Religion and Politics

Statement of Jim Wallis to the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee
June 18, 2004

I am Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine and convener of Call to Renewal, a network of churches and faith-based organizations working to overcome poverty. Thank you for your invitation to address you this afternoon.

The media is filled these days with stories of a divided church. And it is already looking certain that highly controversial social questions will again be used during this election year as "wedge issues." Some want us to believe the only "religious issues" in this critical election year are gay marriage and abortion. Others say religion shouldn't matter at all in an election. We believe that our faith does matter in politics.

Some of us feel that our faith has been stolen; and it is time to take it back. In particular, an enormous misrepresentation of my Christian tradition has taken place. And because of an almost uniform media misperception, many people think Christian faith stands for political commitments that are almost the opposite of its true meaning. How did the faith of Jesus come to be known as pro-rich, pro-war, and only pro-American? It's time for a rescue operation-to get back to the historic, biblical, and a genuinely evangelical faith rescued from contemporary distortions. The good news is that the rescue operation has begun-in a time where the social crisis we face literally cries out for more progressive and prophetic religion.

Too many people still believe that faith is private and has no implications for political life. Some politicians seem almost to be saying, "Sure I have faith, but don't worry, it won't affect anything. But what kind of faith is that? Where would America be if the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had kept his faith to himself? The United States has a long history of religious faith supporting and literally driving progressive causes and movements. From the abolition of slavery to women's suffrage to civil rights, religion has led the way for social change.

The separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. America's social fabric depends on such values and vision to shape our politics — a dependence the founders recognized. Not everyone in America has the same religious values, of course. And many moral lessons are open to interpretation.

Yet, it is possible (and necessary) to express one's faith and convictions about public policy while still respecting the pluralism of American democracy. Rather than suggesting that we not talk about "God," we should be arguing — on moral and even religious grounds — that all Americans should have economic security, health care and educational opportunity, and that true faith results in a compassionate concern for those on the margins.

How a candidate deals with poverty is a religious issue, and the Bush administration's failure to support poor working families should be named as a religious failure. Neglect of the environment is a religious issue. Fighting pre-emptive and unilateral wars based on false claims is a religious issue.

Such issues could pose problems for the Bush administration among religious and nonreligious people alike — if someone were to define them in moral terms. The failure to do so is not just a political miscalculation. It shows a lack of appreciation for the contributions of religion to American life.

God is always personal, but never private. It is wrong to restrict religion solely to the private sphere; and it is wrong to define it solely in terms of individual moral choices and sexual ethics. In an election year, people of faith are called to see our political responsibilities in light of our religious faith and our deepest held values.

God bless the Dems (literally) for having the smarts to bring Jim Wallis in. Wallis is a liberal evangelical with the standing to challenge the Pat Roberts and Jerry Falwells of the world, and to give the Dems the kind of standing with liberal religious people that the Bushies have with the Christian right. I may be Catholic, but I have a lot more in common with Jim Wallis than a do with a bunch of my own bishops.

Thanks to the ever-observant Susie Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla for the catch. That woman misses nothing--except a job. We have that in common. If you are able to hit the Paypal or Amazon wishlist links over on the top right, it'll be much appreciated. Tomorrow I will have been unemployed for one year to the day. My life is a bailing wire and duct tape operation right now.

Conspiracy Theories

via the new and improved Agonist:

(as Sean Paul says, if you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention)

Voting Official Seeks Terrorism Guidelines

Fri Jun 25, 3:59 PM ET

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The government needs to establish guidelines for canceling or rescheduling elections if terrorists strike the United States again, says the chairman of a new federal voting commission.

Such guidelines do not currently exist, said DeForest B. Soaries, head of the voting panel.

Soaries was appointed to the federal Election Assistance Commission last year by President Bush (news - web sites). Soaries said he wrote to National Security (news - web sites) Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in April to raise the concerns.

"I am still awaiting their response," he said. "Thus far we have not begun any meaningful discussion." Spokesmen for Rice and Ridge did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Soaries noted that Sept. 11, 2001, fell on Election Day in New York City — and he said officials there had no rules to follow in making the decision to cancel the election and hold it later.

Events in Spain, where a terrorist attack shortly before the March election possibly influenced its outcome, show the need for a process to deal with terrorists threatening or interrupting the Nov. 2 presidential election in America, he said.

"Look at the possibilities. If the federal government were to cancel an election or suspend an election, it has tremendous political implications. If the federal government chose not to suspend an election it has political implications," said Soaries, a Republican and former secretary of state of New Jersey.

"Who makes the call, under what circumstances is the call made, what are the constitutional implications?" he said. "I think we have to err on the side of transparency to protect the voting rights of the country."

Soaries said his bipartisan, four-member commission might make a recommendation to Congress about setting up guidelies.

"I'm hopeful that there are some proposals already being floated. If there are, we're not aware of them. If there are not, we will probably try to put one on the table," he said.

Soaries also said he's met with a former New York state elections director to discuss how officials there handled the Sept. 11 attacks from the perspective of election administration. He said the commission is getting information from New York documenting the process used there.

This is utter garbage. We held elections on time in the middle of the Civil War, fer cryin' out loud. This is the kind of stuff that sends me into tinfoil hat territory. Remember that interview that Gen. Tommy Franks gave to Cigar Afficianado last fall?

Thai Retreat

Thai troops begin Iraq pullout early

By South-East Asia correspondent Peter Lloyd

Thailand will begin withdrawing military forces from Iraq tomorrow.

When the Thai Government agreed to send 450 engineers and medics on a one-year deployment last September, the US touted Thailand as one of the "coalition of the willing".

Thai officials have been insisting that the troops will see out their mission, despite calls for their withdrawal after two Thai soldiers were killed in a car bombing last December.

However, the Government has now announced that a phased withdrawal of military hardware and some troops will start from Thursday.

A Defence Ministry official said the decision did not reverse Thailand's one-year commitment but he refused to specify how many troops would remain in Iraq until September.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra says Thai troops will be brought home sooner if attacks on foreigners worsen.

Gotta read the Australian press to find this stuff out.

Trifecta Box

Graduate Iraq, but fail U.S. as its principal

RICHARD COHEN

The ceremony in Baghdad is the appropriate time to pronounce the war in Iraq a failure, maybe even a debacle. Its only success was the removal of Saddam Hussein – an ogre, yes, but one who had been largely defanged by years of U.N. sanctions, arms inspections and his own stunning incompetence. No meaningful link to al-Qaida has been established, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and no diminution of terrorism has resulted – an astounding trifecta of failure. In fact, as the State Department reluctantly reported, there is now more worldwide terrorism than ever before. Even Saudi Arabia, our friendly filling station, is now a risky place for Americans. More successes like Iraq, and Americans won’t want to travel farther than Bruce Springsteen’s Jersey Shore.

Monday’s ceremony was propelled by both logic and politics. The first has to do with one reason for the insurgency – the U.S. occupation. The sooner Iraqis deal with Iraqis, the better the chances that ultimately a stable government of some sort can be formed. The swiftness with which the liberation became the occupation testifies to Iraq’s low tolerance for anything that suggests Western (colonialist) interference.

But politics, too, plays a role – the upcoming American elections. The apparent policy of the Bush administration is to keep combat deaths to a minimum – even if that means letting the bad guys go. It has enacted the doctrine first enunciated by Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who, in paraphrase, said, “Watch what we do and not what we say.” So watch when American soldiers do not clear out infestations of militia fighters, as has already been the case in Fallujah. That might be bad for Iraq, but it’s good for Bush in November.

We all should wish the graduate well. If Iraq implodes – civil war, etc. – then the Mideast that Bush wants to transform into an Islamic Iowa is going to go to pieces, the final repudiation of the British Colonial Office’s grand design for the region. Already, the Kurds are making noises that sound suspiciously like a declaration of independence, and no one, it seems, knows what the Iranians are up to – or what they will do if their fellow Shiites somehow manage to lose the promised elections.

Iraq faces so many formidable problems that if it were a stock, I’d sell it short.

A supposedly new Iraq was born this week, a graduate going off – really being kissed off – without the necessary skills. It is riven by an insurgency and burdened by an economy that Saddam ruined and war hardly helped. The insincerely proud parent of this miserable misfit is the Bush administration, whose incompetence has been staggering.

Monday’s charade, though, is only half done. Graduate the kid, if need be, but fail the principal.

Bravo, Richard.

Somewhere Near a Whiskey Bar

If you, like me, have gone into a bit of withdrawel over Billmon's decision to close comments on his site, you can go here to the commentary site set up by frequent commentor Bernhard Horstmann. I applaud this sort of community building.

A Snarl in a Suit

Our Feel-Good Veep

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, June 30, 2004; Page A21

Considering that he's out of the public eye most of the time, it's remarkable that Cheney has become just as much of a polarizing figure as his boss. But then, Cheney is a master of high-impact public appearances. When a guy continues to insist, for instance, that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda, despite the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission's report that it has found no evidence of such a link, he begins to convey an impression. In this case, it's that of one of Alfred Hitchcock's obsessional lunatics.

A lesser president might seek to jettison such a running mate, but not George W. Bush. Cheney still has a signal virtue: Unlike Tom Ridge or Rudy Giuliani, he's no threat to brother Jeb's presidential prospects in 2008. Whatever peril Cheney may pose to the planet, he remains no obstacle to the George-'n-Jeb succession -- the least impressive dynastic duo since Willy of Prussia and Nicky of Russia.

John Kerry, meanwhile, is fast approaching the day when he must announce his own running mate. And just as the Democratic Party settled on Kerry as its most electable presidential choice, it has settled on John Edwards as its most electable veep. Whether Kerry has settled on Edwards, of course, remains the deepest of mysteries.

Besides Edwards, the only potential vice presidential pick with a voluble group of champions is Dick Gephardt. The presidents of a number of unions, chiefly in the manufacturing sector but led by Teamster chief Jim Hoffa (who was Gephardt's law school classmate), have rallied behind the Missouri congressman. But the support of Gephardt, even among union presidents, is far from unanimous.

All of labor is grateful for Gephardt's more-than-decade-long leadership of the fight against the kind of globalization that pays no heed to labor or environmental standards. But many union leaders are quick to point out that when Gephardt ran fourth in January's Iowa caucuses and was compelled to withdraw from the race, he lost even the factory towns to Kerry and Edwards. Great guy, good message, bad messenger, these presidents say. Edwards's "two Americas" talk, by contrast, has electrified Democrats -- and, if the primary results are any indication, many independents as well -- in search of a resonant explanation of what has gone wrong in an increasingly plutocratic America.

Kerry is rightly concerned, of course, that his vice presidential pick have credibility in matters of national security. The mystery is that anyone still feels that Cheney, and his boss, have any. They invaded Iraq because they believed erroneous evidence (and may still believe it, all actual evidence to the contrary) or, more plausibly, because they could, because they knew they'd feel better afterward. Of course, because they discarded the occupation plans developed by the State Department, the CIA and the military and opted to go into Iraq with no occupation plan whatever, they don't feel better afterward. The place is a bloody mess. No wonder they're cussing at Democrats. It's one of the few small pleasures their current life affords.

I'll join the rest of the lefty blogosphere in declaring that Kerry's veep selection matters to me not a whit. This election is about re-taking the Republic and restoring democracy in THIS country. John Kerry can select any random homo sapient and it'll be fine with me.

Meyerson's larger case, that Bush and the neo-cons have made a hash of our foreign policy, remains out of sight, out of mind, for about half of the electorate. That's astonishing.

Subjects or Citizens?

Abu Ghraib, Stonewalled

Published: June 30, 2004

While piously declaring its determination to unearth the truth about Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration has spent nearly two months obstructing investigations by the Army and members of Congress. It has dragged out the Army's inquiry, withheld crucial government documents from a Senate committee and stonewalled senators over dozens of Red Cross reports that document the horrible mistreatment of Iraqis at American military prisons. Even last week's document dump from the White House, which included those cynical legal road maps around treaties and laws against torturing prisoners, seemed part of this stonewalling campaign. Nothing in those hundreds of pages explained what orders had been issued to the military and C.I.A. jailers in Iraq, and by whom.

It took the Pentagon more than two weeks to appoint a replacement for Maj. Gen. George Fay, who had to be relieved of the task of investigating the military intelligence units at Abu Ghraib because he was not senior enough to question Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander in Iraq. The process underscored the inability of the military to investigate itself at this level. The Pentagon named someone of high enough rank — just barely. That officer is a three-star general, as is General Sanchez. He will have to get up to speed before questioning General Sanchez, and the Pentagon will undoubtedly stall again when the new investigating general, inevitably, needs to go yet higher.The Pentagon has also not turned over to the Senate the full report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who conducted the Army's biggest investigation so far into abuses at Abu Ghraib. The Pentagon has still not accounted for the 2,000 pages missing from his 6,000-page file when it was given to the Senate Armed Services Committee more than a month ago; the missing pages include draft documents on interrogation techniques for Iraq. The committee's chairman, Senator John Warner, said last week that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had assured him that he was working on the problem. Mr. Warner's faith seems deeply misplaced.

Mr. Rumsfeld's handling of another issue, the Red Cross reports on Iraq, is the most outrageous example of the administration's bad faith on the prison scandal. The Bush administration has cited Red Cross confidentiality policies to explain its failure to give up the reports. The trouble is, the Red Cross has repeatedly told the administration to go ahead and share the agency's findings with Congress, as long as steps are taken to prevent leaks.

On May 7, the Senate armed services panel asked Mr. Rumsfeld for these reports on widespread abuse in the military prisons in Iraq; one of the reports had already appeared on the Internet. Mr. Rumsfeld assured the committee that he would turn them over, if the Red Cross agreed. Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides have not handed over the reports — 40 in all, including 24 from Iraq. Over the weeks, the Pentagon has assured increasingly angry senators that it was negotiating with the Red Cross, and then offered the rather absurd claim that it was still "collecting" the documents.

In fact, the International Red Cross gave its consent within 24 hours of Mr. Rumsfeld's empty promise, and has repeated it several times.

In late May, Kevin Moley, the American ambassador to the international organizations based in Geneva, invited the head of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, to "express any concerns" his organization had about giving the documents to Congress. Dr. Kellenberger replied that it was never a problem as long as the documents were kept confidential. Given the administration's habit of selective disclosure, however, Dr. Kellenberger insisted that all of the reports, not just some, be sent to Congress, in their entirety. He has also asked for an inventory of what is shared.

Still, the Pentagon told Senator Warner's committee that it had not worked out an arrangement. On June 15, Christophe Girod, head of the Red Cross delegation in Washington, wrote to Senator Edward Kennedy, a leader in the fight to get the prison reports, that the decision "lies with the U.S. authorities." He confirmed that the Red Cross had given the Pentagon permission to hand over the documents in early May.

Last Thursday, members of the Armed Services Committee attended a closed-door briefing with the Pentagon, ostensibly on the Red Cross reports. But the briefers did not turn over any documents; they merely showed the senators reports on Guantánamo Bay that had no bearing on Iraq.

The Senate is now in a two-week recess. In one of the few signs of life on Capitol Hill on this issue, Mr. Warner promises to resume his hearings after the recess. But even the Red Cross in Geneva has got it figured out: the administration has no intention of cooperating. It's time for the Republican majority in Congress to stop covering for the White House and compel the administration, by subpoena if necessary, to turn over all documents relating to Abu Ghraib — starting with those Red Cross reports.

Have you called or faxed your congresscritter to demand further investigation? Have you let Henry Waxman know that you support his demands? Are you going to let the Republicans get away with this?

Republic, Not Empire

Detainees May Be Moved Off Cuba Base

By John Hendren, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Senior Bush administration officials are considering moving hundreds of detainees from a facility in Cuba to prisons within the United States in response to Supreme Court rulings this week that granted military prisoners access to U.S. courts, officials said Tuesday.

As attorneys for detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, began preparing the first of hundreds of expected lawsuits demanding that the government justify the detentions, administration officials acknowledged that they were unprepared for a rebuke in two landmark Supreme Court decisions that rejected the military's treatment of prisoners in the war on terrorism.

Now, after being handed the losses, the administration has been left to scramble to develop a strategy for granting hearings to detainees without having to cope with an unwieldy series of lawsuits throughout the nation.

"They didn't really have a specific plan for what to do, case by case, if we lost," a senior Department of Defense official said on condition of anonymity. "The Justice Department didn't have a plan. State didn't have a plan. This wasn't a unilateral mistake on Department of Defense's part. It's astounding to me that these cases have been pending for so long and nobody came up with a contingency plan."

To avoid ferrying prisoners and government lawyers to federal courts across the country, as might be required, Pentagon and Justice Department officials said they had discussed moving all detainees to a military prison in a conservative judicial district within the United States to enable the consolidation of all the proceedings in one court. They said possible locations could be Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., where there is an Army base with a military prison, or Charleston, S.C., home of the Charleston Naval Weapons Station, which houses the Navy brig.

Another option would be to allow prisoners to file for writs of habeas corpus — a demand for legal justification for their imprisonment — at a makeshift court at the base in Cuba. The Supreme Court left open the possibility of such an option.

Under a third proposal offered Justice Department officials and discussed at a high-level interagency meeting Tuesday, a senior administration official said, the administration would ask Congress to designate one federal court district to try the cases — most likely Washington, D.C., or the Eastern District of Virginia, whose jurisdiction includes the Pentagon.

The changes could occur as part of a general reorganization of Guantanamo currently under consideration in which the prison facility would be revamped, with detainees segregated by the level of threat they are thought to pose, the senior administration official said.

The administration has faced months of criticism over its prisoner detention program. Critics say the issue, combined with the prison abuse scandal in Iraq and this week's rulings, have undermined the administration's contention that it could be trusted to offer detainees "full and fair" justice.

"The 'trust us' era is over," said Joshua Dratel, a New York attorney who is representing Australian detainee David Hicks, one of three detainees who was referred Tuesday to the first military commission proceedings to be held since World War II.

Thank God for the Bill of Rights. Otherwise, you and I could end up at Gitmo. Think about it. C-minus Augustus gave a good run at overturning habeus corpus but even he couldn't do it. We have a chance at returning the republic in November. Vote.

The Future

Reality Intrudes on Promises in Rebuilding of Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ and ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: June 30, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 29 - The four big smokestacks at the Doura power plant in Baghdad have always served as subversive truth-tellers. No matter what Saddam Hussein's propagandists said about electricity supplies, people knew they could get a better idea of the coming day's power by counting how many stacks at Doura were spewing smoke.

Mr. Hussein is vanquished and a new Iraqi government has just gained formal sovereignty, but those smokestacks remain potent markers - not only of sporadic electricity service but of the agonizingly slow pace of Iraq's promised economic renewal.

More than a year into an aid effort that American officials likened to the Marshall Plan, occupation authorities acknowledge that fewer than 140 of 2,300 promised construction projects are under way. Only three months after L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator who departed Monday, pledged that 50,000 Iraqis would find jobs at construction sites before the formal transfer of sovereignty, fewer than 20,000 local workers are employed.

Inside the high-profile Doura plant, American-financed repairs, originally scheduled to be completed by June 1, have dragged into the summer even as the demand for electricity soars and residents suffer through nightly power failures.

At the same time, an economy that is supposed to become a beacon of free enterprise remains warped by central controls and huge subsidies for energy and food, leaving politically explosive policy choices for the fledgling Iraqi government.

While the interim government has formally taken office, the reconstruction effort - involving everything from building electric and sewage plants to training police officers and judges - is only beginning.

Scrambling to speed up the process, the Pentagon has recently begun pumping out long-awaited money and work orders, committing $1.4 billion in just the last week even as a spreading insurgency cripples the ability of Western contractors to oversee their projects and has made targets of Iraqi workers.

American authorities, while admitting to a slow start and more aware than anyone of the security threat, insist that the rebuilding will proceed. "Some of the power plants may get blown up," David J. Nash, the retired rear admiral who directs the American building program, said in an interview last week. "But we're not going to stop."

Of the $9 billion in contracts the Pentagon has issued so far, only $5.2 billion has actually been nailed down for defined tasks. Most of those projects are still in planning stages, though officials insist that the rebuilding effort will soon flower.

From the outset the designing of projects and awarding of billions of dollars in contracts proved slower than some officials had imagined.

Among other things, planning, oversight and competitive procedures were tightened after some of the earliest postwar contracts, awarded without competition to companies including Halliburton, were tainted by evidence of waste and overcharging.

But even more, the glowing economic promises met the realities of Iraq. Decades of neglect, sanctions and war left the country's physical infrastructure in far worse condition than many expected. And as an anti-American uprising gained force, the reconstruction effort became a prime target, with oil pipes and power lines blown up as soon as they were repaired and Iraqi workers put in fear of retribution.

From the start, refurbishing Iraq's dismal infrastructure and creating a thriving market economy were promoted by Bush administration officials as pillars of the American-led invasion - "the perfect complement to Iraq's political transformation," in the words of Mr. Bremer.

But more than a year later, supplies of electricity and water are no better for most Iraqis, and in some cases are worse, than they were before the invasion in the spring of 2003.

Repairs of three giant wastewater treatment plants in Baghdad, for example, are weeks or months behind, while water supply systems in the south of the country are months or even years away from functioning properly. Unrepaired bridges continue to create monstrous bottlenecks in many parts of the country.

How do you spell "quagmire?"

The Economy, Stupid,

Low-wage jobs rise at faster pace
By Barbara Hagenbaugh and Barbara Hansen, USA TODAY
By Steve Yeater for USA TODAY

Nearly 14% of the jobs added have been temporary workers, who typically are paid lower wages. Restaurant workers, who also usually are paid lower wages, have been added, too. Higher-paid computer jobs have been added at a snail's pace.

Jobs will be one of the biggest factors in the Federal Reserve's decision today about interest rates.

Although U.S. firms have added more than 1.4 million jobs in the last nine months, economists and politicians have questioned if workers are finding good, higher-paying jobs or if firms are creating lower-paying work that the jobless are desperately taking.

The difference is key. Higher-wage jobs create more income, which leads to more spending. Lower-wage jobs tend to create just enough income for a household to live without creating extra spending money. Consumer spending is the key driver of the U.S. economy, accounting for more than two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity.

USA TODAY asked two economic consulting firms, Economy.com and Global Insight, to study the recent job creation based on both industry data and geography.

"We're creating a lot more jobs but they are still largely lower-paying jobs," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. Zandi calls the difference between the higher-wage and lower-wage job creation pace significant.

"It means the jobs we are creating pack less of a punch for the economy," Zandi says. "With less income, there is less spending and less growth."

The results aren't necessarily surprising. Shaken by a sharp slowdown in business spending, the bursting of the stock market bubble, the Sept. 11 attacks, war and corporate scandals, CEOs have been cautious about hiring workers. It stands to reason that firms would be much more comfortable adding a $6-an-hour job vs. a $30-an-hour one.

It's a trend that has been seen in previous job recoveries, Zandi and Global Insight's Phil Hopkins say.

