conviction but of sentiment, friendship and family ties.

There are easy replies to such skepticism, including the command shared across many traditions to love both God and neighbor. This implies -- does it not? -- a respect and, yes, a love for those who seek God in different ways.

But the orthodox believer and the atheist both have a point in challenging our facile answers. That's why, in this week of all weeks, I treasured the New Republic's ironic cover line: "God Bless Atheism." Inspired by the recent Supreme Court argument over the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, Leon Wieseltier, the magazine's literary editor, praises atheists for taking the question of God's existence so seriously that they force believers to do the same.

If the basis for religion "is not an intellectually supportable belief in the existence of God," Wieseltier writes, "then all the spiritual exaltation and all the political agitation in the world will avail it nothing against the skeptics and the doubters, and it really is just a beloved illusion." He goes on: "There is no greater insult to religion than to expel strictness of thought from it." Wieseltier makes clear by implication why it is easy for the nonbeliever to insist upon religious freedom and pluralism. Since the nonbeliever sees faith as an irrational "preference" among many other preferences, government has no business privileging one preference over another.

The believer's basis for supporting religious freedom will necessarily be more complicated because the believer, by definition, sees faith not as a "preference" but as truth.

The believer can certainly support religious freedom on pragmatic grounds. History has shown that the alternative is chaos, persecution, war and mass murder. But it is also possible for the believer to be intellectually rigorous and still acknowledge a debt to the Enlightenment, to the Age of Reason -- and, yes, to atheists.

All religious traditions interact with their times. Some reject the spirit of their times. Some are swallowed up. Most traditions survive by finding a balance between preserving their integrity and adjusting to new revelations.

The Enlightenment waged war on the imposition of religion through force, and many religious traditions (notably, after some struggle, my own Catholic Church) eventually adapted to the lessons it had to teach.

But the Jesuit theologian David Hollenbach puts an interesting twist on that adaptation. Religious liberty, he argues, must be rooted not merely in "tolerance" but in what he calls "intellectual solidarity."

Tolerance, he notes, is "a strategy of noninterference with the beliefs and lifestyles of those who are different or 'other.' " That is the classic Enlightenment view. Intellectual solidarity demands more, he says. It "entails engagement with the other . . . in the hope that understanding might replace incomprehension and that perhaps even agreement could result."

Those who subscribe to various faiths and to none agree to put their own understanding of things at risk, "to listen as well as to speak, to learn from what they hear, and, if necessary, to change as a result of what they have learned."

Those who believe they possess truth should not fear entering what Hollenbach calls "a community of freedom." Doing so is not a sign of intellectual fuzziness or a lack of faith. On the contrary, it means embracing the very "strictness of thought" that Wieseltier rightly demands of believers. It is only in dialogue with others that our faith is tested, our ideas made explicit, our errors corrected. And that is why I thank my friends who invited us to join in solidarity with them to recall the Exodus story and to reaffirm the quest for human freedom that it celebrates.

Tolerence is, at best, a very fuzzy virtue, existing just over the line from intolerence. It is, at most, a negation of intolerence. That's not a very positive worldview. Religiously serious people can and must encounter others of different faiths on the ground of seriousness, respect and a willingness to enter in to the reality of the other, not mere surface observance. We must enter into the reality of the others' experience if we want to understand it, and how we concur or differ. And we MUST do this if we want to understand who we are.

I'm glad this article was published today, because it gives me a natural way to invite you to explore a new website, or, rather, the update of an old webpresence and a more robust web community.

If you've been around here for a while, you know that I make common cause with a number of other religious progressives on the web. The links are over in the sidebar (desperately in need of updating, I know) under Deeper Connections. The Right Christians has been a part of my daily reads since Bump went up, and today Allen Brill opened the door to a new version of his community with new software and new potential. He's found a new software package which has a lot of the same features as Scoop, the program Daily Kos uses, but has even greater potential for community collaboration and interaction. It's very cool. It uses a log in system like Scoop which is free. Go take a look The Village Gate, which was the place for community conversation and consultation in a world gone by, and one we are creating again in our webspace. You can go and kick the tires but you have to log in to comment.

Just a Bump in the Beltway is about a lot of things, it is part of the web of religious progressives building this election seasib when there is so much at stake. Like Bump, The Village Gate--The Right Christians is hospitable to progressives of all faiths or none who are interested in conversation, mutual learning and help, from whatever their faith perspectives. We all have much to learn from and to teach each other.

If nothing else, go give Allen some props for taking this extremely complicated software project for its maiden voyage during the Christian Holy Week. Allen is Lutheran pastor, and Holy Week is about the busiest time of the year, so he is either crazy or inspired.

Drip, Drop, Splash

Uprising in Iraq could derail Bush

As US forces suffer another bloody day, Republicans turn on president

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday April 7, 2004
The Guardian

President George Bush was yesterday struggling to prevent the escalating violence in Iraq from engulfing his re-election campaign, after his worst political week this year triggered bipartisan calls for a rethink of US strategy there.

Fighting spread across the country as the US-led coalition fought a two-front war against Sunni rebels concentrated in the western town of Falluja and a radical Shia uprising in south and central Iraq.

Thirty American soldiers and 130 Iraqis have been killed since the weekend in Falluja, where heavy combat continued last night. Unconfirmed reports said US planes fired rockets yesterday, destroying four houses and killing 26 Iraqis.

US forces confirmed last night that up to 12 marines had been killed in Ramadi, 36 miles west of Falluja. Dozens of Iraqis attacked a US marine position near the governor's palace, a senior US defence official said from Washington.

In the southern town of Amara, British troops killed 15 Iraqis in clashes with followers of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and another 15 Iraqis died in fighting with Italian troops in Nassiriya. Bulgarian and Polish troops also suffered casualties.

Washington insisted yesterday that US commanders would have all the troops and resources they needed, and Mr Bush signalled once more that he was prepared to stake his presidency on defeating the insurgents. "There are thugs and terrorists in Iraq who are trying to shake our will," the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, told journalists. "And the president is firmly committed to showing resolve and strength ... They cannot shake our will."

However, with even Republicans warning of the imminent danger of a civil war in Iraq, and the administration's handling of the terrorist threat under increasing scrutiny, the president's image as a wartime leader is taking a battering.

The news that Tony Blair is flying to the US next week for consultations has only added to the sense of crisis.

The White House yesterday insisted that the visit to New York and Washington had been planned weeks ago, but conceded that much of the agenda would be consumed by Iraq.

Mr Blair will find a president who is increasingly nervous about his re-election.

Opinion polls show Mr Bush's approval ratings eroding, despite spending $40m (£22m) on campaign advertising in the past month. A survey by the Pew Research Centre found only 43% of Americans thought the president was doing a good job, down four points from last month and 13 points from January. The poll, taken before the disastrous weekend in Iraq, showed a majority of the population disapproved of the way Mr Bush had handled the situation there, and less than a third of those asked thought he had a clear plan.

Lousy headline: Borger quotes only Hagel and McCain.

My question: in the last graph, what on earth are those one third of voters who think Bush has a plan smoking?

Iraq

By now I'm sure you've heard that there have been multiple revolts, and there are firefights in progress in at least 7 cities in Iraq. The casualty situation is fluid, most American outlets are reporting 12 dead and 20 wounded so far. Hard numbers are going to be hard to find in the chaos, and it will be hours or days before we have a sense of what has happened and how many casualties have been taken on all sides. If the number of coalition troops is large, expect that number to be very hard to find.

The situation is both tragic and unnecessary. But what really has me doing a very fast burn is the fact that Bush is "on vacation" in Crawford, for the upcoming holiday, I suppose. We've a full-fledged military crisis and Bush can't consider staying in Washington, even for appearances sake. My blood pressure is through the roof, I've got to take a break.

Ignorant, Childish Towelheads

Wanna know why the situation in Iraq is going so desperately wrong? Of course there is more than one answer to that question, but I found one of them in the Letters to the Editor of todays Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Stop assaulting new government

Recent shrilly written letters pathetically analyzed the closing of an Iraqi newspaper as a supposed -- and perhaps even conspiratorial -- governmental intrusion on free speech. It is anything but.

Just as children cannot handle many of the same drugs that prove therapeutic for identical diseases in adults, a nascent democracy cannot withstand the same tribulations that a 226-year-old democracy can. Al-Hawza was nothing more than a mouthpiece for a Shiite cleric who is openly hostile to the establishment of a democratic state and wants an Iranian-like theocracy.

We cannot allow to go unchecked this hatred-spewing assault on the blossoming Iraqi democracy, just as we cannot blindly administer adult medicines to our children. Otherwise, we risk killing both.

Democracy may or may not be nascent in Iraq, but infantalizing the Iraqi people themselves is one of the things that fuels the anger and empowers people like Moqtada al-Sadr. For Proconsul Bremer to shut down al-Sadr's little broadside is to say that the Iraqi people are incapable of judging for themselves the truth or falsity of the things they read. When Bush is campaigning on "the benefits of freedom" while denying them to the Iraqis, who are watching American TV on their satellite dishes, ya think we might have a little propaganda problem.

The sender of this letter, whose name I omitted for his own protection, obviously knows nothing about the early days of his own country, when broadsheets like Al Hawsa printed all kinds of hateful or mendacious things. They competed with each other to say the most outrageous things. They are doing it to this day. The republic may, in fact, not survive the distortions of the New York Times, but I'm pretty sure that the Globe ain't going to bring her down.

Parts of Speech

Bush Hits the Pavement Again and Again . . .

President Bush seems to have developed a powerful obsession with asphalt. Wherever and whenever the president sees a mayor, he blurts out one word: "potholes."

Bush has employed this word association about 30 times in speeches, when he introduces the local mayor. In Appleton, Wis., last week, he advised Mayor Tim Hanna: "Fill the potholes and empty the garbage. All will be well." Three weeks earlier it was Harvey Hall, mayor of Bakersfield, Calif., who received the same advice. Bush has given similar instructions to the mayors of St. Petersburg, Seminole and Clearwater, Fla.; Springfield, Mo.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Roswell, N.M.; Little Rock; Pasco, Wash.; Santa Monica, Calif.; and Livonia and Dearborn, Mich. Noting that Mayor Al Cappuccilli of Monroe, Mich., received loud applause, Bush observed: "You must be filling the potholes, picking up the garbage; that's the way to go."

No city executive has endured the pothole joke more often than Washington's own Mayor Anthony A. Williams. Bush first singled out Williams in the Rose Garden in April 2001, noting to laughter: "There's a couple of potholes out back that I'd like to talk to you about."

Bush delivered the same joke at Williams's expense in May, June and July.

This is a strange little story and I know exactly why Dana Millbank wrote it. Unlike normal people (that would be you) reporters and bloggers are forced to listen to W and his eight grade oratory on a constant basis (I have CNN on behind me all day long to listen to the way the lowest common denominator media are playing the day's stories as they develop) so I've been treated to a steady diet. I can only imagine that Millbank, like me, is ready to start throwing shoes at Bush's verbal tics. It doesn't seem like the guy can develop more than one talking point per month and he repeats them ad nauseum.

Just had to get that off my chest.

Be Prepared

Report: Major blackout could have been prevented

By Edward Iwata
USA TODAY

The vast blackout that left tens of millions of people without power last summer could have been contained with stronger emergency actions and tougher regulation, energy investigators said Monday.

The nation's largest-ever power outage, which cost the economy up to $10 billion, forced Congress and regulators to look hard at what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.

Legislation to overhaul the industry is stalled. But U.S. and Canadian energy regulators released a 220-page investigative report Monday that offers a potential strategy. It proposes:

* Creation of an independent, international overseer that could fine utilities and be funded with industry fees.

* Stronger emergency planning and control room procedures by electric utilities.

U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the report ''makes clear that this blackout could have been prevented.''

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, urged passage of Senate legislation that he says would provide more investment dollars and technology for the power grid.

For decades, the industry followed what critics call weak, voluntary guidelines by the North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group. Monday's report says the council is an inadequate overseer, and it scolds an Ohio utility, FirstEnergy, for touching off the blackout that spread from the Midwest to the Northeast and Canada.

Since it appears that we are sitting on a disaster waiting to repeat itself, anybody want to hazard a guess about why this legislation is "stalled?"

Things to do to prepare for the next one:

--$100 cash stashed somewhere around the house 'cuz the ATMs won't work
--Refill the gas tank at the half-full point from now on, 'cuz the pumps won't work
--Keep a couple of spare gallons of distilled water stashed someplace; the muni pumps may be down
--Clean out the fridge NOW
--Spare batteries, flashlights, candles

It's like always being prepared for a major storm.

The Palace Militia

Private Guards Repel Attack on U.S. Headquarters

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 6, 2004; Page A01

An attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia members on the U.S. government's headquarters in Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a private security firm, according to sources familiar with the incident.