In other words, this is still a jobless recovery and it still sucks.

What Up North Means for Down South

I discovered this terrific CSMonitor blog a couple of weeks ago. The author, Tom Regan, is a dual citizenship Canadian American. He has an interesting Canadian perspective for Americans on the Candian by-elections yesterday.

I won't bore you with all the Canadian inside baseball stuff, but there were a couple of points worth nothing. The group with the most egg on its collective face this morning is the country's pollsters. They had called for the closest election in almost 50 years, with both of the leading parties (the Liberals and the Conservatives) projected to win almost the same number of seats, with the Conservatives having a slight edge.

And it won't be in a way that he likes.

Accountability

Sack ‘Em and Rack ‘Em

By David H. Hackworth

America would be a whole lot safer if the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, was flying for Virgin Airlines, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was competing on “Survivor.” Both war leaders have done so miserable a job honchoing the military side of our critical conflict against global terrorism, and in the process so jeopardized our national security, that they should be sacked for dereliction of duty.

Even though Rumsfeld and Myers know zilch about ground fighting in an insurgent environment, they were convinced “Shock ‘n’ Awe” would do the trick, just as another military dilettante, former SecDef Robert McNamara, believed the big hammer would win in Vietnam, a war where the USA dropped three times the bomb tonnage and used twice the artillery firepower than was used in all of World War II.

There really isn't any more that needs to be said, Hack.

Restraining the Imperium

Executive Branch Reined In

By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 29, 2004; Page A01

The Supreme Court's complicated holdings in three cases involving detainees from the battle against terrorism may not result in any prisoners going free -- the justices yesterday left that for lower courts or tribunals to decide.

But the opinions, concurrences and dissents were decisive on this: They represent a nearly unanimous repudiation of the Bush administration's sweeping claims to power over those captives.

Liberal or conservative mattered little in the ultimate outcome. The court roundly rejected the president's assertion that, in time of war, he can order the "potentially indefinite detention of individuals who claim to be wholly innocent of wrongdoing," to quote the court's opinion in the case of foreign prisoners held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In fact, the administration's claim to such power over U.S. citizens produced an opinion signed by perhaps the court's most conservative justice, Antonin Scalia, and possibly its most liberal, John Paul Stevens.

"The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive," Scalia wrote, with Stevens's support.

In this way, the court's rejection of the executive-power arguments in the cases might be seen as part of a reemergence of the other branches of government from the shadow of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As the justices suggested several times in their opinions, emergency measures that might have been within the president's power in the days and weeks just after 9/11 now must be reconciled withAmerican norms of due process. In that sense, the cases struck a chord with congressional hearings into the rules for prisoner interrogations at U.S. prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I think van Driehle's analysis is astute here: the deference given to the executive branch after 9/11 has been excessive, and, on the part of congressional Dems, wrong headed. Now if we could just get a better press corps....

Involuntary Army

Army Plans Involuntary Call-Up of Thousands
Mon Jun 28, 2004 11:16 PM ET

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army is planning an involuntary mobilization of thousands of reserve troops to maintain adequate force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense officials said on Monday.

The move -- involving the seldom-tapped Individual Ready Reserve -- represents the latest evidence of the strain being placed on the U.S. military, particularly the Army, by operations in those two countries.

Roughly 5,600 soldiers from the ready reserve will be notified of possible deployment this year, including some soldiers who will be notified within a month, said an Army official speaking on condition of anonymity.

A senior defense official said, "These individuals are being called back to fill specific shortages for specific jobs."

The official said the last time the Individual Ready Reserve, mainly made up of soldiers who have completed their active duty obligations, was mobilized in any significant numbers was during the 1991 Gulf War.

Army officials are in the process of briefing members of Congress on the mobilization and plan a formal announcement on Wednesday.

The Army official said the mobilization "will be through the rest of the year. Some could be within a month."

"It would be an involuntary measure, an involuntary mobilization," the Army official said. "It's approximately 5,600."

"We're not calling up units, we're just using all the existing assets in theater and we're augmenting those assets with these individuals -- various occupational specialties, various different types of officers running the whole gamut," the Army official said.

The official said military police and civil affairs personnel were among the specialties involved.

The defense official said that while soldiers in the Individual Ready Reserve have served their voluntary obligation in the Army they still can be mobilized involuntarily for several years after returning to civilian life.

You can talk "handover" all you want, but this is the reality of Iraq. I blogged about this on June 2nd. These recalled troops are not happy, feeling abused and complaining. I'm amazed not to be finding this Reuters story in any of the national papers today.

"It Was A Mistake."

The Administration vs. the Administration

By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, June 29, 2004; Page A21

White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales assembled reporters in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building last week for what has become an administration ritual: disavowing the conclusions of official documents.

Administration memos -- some of which appeared to sanction torture of prisoners -- were "unnecessary, over-broad discussions" and "not relied upon" by policymakers, Gonzales said. "In reality, they do not reflect the policies that the administration ultimately adopted."

A week earlier, it was Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's turn to step away from an official document, this one State's "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, which showed the number of terrorist incidents worldwide falling to the lowest level in more than three decades. "Unfortunately, the data that is within the report, the actual numbers of incidents, is off, it's wrong," Powell said. "And I am regretful that this has happened." A revised report showed that 625 people died in terrorist attacks in 2003, not 307 as first reported.

Before that, the administration publicly disavowed -- or at least tiptoed away from -- a budget memo calling for spending cuts next year, unrealistically upbeat reports about job growth, Medicare prescription costs and minority health care, and optimistic assumptions in a proposed regulation governing mercury emissions.

Democrats say this is no accident. "It's either political manipulation or incompetence," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a former top aide to President Bill Clinton. "I know it's not incompetence." Emanuel, with Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), alleges "a rampant pattern of crafting government reports to match the administration's political objectives."

Untrue, said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan. "The president has set clear policies, and we are achieving real results," she said. "It's unfortunate that some Democrats would rather manipulate the facts of certain memos than work with the president to win the war on terror, build on the economic recovery and make America better."

Every administration does its best to spin its way out of trouble caused by a leaked memo, an impolitic remark or an unfavorable conclusion in an agency's policy analysis. Clinton, knowing a damaging report was being prepared, would preempt it by announcing new policies. In the latest version, Bush officials have been walking away from several conclusions produced by their colleagues.

The most embarrassing are cases in which good-news reports by the administration turn out to be based on errors, omissions or wishful thinking. As Powell did this month with the global terrorism report, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson earlier this year distanced himself from a report by his agency that played down inequalities in health care for minorities. The original version was edited to remove many uses of the word "disparity" and the description of the inequality as a national problem. "I think people just wanted this to be a more positive report and made that editorial position known," Thompson said in congressional testimony. "It was a mistake."

This entire regime is a mistake. Can't wait untill we can send these asshats back to Crawford.

Up North

As friend, blogger and regular commentor pogge predicted, Canada has elected a minority government which probably won't last 18 months. Our neighbor to the north is having some of the same political "issues" we have, and they remain unresolved.

Canada's Ruling Party Loses Its Majority in Elections
Liberals Seen Likely To Retain Power in Minority Government

By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 29, 2004; Page A15

TORONTO, June 29 -- Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberal Party lost its absolute majority in Parliament in nationwide voting on Monday, but still outdistanced its rivals and appeared likely to hold on to power by forming the nation's first minority government in 25 years.

Preliminary results announced by Canada's electoral commission said the Liberals, who have held the government for 11 years, won 135 seats in Parliament, short of the 155 needed to retain a majority.

But the Conservative Party, led by Stephen Harper, which expected a boost at the polls because of anger over a government financial scandal, was unable to gain as many seats as it hoped.

Nearly complete returns showed the Conservatives winning 97 seats in the new Parliament, a gain of 24. The Bloc Quebecois party was projected to win 54 seats, a net gain of 21. The New Democratic Party won 22 seats, a gain of eight. The Liberals would have to form an alliance with a smaller party to form a new government.

It appeared Monday night that the Liberals would attempt to form a coalition with the New Democratic Party.

Martin, whose party lost 33 seats in the election, said in a speech Monday night in Quebec that Canadians had sent the Liberals a message: "As a party and as a government, we must do better." He said he would work to maintain a progressive Canada, strengthen health care and build a national system of child care. Martin, whose party was hobbled throughout the campaign by a financial scandal in the Liberal Party, declared in Quebec, "We will work very hard every day to earn your confidence."

Harper, who just weeks ago had projected his party would win a majority government, admitted Monday night he was disappointed in the results but congratulated the party on depriving the Liberals of a majority.

"We increased our seats and broadened our base," Harper told cheering supporters in Alberta. "Until someone achieves a majority, the fight is not won or lost."

Goldy Hyder, a Conservative Party strategist, said the party failed to win over Canadians on certain key issues such as support for the war in Iraq. "I think the challenge for the right continues to be that it finds itself on the wrong side of what turns out to be dominate election issues," he said. "On those kinds of issues, it still has a way to go to explain to the public what its views are."

As leaders of the major parties ended five weeks of campaigning, they were shown on television casting votes in their home precincts.

Martin, who was widely seen as running a botched campaign in his effort win a fourth consecutive term for the Liberals, voted in Quebec. He returned home on Monday morning after flying across the country, attempting to rally voters to remain with his party. He charged that Harper, his main rival, had a hidden agenda to stop same-sex marriage, change abortion laws and privatize Canada's free public health care system.

Harper, who advocates cutting taxes and increasing military spending, voted in Calgary, Alberta. In last-minute campaigning on Sunday in Alberta, he argued that the Liberal Party was corrupt, citing the ongoing financial scandal. He characterized Martin as "a desperate man."

"There is no culture of defeat in this room," Liberal Party candidate Scott Brison said after he won in Atlantic Canada. "Across Canada tonight in an extremely tight election, we hope Canadians vote to put Canada first and vote to support values that make Canada the envy of the world."

In the crucial province of Ontario, Liberals had captured 75 of the 106 seats, and the Conservatives won 24. In Quebec, Bloc Quebecois won 54 seats and the Liberals won 21. The Conservatives won no seats in Quebec.

Political analysts said that in Atlantic Canada, many members of the old Progressive Conservative Party voted for the Liberals instead of for the new Conservative Party. Preston Manning, the leader of the former Reform Party, said in a televised interview: "When Atlantic Canada is worried, they go with the devil they know. When the West is worried, they tend to stir up the pot."

I'll be curious to see if the same regional dynamics play out here, although the stakes are different.

Empire or....

From Occupation to 'Partnership'
Despite Threat of Violence, U.S. Soldiers Prepare to Slip Into the Background

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 29, 2004; Page A19

BAQUBAH, Iraq, June 28 -- In the fluorescent glow of warehouse lights, Capt. Travis Van Hecke looked up into the face of a far larger man dressed in a gray caftan. A few others gathered around the pair, providing a running commentary of the encounter between the Army officer from Wisconsin and the shopkeeper from Howadir.

"So do you guys know that June 30 is the transfer of sovereignty?" Van Hecke asked the man, pausing to give his interpreter time to convey the question. "We'll still be here to support the Iraqi police, but the occupation ends. How do they feel about that?"

A crowd emerged from the closet-blackness enveloping the tiny town where Van Hecke had come Sunday evening on a visit in search of intelligence about the anti-American insurgency battering nearby Baqubah. Cigarettes glowed, and Van Hecke's soldiers stood ready against walls overhung by date palms.

"He says if you are still all over this town, day and night, then the problem will still be here," Van Hecke's interpreter said after much chatter from the crowd. "He says you can avoid giving the insurgents an excuse for their doings if you stay away."

The request, made only hours before Monday's surprise transfer of political power from the United States to the interim Iraqi government, underscored the challenges facing U.S. soldiers as they begin adapting to a new mission after months of serving as an occupying force. Over the course of a five-minute ceremony in Baghdad, the country changed governments. But the violence threatening the American project to bring a stable democracy to Iraq continued; while the ceremony was being held in the capital, a roadside bomb exploded near a military convoy in this city 35 miles to the northeast.

The adjustments contemplated by U.S. military commanders over the next six months, a potentially volatile period before Iraqis elect a government, involve changes in tone more than substance. Taken together, commanders say, the changes will turn the 138,000 U.S. troops, the chief guarantors of Iraq's security, into something resembling a police force called in to assist the fledgling Iraqi police and national guard.

But military commanders acknowledge those changes will be difficult to impose on troops fighting a skilled guerrilla insurgency. Nighttime patrols and intelligence gathering by Army units stationed around the country are vital to the counterinsurgency effort, commanders said.

Local Iraqi officials have asked the U.S. troops to cease the provocative military patrols -- known as "reconnaissance by fire" missions because they are intended to draw insurgent attacks -- and remain on two bases outside Baqubah unless needed. U.S. commanders here understand that if they refuse, they could undermine the new government's independence in the eyes of the ordinary Iraqis.

Changing the name doesn't change the game. We can retreat to the bunkers, but, then, why are we here?

The Haunting of the President

There is so much news today that is hard to know where to start. So I'll start here:

Bush's Rating Falls to Its Lowest Point, New Survey Finds
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

Published: June 29, 2004

President Bush's job approval rating has fallen to the lowest level of his presidency, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The poll found Americans stiffening their opposition to the Iraq war, worried that the invasion could invite domestic terrorist attacks and skeptical about whether the White House has been fully truthful about the war or about abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison.

A majority of respondents in the poll, conducted before yesterday's transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government, said that the war was not worth its cost in American lives and that the Bush administration did not have a clear plan to restore order to Iraq.

The survey, which showed Mr. Bush's approval rating at 42 percent, also found that nearly 40 percent of Americans say they do not have an opinion about Senator John Kerry, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, despite what have been both parties' earliest and most expensive television advertising campaigns.

Among those who do have an opinion, Mr. Kerry is disliked more than he is liked. More than 50 percent of respondents said that Mr. Kerry says what he thinks voters want to hear, suggesting that Mr. Bush has had success in portraying his opponent as a flip-flopper.

Americans were more likely to believe that Mr. Bush would do a better job than Mr. Kerry would in steering the nation through a foreign crisis, and protecting it from future terrorist attacks. Support for Mr. Bush's abilities in those areas has declined in recent months, but the findings suggest that Americans are more comfortable entrusting their security to a president they know than a challenger who remains relatively unknown.

Even so, the poll was scattered with warning flags for Mr. Bush, and there was compelling evidence that his decision to take the nation to war against Iraq has left him in a precarious political position.

Play with that while I try to get caught up on sleep. Man, I'm fried.

Mental Illness

Wary Iraqis Welcome the Handover but Ask, Now What?
By EDWARD WONG and IAN FISHER

In the southern holy city of Najaf, where the most powerful Shiite clerics in Iraq reside, people tried grappling with what exactly sovereignty meant.

"I don't see the handover as an important thing," said Radi Aziz Hassan, 36, a teacher. "The most important thing is whether this government will change our tragic situation. Is the occupation truly finished? All these are claims that need to be discussed."

The "tragic situation" that Mr. Hassan referred to — the chronic lack of electricity, the shortage of clean water, the high unemployment rate, the daily spasms of violence — weighed heavily on the minds of Iraqis.

"State employees are benefiting under the new government," said Ali Khadhum, 38, a salesman in a Baghdad furniture store. "They have good jobs and better pay. But what about ordinary citizens? What about all the people with no jobs? Will the new government provide more jobs? What will happen to them in the future Iraq?"

Mr. Khadhum lived in the sprawling Shiite slum of Sadr City, where followers of the firebrand cleric Moktada al-Sadr have clashed with American soldiers throughout the occupation.

The store owner, Hussein Abdul-Wahid, also resided there. He proclaimed himself a supporter of Mr. Sadr. After finishing afternoon prayers, he stood up on a prayer rug in a corner of the store and turned to a reporter.

"Everybody is backing Sistani and Sadr," Mr. Abdul-Wahid said, referring to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq. "They are our marjaiyah, our high clerics, and we follow them 100 percent. The Americans and the new government will be like Saddam. They won't give a big role to the clerics. They won't be allowed to have a big influence on the people."

It's clear to me the Iraqis aren't fooled by this PR stunt. Typical of the maladministration, we get PR instead of competence or a plan. The fact that people are dying doesn't seem to move these people. Remember the old definition of neurosis: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

Brave New World

Into the Abyss

By
Martin van Creveld

In the short run, the greatest beneficiary of the war is Israel. The destruction of Iraq has created a situation where, for the first time since the State was founded in 1948, it has no real conventional enemy left within about 600 miles of its borders. If Sharon had any sense he would use this window of opportunity to come to some kind of arrangement with the Palestinians. Whether he will do so, though, remains to be seen.

Even if the Islamic Republic is overthrown, as some hope, the new government in Tehran will surely follow the same nationalist line as its predecessor did. A nuclear Iran is likely to be followed by a nuclear Turkey. Next will come a nuclear Greece, a nuclear Saudi Arabia (assuming the country can survive as a single political unit), and a nuclear Egypt. Welcome to the Brave New World, Mr. Bush.

Agree or disagree, but the smart folks at Defense and the National Interest always have thoughtful things to say. Martin van Creveld lives and teaches in Jerusalem. He has written several books that have influenced modern military theory, including Fighting Power, Command in War, and most significantly, The Transformation of War. Van Creveld opens this essay with the flat admission that the war is already lost, but you knew that.

Bush and the Saudis

Don't dismiss 'terrorists'
By Eric Margolis -- Contributing Foreign Editor

After 9/11, America's pro-Israel neo-conservatives launched vicious political and media attacks against the Saudi regime, accusing it of being in league with Saudi militant Osama bin Laden. The neo-cons' objective: Bring down the Saudi government, a key financial backer of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.

But far from being an enemy of the U.S., Saudi Arabia is almost an overseas American state. One-third of the population of 24 million is foreign. Saudi defences, internal security, finance and the oil industry are still run by some 70,000 U.S. and British expatriates. Some eight million Asian workers do the middle management and donkey work.

The royal family is intimately linked to Washington's political and money power elite through a network of business and personal connections. The Bush family, and its entourage of Republican military-industrial complex deal makers, has been joined at the hip for two decades with Saudi power princes and their financial frontmen.

As this column has long maintained, Saudi Arabia did not finance or abet Osama bin Laden -- it tried repeatedly to kill him. Bin Laden's modest funds came from donations by individual Saudis, wealthy and poor alike, who supported his jihad against western domination.

The violence now erupting across the kingdom is partly the work of small al-Qaida cells. Bin Laden's charges that the royal family debases Islam, squanders the nation's oil billions on useless arms, luxury prostitutes, and the gaming tables of Monte Carlo, resonate across all of Arabia.

Anti-royalist jihadi groups, many veterans of the 1980s Afghan war, have joined in the revolt with young Saudis fed up by their nation's medieval society, corrupt regime, brutal repression, and subservience to Washington. Half of Saudis are under 16. The kingdom is undergoing the same kind of generational revolt that brought down the Soviet Empire.

These anti-feudal rebels cannot simply be dismissed as "terrorists." Many want genuine democracy and modernity; others, a truly Islamic state, or, simply, change. The ground is shaking in Saudi Arabia.

While the CNN stenographers insist on repeating Bushspeak simplicities, there still are some REAL jounalists out there capable of telling us what is really going on. The situation in the Kingdom is a good deal more complex than the infotainment channels will have you know.

Hubris Always Brings Nemesis

COMMENTARY
A State That's Not a State
The U.S. can invent a 'sovereign' entity, but there's no guarantee that the creature won't become a monster.

By Adam Hochschild, Adam Hochschild is the author of "The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journey" (Penguin, 1990) and "The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin" (Viking, 1994).

The reality is that with nearly 140,000 American troops on Iraqi soil, most military power will not be in Iraqi hands. Nor, with Washington largely paying the bills, will the budget. Furthermore, American administrator L. Paul Bremer III has already appointed a number of people to crucial watchdog and regulatory commissions for five-year terms.

If the Iraq-to-be is not a state, what is it? We do not really have a word for the government of a country where most real power is in the hands of someone else. Pseudo-state, perhaps. From Afghanistan to the Palestinian Authority, Bosnia to Congo, pseudo-states are now spread out around the globe. Some of them will even be exchanging ambassadors with Iraq.

Pseudo-states are nothing new, and two notable collections of them had surprising fates near the 20th century's end. One group was the homelands of South Africa, four of which were formally independent — Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, Transkei and Venda. The so-called South African embassies evolved seamlessly out of the white administrations that formerly ran these territories, just as the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is beginning life in the very same Republican Palace complex from which Bremer has run Iraq for the last year.

The South African government equipped the homelands with everything from foreign ministries to luxurious, gated residential compounds for Cabinet members. The territories were given flags, national anthems and the like.

But it was all an expensive illusion. No country except South Africa recognized the "independent" Bantustans as sovereign nations. And when a 1988 coup temporarily deposed Lucas Mangope, the president of Bophuthatswana, it was the South African army that promptly restored him to power.

As South Africa made its miraculous transition to majority rule in the early 1990s, the homelands as separate political entities swiftly vanished. The only people to whom the past trappings of their independence still matter today are collectors who do a lively trade in the territories' stamps.

Another class of pseudo-states, however, had a very different fate: the 15 Soviet socialist republics that composed the Soviet Union. These too were decked out with the external indicators of sovereignty, and for two of the republics, Byelorussia and Ukraine, you didn't even have to leave the United States to see their flags and other symbols. They'd been given something that South Africa's homelands never got: seats at the United Nations, a concession that Stalin had wrung from the Allies at the end of World War II.

But everyone knew, despite Soviet propaganda, that these so-called republics were nothing of the sort. They had no independence; ultimate power resided in Moscow. (Moscow could even dissolve them at will: A short-lived 16th Soviet socialist republic along the Finnish border simply disappeared in 1956.) And yet, in that other unexpected transformation of the early 1990s, it was the Soviet Union itself that evaporated — and its 15 pseudo-states, overnight, turned into real ones.

The Iraq that will come into being this week will not closely resemble either the South African homelands or the old Soviet republics. But their histories, though radically different, suggest the same lesson: Because such creations are acts of such hubris, pseudo-states often turn out different from what their inventors intended. And the larger and more unstable the pseudo-state, the more likely that plans will go awry.

Given the complete ineptitude that the Bushies have exercised to date, Hochschild's caution is important: we run the risk of creating a monster, another Afghanistan, perhaps.

Hand-Over

Hand-Over Is Political Gamble for Bush

By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer
June 28, 2004

WASHINGTON — The hand-over of authority to an interim Iraqi government may offer President Bush his best opportunity before November to rebuild public confidence in his strategy for Iraq, but it also risks accelerating U.S. disillusionment with the mission there.

With a flurry of recent polls showing most Americans uneasy with events in Iraq, analysts across the political spectrum agree that the changeover could represent a pivotal moment in U.S. attitudes about the war.

Progress in establishing an Iraqi government capable of bearing more of the military burden could help Bush reverse the growing doubts about his management of the conflict — and fears that it has reduced rather than enhanced U.S. security.

Conversely, if the new government cannot establish legitimacy and order, pessimism about the mission's prospects — and disillusionment over Bush's initial decision to invade Iraq — is likely to solidify and even spread, experts say.

"There is risk and there is opportunity for Bush in the hand-over, and it is one of the most important events in an event-driven election," said Andy Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

One key question is how Americans measure success in the weeks ahead. With U.S. officials indicating that they expect American forces to cede more security responsibilities to Iraqis, the number of U.S. casualties could decline. But as the terrorist attacks across Iraq last week show, a reduced U.S. role could mean more violence and Iraqi casualties.

"The administration is gambling on the notion that Americans will be thankful that there are fewer American casualties, even if the place is blowing up," said Ivo Daalder, a former national security aide to President Clinton and coauthor of a recent book on Bush's foreign policy.

I think Brownstein's analysis is essentially correct, but note that the Center for American Progress notes that the premature handover is fueled by the increasing instability in Iraq, which makes the likelihood of success of this venture that much less.

News Digest

President Bush, seeking additional help from NATO for Iraq, shuts down the city of Istanbul, as he wins hearts and minds. NATO has agreed to begin providing training for Iraqi police. Meanwhile 40,000 Turks meet Bush with a protest.

The "handover" of sovereignty in Iraq comes early, as Paul Bremer turns over the keys this morning. Ayad Allawi says, "We feel we are capable." Meanwhile, a militant group threatens to behead a hostage Marine. Newsweek asks, "can David Petraeusturn the security situation around?

Can the interim government find legitimacy? Particularly if they invoke martial law to begin with? Meanwhile, billions of oil dollars have gone missing, says Salon.

In this election year, American families are feeling fragile. The growing trade gap has implications for this election year. The Washington Post finds small choices for voters: "health care or tax cuts."

Filmaker Micheal Moore's "Fahrenheit 9-11" took off at the box office this weekend. The film has grossed $21.8 million on only 868 screens, "In terms of raw dollars, Fahrenheit is actually the biggest opening ever for a movie playing at less than 1,000 theaters, topping Rocky III's $12.4 million at 939 venues." Plus: fact-checking Michael Moore.

Canadians are voting on a new national government today, in a Canada as evenly divided as the US is. Over the weekend, Toronto's Gay Pride weekend drew hundreds of thousands.

Some reporters are beginning to ask if the White House is beginning to melt-down under the weight of scandal investigations, inter-agency wars and foreign policy failures. Plus: Has the Iraq occupation undermined the "Bush Doctrine" of pre-emtive action?

The Financial Times reports that "Oil slides as Norway and Iraq output returns," and domestic gas prices begin to fall, while The Economist frets, "Is Alan Greenspan fretting enough about inflation?" The magazine writes: "After cushioning the economy from serious recession by slashing rates to 1%, Mr Greenspan now faces an equally tricky task: to tighten today's extraordinarily loose monetary policy without derailing the economy."

University of California economist (and former Clinton Council of Economic Advisor member) J. Bradford DeLong details the reasons why so much economic reporting is so poor, and why the current economy is actually quite soft. "But on the labor side, employment is still well below what it was three and a half years ago (and with our growing population we would have needed employment to grow by 4 or 5 million to keep the employment-to-population ratio steady), and wage and salary incomes have been essentially flat since the last business cycle peak." The Economic Policy Institute's " job watch"< a> website has supporting charts.

USA Today is all over the story of rising college tuition. Dennis Cauchon has two articles today, "Grants more than offset soaring university tuition: Despite rising sticker prices, the actual cost is dropping for most students" and Tuition burden falls by a third: 80% jump in aid offsets price hikes," both of which fly in the face of the conventional wisdom. "Contrary to the widespread perception that tuition is soaring out of control, a USA TODAY analysis found that what students actually pay in tuition and fees -- rather than the published tuition price -- has declined for a vast majority of students attending four-year public universities. In fact, today's students have enjoyed the greatest improvement in college affordability since the GI bill provided benefits for returning World War II veterans."

The "Nation's Paper" also takes the lead today in reporting on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal with three stories, including this frontpager, "The U.S. Army's inspector general and criminal division are investigating whether U.S. troops deliberately or negligently exposed Iraqi prisoners to extreme heat and cold in ways that contributed to deaths that have until now been attributed to natural or unknown causes." Further into the paper is a story questioning Army documents on a prisoner's death and another on a new Justice Department document outlining broad guidelines for the interrogation of prisoners.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry cancels his speech to the US Conference of Mayors in Boston, refusing to cross the picket lines of striking firefighters and police. The Boston Globe reports, "The statement leaves open the question of what he will do if the contracts are not settled before next month's Democratic National Convention."

Vagaries of Life

I'm working on a job audition this morning. Posting will resume noonish.

UPDATE: Thanks to all for your best wishes, prayers and thoughts. I got the thing done on time and will know something more in a week or so. This is for an editing position, something I think I've honed in the almost 8 months of this blog, and it is a Web job, the place I'm most familir with these days. The pay's lousy, but it would allow me to cut fine editor's teeth under the tutelage of one of the best. More than that I can't say right now, but I'll keep you updated. DavidByron, this job would change my posting schedule but probably help me to do higher quality work than I'm doing now. It's also a job I can do from anywhere, which is a Good Thing because I may move later this year. To a place which is so much cheaper to live that the pay wouldn't be lousy. I'll let you know how it goes.

CNN Rant

Listening to CNN is causing me to want to move all of my footware into the living room within arms reach. All of the bubbleheads are talking about their upcoming special on Tuesday regarding the "handover" of sovereignty this week, which tells me the only news they know anything about is the pablum cranked out by their writers. As I blogged this morning, Chandresekaran and Pincus's article in this morning's WaPo pretty graphically demonstrates how little this "handover" means: Bremer has issued so many orders limiting the authority of the appointed government that they will be nothing more than figureheads designed to put an Iraqi face on the occupation, in the hope that Bush can neuter Iraq as an election issue. Iraq will be THE issue in the election.

And then I have to listen to the idiot newsreader pronounce "cavalry" as "calvary." W does that all the time but you'd think that being a newsreader would mean having at least a working familiarity with the language.

Facts on the Ground

Christopher Allbriton writes from Baghdad:

Nothing much happening here, as near as I can tell, and I’m still under “hotel arrest” — for my own security, of course. People seem to be laying lower, if not low, but TIME has asked me not to go out of my compound unless it’s an emergency. Sigh At least this gives me some time to catch up on some writing. I’ve got one, possibly two decent stories coming out in the New York Daily News tomorrow, inshallah, and I’ve got a column due for New York Magazine. So the work is fine.

Whether the Iraqi Police, the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and the newly minted Army actually have the ability or will to do so remains to be seen, but the Iraqis seem to be trying.

The situation has been headed in this direction for several months.

3 Turks Taken Hostage in Iraq
The kidnappings may be intended to undermine Bush during his talks this week with NATO allies in Istanbul. A wave of attacks leaves 54 dead.
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — Followers of the United States' "No. 1 target" in Iraq announced Saturday that they had kidnapped three Turkish contractors and threatened to behead them, even as President Bush was flying to Turkey for a NATO summit. The abductions came as 54 people were killed in insurgent attacks across Iraq.

The seizure of the three Turkish civilian contractors by loyalists of Jordanian-born fugitive Abu Musab Zarqawi appeared aimed at undermining Bush during his meeting in Istanbul with allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The hostage-taking cast a pall over Bush's diplomatic mission to heal rifts with allies that were opened by the Iraq war. As Bush landed Saturday night in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul failed to greet him at the airport as scheduled, apparently because he was dealing with the hostage crisis.

White House officials offered no immediate comment on the incident.

Turkey, host of the two-day summit that will begin Monday, is not a member of the multinational force that invaded Iraq 15 months ago. The U.S.-led force has struggled against a fierce and intensifying insurgency that has killed hundreds of U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis. Civilian contractors also have been targeted by the insurgents, and two of them have been beheaded.

Arab satellite TV broadcasts showed the three Turks kneeling at gunpoint at the feet of their masked captors, holding up identity documents for the camera. The militants pointed their guns at the captives' heads while one read an ultimatum demanding that Turks doing business with the U.S.-led occupiers of Iraq withdraw within 72 hours or the three would be killed.

The same group claimed responsibility for the beheading last week of a South Korean hostage, a civilian interpreter, despite his desperate, televised pleas that his life be spared.

Most Turks in Iraq are engaged in private trade, primarily trucking in gasoline as extremists continue to sabotage Iraqi pipelines and refineries.

An overwhelming majority of Turks are opposed to the U.S.-led occupation. On Saturday, police battled scores of protesters in Ankara's central Kizilay Square before Bush's arrival. Two days earlier, four people were killed in bombings in Ankara and Istanbul. An obscure Marxist-Leninist group claimed responsibility for the attacks.

In Iraq, coalition military leaders have been warning for weeks that foreign and Iraqi insurgents fighting the occupation would intensify their attacks ahead of a scheduled transfer of sovereignty Wednesday to an interim Iraqi government.

The Borrowers

WaPo Letters to the Editor

Style's June 4 Names & Faces column reported that novelist Ray Bradbury is upset about the title of Michael Moore's new documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11." He says that the filmmaker "stole" the title from his novel "Fahrenheit 451."

Is this the pot calling the kettle black?

The titles of several of Mr. Bradbury's greatest books are "stolen" from works by other authors, in a manner far more direct than Mr. Moore's allusion-to-but-not-complete-appropriation-of the Bradbury title.

Cases in point: "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (William Shakespeare); "I Sing the Body Electric!" (Walt Whitman) and "Golden Apples of the Sun" (William Butler Yeats).

ANNIE HUDSON

Austin

War of No Ideas

Former terrorism czar calls Iraq invasion 'enormous mistake'

By Mike Schneider, Associated Press, 6/26/2004 20:56

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) The invasion of Iraq was an ''enormous mistake'' that is costing untold lives, strengthening al-Qaida and breeding a new generation of terrorists, former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said Saturday.

''We did exactly what al-Qaida said we would do invade and occupy an oil-rich Arab country that wasn't threatening us in any way,'' Clarke said before giving the keynote address at the American Library Association's annual convention in Orlando. ''The hatred that has been engendered by this invasion will last for generations.''

Clarke, a counterterrorism adviser to the past three presidents, wrote the book ''Against All Enemies,'' which strongly criticizes the Bush administration for making Iraq a top priority and for underestimating warnings about al-Qaida before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Clarke said the United States will lose the war on terrorism if it loses the battle of ideas against extremists in the Middle East.

''We won the Cold War by, yes, having good strong military forces but also by competing in the battle of ideas against the Communists,'' Clarke later told the librarians. ''We have to do that with the jihadists.''

The United States' ideological credibility has been undermined by revelations of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison and the release of documents that showed U.S. government attorneys conducted a legal analysis of what constituted torture, Clarke said.

Let's see. We have a president who stands for "strong leadership" by taking us into an unnecessary war in a country that wasn't threatening us (or Israel), cuts taxes for the wealthy (but not for thee or me) and spends most of his time on vacation. This will win the war of ideas.

Oh, yes, and what our lackey press is still afraid to tell you: we are losing both Iraq and Afghanistan, Bin Laden's minions run free and Mr. Leadership Preznit has made us much, much less safe. But you won't hear that from GE/TIME-Warner/Murdoch.

Losing

Reality of Insecurity Dominates Life for Most Iraqis
Training, troops and the trust of the people are some of the hurdles faced by local leaders and their American partners as sovereignty returns

By Alissa J. Rubin, Doyle McManus, Times Staff Writers

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The deep "booms" come most mornings now. The explosions, often from artillery shells wired together in the trunk or back seat of a car, shear through the blazing summer heat. If you're too close, you're dead. A few steps removed and you're maimed. To those who are spared, the odor of burnt flesh both sickens and reminds that luck has been a partner today.

There is a backbeat, too, to these mass attacks — a barrage of bullets pumped into a car, or perhaps the single shot to the back of the head. Iraq's assassination victims by now number as many as a thousand, although no one keeps official count. Some are academics, doctors or lawyers; others are Iraqis suspected of working with the U.S.-led occupation authority; still others are suspected former Baathists, followers of Saddam Hussein.

There are kidnappings, too. They seem mild by comparison because most merely seek a ransom, and the victim survives. But their spread has driven many of the country's professionals out of the country.

The United States and its allies have ruled Iraq for more than a year and can cite a list of successes. The most important is that Iraq is free of Saddam's tyrannical grip. People can say what they want, mostly, and are debating in a democratic way for the first time in their history.

But the occupation government has also failed notably in its attempts to restore security — and as the return of Iraq's sovereignty approaches, that reality is what dominates life for most Iraqis.

Beginning Wednesday, Iraqis selected by the United Nations and the United States will get a chance to repair their broken country. If they are skilled and lucky, and if they can persuade thousands of their countrymen to fight in new security forces, they may achieve their goal: a country stable enough to hold free elections early next year. If skill and luck run out, the insurgency could intensify, and the simmering strife among Iraq's three major groups — Sunni Muslim Arabs, Shiite Muslim Arabs and Kurds — could spiral into civil war.

The recent coordinated attacks against American troops and Iraqi police dominated headlines — and obscured the signs of what else awaits if security is not restored. On Saturday, insurgents believed to be Sunnis besieged a Shiite political party's headquarters in Baqubah, about 30 miles north of Baghdad, killing three workers. Last week, six Shiite truck drivers were killed in the Sunni-controlled town of Fallujah after taking shelter in a police station. Last weekend, Kurds captured a handful of Arab Sunnis near Kirkuk after Arab attacks on Kurds. In recent days Shiite factions faced off in southern Iraq for control of mosques and cities.

Iraqis and their American partners still face daunting hurdles in restoring public safety. Many of the Iraqis who once welcomed Americans as liberators now disdain them as occupiers. Yet the 163,000 U.S. and allied troops now in the country have no timetable for leaving. Quite the contrary: Over the coming year, their numbers are likely to grow.

For Americans, the price of occupation has already been far higher than anyone imagined — in dollars, loss of life, and erosion of U.S. credibility in the world. Before the invasion, the Bush administration predicted the new Iraq would be a self-governing, self-financing country that, with a little help, would quickly become a stable, prosperous and reliable ally. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said it was "hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself." Under the Pentagon's initial timetable, most U.S. troops were supposed to be home by now.

But the administration's expectations turned out to be based on bad intelligence and wishful thinking. Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, deliberately sent the minimum number of troops necessary to Iraq, with little provision for unhappy surprises. Bush and his aides disdained "nation-building," and so did little to prepare for what has become their principal foreign policy problem.

As a result, the administration was unprepared when the reality of Iraq fell short of its ideal. After the invasion, Baghdad's police forces and its civil service disappeared overnight. Looters destroyed the government offices to which U.S. advisers had been told to report. The economy, the oil industry and public utilities were not self-starting. An underground insurgency launched by "former regime loyalists" grew, and Shiite radicals and Sunni nationalists began their own resistance efforts, the latter with assistance from foreign fighters.

U.S. military units designed and equipped for war against Saddam's conventional army attempted to retool to fight guerrillas. The results, predictably, were mixed. American soldiers with no experience in the Arab world and no command of its language found themselves kicking in the doors of terrified villagers.

Some Bush administration officials acknowledge that many of their initial expectations turned out to be wrong. "Of all the things that were underestimated, the one that almost no one that I know of predicted . . . (was) the resilience of the regime that had abused this country for 35 years," Wolfowitz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month.

As a result, the United States is likely to remain deeply engaged in Iraq, with thousands of troops on the ground and billions of dollars in spending, for years to come. The cost thus far in terms of lives lost and money spent is certain to rise appreciably.

It is far from clear whether that commitment will win the prizes the Bush administration sought: a real democracy in Iraq, a stable U.S. ally in the Arab world, a vital political and military base for a larger war against terrorism.

Instead, the question now is whether the United States and its Iraqi allies can succeed in staving off a far worse outcome than anyone wanted: a bloody, dispirited Iraq, riven by civil strife, hostile to Americans — and, in a worst-case scenario, hospitable to terrorists.

On a hot day last summer in Baqouba, north of Baghdad, three American soldiers were guarding the city's main hospital. They sat in front of the main entrance, playing cards. As one of the soldiers dealt a hand, a grenade fell among them and exploded. All three were torn to shreds. The grenade was dropped from one of the hospital's upper floors.

The incident was shocking at the time, since there seemed to be no point to killing soldiers protecting a hospital. Now it looks like a symbol of what was beginning to go wrong for American hopes: The liberators were becoming occupiers.

Many months later, even being remotely associated with Americans brings danger.

"The situation scares me," confesses Hachim Hassani, minister of industry in the new interim government. "I cannot go walking around protected by U.S. soldiers; that would not be a good idea in this country. I have to protect myself with guards, but they are not well-trained — and the people carrying out these bombings are well-trained."

Idiots. All of us who opposed the war and the State Department's own after-action plan foresaw all of this. Why Wolfowitz still has a job should be an issue in November--in any other industry, incompetence would be rewarded with a pink slip. Afghanistan is a failure, Iraq is a failure and no one has lost their job. Which means that the head of the tribe needs to be cast out in November before more blood and treasure gets sacrificed for these disasters.

Pissant President

U.S. Edicts Curb Power Of Iraq's Leadership

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 27, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, June 26 -- U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer has issued a raft of edicts revising Iraq's legal code and has appointed at least two dozen Iraqis to government jobs with multi-year terms in an attempt to promote his concepts of governance long after the planned handover of political authority on Wednesday.

Some of the orders signed by Bremer, which will remain in effect unless overturned by Iraq's interim government, restrict the power of the interim government and impose U.S.-crafted rules for the country's democratic transition. Among the most controversial orders is the enactment of an elections law that gives a seven-member commission the power to disqualify political parties and any of the candidates they support.

The effect of other regulations could last much longer. Bremer has ordered that the national security adviser and the national intelligence chief chosen by the interim prime minister he selected, Ayad Allawi, be given five-year terms, imposing Allawi's choices on the elected government that is to take over next year.

Bremer also has appointed Iraqis handpicked by his aides to influential positions in the interim government. He has installed inspectors-general for five-year terms in every ministry. He has formed and filled commissions to regulate communications, public broadcasting and securities markets. He named a public-integrity commissioner who will have the power to refer corrupt government officials for prosecution.

Some Iraqi officials condemn Bremer's edicts and appointments as an effort to exert U.S. control over the country after the transfer of political authority. "They have established a system to meddle in our affairs," said Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Governing Council, a recently dissolved body that advised Bremer for the past year. "Iraqis should decide many of these issues."

Bremer has defended his issuance of many of the orders as necessary to implement democratic reforms and update Iraq's out-of-date legal code. He said he regarded the installation of inspectors-general in ministries, the creation of independent commissions and the changes to Iraqi law as important steps to fight corruption and cronyism, which in turn would help the formation of democratic institutions.

"You set up these things and they begin to develop a certain life and momentum on their own -- and it's harder to reverse course," Bremer said in a recent interview.

As of June 14, Bremer had issued 97 legal orders, which are defined by the U.S. occupation authority as "binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people" that will remain in force even after the transfer of political authority. An annex to the country's interim constitution requires the approval of a majority of Allawi's ministers, as well as the interim president and two vice presidents, to overturn any of Bremer's edicts. A senior U.S. official in Iraq noted recently that it would "not be easy to reverse" the orders.

It appears unlikely that all of the orders will be followed. Many of them reflect an idealistic but perhaps futile attempt to impose Western legal, economic and social concepts on a tradition-bound nation that is reveling in anything-goes freedom after 35 years of dictatorial rule.

The orders include rules that cap tax rates at 15 percent, prohibit piracy of intellectual property, ban children younger than 15 from working, and a new traffic code that stipulates the use of a car horn in "emergency conditions only" and requires a driver to "hold the steering wheel with both hands."

Iraq has long been a place where few people pay taxes, where most movies and music are counterfeit, where children often hold down jobs and where traffic laws are rarely obeyed, Iraqis note.

Other regulations promulgated by Bremer prevent former members of the Iraqi army from holding public office for 18 months after their retirement or resignation, stipulate a 30-year minimum sentence for people caught selling weapons such as grenades and ban former militiamen integrated into the Iraqi armed forces from endorsing and campaigning for political candidates. He has also enacted a 76-page law regulating private corporations and amended an industrial-design law to protect microchip designs. Those changes were intended to facilitate the entry of Iraq into the World Trade Organization, even though the country is so violent that the no commercial flights are allowed to land at Baghdad's airport.

Some of the new rules attempt to introduce American approaches to fighting crime. An anti-money-laundering law requires banks to collect detailed personal information from customers seeking to make transactions greater than $3,500, while the Commission on Public Integrity has been given the power to reward whistleblowers with 25 percent of the funds recovered by the government from corrupt practices they have identified.

In some cases Bremer's regulations diverge from the Bush administration's domestic policies. He suspended the death penalty, and his election law imposes a strict quota: One of every three candidates on a party's slate must be a woman.

Iraqis have already scoffed at some of the requirements. Judges on the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, who were appointed by Bremer, have refused to impose 30-year sentences on people detained with grenades and other military weapons. At the same time, many Iraqi politicians contend that banning the death penalty was a mistake. Several have said they will push to reinstate capital punishment after the transfer of political authority.

Some of the Iraqis recently appointed by Bremer as inspectors and commissioners said they should have been given their jobs months ago. Had that happened, they insisted, they would have had more time to build support for the activities.

"There are some doubts about my work," said Nabil Bayati, the inspector general in the Ministry of Electricity, who is charged with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. People in the ministry, he said, "don't understand it yet."

Siyamend Othman, the chief executive of the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission, said his fellow commissioners were only appointed three weeks ago. "Had this commissions been set up six months ago, we would have been in a far more secure position that we are today," he said. "We would have had six months to prove and to show to the Iraqi people our worth and what we're capable of doing, and why this commission is such an important institution."

In recent weeks, Bremer has issued orders aimed at setting policy for a variety of controversial issues, including the future use of radioactive material, Arab-Kurd property disputes and national elections planned for January.

On June 15, Bremer signed an order establishing the Iraqi Radioactive Source Regulatory Authority as an independent agency regulating radioactive material in Iraq. His order forbids, even after the transfer of sovereignty, any activity involving radioactive material except under requirements established by the agency.

On June 19, in an effort to keep unemployed Iraqi weapons scientists from working for other nations, Bremer established the Iraqi Non-Proliferation Programs Foundation, a semi-governmental organization set up to provide grants and contracts to people who worked on Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs. An initial grant of $37.5 million was set aside by Bremer to pay the scientists' expenses to attend international conferences so they can be retrained for non-weapons employment.

I read this with utter fascination. Bremer, like Bush, has turned Iraq into Bremerland (we are living in Bushland) where his ideas, his truth, is the only one which prevails. No wonder the American taxpayer travails in the world of paying everything to Halliburton. In this scheme, we don't matter, and neither does the ordinary Iraqi, we are all part of a bid-out scheme for the wealthy. This is not unlike the interview the Bush gave to Irish TV the other night, the wealthy and powerful are a law unto themselves and don't you forget it.