Before U.S. reinforcements could arrive, the firm, Blackwater Security Consulting, sent in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine, the sources said.

The role of Blackwater's commandos in Sunday's fighting in Najaf illuminates the gray zone between their formal role as bodyguards and the realities of operating in an active war zone. Thousands of armed private security contractors are operating in Iraq in a wide variety of missions and exchanging fire with Iraqis every day, according to informal after-action reports from several companies.

In Sunday's fighting, Shiite militia forces barraged the Blackwater commandos, four MPs and a Marine gunner with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 fire for hours before U.S. Special Forces troops arrived. A sniper on a nearby roof apparently wounded three men. U.S. troops faced heavy fighting in several Iraqi cities that day.

The Blackwater commandos, most of whom are former Special Forces troops, are on contract to provide security for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Najaf.

With their ammunition nearly gone, a wounded and badly bleeding Marine on the rooftop, and no reinforcement by the U.S. military in the immediate offing, the company sent in helicopters to drop ammunition and pick up the Marine.

So, we have a private militia with its own helicopters and support lines. The private militia, which answers only to its corporate HQ, not to any Constitutional chain of command, is guarding the US HQ in Baghdad and Najaf. Does the expression Praetorian Guard begin to resonate for you here?

If this doesn't send chills up your spine, you haven't spent any time with the US Constitution lately. I recommend that you re-read Article I, Section 8, Clauses 12-15 regarding civilian, not corporate, control of the military.

If you are not willing to raise hell about this, you have lost the ability to raise hell.

I Hate To Say It, But....

Generals in Iraq Consider Options for More Troops
By DAVID E. SANGER and DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: April 6, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 5 — American commanders in Iraq are developing contingency plans to send more American forces to the country if the situation worsens, and administration officials said Monday that the new surge of violence by Shiites represented a worrying challenge to their plans to turn over power in less than 90 days.

President Bush, speaking in Charlotte, N.C., said he intended to stick to the June 30 date for giving control of the country to an interim Iraqi government, even as he conceded that the new government's structure had not been settled. He vowed that the violence — which he said was being instigated by Moktada al-Sadr, a young Shiite cleric — would be put down, saying, "We just can't let it stand."

Mr. Bush appeared eager on Monday to dispel any thought that the new wave of attacks on American forces, in which Shiites as well as Sunnis have now joined, would shake his resolve. "If they think that we're not sincere about staying the course, many people will not continue to take a risk toward — take the risk toward freedom and democracy," he told reporters.

The weekend of violence — which included the deaths of eight American soldiers in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City — did not appear to touch off crisis meetings in Washington. The president was campaigning and throwing out the first pitch at an opening-day game in St. Louis. His national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was preparing for testimony on Thursday before the commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks. One of her chief advisers on Iraq strategy was in Baghdad. One official said there were "many conference calls, but no big decisions."

British officials said Monday, though, that Prime Minister Tony Blair was expected to meet with Mr. Bush in Washington next week and that the meeting was expected to be dominated by concerns over Iraq.

Pentagon delays U.S. troops' trip home

By Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — A decision by the Pentagon to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is a reversal of its plan to steadily reduce the U.S. force level there.

Since the war began a year ago, senior military leaders have given frequent assurances to troops and their families that Iraq duty would be no longer than a year.

Now, those assurances have met the reality of Iraq, where military leaders are planning for the possibility that anti-U.S. violence will spread. U.S. troops are stretched thin around the world, and the Pentagon has few options to increase the force in Iraq if necessary.

On Monday, a senior official with U.S. Central Command said that the return home of about 24,000 U.S. troops who were scheduled to leave in the next few weeks would be delayed as their replacements arrive. Central Command's responsibility includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With the 24,000 remaining and others who have arrived as intended replacements, there are 134,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

The senior official spoke to reporters at the Pentagon by phone from Central Command in Tampa. He gave the briefing on the condition that he not be identified.

Defense officials did not say how much beyond a year some troops would stay, but they discussed the deployment in the context of reducing the current violence in Iraq in the weeks leading up to June 30, when Iraqis will regain their sovereignty from the United States. The United States will maintain a military presence after Iraq resumes self-rule.

At an emergency meeting Monday, Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command, and other senior generals ordered a list of options on troop levels after an escalation of violence over the weekend.

Besides the extended deployment, they are studying which U.S. troops at bases around the world could be readied for a quick move to Iraq in an emergency, the senior defense official said. None of the units being considered for emergency duty in Iraq are in the USA now, he said.

The official said that the Pentagon doesn't believe additional U.S. forces would be needed and that the latest violence is not the beginning of a civil war in Iraq.

The Army's 4th Infantry, 101st Airborne, 1st Armored, 82nd Airborne division and 173rd Airborne Brigade have units in Iraq that have been scheduled to leave by May. Most have been there for a year.

Delphi Speaks

Billmon nails some pretty important ideas:

Ordinarily, I'd be pleased and excited about the results of the latest Pew poll, which shows a sharp drop in Bush's approval rating over the past couple of weeks (It's now negative -- 43% approve, 47% disapprove, and even worse on specific issues like the economy, energy and Iraq).

Again, I probably should be happy that most of my fellow Americans care so little about basic issues of morality and civil rights -- considering how backwards their views on such issues tend to be. But the picture of the average American voter that you get from these news items isn't very flattering. He, or she, appears to be not much more than a giant butt with a pair of eyeballs and some car keys attached to it.

And then I find Josh Marshall's citation of The Nelson Report tonight at Atrios:

Gloom...has been building over Iraq. Increasingly, the Wise Heads are forecasting disaster. Wise Heads say they see no realistic plan, hear no serious concept to get ahead of the situation. Money, training, jobs...all lagging, all reinforce downward spiral highlighted by sickening violence. There seems to be no real "if", just when, and how badly it will hurt U.S. interests. Define "disaster"? Consensus prediction: if Bush insists on June 30/July 1 turnover, a rapid descent into civil war. May happen anyway, if the young al-Sadr faction really breaks off from its parents. CSIS Anthony Cordesman's latest blast at Administration ineptitude says in public what Senior Observers say in private...the situation may still be salvaged, but then you have to factor in Sharon's increasing desperation, and the regional impact.

Note: "quagmire"...when you are in a bad situation you created yourself, and would quit in a minute if you could, but which if you did, it would make everything else worse. So you can't...and it gets worse anyway. (Apologies to Bierce...)

1. Comes word from Very Senior Foreign Policy Observers that the situation now unfolding in Iraq is "a qualitative change of very profound significance. The chances of something like a general breakdown after the July 1 transfer is accelerating." The Observation continues: "Even if [dissident cleric Muqtada] al-Sadr is arrested, the whole question is whether the Shi'ia majority is comfortable with continued U.S. occupation." The suggested answer seems to be "no".

-- the Observer goes on to warn that, on the basis of personal soundings within the Administration, the conviction arises that the White House has "no concept of how to manage the crisis, no plan in place likely to work." This Observer last week relayed a concern that President Bush was not being given accurate reports from Iraq, but today, one assumes that even a President who prides himself on not reading the newspapers now grasps that things are not necessarily proceeding to our advantage, to borrow an historic phrase.

So, the ruling class suffers from the same diseases as the drones.

I'm shocked by the complacency of both the rulers and the ruled. Choices are about sacrifice. In order to get one thing, you usually have to give something else up. Both the rulers and the ruled have been acting like you could have it all and it would cost you nothing, and this is certainly the assumption which is driving the debt bubble which is the only thing propping up our rapidly rotting economy right now, which has about 3-4 month to run, I think. The fall from this illusion is going to be a hard one.

I'm a trend-spotter, not a Sybil, but here is how it looks from here tonight:

We aren't in a recovery, we are in a temporary bubble which is going to make the trainwreck of 2001 look like a blip when the bills come due. Iraq is spinning out of control, and the combination of ruinous spending on the war, a collapsing economy and a military catastrophe is going to mean that whoever inherits the White House is going to be handed "the Trifecta" of catastrophe. I hope Kerry is up to it and understands that it is quite possible that this is what he is walking into. He is going to need the Mother of All Cabinet, and the best financiers the world has to help him get out of the mess that Shrub will hand off.

I'm mindful of the fact that, in 1972 the trainwreck was already pretty obvious and Nixon was re-elected anyway. It could happen again, and I fear for the republic if it does, but tonight 04-05-04 the events of this week and the coming months which appear to be reasonable anticipated should turn the "undecided" voters. The trainwreck is going to be obvious this year. Given Billmon's cautions above, they are going to have to be nearly drawn in black and white on the foreheads of every citizen before they will get noticed.

From the Left Coast

Gropinator has some thoughts on libel charges filed against, well, Governor Gropinator, for libel in England:

Ooops, He Did it Again

Maybe Tony Blair's Britain can redeem itself after all. Now if we can just work on Crawford on the Potomac.

An Important Distinction

FromBill Moyer's NOW last week:

BILL MOYERS: If Condoleezza Rice asked you to help her prepare for that testimony, what advice would you give her?

JOHN DEAN: Well, I'd say give lots of opinions. Because opinions aren't perjurious.

BILL MOYERS: They're not?

JOHN DEAN: No. They're not.

BILL MOYERS: Perjurious meaning?

JOHN DEAN: You're convicted of perjury for a false statement.

BILL MOYERS: Give me an example.

JOHN DEAN: Well, I'll give you an example with Clarke. Clarke has said that he can't believe that Bush is running on his record of terrorism. That's pure opinion. You can't be convicted for perjury on offering an opinion like that.

I Need Some Good News

Public Support for War Steady, But Bush Job Ratings Slip
After Falluja

Public support for war in Iraq has been unaffected by the murders and desecration of the corpses of American citizens in Falluja. However, continued turmoil and violence in Iraq may be taking a toll on President Bush's approval ratings. More Americans now disapprove of the way he is doing his job than approve, though by only a slight margin (47% disapprove vs. 43% approve). Just four-in-ten approve of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, his lowest rating ever and down from 59% in January. Bush's evaluations on other issues – the economy, energy and even terrorism – have fallen as well. And by a wide margin (57% to 32%) the public does not think he has a clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq to a successful conclusion.

Support Drops for New Medicare Law
Few Americans believe it will help seniors or financial security of Medicare

Support has declined among all age groups, but the change is particularly significant among seniors -- people aged 65 and older -- who are the principal beneficiaries of the new law. Last December, seniors favored the new law by 46% to 39%, but now they oppose it by 48% to 36%.

Cuban American support for President Bush falls

By Rafael Lorente | South Florida Sun-Sentinel

WASHINGTON -- Six in 10 Cuban-American voters say they are likely to vote for President Bush in November, a substantial drop from the votes he received in 2000 and a possible reflection of long-simmering tensions between exiles and a White House that some in the Cuban-American community feel has fallen short of its tough anti-Fidel Castro rhetoric.

Bush is estimated to have garnered about 80 percent of the Cuban-American vote in the 2000 election, in large part the result of anger over the Clinton administration's return to Cuba of Elian Gonzalez, the boy rescued from a boat in which he and his mother and others were trying to reach the United States. His mother died.

Bush Aids Terrorism

This is the price we are all paying for Bush dropping the ball on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan:

A changing Qaeda seen on 5 continents

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff, 4/5/2004

WASHINGTON - Foiled attacks last week by suspected followers of Osama bin Laden in Britain and the Philippines and a deadly string of bombings in Uzbekistan demonstrate that the Al Qaeda terrorist network has grown larger and looser, making it far more difficult to track than when bin Laden sat at the head of an army of terrorists, US intelligence officials say.

Al Qaeda has morphed into splinter groups on at least five continents, the officials said. Penetrating the new network will be more difficult than unraveling the old network, which took half a decade and at least four deadly attacks, according to a new report from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a bipartisan group investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"The Al Qaeda of today is different from the Al Qaeda of 2001,'' Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and a member of a House subcommittee on terrorism, said last week.

"Like a virus, Al Qaeda has evolved and adapted to the US-led war against it,'' Schiff added. "We may have made remarkable inroads in destroying the Al Qaeda of 2001, [but] are we making progress against the Al Qaeda of 2004?''

New revelations from the 9/11 commission show just how little the United States knew about Al Qaeda before the 2001 attacks: Between 1992 and 1997, bin Laden's network assassinated a rabbi in New York, exploded a truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center, trained guerrillas in Somalia to kill US soldiers, and attacked a US military barracks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

and this is the price we are paying for Bush's friendship with the House of Saud:

Newsweek: Saudi Money Tied to Radical Clerics

New York -- A federal investigation into the bank accounts of the Saudi Embassy in Washington has identified more than $27 million in "suspicious" transactions -- including hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Muslim charities, and to clerics and Saudi students who are being scrutinized for possible links to terrorist activity, according to government documents obtained by Newsweek.