Bush's little tantrum is quite informative. The Boy Emperor doesn't really take questions so much as offer imperial truths.

Drip, Drip

More GIs At Prison May Face Charges
Abu Ghraib Investigators Examine Intelligence Unit

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A14

BAGHDAD, June 25 -- Army investigators continue to sift through photographs and evidence of alleged abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison to try to identify more soldiers who were involved, possibly including members of military intelligence, and sources close to the investigation said more soldiers would likely be charged.

Investigators are looking closely at the actions of three Army junior reservists with the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion -- Spec. Roman Krol, Spec. Israel Rivera and Spec. Armin J. Cruz, the sources said. All seven soldiers charged to date were members of a military police unit.

Investigators have identified the three military intelligence soldiers in a photograph taken in late October in a hallway in a cellblock on Tier 1 at the prison, where most of the abuse is alleged to have occurred, according to the sources. The picture shows three shackled detainees naked and splayed on the floor, while a military police officer leans over them and the three intelligence soldiers and others stand nearby.

Both Krol and Rivera have acknowledged that they are shown in the photo. Rivera testified to that effect on Thursday at an investigative hearing for Spec. Sabrina Harman, one of the seven soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company charged with abuse, and Krol told The Washington Post last month that he was one of the soldiers in the photograph.

Cruz declined to testify on Thursday, citing his right to avoid self-incrimination.

Harman's court session, known as an Article 32 hearing, concluded on Friday after her defense attorney, Frank Spinner, admonished the Army for assigning her to the prison in the first place. The unit's company commander testified a day earlier that the soldiers were poorly trained for their mission and were overwhelmed by the prison population, which outnumbered them 100 to 1.

"The government prosecution seems to believe that Specialist Harman, who sells, makes and delivers pizza for a living, is supposed to come in and challenge" her superiors, he said. Harman "was caught in a very difficult situation as a junior soldier. . . . I don't think this young woman should ever have been put in that environment. I think the Army set her up. I think the Army should take the blame."

Lawyers for the accused soldiers have said their clients were being made scapegoats for their commanders. No senior officers have been charged with abuse.

The last sentence is telling.

Massive Theft

The multibillion robbery the US calls reconstruction

The shameless corporate feeding frenzy in Iraq is fuelling the resistance

Naomi Klein
Saturday June 26, 2004
The Guardian

Good news out of Baghdad: the Program Management Office, which oversees the $18.4bn in US reconstruction funds, has finally set a goal it can meet. Sure, electricity is below pre-war levels, the streets are rivers of sewage and more Iraqis have been fired than hired. But now the PMO has contracted the British mercenary firm Aegis to protect its employees from "assassination, kidnapping, injury and" - get this - "embarrassment". I don't know if Aegis will succeed in protecting PMO employees from violent attack, but embarrassment? I'd say mission already accomplished. The people in charge of rebuilding Iraq can't be embarrassed, because, clearly, they have no shame.

In the run-up to the June 30 underhand (sorry, I can't bring myself to call it a "handover"), US occupation powers have been unabashed in their efforts to steal money that is supposed to aid a war-ravaged people. The state department has taken $184m earmarked for drinking water projects and moved it to the budget for the lavish new US embassy in Saddam Hussein's former palace. Short of $1bn for the embassy, Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, said he might have to "rob from Peter in my fiefdom to pay Paul". In fact, he is robbing Iraq's people, who, according to a recent study by the consumer group Public Citizen, are facing "massive outbreaks of cholera, diarrhoea, nausea and kidney stones" from drinking contaminated water.

If the occupation chief Paul Bremer and his staff were capable of embarrassment, they might be a little sheepish about having spent only $3.2bn of the $18.4bn Congress allotted - the reason the reconstruction is so disastrously behind schedule. At first, Bremer said the money would be spent by the time Iraq was sovereign, but apparently someone had a better idea: parcel it out over five years so Ambassador John Negroponte can use it as leverage. With $15bn outstanding, how likely are Iraq's politicians to refuse US demands for military bases and economic "reforms"?

Unwilling to let go of their own money, the shameless ones have had no qualms about dipping into funds belonging to Iraqis. After losing the fight to keep control of Iraq's oil money after the underhand, occupation authorities grabbed $2.5bn of those revenues and are now spending the money on projects that are supposedly already covered by American tax dollars.

But then, if financial scandals made you blush, the entire reconstruction of Iraq would be pretty mortifying. From the start, its architects rejected the idea that it should be a New Deal-style public works project for Iraqis to reclaim their country. Instead, it was treated as an ideological experiment in privatisation. The dream was for multinational firms, mostly from the US, to swoop in and dazzle the Iraqis with their speed and efficiency.

Iraqis saw something else: desperately needed jobs going to Americans, Europeans and south Asians; roads crowded with trucks shipping in supplies produced in foreign plants, while Iraqi factories were not even supplied with emergency generators. As a result, the reconstruction was seen not as a recovery from war but as an extension of the occupation, a foreign invasion of a different sort. And so, as the resistance grew, the reconstruction itself became a prime target.

The contractors have responded by behaving even more like an invading army, building elaborate fortresses in the green zone - the walled-in city within a city that houses the occupation authority in Baghdad - and surrounding themselves with mercenaries. And being hated is expensive. According to the latest estimates, security costs are eating up 25% of reconstruction contracts - money not being spent on hospitals, water-treatment plants or telephone exchanges.

We saw a trailer for The Corporation last night. Bushco's Mesopotamian misadventure is "all about the Benjamins" for their corporate sponsors.

The fact that the peasants with pitchforks aren't in the streets over this says a great deal about what is wrong with America.

Control Room

Here's the WaPo review:

* CONTROL ROOM (Unrated, 86 minutes) -- The cultural and religious fault lines between Western and Eastern news coverage of the Iraq invasion are made all too clear in Jehane Noujaim's enlightening, if structurally wandering documentary. The Egyptian American filmmaker attended news briefings by Centcom (the abbreviation for the American military's U.S. Central Command), witnessed candid conversations between foreign journalists and Centcom press officer Lt. Josh Rushing, and spent virtually unlimited time in the al-Jazeera newsroom. She also conducted many interviews with, and followed around, al-Jazeera journalists. The documentary covers the main highlights of the war's media coverage, including al-Jazeera's highly controversial decision to show footage of captured American troops, and the eventual fall of Baghdad. It shows a resistance to truth on both sides of the ideological news divide. Many members of the American media may have been embedded prisoners of the Pentagon's propaganda machine, but al-Jazeera has its own agenda, too, using hyperbole and slanted coverage to show the U.S. forces in as poor a light as possible.

Sharon and I saw this because "Fahrenheit: 9-11" was sold out in every theater in Washington by noon yesterday. That says something. "Control Room" is a powerful film. Here is what I wrote to a friend last night:

"Control Room" is the story of the war as seen through the eyes of Al Jazeerah. It's been out a couple of weeks here, but the theatre was packed.

There was much reaction in the theatre to the things we saw and heard on the screen. One of the points made in "Control Room" by a senior (and very wise) Iraqi reporter at Al Jazeerah is that "it is the American people who will deal with America." We broke it, this country, we bought it and it's up to us to fix it. The buzz in the theatre as we filed out: "It's up to us." A full theatre of angry and determined people is a beautiful thing to see. I don't know how often I've gotten to the end of a film and been grateful for the experience. This was one such time.

Failure, Where it Counts

That CIA analyst, Anonymous, and his new book, have already been treated here. Today's WaPo has a further interview, from which I find this new material:

The Bush administration's policy on Afghanistan is described as a failure because it hinges on producing a Western-style democracy with religious tolerance and women's rights -- all of which he characterizes as an "anathema to Afghan political and tribal culture and none of which has more than a small, unarmed constituency."

"We are succeeding only in fooling ourselves" in Afghanistan, he argues. The current insurgency by the Taliban "gradually will increase in intensity, lethality and popular support and ultimately force Washington to massively escalate its military presence or evacuate," he writes. Neither the United States nor its Afghan surrogates "have built anything political or economic that will long outlast the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces," he predicted.

In a broader critique, he said, "U.S. leaders refuse to accept the obvious: we are fighting a worldwide Islamic insurgency -- not criminality or terrorism -- and our policy and procedures have failed to make more than a modest dent in enemy forces."

That other war, the one where Bin Laden actually lives, is a complete and total failure. That ought to alarm us, but instead it gets nearly no press. This story is on page A13 of today's Post. Thanks for setting the agenda, Fourth Estate.

4thGW

Iraq Insurgency Showing Signs of Momentum
Analysts and some U.S. commanders say it could be too late to reverse the wave of violence. Sunnis are seen as the stronger, long-term threat.

By Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — As this week's coordinated violence demonstrates, Iraq's insurgent movement is increasingly potent, riding a wave of anti-U.S. nationalism and religious extremism. Just days before an Iraqi government takes control of the country, experts and some commanders fear it may be too late to turn back the militant tide.

The much-anticipated wave of strikes preceding Wednesday's scheduled hand-over could intensify under the new interim government as Sunni Muslim insurgents seek to undermine it, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

"I think we're going to continue to see sensational attacks," said Army Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the 101st Airborne Division commander who will oversee the reshaping of Iraq's fledgling security forces.

Long gone are the days when the insurgents were dismissed as a finite force ticketed for high-tech annihilation by superior U.S. firepower.

Wreaking havoc and derailing plans for reconstruction of this battered nation, the dominant guerrilla movement — an unlikely Sunni alliance of hard-liners from the former regime, Islamic militants and anti-U.S. nationalists — has taken over towns, blocked highways, bombed police stations, assassinated lawmakers and other "collaborators," and abducted civilians.

Although Shiite Muslim fighters took U.S. forces by surprise in an April uprising, the Sunni insurgents represent a stronger, long-term threat, experts agree. The fighters, commanders say, are overwhelmingly Iraqis, with a small but important contingent of foreign fighters who specialize in carrying out suicide bombings and other spectacular attacks, possibly including this week's coordinated strikes that killed more than 100 people.

"They are effective," said Army Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, operational commander of U.S. troops here.

The insurgent force has picked up legions of part-time nationalist recruits enraged by the lengthy occupation and the mounting toll on civilians. Whether the result of U.S. or insurgent fire, the casualties are blamed on Americans.

The anti-U.S. momentum is evident in both the nation's urban centers and the palm-shrouded Sunni rural heartland, where resentment over military sweeps and the torturous pace of reconstruction is pervasive. Support for the insurgency ranges from quiet assent to participation in the fighting.

"We're talking about people who are the equivalent of the Minutemen," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who served as an advisor for the U.S.-led occupation here. "They pick up their weapons and join the fight and then go back to their homes and farms. It makes it so fluid. And the media functions as the town crier, like the calls from the minaret."

The nimble enemy has kept just far enough ahead of coalition forces to raise the question in Iraqi minds: Who will be here in the long run, the U.S. and its allies or the insurgents?

The characteristics of the insurgency in Iraq are familiar from earlier campaigns in Vietnam and elsewhere, Hoffman wrote in a recent paper: "A population will give its allegiance to the side that will best protect it."

Also like past insurgency campaigns, this one combines classic guerrilla tactics — ambushes and other attacks on occupying troops — with ruthless terror, including the massacres of religious worshipers and restaurant patrons and the beheading of hostages.

The insurgents' decentralized command structure, Hoffman said in an interview, echoes the atomized nature of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. Thus, the arrest of deposed President Saddam Hussein in December was not nearly the intelligence windfall that U.S. authorities had predicted. Nor did his capture dry up funding for the insurgents.

Although U.S. officials have labeled Jordanian fugitive Abu Musab Zarqawi a mastermind in the wave of attacks that has shaken the country since last year, commanders say the insurgents' coordination is unclear.

"We can't find … a particular command and control structure that leads to one or two or three particular nodes," Metz said. "But I'm confident there are some leaders who have the wealth to continue … paying people to do business."

U.S. authorities have jailed dozens of cell chiefs but watched in frustration as the groups have regenerated and fought anew. "These kinds of networks, you chop off one part and the other part keeps on moving," Petraeus said.

The insurgents have other strengths: plentiful weapons (in many cases, looted from unguarded armories at the end of the invasion last year); easy mobility, in the form of a relatively modern highway system; and communications, in the form of cellphones and access to regional television channels such as Al Jazeera.

Defeating a force this entrenched and energized is difficult, commanders say.

If you've been reading this site for a while, you know that all of this was predicted, and that Fourth Generation Warfare is already an old doctrine. The lesson was Viet Nam. Rummy didn't learn it. For W., history didn't happen. These folks don't know anything.

Potty Mouths

Cheney Defends Use Of Four-Letter Word
Retort to Leahy 'Long Overdue,' He Says

By Dana Milbank and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A04

Vice President Cheney on Friday vigorously defended his vulgarity directed at a prominent Democratic senator earlier this week in the Senate chamber.

Cheney said he "probably" used an obscenity in an argument Tuesday on the Senate floor with Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and added that he had no regrets. "I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it," Cheney told Neil Cavuto of Fox News. The vice president said those who heard the putdown agreed with him. "I think that a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue."

The forceful defense by Cheney came as much of Washington was discussing his outburst on the Senate floor in which a chance encounter with Leahy during a photo session in the usually decorous Senate chamber ended in colorful profanity. The obscenity was published in yesterday's editions of The Washington Post.

President Bush had made his vow to "change the tone in Washington" a central part of his 2000 campaign, calling bipartisan cooperation "the challenge of our moment."

"Our nation must rise above a house divided," he said in his victory speech in December 2000. "I know America wants reconciliation and unity. I know Americans want progress. And we will seize this moment and deliver."

Cheney said yesterday he was in no mood to exchange pleasantries with Leahy because Leahy had "challenged my integrity" by making charges of cronyism between Cheney and his former firm, Halliburton Co. Leahy on Monday had a conference call to kick off the Democratic National Committee's "Halliburton Week" focusing on Cheney, the company, "and the millions of dollars they've cost taxpayers," the party said.

"I didn't like the fact that after he had done so, then he wanted to act like, you know, everything's peaches and cream," Cheney said. "And I informed him of my view of his conduct in no uncertain terms. And as I say, I felt better afterwards."

Leahy, crossing the aisle to the Republican side of the chamber Tuesday, tried to make small talk with Cheney. Cheney yesterday referred to the incident as "a little floor debate in the United States Senate," although the Senate was not in session at the time. According to Leahy's staff, the Vermont senator answered Cheney's complaint about Halliburton with Democrats' complaints that the White House sanctioned a smear of Catholic Democratic senators over their objections to Bush's judicial nominees.

"Ordinarily I don't express myself in strong terms, but I thought it was appropriate here," Cheney said on Fox.

David Carle, Leahy's spokesman, said: "It appears the vice president's previous calls for civility are now inoperative."

As news spread on Thursday of the Cheney-Leahy exchange, Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) appealed to colleagues of both parties to rise above "partisan retaliation" and find a "common ground" for lawmaking.

You've already seen all the comparison quotes elsewhere, the promises to "bring a higher moral tone" to governing by the Bush/Cheney crew. That's not the point I want to make.

Bush has always been comfortable with the F-bomb. We are the people that he's fscked, and he's comfortable with that, and that is the point of Cheney's verbal expression. Pat Leahy is one of the mildest people in the Senate. That Cheney felt so comfortable blowing him off tells you everything you need to know about the Dickster, who sounds increasingly irrational. Verbal harrassment is for punks.

UPDATE: Professor Juan Cole adds:

Should Cheney be Fined $275,000?

And, I propose that the fine go to vocational training for the disadvantaged people that Cheney has made a career of stomping all over.

Upgrade Now

PC Users Warned of Infected Web Sites

By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; 3:30 PM

Computer security experts and the federal government are warning Internet users to take extra precautions when browsing the Web after an Internet attack seeded Web sites with programs that hackers can use to steal personal information.

CERT recommends that Internet Explorer users consider different browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Communicator or Opera. For people who continue to use Internet Explorer, CERT and Microsoft recommend setting the browser's security setting to "high."

News you can use from Just a Bump in the Beltway. Go here to download the new release of Mozilla Foxfire. It is simply a better piece of software than IE, and the email client is far superior to Outlook.

Curioser and Curioser

AP Lawyer: It's 'Curious' We've Had to Sue for Bush Records
By Joe Strupp

Published: June 24, 2004 12:01 AM EST

NEW YORK The Associated Press has sued the Pentagon and Air Force, seeking access to all records of President George W. Bush's military service, but the news agency wonders why it has come to this.

The Air National Guard has control of the microfilm, which should be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, the lawsuit claims. AP says the records "are being unlawfully withheld from the public." The lawsuit adds that no one has looked at any of the Bush military records at the state archives since 1996.

Wonder what he's trying to hide?

It's STILL the Economy

Economy Grew More Slowly in 1st Quarter Than First Thought
By REUTERS

Published: June 25, 2004

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy grew much more slowly than previously thought in the first quarter while inflation was higher, a government report showed on Friday.

The surprise downward revision to gross domestic product - which measures total output within the nation's borders - cut growth to a 3.9 percent annual rate in the first three months of 2004 from the 4.4 percent reported a month ago and below the 4.1 percent pace in the final quarter of last year.

Wall Street analysts had not expected the Commerce Department to change the GDP estimate. The department said the reduction in its final measure of first-quarter economic growth resulted from a sharp upward revision to imports - which subtract from GDP - and a downward revision to the amount consumers spent on bank services.

The government also ratcheted up a key measure of inflation, confirming an acceleration in price rises that has fueled expectations the Federal Reserve will begin raising interest rates next week to head off inflation.

The core price index for consumer spending - a favorite of Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan that cuts out volatile food and energy prices - gained at an annual rate of 2.0 percent in the quarter, a bump up from the 1.7 percent reported a month ago.

Commerce also provided its estimate of market-based personal consumption expenditures, a supplemental measure meant to show household purchases of goods and services that excludes implicit prices such as banking services. It said the market-based PCE rose at a 3.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter, while the core rose at a more moderate 1.6 percent annual rate. The core rate was double the 0.8 percent pace in the fourth quarter.

Until now, the market-based PCE had been released with personal income data, several days after the GDP report.

In its final snapshot of the first-quarter economy, Commerce said after-tax corporate profits rose 2.1 percent from the fourth quarter, a sharp upward revision from the 1.4 percent reported a month ago. Still, the profit climb was well below the 7.6 percent rise notched in the final three months of 2003.

Correction

Tuesday, June 22, 2004; Page A16

On June 19 we wrote that wage increases had kept pace with inflation in the year to May, and criticized Sen. John F. Kerry for suggesting that wages had fallen behind. We were wrong and Mr. Kerry was right: Hourly wages for non-supervisory workers rose 2.2 percent, while the consumer price index rose 3.1 percent.

Most states still face jobs shortfall
Despite good job growth nationally, and strong growth in some states, most states have not recovered their pre-recession job levels. Thirty-five states still have fewer jobs than when the recession started, and the shortfall is wide-spread, from Minnesota (-23,700) to Oregon
(-19,200), and from North Carolina (-96,600) to Pennsylvania (-97,600).

For those of us who work for a living, the economy ain't all that hot. Jobless figures are flat at 5.6%.

Fahrenheit: 9-11

Unruly Scorn Leaves Room for Restraint, but Not a Lot
By A. O. SCOTT

Not that Mr. Moore is kidding around. Perhaps because of the scale and gravity of the subject of "Fahrenheit 9/11," perhaps because his own celebrity has made the man-in-the-street pose harder to sustain, Mr. Moore's trademark pranks and interventions are not as much in evidence as in earlier films. He does commandeer an ice cream truck to drive around Washington, reading the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a loudspeaker (after learning that few of the lawmakers who voted for it had actually read it), and he does stand outside the Capitol trying to persuade members of Congress to enlist their children in the armed forces. (The contortion that one legislator performs to avoid shaking Mr. Moore's hand is an amusing moment of found slapstick.)

Mostly, though, he sifts through the public record, constructing a chronicle of misrule that stretches from the Florida recount to the events of this spring. His case is synthetic rather than comprehensive, and it is not always internally consistent. He dwells on the connections between the Bush family and the Saudi Arabian elite (including the bin Laden family), and while he creates a strong impression of unseemly coziness, his larger point is not altogether clear.

After you leave the theater, some questions are likely to linger about Mr. Moore's views on the war in Afghanistan, about whether he thinks the homeland security program has been too intrusive or not intrusive enough, and about how he thinks the government should have responded to the murderous jihadists who attacked the United States on Sept. 11.

At the same time, though, it may be that the confusions trailing Mr. Moore's narrative are what make "Fahrenheit 9/11" an authentic and indispensable document of its time. The film can be seen as an effort to wrest clarity from shock, anger and dismay, and if parts of it seem rash, overstated or muddled, well, so has the national mood.

If "Fahrenheit 9/11" consisted solely of talking heads and unflattering glimpses of public figures, it would be, depending on your politics, either a rousing call to arms or an irresponsible provocation, but it might not persuade you to re-examine your assumptions. But the movie is much more than "Dude, Where's My Country," carried out by other means. It is worth seeing, debating and thinking about, regardless of your political allegiances.

Mr. Moore's populist instincts have never been sharper, and he is, as ever, at his best when he turns down the showmanship and listens to what people have to say. "Fahrenheit 9/11" is, along with everything else, an extraordinary collage of ordinary American voices: soldiers in the field, an Oregon state trooper patrolling the border, and, above all, citizens of Flint, Mich., Mr. Moore's hometown. The trauma that deindustrialization visited on that city was the subject of "Roger and Me," and that film remains fresh 15 years later, now that the volunteer army has replaced the automobile factory as the vehicle for upward mobility.

The most moving sections of "Fahrenheit 9/11" concern Lila Lipscomb, a cheerful state employee and former welfare recipient who wears a crucifix pendant and an American flag lapel pin. When we first meet her, she is proud of her family's military service — a daughter served in the Persian Gulf war and a son, Michael Pedersen, was a marine in Iraq — and grateful for the opportunities it has offered. Then Michael is killed in Karbala, and in sharing her grief with Mr. Moore, she also gives his film an eloquence that its most determined critics will find hard to dismiss. Mr. Bush is under no obligation to answer Mr. Moore's charges, but he will have to answer to Mrs. Lipscomb.

The Best Friend and I are catching the 7:00 screening. I'm hearing that even Republicans find it moving.

War and Rumor of War

Upper Hand

New Clashes Erupt in Falluja and Baghdad Bomb Kills Iraqi
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and TERENCE NEILAN

Published: June 25, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 25 — A second day of clashes erupted in the Shiite stronghold of Falluja today and a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed an Iraqi policeman and wounded another, witnesses said.

American tanks and armored vehicles on the edges of Falluja fired in several directions, while armed men in an eastern suburb returned fire, witnesses told The Associated Press. Seven people have died in two days of exchanges there, hospital officials said, the agency reported.