The probe also has uncovered large wire transfers overseas by the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The transactions recently prompted the Saudi Embassy's longtime bank, the Riggs Bank of Washington, D.C., to drop the Saudis as a client after embassy officials were "unable to provide an explanation that was satisfying," says a source familiar with the discussions.

A Saudi spokesman strongly denied that any embassy funds were used to support terrorism and said Bandar chose to pull the embassy's accounts out of Riggs.

The Saudis point out that an earlier FBI probe into embassy funds that were moved to alleged associates of the 9/11 hijackers has not led to any charges. The current probe, by the FBI and Treasury Department, is one of the most sensitive financial inquiries now being conducted by the government and is being closely monitored by the White House.

Bush is the best friend the worldwide terrorist network ever had.

Viet Nam Redux

Great, just what we need: another generation of vets returning home with drug problems. More from the Sy Hersh interview:

(Amy Davidson) One of the most disturbing parts of your piece has to do with drugs. What’s happened to the heroin business in Afghanistan?

I’ve been told for more than a year that there were problems of heroin use, in particular among the rear-echelon soldiers in Afghanistan, and that it was a problem that was simply being buried by the leadership. In my reporting, I was also told that there had been a problem with some of the Marines. And the Pentagon, when they were asked for comment, acknowledged that there had been problems with some U.S. military personnel for suspected use, though in the case of the Marines, at least, they said that it was marijuana, not heroin. A lot of hashish is also produced in Afghanistan.

The problem with the Bushiviki is that they believe their own bullshft. This is classic Narcissistic Personality Disorder behavior, by the way.

*NB--Saying you are going to "do something about it" and actually coming up with and implementing a plan that "does something about it" are two very different things. Rummy has been very good at the former, it's the follow-through where he has, erm, a performance problem.

Bush's Attention Deficit

Sy Hersh has another big, investigative piece in the new New Yorker this week. Amy Davidson interviews him for the online edition.

Bush’s Afghanistan Problem
Posted 2004-04-05

AMY DAVIDSON: In your piece in the magazine this week, you write that there’s a gap between the portrayal of the war in Afghanistan and the reality. How so?

What I’ve heard is simply this. The Administration, faced with a problem in Iraq that isn’t going to go away and is not going to get better, determined last year that we would finally begin to spend some of the money that should have been spent right away in Afghanistan, and we’ve committed $2.2 billion for the coming year, and we’ll probably pledge a little more next year. This is seen as an effort to make the best case for the success of Bush’s policy of preëmptive war. And as part of that, there is tremendous pressure to ensure that the Presidential elections in Afghanistan, which were scheduled for June of this year but are now scheduled for September, will take place, along with parliamentary elections. The idea is that the White House will be able to say, “Look, we can make democracy, we took, we went to Afghanistan, we’ve got the war, and it’s now a democratic country; it’ll happen in Iraq, too.” I just don’t know if it’s possible.

More on this later today, after I've had a chance to read through Hersh's article. In the interview, above, Hersh also says that the Iraq war has become extremely unpopular within the military. He says, "I think that for the longest time, the morale, certainly among the officers, stayed high, because it was a chance to do what they do, which is wage war—run a battalion, run a company, demonstrate coolness under fire, and get promoted. But things have gotten very much out of control. For instance, there’s a whole new wave of soldiers in Iraq. There is a lot of shooting, and a lot of uncertainty about the targets. I don’t think that you can entirely separate the anger at American soldiers that the public is increasingly displaying—Fallujah’s an extreme example, but it’s also present elsewhere—from the way we operate, with massive displays of force. Look, there’s a lot more talking going on than people know. This is not a popular war, not among the soldiers—which is a separate issue from whether they’re doing their job—and not among the senior officers."

That sounds to me like the late stages of Viet Nam.

Beyond Spin

So Much for Spinning the Positive

By Al Kamen

Monday, April 5, 2004; Page A15

The Bush administration has been fuming for many months that the media keep getting things wrong about Iraq, that reporters just refuse to cover the really great things going on over there. So back in the fall, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asked his Cabinet pals to help out.

There is all sorts of progress in Iraq, he wrote, thanks to many people, "including some of your staff members. . . . Unfortunately, the American people don't know much about the progress being made -- because the media has focused on the difficulty and challenges, not the successes."

He enclosed a six-page memo with suggestions for each Cabinet member who would be "taking along their respective press corps, who may be less jaded, and more open to good news, than those who regularly cover Iraq."

For Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, we find:

"MESSAGE: Crime is down in Baghdad and other cities. . . . Iraqi courts are operating again. . . . More than 30,000 Iraqi police are trained, armed and are conducting joint patrols with Coalition forces.

"EVENTS:

• Watch a police training session. . . .

• Go on a joint patrol (in a permissive neighborhood) with Iraqi police. . . .

"PRESS CORPS INVITED: Justice/legal correspondents of major news organizations."

And so it went for each agency. A LexisNexis search by our colleague Lucy Shackelford shows that since late September, five of the 12 members invited have been to Iraq: Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson.

It is not clear whether they took their own press corps. Some, such as Mineta, did not get much coverage. Others, such as Veneman and Chao, received excellent press. Sometimes the coverage was a mix of good news and bad news.

For example, Evans told reporters on a visit to Iraq Oct. 14 that his own presence showed Iraq is safe. "But just moments before," the Associated Press reported, "U.S. soldiers delivered the bad news: They'd found a roadside bomb on the route. The bus would be diverted."

Some Cabinet types could improve their skill in staying on message. For example, Thompson, who has demonstrated a willingness to travel overseas regularly if that is what it takes to improve the health of all Americans, visited in February.

He toured a Baghdad hospital, as Rumsfeld's missive suggested, but it was filthy. "If they just washed their hands and cleaned the crap off the walls," Associated Press reporter Mark Sherman quoted him as saying, things would improve.

"No one bothered to mop up a puddle near one girl's bed when Thompson walked through the cancer ward Sunday," the story continued. "Two decades of war and international sanctions have rendered Iraqi hospitals decrepit and doctors woefully behind the times in terms of training. Looting after the U.S.-led invasion stripped many hospitals and clinics bare."

Oh, well.

Beyond irony, beyond parody, beyond satire.

Everything Old Is New Again

Juan Cole's round up from the Arabic press:

Monday, April 05, 2004

Muqtada Under Siege, US Helicopters Patrol Skies above East Baghdad

It will now be seen if "Sistani's calls for calm" trump young Badr's call to hit the streets with weapons. I don't know how this will end.

Kleptocracy

Nathan Newman made the catch.

Why Your Tax Cut Doesn't Add Up
Behind the promises to save you money, a hidden agenda is at work, with a stealth tax to pay for it all

By Allan Sloan
Newsweek

April 12 issue - Tax time isn't fun, unless you're an accountant keeping a running tab of how much you're billing clients as April 15 nears. But this year tax season's even more distressing than usual. You've been looking forward to cashing in your share of the $3 trillion or so in tax cuts President George W. Bush has pushed through in the past few years, those "real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans'' he's promised (most people consider themselves middle-income these days). But who can figure out this stuff? Even accountants now get Excedrin headaches from an ever-more-complex set of rules: financial publisher CCH says its Standard Federal Tax Reporter, the tax-biz bible, has grown by a third in the past three years, to more than 60,000 pages.
....
If Bush gets what he wants, the income tax will become a misnomer—it will really be a salary tax. Almost all income taxes would come from paychecks—80 percent of income for most families, less than half for the top 1 percent. Meanwhile taxpayers receiving dividends, interest and capital gains, known collectively as investment income, would have a much lighter burden than salary earners—or maybe none at all. And here's the topper. In the name of preserving family farms and keeping small businesses in the family, Bush would eliminate the estate tax and create a new class of landed aristocrats who could inherit billions tax-free, invest the money, watch it compound tax-free and hand it down tax-free to their heirs.

By drastically favoring investment income over salary, fees and other "earned income," Bush would make it harder for people who start out with nothing to earn their way up the economic ladder, because they'd pay full taxes on almost everything they make, but he'd shower rewards on people who have already made it to the top rungs.

As Nathan put it, this is nothing short of class warfare, which will allow for an even greater disparity between the working stiff, which is what all of us without a trust fund will be, and a legislated class of landed gentry, able to roll all of their funds over to their heirs, compounded over decades by investments.

All of the rhetoric coming out of the Right is mirrors and blue smoke on taxes. This the one, big, honking reason that poor to middle class southern whites are voting massively against their own economic interests when they vote for these kleptocrats.

You know, I look at the stuff I've put up on this front page today and I almost can't believe it. As a theologian and just an ordinary person, I've always thought that "evil" was a word I wouldn't need to use very often, but we are now seeing a scale of evil which boggles my mind. And it isn't like they are even trying to hide it: Sloan's reporting on this issue is something that anyone with a little experience in tax policy could figure out easily. I had it figured out after the first tax cut, and I'm not particularly comfortable with numbers.

I was talking with a friend by phone last night--she's a regular reader--and she asked if reading this stuff constantly doesn't get to me. Most of the time it doesn't. But today I feel a little overwhelmed by it.

Use The Big Lie

This explains a lot. Thanks to Juan Cole for the catch.

AP: Bush Loyalists Pack Iraq Press Office

Sunday April 4, 2004 6:46 PM

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Inside the marble-floored palace hall that serves as the press office of the U.S.-led coalition, Republican Party operatives lead a team of Americans who promote mostly good news about Iraq.

Dan Senor, a former press secretary for Spencer Abraham, the Michigan Republican who's now Energy Secretary, heads the office packed with former Bush campaign workers, political appointees and ex-Capitol Hill staffers.

One-third of the U.S. civilian workers in the press office have GOP ties, running an enterprise that critics see as an outpost of Bush's re-election effort with Iraq a top concern. Senor and others inside the coalition say they follow strict guidelines that steer clear of politics.

One of the main goals of the Office of Strategic Communications - known as stratcom - is to ensure Americans see the positive side of the Bush administration's invasion, occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, where 600 U.S. soldiers have died and a deadly insurgency thrives.

``Beautification Plan for Baghdad Ready to Begin,'' one press release in late March said in its headline. Another statement last month cautioned, ``The Reality is Nothing Like What You See on Television.''

Senor, spokesman for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, said his office is guided by ethical ``red lines'' that prevent it from crossing into the Bush campaign.

``We have an obligation to communicate with the U.S. Congress and the American people, given that they're spending almost $20 billion in Iraq and have committed over 100,000 U.S. troops here,'' Senor said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Earlier in his career, after Hebrew University and Harvard Business School, Senor was with the Carlyle Group, an investment firm with Bush family ties and big defense industry holdings. Senor jogged in a Thanksgiving Day race here wearing a ``Bush-Cheney 2004'' T-shirt.

Known as the Green Room, the press office is inside coalition headquarters in the Republican Palace that used to belong to Saddam Hussein. The palace is in central Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

The CPA Information Office is the Baghdad Branch office of the Bush-Cheney Re-eelect. That explains why the propaganda coming out of it is so much at odds with the first hand reports we get from bloggers and foreign reporters.

Not Safer, On So Many Levels

Changing All the Rules
By BRUCE BARCOTT

Published: April 4, 2004

President Bush doesn't talk about new-source review very often. In fact, he has mentioned it in a speech to the public only once, in remarks he delivered on Sept. 15, 2003, to a cheering crowd of power-plant workers and executives in Monroe, Mich., about 35 miles south of Detroit. It was an ideal audience for his chosen subject. New-source review, or N.S.R., involves an obscure and complex set of environmental rules and regulations that most Americans have never heard of, but to people who work in the power industry, few subjects are more crucial.

The Monroe plant, which is operated by Detroit Edison, is one of the nation's top polluters. Its coal-fired generators emit more mercury, a toxic chemical, than any other power plant in the state. Until recently, power plants like the one in Monroe were governed by N.S.R. regulations, which required the plant's owners to install new pollution-control devices if they made any significant improvements to the plant. Those regulations now exist in name only; they were effectively eliminated by a series of rule changes that the Bush administration made out of the public eye in 2002 and 2003. What the president was celebrating in Monroe was the effective end of new-source review.
....
Having long flouted the new-source review law, many of the nation's biggest power companies were facing, in the last months of the 1990's, an expensive day of reckoning. E.P.A. investigators had caught them breaking the law. To make amends, the power companies were on the verge of signing agreements to clean up their plants, which would have delivered one of the greatest advances in clean air in the nation's history. Then George W. Bush took office, and everything changed.

This is a long, frightening and important article. It is also the kind of investigative journalism that we haven't seen out of the Gray Lady in a long time.

The Most Segregated Hour

I'm putting this article up, not because it is good, but because coverage of this issue in the secular media is rare.

Minority Pastors Preach Diversity
Clergy of Color Help Expand Horizons of White Churches

By Phuong Ly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 4, 2004; Page A01

On Faith appears the first Sunday of each month.

Whenever he closed his eyes and listened, the Rev. Gerard A. Green Jr. was reminded that he was a black pastor leading a predominantly white church.

No one said "Amen" aloud during the sermons. The choir sang without clapping. And after the services, there were whispers among the parishioners of Epworth United Methodist Church in Gaithersburg: Why did their new pastor need to raise his voice and gesture to make his points?

Racial diversity is still a struggling novelty in most houses of God. Just 8 percent of Christian churches in the United States are multiracial, defined as one ethnic group making up no more than 80 percent of the membership, according to a 2002 study.
....
The Rev. William C. Teng, moderator of the National Capital Presbytery, said he thinks more congregations are willing to try cross-racial appointments. Three years ago , Teng, a Chinese American, became the first nonwhite pastor at Heritage Presbyterian Church, a nearly all-white congregation in Fairfax County's Alexandria area.

The 250-member church has parishioners who work in international business and the military and are used to being with people of diverse backgrounds, Teng said. These days, "most people are much more mindful that they need to be more inclusive," he said.

But some academic experts say the biggest danger in cross-racial appointments is that they will fail so badly that a backlash against diversity may result. Many appointments have not been successful. At United Methodist forums on race, pastors have expressed loneliness and frustration.

The Rev. Dellyne "Dell" Hinton, an African American pastor who has spent the past seven years in predominantly white churches, compares the work to being a missionary. At a church in Harford County, Md., a parishioner who phoned to request a clergy visit used a racial slur, Hinton said.

Hinton said there were some successes. She and the parishioners learned about each others' different worship styles -- she learned to keep her sermons under 20 minutes; they responded to her preaching with more body movement and expression.

Still, the two churches that she has served as associate pastor have remained largely white. She said she is the only person of color most of her parishioners know. "This has been a long and difficult journey, and I'm tired," said Hinton, an associate pastor at Catonsville United Methodist Church.

At Epworth church in Gaithersburg, where the appointment of Green appears to have led to a more open and multicultural congregation, parishioners are starting to wonder whether the changes will survive when he eventually moves to another church. Terry Utterback, a district lay leader who has attended Epworth for 25 years, said that the changes in the church have been dramatic but that more work needs to be done. Participation in most social activities and committees is still overwhelmingly white.

Attendance at the worship service has gone from about 95 percent white to about 70 percent white. Many of the new members who are Indian, African and African American decided to come back for a second look after seeing a minority pastor.

"It's not something that happened overnight," Utterback said. "We are so pleased with the way it is now that we don't want it to go back to the way it was. To us that's not acceptable. But we'll just have to wait and see."

On a recent Sunday, Green baptized four young children. At the end of the service, the children's relatives surrounded them, snapping pictures. Green, the only nonwhite on the stage, excused himself and ran to a back room.

He grabbed his camera so he could take his own photos of the moment. They were his family, too.

Let me offer a little context here. I'm not an expert on race, but I am something of an expert on the clergy, who have been my special study for nearly a decade.

The men and women who take up these cross-racial pastorates are heros. I don't know that most parishioners understand this, but congregational ordained ministry is one of the most difficult and lonely jobs there is, under the best of circumstances. This is true even when the pastor and the congregation look like each other. To attempt this across the line of race requires extraordinary personal resources, courage and patience.

The caution that the author offers, that the greatest danger is of failure, is on point, and because of the inherent loneliness and difficulty of the job, the stakes are very high. My concern here is for the lives of both the parishioners and the clergy, because the denominational judicatories themselves will have to offer extra resources to these congregations and pastors, and I know that the resources just aren't there. That is something the article doesn't tell you.

Talking Back

Framework of Clarke's Book Is Bolstered

By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 4, 2004; Page A01

When Condoleezza Rice appears Thursday before the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush's national security adviser will have the administration's best opportunity to rebut her former aide's stinging critique of Bush's terrorism policy.

Since former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke charged March 24 that the Bush White House reacted slowly to warnings of a terrorist attack, his former colleagues have poked holes in parts of his narration of the early months of 2001 and have found what they say is evidence that Clarke elevated his own importance in those events.

The most sweeping challenge to Clarke's account has come from two Bush allies, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Fred F. Fielding, a member of the investigative panel. They have suggested that sworn testimony Clarke gave in 2002 to a joint congressional committee that probed intelligence failures was at odds with his sworn testimony last month. Frist said Clarke may have "lied under oath to the United States Congress."

But the broad outline of Clarke's criticism has been corroborated by a number of other former officials, congressional and commission investigators, and by Bush's admission in the 2003 Bob Woodward book "Bush at War" that he "didn't feel that sense of urgency" about Osama bin Laden before the attacks occurred.

In addition, a review of dozens of declassified citations from Clarke's 2002 testimony provides no evidence of contradiction, and White House officials familiar with the testimony agree that any differences are matters of emphasis, not fact. Indeed, the declassified 838-page report of the 2002 congressional inquiry includes many passages that appear to bolster the arguments Clarke has made.

For example, Rice and others in the administration have said that they implemented much more aggressive policies than those of Clarke and President Bill Clinton. Rice said the Bush team developed "a comprehensive strategy that would not just roll back al Qaeda -- which had been the policy of the Clinton administration -- but we needed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda."

But in 2002, Rice's deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, wrote to the joint committee that the new policy was exactly what Rice described as the old one. "The goal was to move beyond the policy of containment, criminal prosecution, and limited retaliation for specific attacks, toward attempting to 'roll back' al Qaeda."

The joint committee's declassified report, released last July, contains dozens of quotations and references to Clarke's testimony, and none appears to contradict the former White House counterterrorism chief's testimony last month. In its July 2003 report, the congressional panel cited Clark's "uncertain mandate to coordinate Bush administration policy on terrorism and specifically on bin Laden." It also said that because Bush officials did not begin their major counterterrorism policy review until April 2001, "significant slippage in counterterrorism policy may have taken place in late 2000 and early 2001."

Eleanor Hill, staff director of the House-Senate intelligence committee inquiry, said last week that she heard some of Clarke's March 24 presentation before the 9/11 commission and remembered his six-hour, closed-door appearance.

"I was there," she said of Clarke's 2002 testimony, "and without a transcript I can't have a final conclusion, but nothing jumped out at me, no contradiction" between what he said last month and his testimony almost two years ago. She also noted that Rice refused to be interviewed by the joint intelligence panel, citing executive privilege.

Repeated efforts to reach Clarke for comment last week were unsuccessful.

Right. He's only in it for the bucks and the PR, unlike little miss Hit-All-The Sunday Shows. Who is preparing for Thursday in front of the 911 commission, I guess.

Today's pretty head line up:

FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG), 9 a.m.: Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA), 10:30 a.m.: Sept. 11 commission members Bob Kerrey and John F. Lehman.

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC), 10:30 a.m.: Sept. 11 commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton; former White House counselor Karen Hughes.

THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA), 11:30 a.m.: Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.

LATE EDITION (CNN), noon: Sens. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.); former Vermont governor Howard Dean (D); Sept. 11 commission member Timothy J. Roemer; former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger; former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger; Marc Racicot, chairman of Bush-Cheney campaign; and Adel Jubeir, Saudi foreign policy adviser.

Interesting who the surrogates are this week.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

Bush attacks environment 'scare stories'

Secret email gives advice on denying climate change

Antony Barnett in New York
Sunday April 4, 2004
The Observer

George W. Bush's campaign workers have hit on an age-old political tactic to deal with the tricky subject of global warming - deny, and deny aggressively.

The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's rosy.

It tells them how global warming has not been proved, air quality is 'getting better', the world's forests are 'spreading, not deadening', oil reserves are 'increasing, not decreasing', and the 'world's water is cleaner and reaching more people'.

The email - sent on 4 February - warns that Democrats will 'hit us hard' on the environment. 'In an effort to help your members fight back, as well as be aggressive on the issue, we have prepared the following set of talking points on where the environment really stands today,' it states.

The memo - headed 'From medi-scare to air-scare' - goes on: 'From the heated debate on global warming to the hot air on forests; from the muddled talk on our nation's waters to the convolution on air pollution, we are fighting a battle of fact against fiction on the environment - Republicans can't stress enough that extremists are screaming "Doomsday!" when the environment is actually seeing a new and better day.'

Among the memo's assertions are 'global warming is not a fact', 'links between air quality and asthma in children remain cloudy', and the US Environment Protection Agency is exaggerating when it says that at least 40 per cent of streams, rivers and lakes are too polluted for drinking, fishing or swimming.

It gives a list of alleged facts taken from contentious sources. For instance, to back its claim that air quality is improving it cites a report from Pacific Research Institute - an organisation that has received $130,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998.

The memo also lifts details from the controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. On the Republicans' claims that deforestation is not a problem, it states: 'About a third of the world is still covered with forests, a level not changed much since World War II. The world's demand for paper can be permanently satisfied by the growth of trees in just five per cent of the world's forests.'

The memo's main source for the denial of global warming is Richard Lindzen, a climate-sceptic scientist who has consistently taken money from the fossil fuel industry. His opinion differs substantially from most climate scientists, who say that climate change is happening.

A Toxic Cover-up?

April 2, 2004

(CBS) A government whistle-blower says the Bush administration covered up the reasons for a toxic coal slurry spill in Appalachia that ranks among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

Jack Spadaro tells Correspondent Bob Simon that political appointees in the Department of Labor whitewashed a report that said an energy company that had contributed to the Republican Party was responsible for the 300-million gallon spill.

Simon's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, April 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Spadaro was until recently the head of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy and played a key role in investigating the spill, which was 25 times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

"It polluted 100 miles of streams, killing everything in the streams, all the way to the Ohio River," says Spadaro of the October 2000 spill that affected West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.

"The Bush administration came in and the scope of our investigation was considerably shortened. I had never seen something so corrupt and lawless in my entire career...interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States."

Spadaro says his investigation found Massey Energy, the owner of the impoundment containing the viscous and toxic liquid, knew the containment was weak, and in fact, had leaked once before.
The company was going to be cited for serious violations that could have resulted in large fines and criminal charges, Spadaro says.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration, a division of DOL, was also going to be criticized for its failure to regulate Massey's impoundment. But the MSHA, the government body for which Spadaro was performing the investigation, curtailed his report, says Spadaro. "It appeared to me that [MSHA] thought we were getting too close to issuing serious violations to the mining company," he said.

You know, this is getting pretty amazing. Commentary is no longer necessary, just stick the facts up and listen to them speak.

Well, I think We Put That To Bed

via The Agonist:

Blair told US was targeting Saddam 'just days after 9/11'
White House faces fresh pressure over flawed intelligence, Saddam's arsenal, and the threat from al-Qa'ida
By Raymond Whitaker

04 April 2004

George Bush asked for Tony Blair's backing to remove Saddam Hussein from power just nine days after the 11 September attacks, over a private dinner at the White House, a US magazine reported last night.

Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to Washington, was at the dinner table as Mr Blair replied that he would rather concentrate on ousting the Taliban and restoring peace in Afghanistan.

In a 25,000-word article in this month's American edition of Vanity Fair, Sir Christopher recounts Mr Bush as responding: "I agree with you Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq." Mr Blair, Sir Christopher writes, "said nothing to demur" at the prospect.

Sir Christopher's account presents a new challenge to Mr Blair's assertion that no decision was taken on the invasion of Iraq until just days before operations began, in March 2003. It implies regime change in Iraq was US policy immediately after 11 September.

Sir Christopher's article comes as the new head of British and American arms inspectors in Iraq is under fire for refusing to acknowledge that the programme has all but ground to a halt.

After his first progress report to the US Congress last week, Charles Duelfer, the head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), was accused of stalling until the presidential election in November is out of the way.

"One ISG member told me that, since last year, the inspectors have been kept in Iraq to save political face rather than to find weapons," said Dr Glen Rangwala, a Cambridge University expert on the WMD issue.

Goodbye, Compassion

Sometimes the universe just hands you a gift. Just posted on the WaPo web site:

Fewer Say Bush Cares About Them
Polls Show President's 'Compassion' Rating Falling Steadily

By Dana Milbank and Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 4, 2004; Page A01

As he approaches the November election, President Bush has shed a good part of the "compassionate conservative" image he cultivated during the 2000 election, a Washington Post poll has found.

Bush came to office three years ago with a message that he was different from traditional Republican conservatives because he was promoting programs for the poor and disadvantaged. But with his presidency dominated by foreign policy issues and such traditional conservative favorites as tax cuts, he has dropped from his speeches the compassionate conservative moniker that was his trademark in 2000.