The new violence followed a day that saw fighting raging in five cities across Iraq as insurgents unleashed a surge of apparently coordinated attacks that killed at least 105 people and wounded hundreds more.

Meanwhile, Iraq's interim vice president warned that a drastic deterioration in security could lead to emergency laws or martial law, which could put the new government scheduled to take over next Wednesday at odds with the United States.

"Announcing emergency laws or martial law depends on the nature of the situation," the interim vice president, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite and member of the Islamic Dawa Party, told The A.P. in an interview on Thursday. "In normal situations, there is clearly no need for that" he said. "But in cases of excess challenges, emergency laws have their place."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was reported today as arguing against martial law. "It would make our task more complex," a German newspaper quoted him as saying, according to a Reuters report.

A United Nations Security Council resolution approved this month gives the United States a primary security role in Iraq even after the transfer of sovereignty. Washington has made it clear that it feels martial law is undesirable.

In Basra, southern Iraq, eight British servicemen detained for straying into Iran's territorial waters have returned to a military base in southern Iraq, ending their four-day ordeal.

On Thursday plumes of smoke boiled up from the streets of Falluja, Ramadi, Baquba, Mosul and Baghdad as masked insurgents battled American and Iraqi security forces in what several officials said could be the opening salvo in a violent push to derail the June 30 transfer of sovereignty.

See here.

Losing the War

Adversary's Tactics Leave Troops Surprised, Exhausted

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A01

BAQUBAH, Iraq, June 24 -- The 1st Infantry Division soldiers who walked off the battlefield Thursday, exhausted by the frantic pace of combat and a baking summer sun, had seen nothing like it in their three months here.

In dawn-to-dusk fighting, more than 100 armed insurgents overran neighborhoods and occupied downtown buildings, using techniques that U.S. commanders said resembled those once employed by the Iraqi army. Well-equipped and highly coordinated, the insurgents demonstrated a new level of strength and tactical skill that alarmed the soldiers facing them.

By the end of the day, infantry and armored patrols had driven the insurgents from the battered center of the city, though some remained in control of two police stations in districts long hostile to the U.S.-led occupation. Two U.S. soldiers were killed in the fight, including a company commander struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.

"They were definitely better than what we normally face," said Lt. T.J. Grider, 25, whose platoon fought for more than 12 hours. "But I think what we did today was pretty significant."

Coming less than a week before the U.S. occupation formally ends, the attacks brought into sharp focus the threat that lies ahead for Iraq's interim government and the challenge that remains for U.S. forces who will stay here to defend it. The U.S.-trained Iraqi police were routed or abandoned their posts rather than face a more capable foe, and military commanders here said the battle for this city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad was far from over.

The insurgents fought in large, coordinated squads, set complex ambushes and occupied downtown buildings from which they apparently planned a long fight, U.S. military commanders said. Striking first along two key avenues bracketing the city, the insurgents intended to isolate and overrun the local Coalition Provisional Authority compound and other downtown government buildings, the commanders said.

Several U.S. commanders suggested the insurgents had learned the tactics in recent weeks from skilled guerrilla commanders from outside the city, perhaps led by foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight the occupation. They noted that the city's merchants received no warning of the attack, as they had before an armed uprising here in April. Many people struggled through rush-hour traffic, only to be turned away by the fighting.

The preparation had apparently been underway for weeks, with the attacks timed to be part of a series across Iraq on Thursday. After a powerful U.S. airstrike stopped the insurgents' momentum here before noon, soldiers found large weapons stockpiles in the rubble of a building and machine-gun positions set up at a technical college nearby.

"He's still in the city, and he's hiding. But he'll be back," said Lt. Col. Steve Bullimore, the task force commander responsible for Baqubah, referring to his enemy. "I'm regrouping and waiting for the next fight. But I don't know when that will be."

Baqubah, which sits amid groves of date palms and scorched plains, has troubled U.S. forces throughout the occupation. Its political life was controlled for years by tribal leaders and former military officers, who lived well when Saddam Hussein was in power. Now many of them are the foot soldiers and mid-level commanders of the local insurgency, U.S. commanders here said.

In what they believed was a major blow to the insurgents here, Bullimore's troops killed a man suspected of being the local leader of the insurgency, Hussein Ali Septi, in a gun battle last week in the rebellious village of Buhriz, south of the city. Thirteen insurgents and one U.S. soldier were killed in the fighting. But the attacks on troops have continued.

Baquba Sealed off as US Loses Control
by Dahr Jamail
Baghdad correspondent for The NewStandard.

Baquba today stood eerily reminiscent of Fallujah in April. On April 4, U.S. Marines sealed the city of Fallujah after losing control of most neighborhoods. A month long siege ensued before the military ceded their security authority to the Iraqi Police, Civil Defense Corps and mujahideen.

Asked if he felt the worst was over, Johnson said, "This is just getting warmed up."

This is a freakin' success.

Sinking Ship

Solicitor General Theodore Olson to Step Down

By Dan Eggen and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A08

Theodore B. Olson, the forceful conservative litigator who served as the Bush administration's top attorney for three eventful years and who lost his wife in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, said yesterday that he is stepping down as U.S. solicitor general.

Olson, 63, said in an interview that he wanted to announce his departure before the U.S. Supreme Court issues a flurry of decisions next week on cases ranging from U.S. detention policies to an Internet pornography case. "It's going to be a big deal next week," he said. "I wanted to do it now before the term is up and everyone is dispersed."

"I had planned every year to consider what I was going to do in June when the court is done with arguments," Olson said. "I have been here three years, and it seemed to be the right time."

Olson, a hero of the modern conservative legal movement, gained national fame in 2000 when he represented George W. Bush before the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. The court's ruling halted the Florida vote recount and resulted in Bush capturing the presidency.

Olson's nomination as solicitor general the next year prompted fierce opposition from Senate Democrats, who viewed him as an arch-conservative and questioned his role in various challenges to former president Bill Clinton by conservative activists. But Olson also engendered praise from legal scholars on both sides of the political aisle, including liberal Democrats such as Laurence H. Tribe, the Harvard law professor who argued against Olson in the first round of the Supreme Court dispute over the 2000 elections.

Olson has argued 26 cases before the Supreme Court as solicitor general, winning 20 of the 23 that have been decided to date. Two are pending, and one was dismissed with no decision on the merits.

Since the terrorist attacks, Olson has been at the forefront of the Bush administration's legal campaign against terrorism, defending expanded surveillance powers under the USA Patriot Act and arguing for extensive presidential control over detainees. Olson's unusually public role in the campaign had a tragic personal dimension: His wife, Barbara, a lawyer and frequent television commentator, was aboard the jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said in a statement that Olson "is among the finest individuals it has been my privilege to know," calling him "a dedicated patriot who brought unbridled energy and enthusiasm, along with brilliant legal acumen and peerless dedication to his office and to Justice."

While his departure at the end of the Supreme Court term is not a surprise, Olson is known inside the Justice Department to be unhappy that he was not informed about controversial memos authored by the Office of Legal Counsel on the use of harsh interrogation methods on detainees overseas, according to a department official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Olson was among the last remaining Justice officials who helped craft the administration's controversial and aggressive legal strategy on terrorism after the attacks. His departure closely follows the announcement last week that the head of the OLC, Jack L. Goldsmith III, also is resigning.

Olson said he has not decided whether he will return to the firm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, where he has spent much of his legal career.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue highly anticipated rulings next week in three cases argued by Olson's office. Two involve U.S. citizens Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla, who were declared enemy combatants by Bush and have been held in a military brig without charges. In another case, the court will consider whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction over detainees held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The CW says that Olson was in line for a SCOTUS slot, after Gonzales. Let us be glad that he's taken himself out of that rotation. It also looks like the rats have decided that the ship isn't sea-worthy.

Their Generals

I found this in a comments thread at Whiskey Bar. If true, it signals the beginning of the end for our Iraq campaign.

'The liberation of Baghdad is not far away'
By Alix de la Grange

BAGHDAD - On the eve of the so-called transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi caretaker government on June 30, former Saddam Hussein generals turned members of the elite of the Iraqi resistance movement have abandoned their clandestine positions for a while to explain their version of events and talk about their plans. According to these Ba'ath officials, "the big battle" in Iraq is yet to take place.

"The Americans have prepared the war, we have prepared the post-war. And the transfer of power on June 30 will not change anything regarding our objectives. This new provisional government appointed by the Americans has no legitimacy in our eyes. They are nothing but puppets."

Why have these former officers waited so long to come out of their closets? "Because today we are sure we're going to win."
....
"We knew that if the United States decided to attack Iraq, we would have no chance faced with their technological and military power. The war was lost in advance, so we prepared the post-war. In other words: the resistance. Contrary to what has been largely said, we did not desert after American troops entered the center of Baghdad on April 5, 2003. We fought a few days for the honor of Iraq - not Saddam Hussein - then we received orders to disperse." Baghdad fell on April 9: Saddam and his army where nowhere to be seen.

"As we have foreseen, strategic zones fell quickly under control of the Americans and their allies. For our part, it was time to execute our plan. Opposition movements to the occupation were already organized. Our strategy was not improvised after the regime fell." This plan B, which seems to have totally eluded the Americans, was carefully organized, according to these officers, for months if not years before March 20, 2003, the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The objective was "to liberate Iraq and expel the coalition. To recover our sovereignty and install a secular democracy, but not the one imposed by the Americans. Iraq has always been a progressive country, we don't want to go back to the past, we want to move forward. We have very competent people," say the three tacticians. There will be of course no names as well as no precise numbers concerning the clandestine network. "We have sufficient numbers, one thing we don't lack is volunteers."

The five city attack today may well be the proof that this article is true, and that there is a high level of coordination in this insurgency. Another 15,000 troops aren't going to matter.

Unfolding Abu Ghraib

Details of Cover-Up in Detainee's Death Emerge

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 24, 2004; 4:00 PM

BAGHDAD, June 24 -- The company commander of the U.S. soldiers charged with abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison testified Thursday during a legal hearing that the top military intelligence commander was present the night a cover-up was hatched to deal with the death of a detainee who apparently died during an interrogation.

Capt. Donald J. Reese, commander of the 372nd Military Police Company, said he was summoned to a shower room in a cellblock at the prison one night in November, where he discovered a group of intelligence personnel standing around the body of a bloodied detainee discussing what to do. He said Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of military intelligence at the prison, was among those who were there.

Reese testified that he heard Pappas say, "I'm not going down for this alone." Reese said an Army colonel named Jordan sent a soldier to the mess hall for ice to preserve the body overnight. (It is not clear whether Reese was referring to Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, head of the interrogation center at the prison.) Reese said no medics were called, and the detainee's identification was never logged. An autopsy the next day determined that the man had died of a blood clot resulting from a blow to the head, Reese said, and the body was hooked up to an intravenous drip and taken out of the prison.

Reese's testimony came during the first day of an investigative hearing for Spec. Sabrina Harman, one of seven Army reservists from the 372nd,which is based in Cresaptown, Md., charged with abusing detainees at the prison. During investigations of alleged abuse at Abu Ghraib, statements by other witnesses have described the death of the detainee, and the corpse appears in photographs documenting abuse at the prison. But no testimony or evidence had previously indicated Pappas was in the shower room the night the detainee died.

During an earlier hearing for another soldier, Spec. Jason A. Kenner testified that officers from other government agencies , a common term for the CIA, and a Navy SEAL team brought the detainee in alive with a bag over his head. Kenner said he later saw that the man had been severely beaten on his face. Intelligence officers took the detainee to a shower room used for interrogations, Kenner said, and shackled him to a wall. "About an hour later, he died on them," Kenner testified. "They decided to put him on ice. There was a battle between [OGA] and MI as to who was going to take care of the body."

This is it. The wheels are coming off of Bush/Cheney re-elect with this news.

FUBAR, Part II

Security a shambles ahead of handover

With one week to go, 30,000 police officers face the sack amid serious shortages of staff and equipment
Rory McCarthy and Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Thursday June 24, 2004

The Guardian

Up to 30,000 Iraqi police officers are to be sacked for being incompetent and unreliable and given a $60m payoff before the US hands over to an Iraqi government, senior British military sources said yesterday.

Many officers either deserted to the insurgents or simply stayed at home during the recent uprisings in Falluja and across the south.

Fourteen months after the war and just a week before the Iraqis take power on June 30, the sources revealed serious shortfalls of properly trained police and soldiers and vital equipment.

The problems are particularly critical because 35 new police checkpoints are to be set up across Baghdad before the handover, when violence is expected to escalate.

Although the US has set aside $3.5bn to rebuild the security forces, much of the training and many of the contracts have yet to be completed.

The police forces, now the first line of defence, are being drastically overhauled.

There are 120,000 officers on the payroll, although only 89,000 turn up for work - and more than half of these have still had no training. Those who do not turn up are either ghost employees left over from the previous corrupt system or are permanently absent. Most will be encouraged to retire.

In addition, up to 30,000 regular police officers who are now deemed unsuitable will be sacked and replaced. Each will receive $1,000 to $2,000 in severance pay - a total package of up to $60m.

"The feeling is this will allow them to generate a business and feed their family and not force them to become fighters," one source said.

An army of 25,000 is also planned but the first 5,000 soldiers are still in training.

A paramilitary force, now known as the Iraqi national guard, should have 51,000 troops but has only 35,000.

The security forces are also desperately short of equipment, having less than 5% of the radios, a quarter of the body armour, a third of the vehicles and slightly more than half the weapons they need.

A total of 253,000 weapons have been ordered but only 141,000 have arrived so far. Of the 57,000 radios on order, there are only 2,500 in Iraq. And of the 25,000 vehicles needed, there are only 8,500.

The high demand for body armour has been particularly difficult to meet. Of the 174,000 sets procured, only 40,000 have so far been received.

You know, everytime I think the Bushies have screwed everything up nearly perfectly, along comes new evidence that things are even worse than I think. More peaceful, more free, my a**.

In Memoriam

Salon offers figures from a study by The Institute for Policy Studies on the human costs of the Iraq war:

U.S. Military Deaths: Between the start of war on March 19, 2003 and June 16, 2004, 952 coalition forces were killed, including 835 U.S. military. Of the total, 693 were killed after President Bush declared the end of combat operations on May 1, 2003. Over 5,134 U.S. troops have been wounded since the war began, including 4,593 since May 1, 2003.

Human Costs: While Americans make up the vast majority of military and contractor personnel in Iraq, other U.S.-allied "coalition" troops have suffered 116 war casualties in Iraq. In addition, the focus on Iraq has diverted international resources and attention away from humanitarian crises such as in Sudan.

The Prosecutor Calls

Bush Is Interviewed in Inquiry on Leak of Operative's Name
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 24, 2004

WASHINGTON -- President Bush was interviewed by government prosecutors Thursday in connection with the federal investigation of who leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative to the news media.

The president was questioned for 70 minutes in the Oval Office by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is heading the Justice Department investigation.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Bush has hired a private attorney, Jim Sharp, a Washington trial lawyer and former federal prosecutor.

"The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," McClellan said, adding that the president repeatedly has said that he wants his administration to cooperate with the investigation. "He was pleased to do his part."

Investigators want to know who leaked the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative, to syndicated columnist Robert Novak last July. A federal grand jury in recent months has questioned numerous White House and administration officials.

Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a federal crime.

Wilson has said he believes his wife's identity was disclosed to attack his credibility because he criticized Bush administration claims that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium from Niger. Wilson went to Niger for the CIA to investigate the information about Iraq and he found the allegation to be highly unlikely.

Bullshft, Scotty. You guys leak classified material (or declassify it in order to leak it) all the time. The felony here is leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent, ending her career, her WMD work and endangering her life and all of those who worked with her.

Intel Trouble

Panel Faults CIA's Spying
The GOP-led House Intelligence Committee scolds the agency's clandestine unit, citing a 'dysfunctional denial' of the need to take action.

By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The CIA has ignored its core mission of spying, has refused to take corrective action and is heading "over a proverbial cliff" after years of poor planning and mismanagement, the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee has concluded in the latest congressional broadside aimed at America's premier intelligence agency.

A report that accompanies the committee's proposed intelligence authorization bill, which was approved by the full House in a 360-61 vote Wednesday night, paints a devastating picture of the CIA division that sends clandestine agents overseas, recruits foreign spies, steals secrets and provides covert commandos for the war on terrorism.

In a strongly worded response to the committee's chairman, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), outgoing CIA Director George J. Tenet staunchly defended the agency's performance. He denounced some of the committee's criticism as "ill informed" and "frankly absurd."

Recent investigations into the CIA's failures on Sept. 11 and in prewar reports on Iraq chiefly have blamed agency analysts, who assess classified information from satellite photos, stolen documents and other intelligence. However, the House committee warned in its majority report that the CIA's problems were broader and in some respects had worsened in recent years.

A Senate report expected next month also was expected to strongly criticize the agency as well as address allegations of links between prewar Iraq and Al Qaeda.

"All is not well in the world of clandestine human intelligence collection," House Intelligence Committee Republicans said in the majority report accompanying the funding measure. "For too long, the CIA has been ignoring its core mission activities. There is a dysfunctional denial of any need for corrective action."

The CIA "continues down a road leading over a proverbial cliff," the committee warned. "The damage to the [human intelligence] mission through its misallocation and redirection of resources, poor prioritization of objectives, micromanagement of field operations, and a continued political aversion to operational risk is, in the committee's judgment, significant and could be long lasting."

The committee's harsh language, representing the position of the House, is notable because CIA officials and the Bush administration previously have blamed problems at the spy service on budget and staffing cuts imposed by the Clinton administration after the Cold War. President Bush has given no indication that he is dissatisfied with the CIA's performance.

But Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence blamed "continued CIA mismanagement," as well as decade-old cuts, for the problems. Goss, the outgoing chairman, is a former CIA clandestine officer and has generally supported the CIA in the past.

This is one of a bunch of fairly blistering critiques of intelligence due out over the next few months. Within the intel community, George Tenet gets generally high marks for re-professionalizing the agency, but had to battle constant pilfering by contractors which has given the agency a hard time in the recruitment and retention department.

New Hire

COMMENTARY
Mercenary Hits It Big, Thanks to the U.S.
A controversial figure wins huge contract in Iraq.
By Robert Young Pelton, Robert Young Pelton is the author of the "World's Most Dangerous Places" (HarperResource, 2003) and "Three Worlds Gone Mad" (Lyons Press, 2004), in which he gives a fuller rendition of Timothy Spicer'

On May 25, the U.S. Army awarded Lt. Col. Tim Spicer, formerly of the British army, and his company, Aegis — a tiny 2-year-old London-based holding corporation — the largest and most important security contract of the Iraq war. Over three years, Aegis will be in charge of all security for the $18.4 billion in ongoing reconstruction projects being overseen by the United States.

As part of the contract, Aegis will hire a "force-protection detail" of about 600 armed men. It will also coordinate the operations of 60 other private military companies already working in Iraq and their 20,000 men, including handling security at prisons and oil fields. It's a no-risk, cost-plus arrangement that could earn the company up to $293 million. And as the owner of almost 40% of Aegis, Spicer could pocket $20 million, according to one financial expert.

No problem there, right? It's the American way.

But it turns out that the United States may have made an enormous error: Apparently nobody bothered to ask who Timothy Simon Spicer really was — a controversial British mercenary.

Spicer has not responded to requests for comment. However, his exploits are well documented.

For example, Spicer's memoir says he was hired by the government of Papua New Guinea in 1997 to put down a rebellion. The prime minister was ultimately forced to step down and Spicer ended up arrested, charged and jailed on weapons violations there. The charges were later dropped.

Spicer was also a central figure in a British "arms to Africa" scandal in which a 1998 U.N. arms embargo was broken. Spicer's company supplied arms to Sierra Leone, and, as he recounts, he accepted $70,000 from a fugitive financier accused of embezzlement to look into overthrowing the government there. And according to the Boston Globe, when he was in the British military he commanded a unit in which two members were convicted of murdering an 18-year-old Catholic in north Belfast. Spicer's business background isn't any more reassuring. He has owned or worked for four private military corporations that have either failed financially, done poorly or have suspended business.

Although Aegis has no track record in Iraq, Spicer is known to members of the Coalition Provisional Authority staff — retired British army Brigadier Tony Hunter-Choat, for example. Hunter-Choat heads security for the program management office of the CPA. He and Spicer both worked in the Balkans, where Hunter-Choat was part of the British U.N. contingent and Spicer was a spokesman for the commander of the U.N. Protection Force.

How did Aegis win the security contract? Last month in Ft. Eustis, Va., an Army board reviewed six competing proposals, including entries from giants like Dyncorp and Control Risks Group and others with long histories of successful contracting with the U.S. military. Army spokesman Maj. Gary C. Tallman said Aegis' proposal did the best in meeting the bid requirements. He said Spicer's resumé showed that he had an impeccable career in the British army and that Spicer had done "security work in Africa and Southeast Asia."

When asked if he knew details of Spicer's background, Tallman replied: "My understanding is that they [Aegis] met all the [bid] requirements." He said that other than checking candidates against an official list of those barred from getting Army contracts, "it's not part of the process to look into the backgrounds of the principals."

The growing controversy over Aegis' qualifications may force the Army to once again review how it hires private contractors. Security analysts and human rights activists have questioned the contract, and one of the losing bidders has asked for a review.

As for Spicer, he is reportedly already at work in Baghdad — Washington's newest private contractor, building a huge private security force with a famous mercenary at its head.

You are known by the company you keep.

War and Failure

I saw the interview last night on CNN. I think the guy gets some things right, some wrong: he's right about the problem, wrong about the solution. Yes, we are at risk and we should dump Bush because of it, but we don't fix terrorism by total war, at least not as Von Clausowitz thought of it. Terrorism is a tactic, not a strategy.

Anonymous's new book, Imperial Hubris, comes out next week. Here's a slice of his interviw with NBC's Andrea Mitchell last night.

Mitchell: "Starting in 1996, the CIA decided to create a station devoted to Osama bin Laden. Why?"

Anonymous: "We're — yes, ma'am. We've won, we won quite a few battles and marvelously so, but we're fighting opponents that perceive tactical losses rather than strategic losses. And it's quite clear that these wars are half-started."

Out of Control

Insurgents Launch Attacks Across Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 24, 2004

Filed at 4:03 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Insurgents launched a series of apparently coordinated attacks on police stations in Sunni Muslim-dominated areas of Iraq on Thursday, killing at least 22 people, including two U.S. soldiers, officials said.

The attacks began at dawn on the police stations in Ramadi and Baqouba. Later, explosions hit police stations in the northern city of Mosul. One of them could have been caused by a suicide bomber, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.

The level of coordination in the attacks appeared unusual and could signal the beginning of a push by insurgents to torpedo next week's transfer of sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation authority to an interim Iraqi government.