The Post poll found Americans split over whether Bush has governed in a compassionate way, with 49 percent saying he has and 45 percent saying he has not. That is down sharply from February 2003, when a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 64 percent of Americans thought he had governed compassionately.

While a majority of Americans (58 percent) say Bush has governed as expected, the Post poll showed that the rest are about twice as likely to say the president has been less compassionate (25 percent) than to say he has been more compassionate (13 percent). Forty-four percent now believe Bush cares most about serving upper-income people, an increase from 31 percent in September 1999 and 39 percent in July 2000. Forty-one percent believe Bush cares equally about all people, with small numbers saying he favors the poor or the middle class.
....
"He's shown far less compassion than I thought he would," said Michael Adams, 48, a political independent who is disabled and lives in Kalamazoo, Mich. "He's for the rich and not for the poor or even for the average person. I expected him to be more compassionate. He's a disappointment. He's for the rich and nobody else."

Similarly, Barbara Wright, a 69-year-old West Virginian, said she is a registered Republican who supported Bush in 2000 but may not do so in 2004. "If he realized how the normal people lived, middle-class people live, if he had some sort of a clue, that would be better," she said. "But he doesn't." Wright hopes that Bush simply is unaware of the problems that people like her face. "I hope he doesn't know. I worry he doesn't care."

Some poll responses suggest Bush still appears to have an opportunity to regain the compassion issue. "I really think he's trying to help everyone, even if people don't see that," said Democrat Deborah Secord, 53, a vice president of a printing company who lives in Sutton, Mass. "I don't think he's just for one class of people. I think he's trying to do things for everybody."

But few expect Bush to rerun the compassion theme of 2000. The conservative National Review magazine is proclaiming "The Death of Compassionate Conservatism" in its April 5 issue. If Bush gains on his Democratic opponent, writes author Ramesh Ponnuru, "it will have little to do with compassionate conservatism and more to do with negative attacks on John Kerry's liberalism."

Stealing Goes Mainstream

Time Records Often Altered, Job Experts Say>
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

As a former member of the Air Force military police, as a play-by-the-rules guy, Drew Pooters said he was stunned by what he found his manager doing in the Toys "R" Us store in Albuquerque.

Inside a cramped office, he said, his manager was sitting at a computer and altering workers' time records, secretly deleting hours to cut their paychecks and fatten his store's bottom line.

"I told him, `That's not exactly legal,' " said Mr. Pooters, who ran the store's electronics department. "Then he out-and-out threatened me not to talk about what I saw."

Mr. Pooters quit, landing a job in 2002 managing a Family Dollar store, one of 5,100 in that discount chain. Top managers there ordered him not to let employees' total hours exceed a certain amount each week, and one day, he said, his district manager told him to use a trick to cut payroll: delete some employee hours electronically.

"I told her, `I'm not going to get involved in this,' " Mr. Pooters recalled, saying that when he refused, the district manager erased the hours herself.

Experts on compensation say that the illegal doctoring of hourly employees' time records is far more prevalent than most Americans believe. The practice, commonly called shaving time, is easily done and hard to detect — a simple matter of computer keystrokes — and has spurred a growing number of lawsuits and settlements against a wide range of businesses.

This is a really disturbing story on many levels. First, there is the outrage that these low-wage workers were cheated, and you have to be the lowest of the low to cheat poor people.

Mr. Pooters' testimoney is that he was pressured to cheat on three consecutive jobs. That's astonishing because it says something pretty profound about how widespread this practice is, at least in retail.

But put this story into play with the political climate we are living in right now. Lying, cheating and stealing have become mainstreamed into the culture. These are sorry times we are living in today. And the Bushies are doing it with a big ol' "Christian" label pasted across the top of it. No wonder the secular culture sees that word as a badge of hypocrisy.

This idolatry of the almighty buck.

UPDATE:

Suzie Madrak has a post up on The American Street which is perfect commentary on the NYT piece, using M. Scott Peck's thesis in The People of the Lie as her hermeneutic:

People of the Lie

This is an excellent companion piece, and a much better one, than the Karen Armstrong interview from the NYT I put up earlier. Armstrong thinks that compassion is the core virtue to be cultivated. While I mostly concur, I am also a Benedictine (as she was) and the Rule of St. Benedict prescribed the cultivation of humility as the most important virtue. It is also extraordinarily difficult in a culture which prizes greed and arrogance.

Someone's Not Buying It

Letter to the Editors

Beware of a Wal-Mart World

Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A21

Peter J. Solomon's March 28 op-ed column, "A Lesson From Wal-Mart," turned my stomach. To him, the Wal-Martization of the world is good, corporate greed should be rewarded, communities should die and those who don't own Wal-Marts can just tighten their belts and learn to live in packing boxes.

Solomon says that "Wal-Mart's pricing practices have had a positive influence on the economy": Inflationary pressures have been dampened, and our standard of living has been improved by lowering prices and forcing suppliers to do the same. He writes with the arrogance that only a person with a secure, well-paying job can.

If our economy is so good, where is the evidence, other than the monstrous salaries of those at the top? Wal-Mart employees can't even afford to shop there. Millions of Americans need two or more jobs just to afford a semblance of shelter and food -- forget medical care. Communities that used to provide jobs with living wages have seen their centers wither and die, their inhabitants impoverished.

The fact that Solomon's thoughts are considered acceptable enough to be printed in a major newspaper shows just how far this country has fallen in the past 30 years.

-- John Fay

Summa Theoblogia

Tomorrow's New York Times Magazine has an interview with Karen Armstrong, who is flogging her new memoir, The Spiral Staircase. The interview is a fairly shallow piece of work, but it exposes some of the themes of Armstrong's new book.

I have mixed feelings about her work; as a convinced post-modernist, I think that understanding the very real differences between the great religious traditions is key to understanding ourselves as well as others. There is a school of interfaith dialogue, which I now find insincere, which plays down the differences, looking for the similarities, and she contributes to that school.

That said, many people like her work and she was mentioned favorably on the thread about the public theologians people admire, so here is a bit of the interview, the part I think is worth thinking about further:

What do you consider the most important virtue?

Compassion. No question about it. It goes right across the board in all the world religions. Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.

If there's so much similarity among world religions, why have wars been fought for centuries?

Because of egotism. Compassion is not a popular virtue. A lot of people see God as a sacred seal of approval on some of their worst fantasies about other people. With the election coming up in the United States, we'll be hearing a lot about God being either a Democrat or a Republican.

I would hope he's an independent.

That would be nice!

....

That's fascinating, but I still find your emphasis on compassion simplistic. We know from Freud that all true achievement derives from selfishness. Who cares if Michelangelo was nice to his next-door neighbors?

Religions are not dealing with geniuses. They are dealing with ordinary people.

Fair enough, but are there people who are simply unworthy of our compassion? Do you have compassion for Osama bin Laden?

No, I don't. But you start with your own circle, because it is no good thinking fine thoughts about people dying in Africa when you're not looking after the people under your own nose.

You had a nervous breakdown before you left the convent. I wonder how you feel about the current widespread use of antidepressants.

We live in a culture where we think we shouldn't be depressed and we demand things, including good moods. But you should be depressed if, say, your child dies. It's a shame to miss it by blocking yourself off.

Oh, that's so Catholic of you to ennoble suffering.

No. It's a very Buddhist idea. Suffering in itself can be really bad.
It can make you into a psychopath. But if we do suffer, it can help us to appreciate the suffering of other people.

Do you find that more people are turning toward God these days?

No. Not in England, where most people are not interested in institutionalized religion, which they find tired and discredited after the horrors of the 20th century.

Europe seems to be in a post-Christian phase, although the U.S. is not.

You're a younger nation. In Europe, we are tired and old and we know about our sins.

Is there any hope for the future of religion?

We need to rediscover what is in our religions, which has gotten overlaid with generations of egotistical and lazy theology. The current thinking -- my God is better than your God -- is highly irreligious.

Hope is not a plan

A grisly wake-up call in Iraq

KILLINGS IN AL-FALLUJAH MUST TRIGGER REASSESSMENT

Mercury News Editorial

....

No one expected the Iraqi occupation to be easy. But more than a year into the occupation, the security situation remains out of control. Neither U.S. nor Iraqi forces are able to prevent violent and deadly attacks. In March alone, 48 U.S. troops were killed, the second highest monthly toll since Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1. In all, more than 600 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq.

The Bush administration's insistence that things are improving, that all that's needed is staying the course, rings hollow. That's not what Americans are seeing on their television screens. And unless things change, public support for the U.S. mission will erode.

The goal of a stable and secure Iraq must not change. But the Bush administration can no longer afford to ignore its many critics. They have argued, among other things, that there are not enough troops on the ground; that the administration hasn't done enough to win international cooperation; and that its plan to hand over power to Iraqis in less than 90 days, before the basic building blocks of a democracy are in place, is unrealistic.

There are positive signs that the administration is looking for a new approach. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been seeking more support from the U.N. and NATO. The head of NATO said Friday the alliance might be willing to send troops to Iraq, under certain circumstances.

Unfortunately, the administration's refusal to cede meaningful control to international forces has made it harder to find allies willing to help. And as retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni pointed out, attacks like Al-Fallujah's serve to scare off international participation even more.

As was mentioned yesterday, the "international community" has already signaled its unwillingness to pull Bush's fat out of the fire. The road ahead is very murky and John Kerry is going to have to say something more concrete than "internationalizing" a conflict that the "international community" decried in the first place. That's not a plan, its a desperate wish.

Iraq Through Many Eyes

Columbia Journalism Review has a wonderful blog Campaign Desk which monitors press coverage of the election season. They do a lot of shorter, quick-check kinds of things, including blogging the blogs, but their site features some longer think pieces as well. I found one tonight which is, I think, a good one for us at Bump right now.

Since we now have a community member who actually is in Baghdad right now, it would do us all good to step back a minute and think about this. She's going to be seeing the things she sees through her own set of filters, and we are going to receive it through ours, and that is the point of this article by Gal Beckerman. Does this set of four vignettes tell the whole story? Of course not, but these can help supply us with some perspective we wouldn't otherwise have.

A bit of irony: when I got hooked on blogging, and then started Bump, my friend Peg thought that was a pretty odd way to spend your time. When she first popped up at Bump, I was the most surprised of all. Some of my other friends visit us here and some leave comments. Peg Bartel is the first to really engage the community, but I have a rather extensive essay from another friend and deep thinker that will go up next week.

Another thing to think about: I've said here before that blogging is a new way of thinking about relationships and community, and I no longer see a bright line between my friends here in Washington and you. There is a community I see in person, and another community which I interact with in person, and each affects the other. I take you with me in all of my relationships on my side of the monitor.

*******************

In Their Skin

Few aspects of reporting in postwar Iraq are more important than the job of entering Iraqi minds to see what they think and feel about the American occupation. Four journalists discuss the challenge

Shadid’s Arabic allows him to understand the small talk, the intonation, the turn of phrase. But he also knows that the nature of the sentiment is complex, and he says the best way to capture this is to lay it all out. “In your interviews with Iraqis you are going to be thrown into a situation where there’s chaos; it’s confusing; everything is all out there,” Shadid says. “And to pin down, nail down this one sentiment of what Iraqis feel is impossible. I’m sure a majority is grateful that Saddam’s gone. A majority does have problems with the occupation. A majority is frustrated with where it’s at. A majority is hopeful about the future. All these things are true and you’re probably going to hear them in the same conversation.”

More after the link

Employing the Gift of Empathy
George Packer, The New Yorker
Daily reporters must deal with the tyranny of the deadline, but George Packer, who spent five weeks in Iraq for The New Yorker and produced a stunning 20,000-word examination of the postwar situation, had the luxury of time. He says, “I found I needed two or three hours, if not two or three visits, to understand all the factors that went into Iraqi attitudes toward the occupation.” The profiles of Iraqis in his piece — among others, a Shiite sheikh, a young student, a psychiatrist — are profiles of people who are complex and, in many ways, conflicted.

But even with time, Packer says, the Iraqi psychology, shaped by more than thirty years of totalitarian Ba’athist rule, made reporting on Iraqis feel more like a job for Freud than for a magazine writer. Perhaps “what was truer of Iraqis than most people was how much talking they needed to do in order to express the fullness of their thinking,” says Packer. “It was a bit like therapy. You are peeling back layers and layers of dogma and rumor.”

But Packer found that Iraqis do love to talk. Their garrulousness surprised him, although he thought that this, too, could have a certain pathological quality. “There were many interviews where I would be sitting with some guy in his living room, after the three-hour lunch we would always have, and I would just start getting angry at my translator because what he was telling me just didn’t make sense,” Packer says. “The conversation just kept on leaping around without any rational back and forth. And he would say to me, ‘George, I’m giving you a word-for-word translation.’” Many of the Iraqis he talked to had a hard time developing clear arguments, explaining themselves fully, and, as Packer put it, “understanding their own situation.” Packer thinks this might be related to the fact that the Iraqis were isolated and denied free will for so long. A psychiatrist whom Packer quoted in the article explained that Iraqis lack “the power to experience freedom.”

Empathy, Packer believes, can help reporters bridge this divide. Journalists need to “make the little imaginative effort to get into the skin of Iraqis,” Packer says. “Then they won’t need hours and hours, and they will be a little bit immune to the tidy sound bite they often end up with.”

In the eighties, Packer spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in an African village. That experience colors the reporting he has done and, he says, has helped him develop an ability to understand other people. Living in such a foreign environment where he was the helpless outsider, he “had to learn how [the local people] saw the world just in order to be able to function.” Packer has also written two novels, and he thinks this, too, helped his journalism in Iraq. “The effort to get inside a character is an act of empathy — it just happens to be with someone nonexistent,” he says. “The things you have to notice about people as a fiction writer are not just what they say, but more how they say things. Or, even, what they don’t say.”

Getting Beyond the First Thing They Say
Hassan Fattah,Iraq Today
For Hassan Fattah, Iraq is more than just a story. It is his past and, now, his future. Fattah’s family left Iraq in 1964 after being persecuted by the government, and eventually moved to Berkeley, California, where he grew up. Iraq was a constant in his parent’s stories and loomed large in his imagination, but he had never been to the country until last May. After the Americans entered Baghdad, Fattah decided to move there to start an English-language newspaper, Iraq Today. As a journalist who had worked for The Economist and Frontline, this was his way of contributing to the rebuilding of Iraqi society and to restoring his family’s name. He would try to bring high journalistic standards and train a cadre of young Iraqis in the ethics and professionalism of western journalism. Fattah also is a regular contributor to The New Republic and Time.

Because he speaks Arabic and his journalists are Iraqi, Fattah can do the kind of grassroots reporting that western journalists often forgo because of the danger of venturing too far afield. Fattah’s reporters live the story of postwar Iraq every day. As he puts it, “You haven’t been in Iraq until you have lived in a house, not a hotel, where the generator breaks down, the electricity goes out, and there is nothing you can do about it.” But having his ear to the ground has only made Fattah even more cautious. He understands the Iraqi sensibility because he has shared the Iraqi fate this past year, suffering the consequences of a broken police force and little security. The day before his first issue went to press, he was awakened by thieves thrusting machine guns in his face and demanding money. He says he goes to sleep at night thinking that his house could be attacked. “Iraqis are very conscious that they could go home and that some guy can come in and shoot them and there is nothing they can do about it,” he says.

So, with such an understanding of Iraqis, what advice would he give western journalists on interviewing them? “Don’t believe the first thing that people tell you. Remember, people here are survivors. They are programmed and they grew up learning how to say the right thing, to survive. Somebody will tell you something, and you think that’s what they mean, but very often that is far from it. There is always something deeper.”

But Fattah also says Iraqis don’t want people feeling sorry for them. The political nature of the story, he thinks, drives reporters to paint Iraqis one-dimensionally, as a people deserving of sympathy. “The sense of empathy, which is the real power of journalism, is lost. And what you get is a kind of sympathy,” Fattah says. “The one thing I think Iraqis are very much afraid of is having people feel sorry for them. They don’t want to be forgotten, but they don’t want to be victims either.”

Being on Your Own
Vivienne Walt, freelancer
It was an aid worker who told Vivienne Walt about the children. In a Baghdad neighborhood, Walt, a former USA Today reporter who is now on assignment for Time and The Boston Globe, found them sitting around, nine- and ten-year-olds, grabbing fistfuls of ammunition from a pile and separating the copper casings from the lead of bullets. A little boy, Karar Ali, holding a Kalashnikov shell in his hand, told Walt, “My mother says this is a good job. I give her all my earnings.” “Of course, it was a great story,” Walt says. But it was also a story she says she couldn’t have found without being pointed in the right direction. As in most foreign countries, correspondents in Iraq depend on independent sources to lead them to stories or offer some reasonably objective analysis when they find them. In Iraq, however, these third parties have almost completely disappeared.

“It’s fairly unique to work in a country where you don’t have international organizations, observers of any kind, either to give you an idea of what’s going on in different towns and neighborhoods or to give you some comments or interpretations about what you are seeing,” Walt says. She reported in Iraq before and after the war. “I’ve worked in over twenty-five countries and I can’t remember being in a country where there are no international aid workers,” she says.

The absence of this “grassroots information,” as Walt calls it, creates great obstacles for journalists eager to tell the Iraqi story. Walt is typical of western reporters in that she doesn’t speak Arabic and cannot easily blend in, and that her work is impeded by a security breakdown in which reporters are targeted as adjuncts of the American occupation. Conditions are such that Iraq “could possibly move towards a situation where western journalists are really too much at risk to operate here,” she says. All this makes her incredibly reliant on fixers and translators. This is true of most foreign assignments. But in Iraq, Walt says, the dearth of other sources makes their role even more essential. Translators also know better how to handle Iraqi sensitivities. They smooth questions down, making them more culturally palatable. “A translator is much more than a translator here,” Walt says. “It’s someone who can put people at ease.”

But translators, however helpful, have not been living in a vacuum for the past thirty years. They are just as much the product of Saddam’s culture of silence and fear as the subjects they help journalists interview. And so Walt finds that beyond translation, they lack the freethinking journalistic skills to perform some of the other tasks that fixers usually do in foreign countries, such as generating stories and finding leads. Under Saddam, a news story was simply a government proclamation. “One of the jobs I have my translator do is read the papers for me,” Walt says. “But they would read twenty-five newspapers a day and then say there is nothing in them. They would just see nonsense.”

Yet, “slowly but surely,” this is changing, she says. Foreign correspondents “have been comparing notes about how we are trying to train our Iraqi fixers to be journalists,” she says, “to read and listen to the news in a way they have never done before.” And this development might be happening just in time. As tensions rise, and journalists feel even more threatened, both the obstacles to uncovering the Iraqi story and the need to expose it will only grow exponentially.

Internationalization

Bush administration casts about for greater international support

By Drew Brown

Knight Ridder Newspapers

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Faced with a stubborn guerrilla war in Iraq; resurgent Taliban, al-Qaida, warlords and drug traffickers in Afghanistan; rising costs in both and no clear way out of either, the Bush administration has begun soliciting more help from its European allies and the United Nations.

American officials said Thursday that the United Nations is likely to pass a new resolution on peacekeeping and security arrangements in Iraq before the end of June, when the U.S.-led civil administration is to return power to an interim Iraqi government.
....
U.S. officials have said they would welcome additional allies in Iraq, but so far they've been unwilling to seek the new U.N. resolution that many countries, including some key allies, have said is necessary to win their support.

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Powell had been discussing a new U.N. resolution with NATO allies, but that no decision had been reached.

The Bush administration has been sharply divided on the issue, with Powell pushing for a broader, U.N.-backed international coalition to topple Saddam Hussein and rebuild Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney and top civilian aides to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the main proponents of the war in Iraq, have fought to minimize the United Nations' role in the war and in postwar Iraq.

However, as the November U.S. presidential election draws closer, the administration is still confronting a costly insurgency that's taken the lives of nearly 600 U.S. soldiers and civilian personnel and questions about the wisdom of its policy in Iraq.

A larger international commitment could reduce the number of American troops and casualties in Iraq and undercut the belief, common among Iraqis, that the United States invaded their country to seize its vast oil reserves or wage war on Islam.

A new U.N. resolution might authorize a multinational security force that would help provide protection for the interim Iraqi government and for U.N. workers who are helping to prepare the country for elections, according to U.S. officials and diplomats in New York. The new force wouldn't take over primary security duties from American troops, they said.

via Hesiod:

New Zealand to Pull Troops out of Iraq
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com Pacific Rim Bureau Chief
April 02, 2004

Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - New Zealand's Labor government said Friday it would withdraw the country's small contingent of 60 military engineers from Iraq in September.

Prime Minister Helen Clark made the announcement as she met with the visiting leader of the Labor Party in neighboring Australia, Mark Latham, who is at the center of political storm over his position on withdrawing Australian troops from Iraq.

Clark said that after pulling out its troops -- which are working with British forces in southeastern Iraq -- New Zealand may investigate other ways of helping Iraq to return to full sovereignty.

"With the commitments we have made to the international effort against terrorism and the reconstruction of Iraq, we have tended to take ... decisions which have a time period on them," she said. "But we may then come back and do the same thing again at another point when we have force regeneration."

Clark noted that New Zealand had contributed Special Air Services forces to the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The SAS troops were later withdrawn and then subsequently redeployed there again.

At an international donors' conference in Berlin this week, New Zealand said it was extending by another year its commitment to help Afghanistan's reconstruction.

"New Zealand is contributing more than 80 million New Zealand dollars [$53.3 million] in military and development support to Afghanistan, a significant sum for a small country of four million people, thousands of kilometers from Afghanistan," Foreign Minister Phil Goff said.

UPDATE 04.03.04:

Thailand considers pulling troops out of Iraq after June 30
www.chinaview.cn 2004-04-03 17:07:05

BANGKOK, April 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Thailand may get its troops out of Iraq after the United States transfers power to a transitional Iraqi authority on June 30, a government spokesman said Saturday.

As violence against coalition forces by insurgents might increase after June 30, the Thai Defense Ministry will conduct a review on whether the Thai troops in Iraq should come back in September as planned or sooner, said ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Palangun Klaharn

If other nations' troops leave Iraq, the Thai government would have to review the policy, he said, adding that otherwise the troops will stay in Iraq for a full year as planned.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Congressional Republicans are revolting. Bush is threatening to veto the only thing which looks like a jobs bill in four years, the first veto of his presidency. I have my doubts that it is more than bluff, since Bush seems to be more bluster than principle.

House Backs Highway-Spending Bill
By DAVID STOUT

Published: April 2, 2004

Before the final House vote, which came around noon today, members rejected by 225 to 198 a Democratic move to increase spending to $318 billion, or roughly in line with the current Senate version.

Representative Don Young, the Alaska Republican who heads the House Transportation Committee, supported the bill as it was passed today, even though he insisted that it was some $100 billion short of what is needed to rebuild the country's crumbling roads. As for holding down costs, he told The Associated Press, "We've done everything we could possibly do."

The highway-spending bill enjoys wide support among Democrats and Republicans alike because the members of both parties have something in common: their constituents use highways (and bridges and bike paths and other incidentals wrapped into the bill.)

Tragedy

I hate to sound like Cassandra, but it is worth remembering that she was right.

No End in Sight
By BOB HERBERT

Published: April 2, 2004

We rode into this wholly unnecessary conflict on the wave of Mr. Bush's obsession with Saddam Hussein and Iraq, and we've made a hash of it. Hundreds of Americans and thousands of innocent Iraqis have died for reasons the administration has never been able to coherently explain.

Last May 1, in a fun moment for the commander in chief, Mr. Bush sat in the co-pilot's seat as an S-3B Viking aircraft landed on the deck of the carrier Abraham Lincoln. The president was in full flying regalia: flight suit, parachute, water survival kit. "Yes," he told reporters, "I flew it."

The president's giddily choreographed "Top Gun" spectacle was designed to take full public relations advantage of his triumphant announcement that "major combat operations in Iraq" had ended.

He was wrong, of course, just as he was wrong about the weapons of mass destruction, and about the number of troops that would be needed to secure Iraq, and so many other things. In fact, the Bush administration has managed to conceal any and all evidence that it knows the first thing about what it's doing in Iraq.

When the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, dared to say publicly that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to occupy Iraq, he was ridiculed by the administration and his career was brought to a close. When Mr. Bush's former Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, disclosed that planning for an invasion of Iraq was already under way in early 2001, he was denounced as someone who didn't know what he was talking about. And there's hardly a serious person in the country who is unaware of the administration's sliming of Richard Clarke, who said, among other things, that the war in Iraq had undermined the war against terror.

There were 4,000 marines stationed near Falluja when Wednesday's gruesome attack occurred. But Marine commanders, as The Times's Jeffrey Gettleman reports, decided they would not intervene to stop the mutilation of the bodies. The atrocity unfolded without interference.

On that same day five soldiers were killed when their convoy rolled over a bomb buried in the road in a town 15 miles west of Falluja. A major trade show in Baghdad that was supposed to be held next week to showcase investment opportunities in the new Iraq had to be postponed yesterday because of security concerns.