Two American soldiers were killed and seven wounded in the Baqouba fighting, the U.S. 1st Infantry Division said. U.S. tanks opened fire on insurgent positions amid fierce fighting raged in parts of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Insurgents seized a police station there.

U.S. aircraft dropped three 500-pound bombs against an insurgent position near the city soccer stadium, said Maj. Neal E. O'Brien, a U.S. 1st Infantry Division spokesman. Insurgents roamed the city with rocket launchers and automatic weapons.

Explosions and shelling shook Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad. Armed men ran through the streets, witnesses said. Residents said U.S. forces were shelling from positions outside the city, and helicopters were in the skies, but the U.S. military did not immediately be reached for comment.

U.S. forces manning a checkpoint opened fire on local government convoy that included Fallujah's mayor and police chief that was trying to meet the Americans to discuss the violence, said an Iraqi police lieutenant, speaking on condition of anonymity. The convoy turned back, and no casualties were reported.

U.S. forces had launched two airstrikes on Fallujah in recent days against what they said were safehouses of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for the beheading for the beheading of American hostage Nicholas Berg and Kim Sun-il, a South Korean whose decapitated body was found Tuesday between Baghdad and Fallujah.

On Tuesday, an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site attributed to al-Zarqawi threatened to assassinate Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi.

U.S. Marines besieged Fallujah for three weeks in April after four American civilian contractors working for the Blackwater USA security company were ambushed and killed, their bodies mutilated and hung from a Euphrates river bridge.

The city has been relatively calm since Marines announced a deal to end the siege that created the Fallujah Brigade, commanded by officers from Saddam Hussein's army.

Scores Killed As Insurgents Launch Attacks Across Iraq
Marines Involved in Heavy Clashes in Fallujah

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 24, 2004; 7:39 AM

BAGHDAD, June 24--Iraqi insurgents launched an apparently coordinated offensive against U.S. occupation forces and Iraqi security posts in a number of locations Thursday, setting off continuing battles that killed at least 66 people, including more than 20 Iraqi police and three U.S. soldiers.

The attacks, an unusual display of ability to stage simultaneous assaults, were the broadest and largest-scale so far in an insurgent campaign of bombings and assassinations in the weeks leading up to the June 30 transfer of a limited form of sovereignty to the Iraqi Interim government.

Violence was reported in at least five Iraqi cities -- Baqubah, Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul and Baghdad -- as insurgents attacked police stations, set off car bombs and fought battles with Iraqi government forces and U.S. troops. The U.S. military responded with air strikes on insurgent positions in Baqubah and Fallujah, dropping 500-pound bombs.

The Iraqi Health Ministry said at least 66 people were killed and more than 250 wounded in the attacks. The highest death toll came in the northern city of Mosul, where the ministry said at least 44 people were killed in a series of car bomb blasts. Fighting in Fallujah and Ramadi left at least nine people dead, and clashes around Baqubah killed at least 13, the ministry reported.

The largest and most sustained attack came shortly after dawn on a police station and other government buildings in Baqubah, a farming hub 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. Gunmen firing AK-47 automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades took over the town's main police station and occupied the central intersections.

The U.S. military said it was also fighting insurgents near its two bases on Baqubah's outskirts. Two U.S. soldiers were killed and seven wounded in the clashes, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division said.

Local correspondents for the al-Jazeera satellite television network said 26 Iraqis were killed, including 16 policemen, and 30 were wounded in Baqubah. The insurgents raised black flags over the police station, which they still occupied at midday, they reported.

In a similar attack at Ramadi, 50 miles west of the capital, masked gunmen clad in black attacked two police stations and a government building with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, local officials told Iraqi journalists. The attackers seized one police station, killing seven policemen, then set explosives in the building and blew it up, the officials said.

At least five bombs were set off, meanwhile, in Mosul, about 220 miles north of Baghdad. Reports from the city, heavily populated by Kurds but also home to many of former president Saddam Hussein's military officers, said a U.S. soldier was killed and three others wounded. Scores of Iraqis were also killed or wounded when car bombs detonated at an Iraqi police academy, two police stations and a hospital in Mosul, news agencies reported.

In Baghdad, an explosion near a checkpoint manned by Iraqi and U.S. soldiers in the southern part of the city left four Iraqi soldiers dead and at least one American apparently wounded. The blast, which appeared to have been caused by a car bomb, also reportedly injured at least two Iraqi civilians.

In Fallujah, which lies halfway along the road linking Ramadi with Baghdad, U.S. Marines in armored vehicles were reported to be fighting insurgents on the eastern outskirts of the long-rebellious city. A U.S. Marine AH-1H Cobra helicopter gunship was shot down nearby, but its crew walked away unhurt, the Marines announced. U.S. warplanes also were seen over the city.

A group of insurgents in Fallujah issued a statement over al-Jazeera warning that they would attack all Iraq's oil pipelines and wells and set them ablaze unless the Marines halted their push toward the city.

Marines had largely kept out of Fallujah since a cease-fire was agreed early last month. Security responsibilities were turned over to a group of former Iraqi Army officers, the Fallujah Brigade, but U.S. officers have expressed disappointment that armed Islamic radicals still control the city, giving sanctuary to foreign fighters.

Four Marines who had been posted as a sniper squad atop a roof were killed and stripped of their gear earlier this week in nearby Ramadi.

The U.S. military launched a missile strike in Fallujah Tuesday against what it called a safehouse used by followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian border Islamic guerrilla leader whom U.S. officials have blamed for much of the recent violence in Iraq.

Immunity? The Bugs Buzz

U.S. Immunity In Iraq Will Go Beyond June 30

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 24, 2004; Page A01

The administration plans to accomplish that step -- which would bypass the most contentious remaining issue before the transfer of power -- by extending an order that has been in place during the year-long occupation of Iraq. Order 17 gives all foreign personnel in the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority immunity from "local criminal, civil and administrative jurisdiction and from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their parent states."

U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer is expected to extend Order 17 as one of his last acts before shutting down the occupation next week, U.S. officials said. The order is expected to last an additional six or seven months, until the first national elections are held.

The United States would draw legal authority from Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law and the recent U.N. resolution recognizing the new government and approving a multinational force, but some U.S. officials and countries in the multinational force still want greater reassurances on immunity, U.S. officials said.

Bush's top foreign policy advisers, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, are still debating the scope of immunity to be granted. "The debate is on the extent or parameters of coverage -- should it be sweeping, as it is now, or more limited," said a senior U.S. official familiar with discussions, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue.

In Baghdad, U.S. officials have been engaged all week with interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and national security adviser Mowaffak Rubaie. Both sides hope to finalize the terms before Bush leaves for the NATO summit in Istanbul at week's end, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

The administration is taking the step in an effort to prevent the new Iraqi government from having to grant a blanket waiver as one of its first acts, which could undermine its credibility just as it assumes power. But U.S. officials said Washington's act could also create the impression that the United States is not turning over full sovereignty -- and giving itself special privileges.

The administration's move comes when issues of immunity are particularly sensitive, in light of the scandal over the abuse of U.S. detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yesterday at the United Nations, the administration, citing opposition on the Security Council, withdrew a resolution that would have extended immunity for U.S. personnel in U.N.-approved peacekeeping missions from prosecution before the International Criminal Court.

In Iraq, U.S. officials are already concerned about the potential fallout after June 30 among key players -- from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most powerful religious cleric, to militant insurgents. But the Bush foreign policy team concluded that there are few alternatives until elections select a government that will be powerful enough to negotiate a formal treaty, U.S. officials said.

The issue of immunity for U.S. troops is among the most contentious in the Islamic world, where it has galvanized public opinion against the United States in the past. A similar grant of immunity to U.S. troops in Iran during the Johnson administration in the 1960s led to the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who used the issue to charge that the shah had sold out the Iranian people.

"Our honor has been trampled underfoot; the dignity of Iran has been destroyed," Khomeini said in a famous 1964 speech that led to his detention and then expulsion from Iran. The measure "reduced the Iranian people to a level lower than that of an American dog."

I welcome comment from Bump's legal community. I'm not a lawyer and this looks to me like getting away with murder. I welcome your comments.

Classic Bush Flip-Flop

U.S. Offers North Korea Aid if It Phases Out Nuclear Program
By JOSEPH KAHN

Published: June 23, 2004

BEIJING, June 23 — The United States today presented North Korea with a proposal for phasing out its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees, as senior Bush administration officials acknowledged softening their hard-line stance to jump-start negotiations with Pyongyang.

James A. Kelly, the chief American negotiator, presented a proposal to his North Korean counterparts on the opening day of six-nation nuclear talks in Beijing, a senior administration official said, adding that "it was time to start getting specific" in the so-far-inconclusive negotiations.

American officials said North Korea rebuffed an invitation to hold a private meeting on the side of the six-party talks to discuss the proposal in more detail today. The North Korean delegation, which put forward its own plan at the talks, had no immediate reaction to the American offer.

The talks, the third round of negotiations involving China, Japan, South Korea and Russia as well as the United States and North Korea, are expected to continue through Friday. Expectations for achieving a breakthrough at this round remain modest.

Under the American plan, North Korea would have to fully disclose its nuclear program, submit to inspections and pledge to begin eliminating the program after a "preparatory period" of three months.

In exchange, the reclusive regime of Kim Jong-Il, the North Korean leader, would receive shipments of heavy fuel oil to meet its energy needs, be granted a "provisional security guarantee" by the United States, and see the lifting of some sanctions.

The proposal, which American officials said was first presented to them by South Korea earlier this month and was modified in Washington, is a combination of ideas put forward in earlier rounds of talks.

Bushco is a 180-degree flip-flopper on this one. Bush could have had this deal before the North Koreans had gotten their nuclear weapons program fully mature,which it now is. What real motivation do they have to take it down now, when everybody on the planet is now rushing to complete their own nuclear program since it seems to be the only thing which will deter the US from unilateral invasions?

Punk'd on Reality

Progress in Iraq is disputed

David Stout NYT

Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Stay may last years, U.S. official asserts

WASHINGTON The United States may have to keep troops in Iraq for years to come despite "enormous progress" in bringing peace to that country, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Tuesday.
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Wolfowitz's prediction, coupled with a high-ranking general's warning that "we should expect more violence, not less," in the near future, highlighted a sometimes contentious hearing of the House Armed Services Committee.
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Wolfowitz, who returned recently from a tour of Iraq, said he had heard military people from the United States and their allies say again and again that the people back home just do not realize how much progress is being achieved in Iraq as it moves toward sovereignty on June 30.
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"It's something we heard almost everywhere - from Iraqis, from Americans, from a British general down in Basra," Wolfowitz said. "What doesn't get through in all the reporting on problems is, there's also been enormous progress."
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But Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the panel's ranking Democrat, was not persuaded. Conceding that much had been accomplished in Iraq, he asserted that progress had been slowed by "the security quagmire" that exists there now.
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"I see, Mr. Secretary, two Iraqs," Skelton said. "One is the optimistic Iraq that you describe, and we thank you for your testimony. And the other Iraq is the one that I see every morning, with the violence, the death of soldiers and marines.
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"I must tell you, it breaks my heart a little bit more every day."
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When Skelton asked Wolfowitz what lessons he had absorbed in the past 15 months, or roughly since all-out war ended and the mopping up and peacekeeping began, Wolfowitz responded at length about the evils of Saddam Hussein, his henchmen and their followers.
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Skelton then broke in:
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"Mr. Secretary, let me interrupt if I may. My question is, what lessons we have learned, you have learned in the last 15 months."
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Wolfowitz replied that military planners might have underestimated how persistent the anti-American forces might be even after the several dozen leaders of the Baghdad regime had been killed or captured.
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Continuing, Wolfowitz said that the Iraqis themselves must eventually impose security on their country, not just to stabilize the government but to allow ordinary Iraqis to go about their lives.
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Skelton then asked, "You think we might be there, then, a good number of years?"
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"I think it's entirely possible," Wolfowitz replied. "But what I think is also nearly certain is the more they step up, and they will be doing so more and more each month, the less and less we will have to do."

I watched this hearing yesterday. Wolfowitz is living in an alternative universe: Iraq grows more violent and less secure each day. No way are they going to be able to stand up an indigenous security force of any meaningful size in time to matter. We're making so much progress that we're mobilizing more troops:

Iraq force may grow by 25,000
Possible mix of U.S. reservists, regulars would bolster security; 'We may need more people,' officer says

By Tom Bowman
Sun National Staff
Originally published June 23, 2004

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Central Command has informally asked Army planners for up to five more brigades - about 25,000 troops - to augment the American force of 138,000 soldiers and Marines now in Iraq, military officers and Pentagon officials said.

Some officers said any increase might well be lower, perhaps involving 10,000 troops that would be a mix of active-duty and National Guard units.

"For a period of time, we may need more people," said a senior officer familiar with the planning, noting the perilous security situation and the needs of Iraq's new interim government, which is to assume sovereignty a week from today. "It's clearly being driven by requirements in theater."

It is uncertain whether a formal request for more troops has been made by Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region. Neither is it clear that discussions between Central Command and the Army have reached Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Bringing Labor Back

A Global Vision for Labor

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, June 23, 2004; Page A21

SAN FRANCISCO -- He may not have been entirely happy about it, but on Monday, Andy Stern had his John L. Lewis moment.

Addressing roughly 3,000 delegates at the quadrennial convention of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Stern, who's been the SEIU's president since 1996, certainly had plenty to be happy about. While the vast majority of American unions have been shrinking or barely holding their own, the SEIU on Stern's watch has nearly doubled in size, to 1.6 million members, which makes it much the largest on the continent. In the Northeast, the Midwest and on the Pacific Coast, it has won decent wages and health care benefits not just for public employees but for janitors, hospital orderlies and nursing home workers who would otherwise be making the minimum wage and seeing doctors only in emergency rooms. With the rate of private-sector unionization having dwindled to a minuscule 8 percent, however, the SEIU is really no more than a unionized island in a non-union sea. And the tides, as they are for all American unions, are threatening.

So the SEIU is also going global -- for the simple reason that it has to.

With two like-minded unions, the clothing-and-laundry UNITE and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (soon to become one union, UNITE-HERE, next month), the SEIU is embarking on a campaign to organize such multi-service global companies as Sodexho, Aramark and Compass Group -- corporations that provide food, laundry and janitorial services in ballparks, schools and hospital cafeterias, as well as in Iraq. Combined, the three companies employ 1.1 million people globally and 330,000 in the United States. Sodexho has 110,000 workers in the United States, and the three unions are putting up $10 million and 80 organizers and researchers to unionize it. But the battle won't only be fought stateside. In conjunction with unions in Europe, says the SEIU's Tom Woodruff, who is running the campaign, "We are working for agreements in more than one country." The U.S. unions seek company-wide recognition, while unions in, say, Britain, want access to Sodexho's list of workers.

This level of global union cooperation is new, but much about this campaign takes a leaf out of John L. Lewis's 70-year-old book on industrial organizing. Like Lewis, whose United Mine Workers funded the rise of such new unions as the United Auto Workers, the SEIU and UNITE-HERE envision a new union rising for the workers in these three companies. Like Lewis, who signed the first company-wide contracts with General Motors and U.S. Steel, Stern and UNITE-HERE's leaders, Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm, believe the only way to build back union strength is to organize entire companies at a time, rather than go facility by facility.

And like Lewis, whose frustration at the American Federation of Labor's opposition to industrial organizing led him to break away and found the CIO in 1935, Stern called on Monday for the AFL-CIO (the two groups got back together in 1955) to radically change its structure. Currently, the AFL-CIO has 65 member unions, the vast majority too small to fund organizing campaigns, though some -- or their locals -- have been known to pick up new members when employers, facing the prospect of real unionization by the likes of the SEIU, have cut sweetheart deals with them. Stern would like to see the unions consolidated into about 15, with clear sectoral responsibilities and enough resources to organize. On Monday Stern told his delegates that it was time either to "change the AFL-CIO or build something stronger." At that, the floor erupted; delegates stood and whooped for a full minute.

Meyerson is one of the few national paper writers who really understands the labor movement and he is right to point out that Andy Stern may just be the visionary who will be able to bring the movement back from the brink of death. Labor organizing has to be able to move the way that capital does in order to be effective, and this globalization strategy, if implemented correctly, may be just the ticket. The trick here is in the specific steps and tactics. I'll wait for outcomes before I canonize Stern, however.

The Public Square

White (House) Lies

By David Corn, AlterNet. Posted June 22, 2004.

But these critics have overlooked the main point: the case against Bush. The essential issue is not whether Bush detractors hate the man or are angry with him. What matters is whether their indictments are persuasive and well-founded. After all, if Bush has indeed misled the public about his far-ranging tax cuts, global warming, homeland security, stem cells research, the reasons for war and other serious topics, isn't anger an appropriate response? But often commentators (mainly of the right-wing variant) have preferred to focus on what they perceive to be the emotions of Bush's antagonists. It has been an easy way to dismiss the bill of particulars. They self-servingly decry the decline of civil debate and avoid the question: How civil should debate be if the president of the United States is not telling the truth about life-and-death issues? (One exception is columnist George Will, who has at least urged Bush to acknowledge his untrue prewar assertions about the weapons of mass destruction.)

If a president recklessly abandons his obligation to determine whether he is in possession of good, solid information, and then accepts incorrect or misleading material and presents it to the public because doing so serves his own ends, he is engaged in a deceptive practice that can be considered the functional equivalent of lying. Bush has yet to face any consequences for promoting deceptions crucial to his agenda, and he has not assumed responsibility for actively misleading the American public and the world. So the debate over his truth-defying ways will continue until Election Day.

This is the central point facing public debate: the right has defined the left as hating nuts, so that anything we say is taken as shrill and meaningless. Getting the public square back as a reasonable and open space for debate IS the next task.

Circular Reasoning

Perverse Polarity
The mainstream media bemoans the lack of civility in Washington--but won't say who's responsible.

By Paul Glastris

There's something similar about the way the national press has been describing the polarization of our political culture over the last few years. It is a cliché to observe that the parties have drawn further apart, the center no longer holds, and partisans on both sides have withdrawn further into mutual loathing and ever more-homogenous and antagonistic groupings. Where the analysis goes wrong is in its assumption, either explicit or implicit, that both parties bear equal responsibility for this state of affairs. While partisanship may now be deeply entrenched among their voters and their elites, the truth is that the growing polarization of American politics results primarily from the growing radicalism of the Republican Party.

This is the sort of reality that most journalists know perfectly well to be true but cannot bring themselves to say, though this increased polarization drives them crazy. Almost without exception, mainstream reporters in Washington see moderation and bipartisanship as inherently virtuous. (Indeed, reverence for these qualities is essentially the defining belief of the Washington establishment.) Read almost any account of bills becoming law, and you'll notice the reporter's obvious affection for centrists who work both sides of the aisle. Yet they are unable to honestly explain to readers what's causing the decline of bipartisanship, thanks to another form of press bias: The desire not to seem biased. As practiced by the modern press, "objective" journalism requires avoiding the appearance of favoring one party over the other--even when the facts merit such a treatment. That's why, when news stories discuss polarization, they bend over backward to avoid laying the "blame" on the political right.

Movements which close back on themselves, as the Republicans have since Gingrich, typically implode. Sitting around checking my watch as I wait has grown old, however.

Lying Liars

Did Ashcroft brush off terror warnings?
NBC exclusive: 9/11 commission interviews FBI officials who contradict Ashcroft testimony
By Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:32 p.m. ET June 22, 2004

WASHINGTON - The 9/11 commission is busy writing its final report, but is still investigating critical facts, including the conduct of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. NBC News has learned that the commission has interviewed two FBI officials who contradict sworn testimony by Ashcroft, about whether he brushed off terrorism warnings in the summer of 2001.

Pickard did brief Ashcroft on terrorism four more times that summer, but sources say the acting FBI director never mentioned the word al-Qaida again in Ashcroft's presence — until after Sept. 11.

Bushco was so focused on Iraq and rolling back the Bill of Rights that they never paid any attention to the real threats. They still aren't, and we are at risk because of it.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

NIH to Curb Its Scientists' Deals With Drug Firms

By David Willman, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The National Institutes of Health will drastically tighten policies that have allowed hundreds of consulting deals between drug companies and scientists at the nation's leading center for public health research, its director told a congressional panel Tuesday.

Announcing a sweeping set of reforms, NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni also said that he would demand public disclosure of any future industry payments to agency employees.

He said that, in hindsight, he should have acted sooner to crack down on the private deals that have created potential conflicts of interest between scientists' duties at NIH and their financial ties to industry.

"I have reached the regrettable conclusion that some NIH employees may have violated these [existing] rules and that the agency's ethics system does not adequately guard against these violations," Zerhouni told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

The NIH is the nation's premier agency for medical research, spending $27.9 billion this year.

Zerhouni said that as congressional investigators continued to sift through potential conflicts of interest in recent weeks — including the discovery of at least 100 deals that had not been properly reported — he reached a "tipping point" regarding reform at NIH. He vowed that he and his staff would "move diligently to completely change the system of ethics at NIH."

"You have my pledge: Any employees who violated the rules will be subject to appropriate penalties," he said. "It's very painful to me that the actions of a few may have tainted the good work of thousands of scientists who have not participated in any of these actions and who work daily at NIH to solve the mysteries of disease and to advance treatments and cures for these diseases."

Zerhouni said that while not all of the changes could be made overnight, he was "working aggressively" with the office of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and with the Office of Government Ethics to implement his proposals.

The announced reforms were greeted warmly by Democrats and Republicans on the subcommittee. The panel opened its investigation of company consulting deals with NIH employees in response to a Dec. 7, 2003, report in the Los Angeles Times.

The article noted that until late 1995, top NIH officials were prohibited from accepting consulting fees and stock options from drug companies, but that restriction was lifted by the then-director of NIH, Dr. Harold E. Varmus. Based in part on documents obtained over five years under the Freedom of Information Act, The Times identified hundreds of consulting payments, totaling millions of dollars, to senior NIH scientists. Two of the scientists had pledged to abstain from matters affecting their clients, but nonetheless participated in decisions involving company products used in NIH studies on patients.

In addition, the article reported that 94% of the highest-paid employees at NIH were not required to publicly disclose payments from outside employers, including drug companies.

The politicization and corporatization of the NIH is a scandal that goes back to the Reagan administration. This cleanup is a small one, but welcome.

Crowning the Messiah

This has been kicking around the Web for a couple of weeks. I left it as wingnut stuff, but when it shows up in the WaPo, I'll take it out to play. The Rev. Moon Honored at Hill Reception
Lawmakers Say They Were Misled

By Charles Babington and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 23, 2004; Page A01

More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in which Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons."

At the March 23 ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon's head. The Korean-born businessman and religious leader then delivered a long speech saying he was "sent to Earth . . . to save the world's six billion people. . . . Emperors, kings and presidents . . . have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

Details of the ceremony -- first reported by Salon.com writer John Gorenfeld -- have prompted several lawmakers to say they were misled or duped by organizers. Their complaints prompted a Moon-affiliated Web site to remove a video of the "Crown of Peace" ceremony two days ago, but other Web sites have preserved details and photos.