We are mired in a savage mess in Iraq, and no one knows how to get out of it. More than 600 U.S. troops are already dead. The rest of the world has decided that this is an American show, so we're not getting much in the way of help. (Even the Saudis have been sticking their fingers in Uncle Sam's eye, leading the effort by OPEC to cut oil production.) President Bush won't come clean about the financial costs of the war. His mantra remains: tax cuts, tax cuts.

We're flying blind. There's no evidence that the president or anyone in his administration knows what the next act of this great tragedy will be.

Faking It

Report Is Better Than Expected; 308,000 Positions Created
By REUTERS

Published: April 2, 2004
Filed at 9:49 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON, April 2 (Reuters) - U.S. employment rose last month at the fastest pace in nearly four years as hiring increased across a wide array of industries, the government said on Friday in a surprisingly strong report that stunned financial markets.

The report offers comfort to President George W. Bush as the jobs market -- a hot political issue in the U.S. presidential campaign -- finally made a decisive break out of a long slump. Nevertheless, U.S. jobs lost since Bush took office still number a hefty 1.8 million.

Comrade Max:

If the job prediction was noithing [sic] more than a return to trend, then the White House was practicing hokum by implying that this return to trend depended on their tax cuts.

If the household survey is more accurate because it captures all those magical job gains in self-employment and entrepreneurial pastimes, then this month's report stinks badly.

UPDATE:

Nathan Newman digs into the BLS data and discovers:

It's a strong jobs report out this month, but like every number out there, in this back and forth economy, there's a negative kicker-- namely that the number of hours worked per employee fell:

We'll see lots of spinning of this number as heralding the success of Bush's economic policies, but the plain fact remains that there is just a hell of a lot less work out there than before he became President.

Nathan has a chart.

The Economic Policy Institute's JobWatch has more:

As shown in the charts below, this business cycle is the only one since the 1930s to still be suffering a job loss after three years. The private sector has lost 2.5% of its jobs (2,792,000), U.S. manufacturing has lost 15.9% of its jobs (2,704,000), and even when incorporating the 3.1% gain in government jobs (657,000), the labor market on the whole has still lost 1.6% (2,135,000) of all jobs. In the prior three business cycles, instead of still being in the hole, the economy had actually generated 2.7% more jobs after three years.

Not surprisingly, poor job creation has led to higher unemployment: a 1.4% rise from 4.2% in early 2001 to a 5.6% unemployment rate in early 2004 (first quarter). In and of itself, this 1.4% rise in unemployment over the last three years is as high as the increase in the first three years of the business cycles in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. But when one accounts for the historically large drop in labor force participation over the last three years—that is, by incorporating the missing labor force (see charts below)—then the 3.1% rise in unemployment has been even larger in this downturn than in prior downturns (up 0.7%).

Abuse of Power

Bush Aides Block Clinton's Papers From 9/11 Panel
By PHILIP SHENON and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: April 2, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 1 — The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said on Thursday that it was pressing the White House to explain why the Bush administration had blocked thousands of pages of classified foreign policy and counterterrorism documents from former President Bill Clinton's White House files from being turned over to the panel's investigators.

The White House confirmed on Thursday that it had withheld a variety of classified documents from Mr. Clinton's files that had been gathered by the National Archives over the last two years in response to requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement failures before the attacks.

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said some Clinton administration documents had been withheld because they were "duplicative or unrelated," while others were withheld because they were "highly sensitive" and the information in them could be relayed to the commission in other ways. "We are providing the commission with access to all the information they need to do their job," Mr. McClellan said.

The commission and the White House were reacting to public complaints from former aides to Mr. Clinton, who said they had been surprised to learn in recent months that three-quarters of the nearly 11,000 pages of files the former president was ready to offer the commission had been withheld by the Bush administration. The former aides said the files contained highly classified documents about the Clinton administration's efforts against Al Qaeda.

The commission said it was awaiting a full answer from the White House on why any documents were withheld.

"We need to be satisfied that we have everything we have asked to see," Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the bipartisan 10-member commission, said. "We have voiced the concern to the White House that not all of the material the Clinton library has made available to us has made its way to the commission."

The general counsel of Mr. Clinton's presidential foundation, Bruce Lindsey, who was his deputy White House counsel, said in an interview that he was concerned that the Bush administration had applied a "very legalistic approach to the documents" and might have blocked the release of material that would be valuable to the commission.

It's a pattern:

This selective declassification signalled to professionals in government that anything they said to reporters could be held against them if they ever in the future contradicted the Bush line. Yet not one news organisation tried to uphold the old rule by threatening to reveal sources of off-the-record briefings unless the White House reverted to the accepted convention that makes informed journalism possible.

The Clarke episode is symptomatic of a systematic abuse of power. Reality is raw and dangerous to report - better to laugh along.

Those who have ears to hear

Dark news. Slain Contractors Were in Iraq Working Security Detail

By Dana Priest and Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 2, 2004; Page A16

The four men brutally slain Wednesday in Fallujah were among the most elite commandos working in Iraq to guard employees of U.S. corporations and were hired by the U.S. government to protect bureaucrats, soldiers and intelligence officers.

The men, all employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, were in the dangerous Sunni Triangle area operating under more hazardous conditions -- unarmored cars with no apparent backup -- than the U.S. military or the CIA permit.

U.S. government officials said yesterday that they suspect that the men were not victims of a random ambush but were set up as targets, which one defense official said suggested "a higher degree of organization and sophistication" among insurgents. "This is certainly cause for concern."

A Blackwater spokesman said the men were guarding a convoy on its way to deliver food to troops under a subcontract to a company named Regency Hotel and Hospitality. One of those killed was identified by his family yesterday as Jerry Zovko, 32, an Army veteran from Willoughby, Ohio. The three other Blackwater employees were former SEALs, the Navy's elite counterterrorism force.

The bodies of the four men were dragged through the streets by jubilant crowds.

Blackwater issued a statement saying it did not intend to release the victims' names. "Coalition forces and civilian contractors and administrators work side by side every day with the Iraqi people," the statement said. "Our tasks are dangerous and while we feel sadness for our fallen colleagues, we also feel pride and satisfaction that we are making a difference for the people of Iraq."

The Fallujah killings this week resonated heavily among the dozens of companies providing security services in Iraq.

"No one is retreating," said Mike Baker, chief executive of Diligence LLC, a Washington security firm with hundreds of employees in Iraq. "No one is calling saying we ought to pull our guys out. I don't think it's stopping anyone from going in. They are fully aware of the security situation."

But Baker, a former CIA case officer, added that how the military is "responding is going to be very important. If there's not a harsh, well-thought-out response, they will take that as a complete sign of weakness and they will become emboldened."

Harsh. That will work out well after a year of war.

Harsh. That's working out so well.

Harsh.

Don't these people have ears?

Shocked, Shocked II

Prosecutors Are Said to Have Expanded Inquiry Into Leak of C.I.A. Officer's Name
By DAVID JOHNSTON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: April 2, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 1 — Prosecutors investigating whether someone in the Bush administration improperly disclosed the identity of a C.I.A. officer have expanded their inquiry to examine whether White House officials lied to investigators or mishandled classified information related to the case, lawyers involved in the case and government officials say.

In looking at violations beyond the original focus of the inquiry, which centered on a rarely used statute that makes it a felony to disclose the identity of an undercover intelligence officer intentionally, prosecutors have widened the range of conduct under scrutiny and for the first time raised the possibility of bringing charges peripheral to the leak itself.

The expansion of the inquiry's scope comes at a time when prosecutors, after a hiatus of about a month, appear to be preparing to seek additional testimony before a federal grand jury, lawyers with clients in the case said. It is not clear whether the renewed grand jury activity represents a concluding session or a prelude to an indictment.

The broadened scope is a potentially significant development that represents exactly what allies of the Bush White House feared when Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from the case last December and turned it over to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago.

Republican lawyers worried that the leak case, in the hands of an aggressive prosecutor, might grow into an unwieldy, time-consuming and politically charged inquiry, like the sprawling independent counsel inquiries of the 1990's, which distracted and damaged the Clinton administration.

Mr. Fitzgerald is said by lawyers involved in the case and government officials to be examining possible discrepancies between documents he has gathered and statements made by current or former White House officials during a three-month preliminary investigation last fall by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. Some officials spoke to F.B.I. agents with their lawyers present; others met informally with agents in their offices and even at bars near the White House.

The White House took the unusual step last year of specifically denying any involvement in the leak on the part of several top administration officials, including Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, has repeatedly said no one wants to get to the bottom of the case more than Mr. Bush.

But Mr. Bush himself has said he does not know if investigators will ever be able to determine who disclosed the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame, to Robert Novak, who wrote in his syndicated column last July that Ms. Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was a C.I.A. employee.

Mr. Wilson was a critic of the administration's Iraq policies. Democrats have accused the White House of leaking his wife's name in retaliation because Mr. Wilson, in a July 6, 2003, Op-Ed commentary in The New York Times, disputed Mr. Bush's statement in his State of the Union address that January that Iraq was trying to develop a nuclear bomb and had sought to buy uranium in Africa.

The suspicion that someone may have lied to investigators is based on contradictions between statements by various witnesses in F.B.I. interviews, the lawyers and officials said. The conflicts are said to be buttressed by documents, including memos, e-mail messages and phone records turned over by the White House.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Chris Albritton actually received this today:

April 1, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Optimists Club Organizes Baghdad Chapter

Optimists International can now claim Baghdad, Iraq as the home of its most recently organized chapter. Founded in 1919 with chapters in 28 countries, Optimists is a service organization best known for “bringing out the best in kids.” The new chapter held its organizational meeting at the former palace of Saddam Hussein, now the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Headquarters in Baghdad. A group of 28 civilian CPA staff and Iraqi nationals attended.

The meeting began with folk music entertainment from Pearse Marshner, who has been in Iraq for a year supporting the Coalition effort. Ben Krause then described plans to promote an essay contest for local high school seniors in the Baghdad metropolitan area. The theme of this year’s essay contest will be “What a Free Iraq Means to Me.” Any Iraqi high school student will be eligible to participate. The date for the contest has not been finalized.

“We are very excited about working with all the schools here in Baghdad, and to see how the students express themselves for the essay contest,” Kraus said. “We expect dozens of entries from each school, and those respective schools will determine the winning essay for that school.”

All those winning essays will then be submitted to a group of international judges, who would then choose the overall 2004 winner.

Krause added: “There is great incentive for students to work hard on their essay, which will be judged in English and in Arabic. The plan is to award a $500 or $1000 educational scholarship to the overall winner. Or, it may be a travel voucher to visit the United States in the future.”

The Optimist Club is but one of several civic organizations sprouting up throughout Baghdad. Several Iraqis who attended today’s meeting showed great interest in expanding the new Optimist chapter into downtown Baghdad where such civic institutions are greatly needed.

The program continued with special guest Dr. John M. Russell, a professor of Art and Archaeology at Boston College, author of two books on Iraqi archaeology, and who wrote his doctoral thesis and conducted archaeological excavation work in Iraq several years ago. He narrated a very informative power-point presentation about the current conditions of Iraq’s Baghdad Museums and National Library, as well as the ongoing rehabilitation of Iraqi artifacts and art treasures that were recently looted and/or sustained environmental damage over the years due to neglect or lack of resources.

Ross lamented that the Baghdad Museum and National Library had been ill-maintained for many years, beginning long before and after the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Said Ross: “Roofs were leaking, allowing high levels of moisture and humidity into the museum space. The museums have not had proper air conditioning or been properly maintained. We found antiquated air-conditioning systems that were completely broken, providing none of the environmental protection required by ancient artifacts.”

During the program, it was revealed by Dr. Ross that one particularly unfortunate case of looter vandalism resulted in serious damage to the “Warka” vase, circa 3000 B.C. Ross considers the Warka vase to be the most valuable Iraqi artifact in the world. Although it was severely damaged, the pieces are all intact. It will take months to reconstruct and repair.

Dr. Ross informed the group that a very positive update was currently transpiring: Nineteen Iraqi museum specialists had recently been flown to Washington, D.C. to participate in a seven week-long course in modern museum operations. In addition, Ross hopes that the Baghdad museum will reopen in July and have some exhibitions ready to show school children in the Fall, but that decision will be made by Iraqi curators.

Several of the Iraqi cultural leaders in attendance expressed optimism that they will be able to form a new chapter in the downtown Baghdad later in the year.

Optimist Clubs (www.optimist.org) have been “Bringing out the best in kids” since 1919. It is a community service based organization committed to creating a more optimistic future for young people through innovative programs. Optimist International boasts 114,000 individual members who belong to 3,500 autonomous clubs. Optimists conduct 65,000 service projects each year, serving six million young people. Optimists also spend $78 million on their communities annually.

Chris insists that, despite the date, this is for real. We've moved past irony into territory unfamiliar to me.

Honesty

Walter Rogers just reported live on CNN that the situation in Falluja is completely out of control, at least for now, and that the attackers are Iraqis, not the ubiquitous "foreign fighters" dodge they've been using for the last year. That tracks with this John Burns article in this morning's NYT:

But along with the publicly expressed confidence, there are hints that American generals are not as sure as they were only weeks ago that they have turned a corner in the conflict. Nor do the scenes from Falluja on Wednesday — Iraqis mutilating American bodies, and crowds cheering at the sight — appear to fit the theory put forward by the American military that Islamic militants, including foreigners, rather than Iraqi supporters of Saddam Hussein, are increasingly behind terrorist attacks. Falluja, 30 miles west of Baghdad, has been the volatile center of support for the toppled dictator, and a bellwether of the wider war.

Falluja, relatively quiet in recent months, has become a major battleground again as the First Marine Expeditionary Force, replacing the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, has sent large troop formations into the city to challenge insurgents who had taken control of entire neighborhoods. This reversed the airborne division's policy of leaving security in the city mainly to Iraqi police and civil defense units, and led last week to several pitched battles in which at least three marines and 30 Iraqis died.

The visceral hatred for Americans that poured forth on Wednesday suggests that the city remains as much a caldron as it was last April 9, when American troops captured Baghdad. Two weeks after Mr. Hussein's ouster, American troops who had taken over a school as a barracks opened fire on angry crowds, killing 17 Iraqis, after shots were fired at the school. The incident set off attacks that by midsummer had engulfed the entire Sunni Triangle, a strategic area of hundreds of square miles in central Iraq, north, south and west of Baghdad.

By February, American generals had begun to say that the worst of the "Saddamist" insurgency was over, its power blunted by a wide American offensive that followed the former dictator's capture on Dec. 13. The American strikes across the Sunni Triangle, they said, had relied heavily on information about the cell structure of the insurgent leadership that was found among the documents seized with Mr. Hussein. Penetrating that, the American officers said, had allowed them to disrupt attacks severely, putting the rebels at a disadvantage.
....
Another problem for those who contend that Islamic terrorists with Qaeda links now pose the main threat to American forces is that only a small number of the 12,000 detainees currently held at American-run camps across Iraq are foreigners from the swath of Muslim countries across Asia, the Middle East and Africa who have been the principal activists of Al Qaeda and its associated groups elsewhere. American officials have said that fewer than 150 of the detainees are foreigners, the rest Iraqis. The United States command has occasionally announced the arrest of a suspected Islamic terrorist, but has then fallen silent.

On Tuesday, before the Falluja attacks, General Kimmitt, the American military spokesman, appeared to back off at least somewhat from the emphasis on Islamic militants as the principal enemy. At a briefing, he offered an overview of the war in which he suggested that what has occurred, in effect, is a merging of the Saddamist insurgents and the Islamic terrorists into a common terrorist threat, and that, either way, "we just call them targets."

Several Iraqis interviewed on Wednesday, including middle-class professionals, merchants and former members of Mr. Hussein's army, suggested that that the United States might be facing a war in which the common bonds of Iraqi nationalism and Arab sensibility have transcended other differences, fostering a war of national resistance that could pose still greater challenges to the Americans in the months, and perhaps years, ahead.

Read that last paragraph again.

That Forgotten Place

Powell Warns Warlords Could Undermine Afghanistan's Reconstruction

By Barry Schweid The Associated Press
Published: Apr 1, 2004

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Secretary of State Colin Powell warned on Thursday that warlords and criminal elements threaten to undermine the freshly bolstered reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

In a closed meeting with ministers at a donors conference in Berlin, Powell said threats to peace in Afghanistan come from many directions, and that the United States remained committed to countering instability with coalition forces.

"There is no place in the new Afghanistan for private armies or sectarian violence," Powell said in a statement distributed to reporters traveling with him before his departure for Brussels.

There, Powell was holding talks with NATO leaders on improving peacekeeping measures in Iraq. Foreign terrorists and remnants of the Saddam Hussein government continue to plague preparations for the country's transition to self-rule on July 1. Hundreds of U.S. troops and civilians have been killed.

I guess he means private armies other than ours.

Comment:
Aid not enough for Afghanistan

Financial help is of little use unless swift action is taken to improve the country's chronic security situation, says Mark Tran

Wednesday March 31, 2004

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, will today make another high-profile plea for international aid at an aid conference in Berlin.

Afghanistan is seeking $27.5bn (£15bn) for the next seven years, but is likely to receive only a fraction of that amount. The EU has pledged €245m (£163.3m), and the US is expected to offer $1bn on top of the $1.2bn it has pledged this year.

The Afghan government points out that the requested aid is not charity that will benefit only Afghanistan. A government study earlier this month, entitled Securing Afghanistan's Future, said that aid would "enhance regional stability, reduce the global threats of drugs and terrorism, and lower the associated defence security-related costs of many nations".

However, unless something can be done to improve security, pledges of money will have little effect.

"There is no point in throwing money at the country when near-anarchy reigns. The UN can't even operate in half the country," said Dominic Nutt, an emergencies officer with Christian Aid, which has a base in Herat, western Afghanistan.

Mr Karzai's writ is largely confined to Kabul. Last week, more than 100 people were killed in factional fighting in Herat, which had previously been considered to be the safest place in the country.

Because of widespread insecurity, and the UN's slow pace of registering voters, elections in Afghanistan have been postponed until September.

Eye on the Ball

Top Focus Before 9/11 Wasn't on Terrorism
Rice Speech Cited Missile Defense

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 1, 2004; Page A01

On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday" -- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals.

The speech provides telling insight into the administration's thinking on the very day that the United States suffered the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text.

The speech was postponed in the chaos of the day, part of which Rice spent in a bunker. It mentioned terrorism, but did so in the context used in other Bush administration speeches in early 2001: as one of the dangers from rogue nations, such as Iraq, that might use weapons of terror, rather than from the cells of extremists now considered the main security threat to the United States.

The text also implicitly challenged the Clinton administration's policy, saying it did not do enough about the real threat -- long-range missiles.

"We need to worry about the suitcase bomb, the car bomb and the vial of sarin released in the subway," according to excerpts of the speech provided to The Washington Post. "[But] why put deadbolt locks on your doors and stock up on cans of mace and then decide to leave your windows open?"

The text of Rice's Sept. 11 speech, which was never delivered, broadly reflects Bush administration foreign policy pronouncements during the eight months leading to the attacks, according to a review of speeches, news conferences and media appearances. Although the administration did address terrorism, it devoted far more attention to pushing missile defense, a controversial idea both at home and abroad, the review shows.

Dream-Filled Missile Silos

Published: April 1, 2004

The Pentagon is foolishly racing to deliver on President Bush's grandiose 2000 campaign promise to have a still unproven, money-munching missile defense system deployed in time for the November election. It's supposed to provide protection against incoming ballistic missiles. But, so far, the rush into the old "Star Wars" dream amounts to an extravagant political shield.

The administration's obstinate intent is to fill the first silos in Alaska as early as this summer, even though the complex project — a composite of 10 separate systems for high-tech defense — is years from being fully tested or built. Plagued with cost overruns and technical failures, the overall missile defense program's main feat of rocketry has been its price tag: roughly $130 billion already spent, and $53 billion planned for the next five years.

Mr. Bush ought to pay attention to the powerful advice just offered by a group of 49 retired generals and admirals who say he should shelve his fantasy start-up plan. They urge that the money for that project be spent instead on bolstering antiterrorist defenses at American ports, borders and nuclear weapons depots. As things stand now, the administration is again looking for showy but questionable ways to reinforce Mr. Bush's identity as a wartime president, while ignoring sensible and effective low-tech strategies to reinforce homeland security.

Missile Defense Testing May Be Inadequate

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2004; Page A04

In his annual review of major new weapons, Thomas P. Christie, who heads the Pentagon's office of operational test and evaluation, expressed concern about the small number of flight tests in the missile defense program and about the relatively simple nature of those tests. Even with two more flight intercept attempts planned this year, Christie doubted that enough information will be available to render much of a judgment about the system's ability to defend the United States against missile attack.

"At this point in time, it is not clear what mission capability will be demonstrated" before President Bush's deployment deadline, he said in his report, which was released yesterday.

As the Defense Department official responsible for monitoring military testing, Christie enjoys considerable authority in assessing whether new weapon systems are ready for full production. He has said little publicly about the missile defense effort and has avoided taking sides in the political debate over it, in contrast to his predecessor, Philip Coyle, who emerged as a critic in the final years of the Clinton administration. But Christie's new assessment was cheered yesterday by opponents of Bush's program.

"It is a scorching criticism," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee. "I think it argues for doing it right, not just doing it. I think the administration should delay deployment and get this program on a schedule where operational testing is clearly defined."

Yes, The Long Haul

Settling in for long haul, U.S. military getting comforts of home in Iraq

By Denis D. Gray, Associated Press, 3/31/2004 02:11

BAQOUBA, Iraq (AP) Fresh strawberries from California. Stationary biking to the beat of rap music. Free Internet. And within gunsights, indoor basketball courts and maybe some cappuccino bars.

What a difference a year makes.

During the Iraq war and the ensuing months, U.S. troops invariably ate MREs packaged military rations showered with bottled water and slept in packed, sweltering tents or on the cold desert floor.

Now, settling in for the long haul, the lifestyles of American soldiers are getting major upgrades. The world beyond the concertina wires may be just as dangerous as last year, but within military bases across Iraq, ''Little Americas'' are acquiring better food, more recreational activities and comfortable living quarters.

While the United States plans to turn over the reins of government to the Iraqis on June 30, American troops are expected to remain for years to buttress the fledgling regime.

''As much as possible, we're trying to make it feel like home. We try to give them food choices they can identify with,'' says Sylvester Moore, who supervises a cavernous mess hall at Camp Warhorse in Diyala province north of Baghdad.

Despite nightmarish transport and supply problems, the up to 10,000 meals a day served include steaks from Australia, shrimp from the United States and ice cream made in Holland. The breakfast buffets would put many a luxury hotel to shame and, Moore says, feature ''crisp American-style bacon, not the thick, salty European variety.''

''They said we would be eating a bunch of MREs, but the food here is better than in Germany,'' said Pvt. Angel Lopez, a soldier from the 1st Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade.

Lopez had just finished e-mailing friends in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas, from one of the 11 computer terminals with free Internet access. Telephone calls to the United States and most other parts of the world cost only 5 cents a minute.

The computer and telephone booths are in an aircraft hangar that was once part of a parachute training center for Saddam Hussein's fallen regime. It also houses a gym with an array of exercise equipment, a television and games room and a bazaar where Iraqi vendors sell carpets, DVDs and paintings of desert scenes. There's even an artist to paint family portraits from the soldiers' photographs.

''It's a life-and-death situation here so it's great that they have some place to unwind. Makes me feel good that I can do that for them,'' says Master Sgt. Twanda Pressey, who is charged with the brigade's morale, welfare and recreation programs.

Pressey, of Bradenton, Fla., tells soldiers they should see themselves as being at a ''duty station,'' rather than on a mission, during their tour in Iraq, which has been set at one year, minus 15 days' leave out of the country.

Home at Warhorse is a prefabricated, box-like, air-conditioned structure that is normally shared by three soldiers. Sandbags are stacked halfway up all four walls for protection against the occasional mortars lobbed into the base by insurgents. Some rooftops sport TV satellite dishes purchased by soldiers.

Not all soldiers in Iraq benefit from the improved living conditions. Following the unwritten rule of most armies, the further away from headquarters one gets, the more basic things become.

But in the brigade's five other camps, hot food, air-conditioned huts and in some cases even wireless Internet are available. And brigade commander Col. Dana J. H. Pittard says the quality of life is improving overall.

Riverbend has a few things to say about "quality of life" in some other parts of Iraq:

On a cold night in November, M., her mother, and four brothers had been sleeping when their door suddenly came crashing down during the early hours of the morning. The scene that followed was one of chaos and confusion… screaming, shouting, cursing, pushing and pulling followed. The family were all gathered into the living room and the four sons- one of them only 15- were dragged away with bags over their heads. The mother and daughter were questioned- who was the man in the picture hanging on the wall? He was M.'s father who had died 6 years ago of a stroke. You're lying, they were told- wasn't he a part of some secret underground resistance cell? M.'s mother was hysterical by then- he was her dead husband and why were they taking away her sons? What had they done? They were supporting the resistance, came the answer through the interpreter.

By the end of her tale, M. was crying silently and my mother and Umm Hassen were hastily wiping away tears. All I could do was repeat, "I'm so sorry... I'm really sorry..." and a lot of other useless words. She shook her head and waved away my words of sympathy, "It's ok- really- I'm one of the lucky ones... all they did was beat me."