Moon, 85, has been controversial for years. Renowned for officiating at mass weddings, he received an 18-month prison sentence in 1982 for tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice. In a 1997 sermon, he likened homosexuals to "dirty dung-eating dogs."

Among the more than 300 people who attended all or part of the March ceremony was Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), who now says he simply was honoring a constituent receiving a peace award and did not know Moon would be there. "We fell victim to it; we were duped," Dayton spokeswoman Chris Lisi said yesterday.

Other lawmakers who attended or were listed as hosts felt the same, she said. "Everyone I talked to was furious," she said. With Minnesotans demanding to know whether Dayton is a follower of Moon, Lisi said, the senator persuaded the St. Paul Pioneer Press to write an article allowing him to reply.

The event's organizers flew in nearly 100 honorees from all 50 states to receive state and national peace awards. The only "international crown of peace awards" went to Moon and his wife.

Some Republicans who attended the event, including Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (Md.), said they did so mainly to salute the Washington Times, a conservative-leaning newspaper owned by Moon's organization. "I had no idea what would happen" regarding Moon's coronation and speech, Bartlett said yesterday.

But a key organizer -- Archbishop George A. Stallings Jr., pastor of the Imani Temple, an independent African American Catholic congregation in Northeast Washington -- said Moon's prominent role should have surprised no one. He said a March 8 invitation faxed to all lawmakers stated that the "primary program sponsor" would be the "Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace (IIFWP), founded by Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon, who will also be recognized that evening for their lifelong work to promote interfaith cooperation and reconciliation." The invitation was signed by Davis and the Rev. Michael Jenkins, as co-chairmen of the IIFWP (USA).

The event's co-sponsors were the Washington Times Foundation, the United Press International Foundation, the American Family Coalition, the American Clergy Leadership Conference and the Women's Federation for World Peace, according to the invitation. Stallings, a former Roman Catholic priest who was married in Moon's church, said Moon's association with those organizations is well known.

"You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not know that any event that is sponsored by the Washington Times . . . could involve the influence, or the potential presence, of the Reverend Moon," he said.

The congressman next door,Tom Davis, was there, it seems. Click the link to see the rest of the attendees. If you see your congresscritter there, you are well within your rights to pen a letter of protest (or a trip to the Hill, if you are within the proximity.) This is truly nutty stuff and I'm glad to see it on A01 of the Post.

Higher Moral Standards

Memo on Interrogation Tactics Is Disavowed
Justice Document Had Said Torture May Be Defensible

By Mike Allen and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 23, 2004; Page A01

President Bush's aides yesterday disavowed an internal Justice Department opinion that torturing terrorism suspects might be legally defensible, saying it had created the false impression that the government was claiming authority to use interrogation techniques barred by international law.

Responding to pressure from Congress and outrage around the world, officials at the White House and the Justice Department derided the August 2002 legal memo on aggressive interrogation tactics, calling parts of it overbroad and irrelevant and saying it would be rewritten.

In a highly unusual repudiation of its department's own work, a senior Justice official and two other high-ranking lawyers said that all legal advice rendered by the department's Office of Legal Counsel on the subject of interrogations will be reviewed.

As part of a public relations offensive, the administration also declassified and released hundreds of pages of internal documents that it said demonstrated that Bush had never authorized torture against detainees from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In doing so, the administration revealed details of the interrogation tactics being used on prisoners, an extraordinary disclosure for an administration that has argued that the release of such information would help the enemy.

The legal memos and policy directives provided a new level of insight into the administration's internal debate and decision-making over how far it should go to gain information from terrorism suspects, including:

• A Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by Bush saying that he believed he had "the authority under the Constitution" to deny protections of the Geneva Conventions to combatants picked up during the war in Afghanistan but that he would "decline to exercise that authority at this time."

"Our nation recognizes that this new paradigm -- ushered in not by us, but by terrorists -- requires new thinking in the law of war," Bush wrote.

The memo, which had not been scheduled to be declassified until 2012, settled a bitter dispute between the State and Justice departments over the issue. It outlined Bush's rationale -- announced the day he signed it -- that some of the Geneva Conventions would apply to fighters for Afghanistan's Taliban but not to members of the al Qaeda terrorist network. Bush added that "our values as a Nation . . . call for us to treat detainees humanely."

But can we believe anything they say?

Want My Vote?

To Hell With Well Behaved
Women who are interested and involved in politics talk quietly about how no one is chasing their vote. Then they sigh and move on
By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek

More than 20 million unmarried American women, a group polls have found are more liberal than the average person, never even voted in the 2000 presidential election. They didn't think it was worth the effort. If he reached out to those women as aerobically as George W. Bush has to evangelicals, Kerry could be working on his Inaugural speech right now. Instead the Democrats seem to be figuring that most female voters have nowhere else to go.

They're counting on the gratitude factor. Democrats better than Republicans, 14 female senators better than none, America better than Afghanistan. Who thinks this way? Do prison reformers back off because at least in Attica inmates aren't stacked naked in a pile having their pictures taken? Here's an antidote to gratitude: the new interim Constitution for Iraq mandates 25 percent female representation in Parliament, which thoroughly trumps the United States on the democracy scale.

History tells us that women's equality is often becalmed by the press of outside events, that the movement that begat suffrage, for example, slowed in the face of the Great Depression. But I suspect that some of the slowdown is always about our fear of unfolding our hands and pointing a finger. In "Iron Jawed Angels," the recent HBO film about the suffrage movement, you saw young women who fought and kicked all the way to a prison cell. It's dispiriting to think that they were bloodied but unbowed so their granddaughters could halfheartedly vote for someone who assumes their support instead of seeking it. Those suffragists refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.

What I want to hear out of John Kerry: childcare (not my issue, but it is a big one for a lot of single women,) tax policy with regard to saving for retirement--we tend to make less over a lifetime which affects savings rates and social security entitlement--and rolling back the income tax on social security income, more on health care and universal coverage. I want to hear about REAL homeland security, improvement in communications and resources for first responders, hardened ports, chemical and nuclear plants and the power grid. The world is a demnostrably a more dangerous place than we thought when Bush was elected, and this dangerous economy has now sprouted some tangible fears.

The Wal-Mart Effect

The Supremes are a very mixed bag this week, removing Miranda rights, curtailing the right to sue HMOs and then this:

Court OKs Class-Action Against Wal-Mart
The suit, originally filed on behalf of six women workers, alleges Wal-Mart often pays female workers less than their male counterparts.

By Jesus Sanchez, Times Staff Writer

A lawsuit claiming that retail giant Wal-Mart Stores discriminated against its female employees today became the largest civil rights case ever filed after a U.S. judge in San Francisco granted the legal complaint class-action status.

The ruling by U.S. District Court judge Martin Jenkins means that as many as 1.6 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees can now be represented under the 2001 lawsuit filed on behalf of six workers. The world's largest retailer is charged with discriminating against women in promotions, pay and job assignments in a far-reaching lawsuit.

The class-action lawsuit applies to female employees who have worked at Wal-Mart or its sister companies since December 26, 1998.

In granting class-action status, Jenkins rejected Wal-Mart's argument that the huge number of women who could join the lawsuit would make the case impossible to manage. The court found that federal employment laws do not make an exception for big companies.

"Insulating our nation's largest employers from allegations that they have engaged in a pattern and practice of gender or racial discrimination — simply because they are large — would seriously undermine these imperatives," Jenkins wrote.

The judge, noting the significance of the case, pointed out that he granted the class-action status on the 50th anniversary of U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. "This anniversary serves as a reminder of the importance of the courts in addressing the denial of equal treatment under the law whenever and by whomever it occurs," he wrote.

Since most of the news about labor and employment has been pretty grim since the Reagan administration, this is a rare step forward. Here's a link to last November's three part LATimes series on Wal-Mart, in case you aren't familiar with the nasty labor practices of this company.

The Podesta Factor

My "Progress Report" just arrived. Here is some interesting news:

American Progress President John Podesta will appear on the "O'Reilly Factor" tonight on Fox News. Earlier this month, Bill O'Reilly lashed out at Podesta for having the nerve to point out O'Reilly lied about one of our Senior Fellows, Eric Alterman. In reference to Podesta, O'Reilly said on his show, " Have I told any lies, sir? " Have I told any lies, sir? Why don't you come right on this program and produce some proof of that? And if you don't, you're a coward and a sleazy propagandist who deserves to be scorned" (This was from a man who is so divorced from the truth that he actually claimed to win a prestigious Peabody award for journalism, when in fact he did not) ). Well, tonight's the night. For just some of O'Reilly's distortions see American Progress's Claim vs. Fact , database and Media Matters) . The "No Spin Zone" airs at 8PM and 11PM on Fox News.

Down the Graft Drain

UN raps US over Iraqi oil revenues

Simon Jeffery
Tuesday June 22, 2004

US-led authorities in Baghdad are to be sharply criticised in an upcoming UN audit over their use of Iraqi oil revenues, it was reported today.

A leaked copy of an interim report by financial advisers KPMG into the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which collects and spends oil money, has revealed loose book-keeping and "resistance" to scrutiny among Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) staff.

The Financial Times, which obtained a copy of the report, said the auditors judged the fund to be "open to fraudulent acts".

"The CPA does not have effective controls over the ministries' spending of their individually allocated budgets, whether the funds are direct from the CPA or via the ministry of finance," it quoted the report as saying.

The US-run DFI was mandated by the UN security council to collect and spend Iraqi oil revenues in May last year, but has been dogged from its inception by accusations of a lack of transparency.

Agreement on an international advisory body to oversee the DFI was not reached until October as Paul Bremer, the US governor in Iraq, haggled over the scope of the watchdog's power. In the interim, its second function as a repository for all reconstruction money has been largely overtaken by UN and World Bank funds as donor countries became wary of contributing to an unaudited fund.

Officials say the audit only began in earnest in April and expressed fears that if the work was not finished by June 30 - when the CPA is to be wound up - no audit of its spending would ever be complete.

Confusion over the final days of the DFI was highlighted last week in a report by Iraq Revenue Watch - part of Hungarian financier George Soros's Open Society Institute - that said nearly $2bn (£1.09bn) was recently allocated to reconstruction projects in addition to the amounts specified in the revised budget in March.

What I'm hearing is that there is so much graft and corruption on the ground in Iraq that asking the question "how much of this money will actually be spent on reconstruction?" is a legitimate request. Here's a link to Soros' Open Society Initiative "Iraq Revenue Watch."

Fool Some of the People

Facts vs. fiction

By Thomas Oliphant | June 20, 2004

WASHINGTON

What Bush and Cheney are doing is what they have been doing since the summer of 2002 -- confusing the concepts of war in Iraq and war on terrorism. In fact, Bush and Cheney have always made it a point to emphasize that their concept of a nation at war is defined as a war against terror -- almost never Iraq.

The result has been -- up to now at least -- an administration-created confusion between the two, resolved by many Americans in favor of a linkage. Just prior to the invasion of Iraq in March of last year, more than two-thirds of the public believed that Iraq was directly involved in the attacks on this country. I don't remember Bush or Cheney doing anything to disabuse the public of this idea, though there are several incidents where they did all they could to encourage it.

All these months later, the percentage of Americans who still believe this fiction has cracked the 50 percent barrier on the way down. In the view of Bush reelection strategists, it cannot fall much further without further undermining the views of nearly half the public that the invasion was worth its subsequent cost. The administration has already spent six months trying to accommodate the truth that, again contrary to its assertions, Iraq had no stockpiled, ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction at the time of the invasion; the political team's view is that it can't take another hit of this nature.

That is why Bush and Cheney are pushing back so hard -- and lamely -- with their assertion that there was indeed a "relationship" or a "tie" of several years' duration between Saddam and Osama.

Specifics refute the contention. Bush, programmed as he is, can only manage the silly assertion that "high-level" people from the two sides met in the Sudan. According to the 9/11 Commission, this was in 1994, at the time that terrorist-supporting state was trying to persuade Osama to stop trying to topple the secular Iraqi regime, which he despised. An Iraqi intelligence official had to make three trips to the place before he could see the terrorist, who wanted help in getting equipment, weapons, and training bases. To the day Saddam's regime crumbled there was no evidence that Iraq ever responded, and there is also no evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda ever collaborated on anything, anywhere, anytime.

Cheney's contribution has been repeated ever since a few weeks after the terrorist attacks: peddling an uncorroborated assertion by one Czech intelligence official that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta had been seen five months before meeting with an Iraqi agent in Prague. The 9/11 Commission, citing physical and documentary evidence, said the facts indicate Atta was already here by then and had never left.

Cheney feeds the opinion polls with this garbage, and then wiggles on the hook by claiming that he can spread the tale because it hasn't been refuted. I trust real decisions on security matters are not made in such a slipshod, duplicitous fashion.

Cheney and Bush are squealing so much because the unmasking of their fiction about Iraq is one more shot into the solar plexus of their diminishing credibility -- and in the president's reelection campaign, credibility is a major route to the independent-minded voters who will probably decide the election.

Cheney and Bush, in short, have been caught in a lie, and that is why they are squealing.

I love Tom Oliphant for calling the Cheney spin-blitz what it is: garbage.

Burying the Cost

Senate Backs Ban on Photos of G.I. Coffins
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: June 22, 2004

WASHINGTON, June 21 - The Bush administration's policy of barring news photographs of the flag-covered coffins of service members killed in Iraq won the backing of the Republican-controlled Senate on Monday, when lawmakers defeated a Democratic measure to instruct the Pentagon to allow pictures.

The 54-to-39 vote came after little formal debate, with 7 Democrats joining 47 Republicans to defeat the provision.

Two Republicans, Senators Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and John McCain of Arizona, voted in favor of permitting news photographers to have access to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where coffins containing the war dead from Iraq arrive.

"These caskets that arrive at Dover are not named; we just see them," said Mr. McCain, a former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war for five years in Vietnam. He added, "I think we ought to know the casualties of war."

But President Bush has insisted that the policy banning the photography protects the privacy of the families of the dead, a view reiterated by lawmakers who opposed the measure.

Some Republicans, including Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, complained that Democrats were trying to score election-year points with the effort. Mr. Grassley noted that the policy had been in place since the first Bush administration, in 1991. "This policy has been in place for 13 years," he said. "Nobody has raised a complaint about it until now."

But the policy has not been consistently followed; President Bill Clinton took part in numerous ceremonies honoring dead servicemen. In March 2003, just as the United States embarked on its war with Iraq, the Pentagon issued a directive stating that there would be no news coverage of "deceased military personnel returning to or departing from" air bases.

The measure defeated on Monday was proposed by Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, as an amendment to a $447.2 billion Pentagon spending plan for 2005, now under consideration in the Senate. Lawmakers hope to finish work on the bill on Tuesday. Mr. Lautenberg's amendment would have instructed the Department of Defense to work out a new protocol permitting the news media to cover the arrival of the war dead in a manner that protected families' privacy.

"A majority of the Senate are now working on behalf of the president to conceal from the American people the true costs of this war," Senator Lautenberg said in a statement after the vote. He said his amendment "would bring an end to the shroud of secrecy cloaking the hard, difficult truth about war and the sacrifices of our soldiers.

Virtually since its inauguration, the contempt the Bushies have displayed for ordinary Americans has been striking. This refusal to let the press cover the arrival of our war dead is part of that contempt. The electorate is beginning to wake up, but, Lord, it has taken a long time.

Noonday Witches

Noonday in the Shade
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: June 22, 2004

In April 2003, John Ashcroft's Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Tex., F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon — a cyanide bomb — big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building.

Strangely, though, the attorney general didn't call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, its owner. He didn't even issue a press release. This was, to say the least, out of character. Jose Padilla, the accused "dirty bomber," didn't have any bomb-making material or even a plausible way to acquire such material, yet Mr. Ashcroft put him on front pages around the world. Mr. Krar was caught with an actual chemical bomb, yet Mr. Ashcroft acted as if nothing had happened.

Incidentally, if Mr. Ashcroft's intention was to keep the case low-profile, the media have been highly cooperative. To this day, the Noonday conspiracy has received little national coverage.

At this point, I have the usual problem. Writing about John Ashcroft poses the same difficulties as writing about the Bush administration in general, only more so: the truth about his malfeasance is so extreme that it's hard to avoid sounding shrill.

In this case, it sounds over the top to accuse Mr. Ashcroft of trying to bury news about terrorists who don't fit his preferred story line. Yet it's hard to believe that William Krar wouldn't have become a household name if he had been a Muslim, or even a leftist. Was Mr. Ashcroft, who once gave an interview with Southern Partisan magazine in which he praised "Southern patriots" like Jefferson Davis, reluctant to publicize the case of a terrorist who happened to be a white supremacist?

More important, is Mr. Ashcroft neglecting real threats to the public because of his ideological biases?

Mr. Krar's arrest was the result not of a determined law enforcement effort against domestic terrorists, but of a fluke: when he sent a package containing counterfeit U.N. and Defense Intelligence Agency credentials to an associate in New Jersey, it was delivered to the wrong address. Luckily, the recipient opened the package and contacted the F.B.I. But for that fluke, we might well have found ourselves facing another Oklahoma City-type atrocity.

The discovery of the Texas cyanide bomb should have served as a wake-up call: 9/11 has focused our attention on the threat from Islamic radicals, but murderous right-wing fanatics are still out there. The concerns of the Justice Department, however, appear to lie elsewhere. Two weeks ago a representative of the F.B.I. appealed to an industry group for help in combating what, he told the audience, the F.B.I. regards as the country's leading domestic terrorist threat: ecological and animal rights extremists.

Even in the fight against foreign terrorists, Mr. Ashcroft's political leanings have distorted policy. Mr. Ashcroft is very close to the gun lobby — and these ties evidently trump public protection. After 9/11, he ordered that all government lists — including voter registration, immigration and driver's license lists — be checked for links to terrorists. All government lists, that is, except one: he specifically prohibited the F.B.I. from examining background checks on gun purchasers.

Mr. Ashcroft told Congress that the law prohibits the use of those background checks for other purposes — but he didn't tell Congress that his own staff had concluded that no such prohibition exists. Mr. Ashcroft issued a directive, later put into law, requiring that records of background checks on gun buyers be destroyed after only one business day.

And we needn't imagine that Mr. Ashcroft was deeply concerned about protecting the public's privacy. After all, a few months ago he took the unprecedented step of subpoenaing the hospital records of women who have had late-term abortions.

After my last piece on Mr. Ashcroft, some readers questioned whether he is really the worst attorney general ever. It's true that he has some stiff competition from the likes of John Mitchell, who served under Richard Nixon. But once the full record of his misdeeds in office is revealed, I think Mr. Ashcroft will stand head and shoulders below the rest.

God bless Paul Krugman. Hired by the Times as an opiner on economics, he is one of the few writers at the paper who is doing any actual reporting on John Ashcroft, the most frightening Attorney General in history (and I remember John Mitchell real well.)

I don't understand why the Noonday story hasn't made the front pages of the national papers (although it never showed up on the fronts of even the Texas papers when the story "broke.") Is it true that rightwing terrorists are politically correct?

Through American Eyes or Iraqi?

Death Stalks An Experiment In Democracy
Fearful Baghdad Council Keeps Public Locked Out

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 22, 2004; Page A01

Last of three articles

The nascent political institutions designed to replace the U.S. administration of Iraq are beset by challenges to their popular legitimacy and effectiveness, and by grave risks to Iraqis who have joined the experiment in representative government. As Iraqis prepare for their country to regain sovereignty, it is uncertain how much their political future will be shaped by the $700 million program in democracy-building that has been at the core of the U.S. occupation.

Inside the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority, which will dissolve with the handover on June 30, some officials express doubts that Iraq's political system will conform to the American blueprints. "Will this develop the way we hope it will?" a CPA official involved in promoting democracy said. "Probably not."

New political institutions to replace Saddam Hussein's Baath Party dictatorship are among the chief legacies of the U.S. occupation. Every city and province has a local council. New mayors, provincial governors and national cabinet ministers have been chosen. The Shiite Muslim majority, shut out of power in Hussein's government, is widely represented, as are religious minorities and women. Hundreds of political parties have formed, and thousands of people have participated in seminars on democracy.

But Iraqis criticize the local councils and the interim national government as illegitimate because their members were not elected. The country's top Shiite cleric has repudiated the interim constitution drafted by the U.S.-appointed Governing Council. In several recent meetings about the country's political future, Iraqis who favor a Western-style democracy have been drowned out by calls for a system governed by Islamic law.

The cabinet, appointed by a U.N. envoy three weeks ago, has had little time to prepare to govern. Local councils, whose authority had been restricted for months by U.S. military commanders, are also stepping into uncharted areas, uncertain about their responsibilities and powers under a system whose inauguration is a week away.

Yet these uncertainties are overshadowed by the imminent threat of violence. Local council members who once welcomed constituents into their homes now keep armed guards at the front gate. Leaders of the national government travel in armored vehicles and work inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, an area off-limits to ordinary Iraqis. Many foreign contractors hired by the U.S. government to promote democracy have either relocated to Kuwait or hunkered down in protected compounds.

Despite those precautions, more than 100 Iraqi government officials have been killed during the occupation, including two members of the Governing Council. Over the past two weeks, the deputy foreign minister and a senior official in the Education Ministry have been assassinated. On Sunday, masked gunmen shot and killed the council chairman of Baghdad's Rusafa district and his deputy as they sat in a cafe.

Teaching Iraqis about democracy has also been risky. Scott Erwin, a 22-year-old CPA staff member, was critically wounded in an ambush this month as he drove away from a Baghdad university where he was teaching a class on democracy. Two CPA employees who worked on civic education initiatives, Fern Holland and Robert Zangas, were shot to death in March near the city of Hilla.

"Iraq may get to a semi-democratic outcome. But the more-democratic outcomes that were possible a year ago are much more difficult to imagine now because of the security situation," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution who worked on democracy issues for the CPA before leaving Iraq this spring, in part because of concerns about safety. "This is the biggest tragedy of Iraq."

Contrast this news with a WaPo-ABC News poll found on the same front page which reveals that:

Fewer than half of those surveyed -- 47 percent -- say the war in Iraq was worth fighting, while 52 percent say it was not, the highest level of disapproval recorded in Post-ABC News polls. Seven in 10 Americans now say there has been an "unacceptable" level of casualties in Iraq, up 6 points from April and also a new high in Post-ABC News polling. A majority say the United States should keep its forces in Iraq until the country is stabilized, but the proportion who want to withdraw now to avoid further casualties -- 42 percent -- has inched up again to a new high. Two in three Americans say the war has improved the lives of the Iraqi people, and a growing number of Americans say the United States is making significant progress toward a democratic government. Last month, 37 percent said they saw significant progress, while 50 percent say so now.

What this tells me is that the media, television primarily, has been doing a lousy job of telling the Iraq story. Some of this is "Reagan bounce," his death and funeral preparations having shoved the story off the TV. The WaPo headline for this story isn't informative, but there is mixed news for both candidates:

Public anxiety over mounting casualties in Iraq and doubts about long-term consequences of the war continue to rise and have helped to erase President Bush's once-formidable advantage over Sen. John F. Kerry concerning who is best able to deal with terrorist threats, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Exactly half the country now approves of the way Bush is managing the U.S. war on terrorism, down 13 percentage points since April, according to the poll. Barely two months ago, Bush comfortably led Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, by 21 points when voters were asked which man they trusted to deal with the terrorist threat. Today the country is evenly divided, with 48 percent preferring Kerry and 47 percent favoring Bush.

With fewer than 10 days before the United States turns over governing power to Iraq, the survey shows that Americans are coming to a mixed judgment about the costs and benefits of the war. Campaign advisers to both Bush and Kerry believe voters' conclusions about Bush and Iraq will play a decisive role in determining the outcome of the November election.

The shift is potentially significant because Bush has consistently received higher marks on fighting terrorism than on Iraq, and if the decline signals a permanent loss of confidence in his handling of the fight against terrorism, that could undermine a central part of his reelection campaign message.

A new meme is inserting itself here, as well. Up until the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, the conventional wisdom was that the economy was going to play a far greater role than the war in making voters' decisions this fall. I always felt that was faulty reasoning. I think the media are simply finally beginning to catch up with reality.

The News

Top Commanders Face Questioning on Prison Abuse
By EDWARD WONG

Published: June 22, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 21 — A military judge ruled Monday that the top American commanders currently involved in the Iraq war will have to submit to questioning by lawyers for two servicemen charged in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse case. The defense lawyers said they would show that the most senior military and civilian officials approved interrogation methods that violated the Geneva Conventions.

Among those who could be questioned are Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of the United States Central Command, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq; and Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, who is overseeing daily military operations.

The judge, Col. James Pohl, also called Abu Ghraib a "crime scene" and ordered the government to "take all steps possible" to preserve the prison, 15 miles west of Baghdad. That command, issued during a pretrial hearing, seemed to override an earlier pledge by President Bush to raze the prison. A defense lawyer, Paul Bergrin, said members of the court should "smell the fecal matter and the urine" that the prison guards lived with every day.

As the court proceedings got under way, Islamic guerrillas threatened to behead a South Korean civilian hostage by sundown, unless the South Korean government canceled plans to send 3,000 troops to Iraq. The deadline passed without any news on the hostage's fate. The South Korean government said Monday that it would not change its plans to send the troops.

I've been a reporter for 30 years, I started in the Watergate years. Sometimes you find the events. Sometimes they find you.

Meme Alert

New meme! About damn time. This is from Dan Froomkin's "White House Briefing" today in the WaPo:

Robert Hillman looks at an odd father-son relationship in the Dallas Morning News: "Mr. Bush offers little about his father. And his father is just as guarded about his son, even if they do share so many political parallels -- wars in Iraq, sky-high poll numbers that plummeted and tough re-election battles."

"The comparisons do not always benefit Bush, a polarizing political figure in a tough re-election battle."

The new meme? Bush in a "tough re-election battle." They treated him like an inevitability all winter. Whoohaw. This is a big deal.

Sorry posting has been so light today. I actually got to meet one of you, my readers, for lunch today. If he is typically of you, you are one savvy group of folks, incredibly well informed. I feel like I'm keeping some good company with you. And what a pleasure to share a meal with an informed lefty and talk that lefty talk. Thanks again, Bob!

Too Little, Too Late

Looking Back Before the War

By Michael Getler
Sunday, June 20, 2004; Page B06

My assessment is that The Post did not commit the sins of the New York Times. In fact, The Post had quite a few probing stories. There were, however, a few front-page stories that possibly raised the prewar temperature. "U.S. Suspects Al Qaeda Got Nerve Agent From Iraqis" was the headline on a Dec. 12, 2002, story by staff writer Barton Gellman. It was the subject of an ombudsman's column a few days later. A Gellman story on March 20, 2003, reported, according to U.S. officials, that the United States had obtained potentially valuable new information on Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programs and had more information on those programs than it had shared with the public or the United Nations. A story on Sept. 5, 2002, by Joby Warrick, based partly on British sources, focused on concerns about fleets of unmanned Iraqi "drones of death" that could spray biological agents. Those stories, by experienced reporters, were carefully hedged and reflected concerns at the time by unnamed official sources.

My quarrel with Post coverage throughout the prewar period, however, was mostly of a different nature. It was based upon complaints by a fair number of readers and my own sense of the obligation for more balanced coverage and display regarding a huge, approaching event. The criticism was twofold: (1) Too many Post stories that did challenge the official administration view appeared inside the paper rather than on the front page; and (2) too many public events in which alternative views were expressed, especially during 2002, when the debate was gathering steam, were either missed, underreported or poorly displayed.

Throughout 2002 until the start of the war in March 2003, there were 19 ombudsman columns, reflecting reader comments and my own two cents' worth, that dealt with some aspect of the impending war.

The Post did put a number of stories on the front page that challenged the official line. "For Bush, Facts Are Malleable; Presidential Tradition of Embroidering Key Assertions Continues," was the headline on Oct. 22, 2002, over a story by White House reporter Dana Milbank. Pentagon reporter Thomas E. Ricks broke a couple of stories in mid-2002 about military concerns over the timing, tactics and need for an invasion. A story by Warrick on Jan. 24, 2003, carried the headline: "U.S. Claim on Iraqi Nuclear Program Is Called Into Question." There were others as well.

Yet the number of challenging stories that editors put inside the paper was, to some readers and frequently to me, dismaying. Warrick's important initial report on the nuclear program, for example, on Sept. 19, 2002, headlined: "Evidence on Iraq Challenged; Experts Question If Tubes Were Meant for Weapons Program," went on Page A18.

Here's a sampling of other stories that didn't make the front page. "Observers: Evidence for War Lacking; Report Against Iraq Holds Little That's New," by Dana Priest and Joby Warrick, Sept 13, 2002; "Unwanted Debate on Iraq-Al Qaeda Links Revived" by Karen DeYoung, Sept. 27, 2002; "U.N. Finds No Proof of Nuclear Program; IAEA Unable to Verify U.S. Claims," by Colum Lynch, Jan 29, 2003; "Bin Laden-Hussein Link Hazy," by Walter Pincus and Dana Priest, Feb. 13, 2003; "U.S. Increases Estimated Cost Of War in Iraq; Military Expenses Alone Projected at Up To $95 Billion," by Mike Allen, Feb. 26, 2003; "U.S. Lacks Specifics on Banned Arms," by Walter Pincus, March 16, 2003; "Legality of War Is A Matter Of Debate; Many Scholars Doubt Assertion by Bush," by Peter Slevin, March 18, 2003; "Bush Clings to Dubious Allegations About Iraq," by Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank, March 18, 2003.

Among the public events that were missed or underreported during the second half of 2002 were early doubts by some Republicans such as former House majority leader Richard K. Armey and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft; hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during which alternative strategies were discussed; hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee at which retired four-star generals urged caution; comprehensive challenges in early speeches by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Robert C. Byrd, both Democrats; coverage of big demonstrations here and abroad that didn't make the front page, and coverage surrounding the views of outgoing Army Chief of Staff Eric K. Shinseki.

If we had a sceptical press (Getler is correct that the Post has been less of a lapdog for the administration than the Times, but that's still not saying much), Bush and Kerry wouldn't be polling dead even. Getler's little apologia fails to notice the critical role that the press plays in a democracy. And ours is in danger because of our fawning press corps.

Guantanamera

You know those really, really scary people we've been holding in Gitmo? The ones that Ashcroft re-wrote our torture policy for? Turns out they aren't so scary after all.

U.S. Said to Overstate Value of Guantánamo Detainees
By TIM GOLDEN and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

Published: June 21, 2004

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, June 19 — For nearly two and a half years, American officials have maintained that locked within the steel-mesh cells of the military prison here are some of the world's most dangerous terrorists — "the worst of a very bad lot," Vice President Dick Cheney has called them.

The officials say information gleaned from the detainees has exposed terrorist cells, thwarted planned attacks and revealed vital intelligence about Al Qaeda. The secrets they hold and the threats they pose justify holding them indefinitely without charge, Bush administration officials have said.

But as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legal status of the 595 men imprisoned here, an examination by The New York Times has found that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided.

In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. They said only a relative handful — some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen — were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization's inner workings.

While some Guantánamo intelligence has aided terrorism investigations, none of of it has enabled intelligence or law-enforcement services to foil imminent attacks, the officials said. Compared with the higher-profile Qaeda operatives held elsewhere by the C.I.A., the Guantánamo detainees have provided only a trickle of intelligence with current value, the officials said. Because nearly all of that intelligence is classified, most of the officials would discuss it only on the condition of anonymity.

Notice this again is all leaks. Cui Bono? is a worthwhile question to keep in the back of your mind.

Crossing the Bar

Judicial Nominee Practiced Law Without License in Utah

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 21, 2004; Page A01

Thomas B. Griffith, President Bush's nominee for the federal appeals court in Washington, has been practicing law in Utah without a state law license for the past four years, according to Utah state officials.

Griffith, the general counsel for Brigham Young University since August 2000, had previously failed to renew his law license in Washington for three years while he was a lawyer based in the District. It was a mistake he attributed to an oversight by his law firm's staff. But that lapse in his D.C. license, reported earlier this month by The Washington Post, subsequently prevented Griffith from receiving a law license in Utah when he moved there.

Under Utah law, Griffith's only option for obtaining the state license was to take and pass the state bar exam, an arduous test that lawyers try to take only once. He applied to sit for the exam, but never took it, Utah bar officials confirm.

Utah State Bar rules require all lawyers practicing law in the state to have a Utah law license. There is no general exception for general counsels or corporate counsels. Lawyers who practice only federal law or whose work is solely administrative can avoid the requirement in some cases.

Griffith has declined to discuss the matter, which is expected to be a subject of his nomination hearings tentatively scheduled for next week. But a Justice Department spokesman said Friday that Griffith sought advice from Utah State Bar officials when he inquired last year about obtaining a license, and followed their suggestions for avoiding any ethical missteps.

Bushco stopped using the American Bar Association's "qualified" rating for judicial nominees. I guess passing the Bar exam isn't as important as ideology. I could be a judge!

Not Going Away

Military judge declares Abu Ghraib prison a crime scene and orders it not to be destroyed

By Fisnik Abrashi, Associated Press, 6/21/2004 07:11

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) A military judge on Monday declared the Abu Ghraib prison a crime scene and said it cannot be demolished as President Bush had offered, while defense lawyers in the prisoner abuse case indicated they want to question Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

During a hearing in Baghdad, the judge, Col. James Pohl, also refused to move the trials of three soldiers Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr., Sgt. Javal S. Davis and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. ''Chip'' Frederick II to somewhere outside Iraq.

The three are among seven soldiers accused of abusing prisoners. One of them, Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, pleaded guilty last month and was sentenced to a year in prison.

After the pre-trial hearing in Baghdad, lawyers for the three defendants said their clients were following orders by senior officers and military intelligence.

''We can't have American soldiers in a war zone questioning the legality of orders,'' Guy Womack, the civilian lawyer for Graner, told reporters.

Womack said there was ''a good chance'' he would seek to question Rumsfeld. He said he doubted he would try to depose President Bush, although ''certainly we will be considering it.''

President Bush had offered to dismantle Abu Ghraib to help remove the stain of torture and abuse from the new Iraq an offer Iraqi officials had already dismissed, saying it would be a waste of the building. Saddam Hussein used Abu Ghraib to torture and murder his opponents.

Pohl declared the prison a crime scene and said it could not be destroyed prior to a verdict.

Civil lawyers for Davis and Graner won permission to seek testimony from the top U.S. general in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez and from the chief of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid.

But the judge turned down a request to seek testimony from higher-ranking witnesses, including Rumsfeld, at this time. Pohl left open the possibility of calling other senior figures if the defense could show their testimony was relevant which Womack said the lawyers intended to do.

Bergrin has also said he wants to question Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the prisoner abuse, though he did not formally present a request in court.

''We would like to interview Bush because we know as a matter of fact that President Bush changed the rules of engagement for intelligence acquisition,'' Bergrin said Monday.

Oh, my. Curioser and curioser.

UPDATE: The WaPo has more...

Questioning of Commanders Allowed in Abu Ghraib Trial
Army Judge Allows Defense Request, Rules Prison Is a Crime Scene

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 21, 2004; 8:15 AM

BAGHDAD, June 21 -- A U.S. Army judge on Monday accepted a request by attorneys of soldiers accused of abusing detainees to question the military's top commander in Iraq and all his subordinates.

The order affectively compels Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. general in Iraq, and Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the second-ranking commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and their subordinates to participate in a deposition with defense attorneys and Army prosecutors unless they invoke their rights against self-incrimination.

The judge, Col. James Pohl, rejected defense requests for memos between justice department attorneys, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials regarding the use of interrogation tactics.

"Quite frankly what they do in Washington, D.C., you have to connect it," Pohl said.

Geography

Sy Hersh is back on the job. Make of this what you will, but I don't think it casts a happy look on our efforts in Iraq.

The Neocon Vision for the Mideast was a safer Israel. Guess they took that seriously.

PLAN B
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
As June 30th approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds.
Issue of 2004-06-28
Posted 2004-06-21

In July, 2003, two months after President Bush declared victory in Iraq, the war, far from winding down, reached a critical point. Israel, which had been among the war’s most enthusiastic supporters, began warning the Administration that the American-led occupation would face a heightened insurgency—a campaign of bombings and assassinations—later that summer. Israeli intelligence assets in Iraq were reporting that the insurgents had the support of Iranian intelligence operatives and other foreign fighters, who were crossing the unprotected border between Iran and Iraq at will. The Israelis urged the United States to seal the nine-hundred-mile-long border, at whatever cost.

The border stayed open, however. “The Administration wasn’t ignoring the Israeli intelligence about Iran,” Patrick Clawson, who is the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and has close ties to the White House, explained. “There’s no question that we took no steps last summer to close the border, but our attitude was that it was more useful for Iraqis to have contacts with ordinary Iranians coming across the border, and thousands were coming across every day—for instance, to make pilgrimages.” He added, “The questions we confronted were ‘Is the trade-off worth it? Do we want to isolate the Iraqis?’ Our answer was that as long as the Iranians were not picking up guns and shooting at us, it was worth the price.”

Clawson said, “The Israelis disagreed quite vigorously with us last summer. Their concern was very straightforward—that the Iranians would create social and charity organizations in Iraq and use them to recruit people who would engage in armed attacks against Americans.”

The warnings of increased violence proved accurate. By early August, the insurgency against the occupation had exploded, with bombings in Baghdad, at the Jordanian Embassy and the United Nations headquarters, that killed forty-two people. A former Israeli intelligence officer said that Israel’s leadership had concluded by then that the United States was unwilling to confront Iran; in terms of salvaging the situation in Iraq, he said, “it doesn’t add up. It’s over. Not militarily—the United States cannot be defeated militarily in Iraq—but politically.”

Flynt Leverett, a former C.I.A. analyst who until last year served on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told me that late last summer “the Administration had a chance to turn it around after it was clear that ‘Mission Accomplished’”—a reference to Bush’s May speech—“was premature. The Bush people could have gone to their allies and got more boots on the ground. But the neocons were dug in—‘We’re doing this on our own.’”

Leverett went on, “The President was only belatedly coming to the understanding that he had to either make a strategic change or, if he was going to insist on unilateral control, get tougher and find the actual insurgency.” The Administration then decided, Leverett said, to “deploy the Guantánamo model in Iraq”—to put aside its rules of interrogation. That decision failed to stop the insurgency and eventually led to the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison.

....
n early November, the President received a grim assessment from the C.I.A.’s station chief in Baghdad, who filed a special field appraisal, known internally as an Aardwolf, warning that the security situation in Iraq was nearing collapse. The document, as described by Knight-Ridder, said that “none of the postwar Iraqi political institutions and leaders have shown an ability to govern the country” or to hold elections and draft a constitution.

A few days later, the Administration, rattled by the violence and the new intelligence, finally attempted to change its go-it-alone policy, and set June 30th as the date for the handover of sovereignty to an interim government, which would allow it to bring the United Nations into the process. “November was one year before the Presidential election,” a U.N. consultant who worked on Iraqi issues told me. “They panicked and decided to share the blame with the U.N. and the Iraqis.”

A former Administration official who had supported the war completed a discouraging tour of Iraq late last fall. He visited Tel Aviv afterward and found that the Israelis he met with were equally discouraged. As they saw it, their warnings and advice had been ignored, and the American war against the insurgency was continuing to founder. “I spent hours talking to the senior members of the Israeli political and intelligence community,” the former official recalled. “Their concern was ‘You’re not going to get it right in Iraq, and shouldn’t we be planning for the worst-case scenario and how to deal with it?’”

Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, who supported the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq, took it upon himself at this point to privately warn Vice-President Dick Cheney that America had lost in Iraq; according to an American close to Barak, he said that Israel “had learned that there’s no way to win an occupation.” The only issue, Barak told Cheney, “was choosing the size of your humiliation.” Cheney did not respond to Barak’s assessment. (Cheney’s office declined to comment.)

In a series of interviews in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, officials told me that by the end of last year Israel had concluded that the Bush Administration would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that Israel needed other options. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government decided, I was told, to minimize the damage that the war was causing to Israel’s strategic position by expanding its long-standing relationship with Iraq’s Kurds and establishing a significant presence on the ground in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan. Several officials depicted Sharon’s decision, which involves a heavy financial commitment, as a potentially reckless move that could create even more chaos and violence as the insurgency in Iraq continues to grow.
....
Whitley Bruner, a retired intelligence officer who was a senior member of the C.I.A.’s task force on Iraq a decade ago, said that the new interim government in Iraq is urgently seeking ways to provide affordable security for second-tier officials—the men and women who make the government work. In early June, two such officials—Kamal Jarrah, an Education Ministry official, and Bassam Salih Kubba, who was serving as deputy foreign minister—were assassinated by unidentified gunmen outside their homes. Neither had hired private guards. Bruner, who returned from Baghdad earlier this month, said that he was now working to help organize Iraqi companies that could provide high-quality security that Iraqis could afford. “It’s going to be a hot summer,” Bruner said. “A lot of people have decided to get to Lebanon, Jordan, or the Gulf and wait this one out.”

The New Crew

Iraq Leader Says Army Will Target Insurgents
Prime Minister Outlines Reorganization of Forces

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 21, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, June 20 -- The interim Iraqi prime minister announced a reorganization of the country's fledgling security forces Sunday and declared that all of Iraq's military resources, including the army, will be used to combat anti-U.S. insurgents, whom he denounced as "enemies of God and the people."

The prime minister, Ayad Allawi, acknowledged that Iraq still needed help from "our friends in the multinational forces" to meet the threat posed by daily bombings, assassinations and other attacks. But his announcement, at a news conference organized by U.S. soldiers, sought to play down the dominant role played by U.S. troops here and suggested that Iraqis would take over once formal sovereignty is transferred on June 30.

"We are deeply grateful for the sacrifices from friendly nations here to help us in our struggle," he said, "but the struggle is first and foremost an Iraqi struggle."

U.S. military officials, however, have made clear that they and their 138,000 American soldiers intend to be in charge of security for the foreseeable future. The U.N. Security Council resolution passed June 8, accompanied by an exchange of letters between Allawi and the Bush administration, gives U.S. commanders the authority to conduct military operations as they see fit even after June 30.

Allawi acknowledged, for instance, that he was not involved in Saturday's decision by U.S. commanders to launch precision weapons on what they described as a safe house in the rebellious city of Fallujah. Allawi said he was informed of the strike just before it was launched, but he added that the interim government supports it.

"This pattern will change, of course, once full sovereignty has been transferred," he said.

This is, of course, a complete crock, and nothing more than the complete capitulation of the Iraqi interim regime to US desires.

The Other Shoe

New Abuse Charges
Classified sections of the military's prisoner abuse report detail sexual assaults on women detainees
By VIVECA NOVAK AND DOUGLAS WALLER

Sunday, Jun. 20, 2004

Could the abuse of prisoners in Iraq have gone beyond the beatings and sexual humiliation already alleged? Unreleased, classified parts of the report on prison abuse from Major General Anthony Taguba, which were read to TIME, contain indications of mistreatment of female prisoners. In a Feb. 21 statement to Taguba, Lieut. Colonel Steven L. Jordan, former head of the Abu Ghraib interrogation center, said he had received reports "that there were members of the MI [Military Intelligence] community that had come over and done a late-night interrogation of two female detainees" last October. According to a statement by Jordan's boss, Colonel Thomas Pappas, three interrogators were later cited for violations of military law in their handling of the two females, ages 17 and 18. Senate Armed Services Committee investigators are probing whether the two women were sexually abused. The Pentagon declined to comment.

Meanwhile, a class action filed in California on behalf of former detainees raises the specter of brutal physical abuse.

One plaintiff, identified only as Neisef, claims that after he was taken from his home on the outskirts of Baghdad last November and sent to Abu Ghraib, Americans made him disrobe and attached electrical wires to his genitals. He claims he was shocked three times. Although a vein in his penis ruptured and he had blood in his urine, he says, he was refused medical attention. In another session, Neisef claims, he was held down by two men while a uniformed woman forced him to have sex with her. "I was crying," said Neisef, 28. "I felt like my whole manhood was gone." The class action also claims that detainees were raped in prison. On June 6, Neisef was released, after a U.S. civilian told him, he says, that he had been wrongly accused by informants. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad confirms that a prisoner with Neisef's ID number was released on that date, and TIME has obtained a copy of his release order. But the Pentagon would not comment on the specifics of Neisef's account.

From what I'm hearing, there is a whole lot more to this scandal yet to be revealed. More than just another shoe, it's more like Imelda Marcos's whole closet. Note that this is another leak, and a classified leak at that, meaning that this is not going to be allowed to go away. I saw The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh on CNN this afternoon, and the further he digs, the higher up the chain of command this goes.

Here's an op-ed from today's WaPo on the DoJ torture memo:

The Convention Against Torture provides that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture." And Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions provides that the rights and duties concerning fundamental humane treatment apply whether a person detained is a prisoner of war, unprivileged belligerent, terrorist or ordinary civilian.

It's hard to believe that the memo was poorly researched, so it makes one wonder whether the Justice Department was being disingenuous. A lawyer who is arguing to a court is allowed to be disingenuous because it is up to the judge to evaluate that argument against the adversary's and decide what the law is. But a lawyer who is writing an opinion letter is ethically bound to be frank.

How could Bybee have written such a scandalous opinion? Lawyers who tell their clients what they want to hear -- rather than the advice they need -- are sometimes rewarded with career advancement. Last year, Jay Bybee was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

There is a proud tradition of lawyers bravely telling clients not what they want to hear, but what the law requires. Judge Bybee's actions stand in stark contrast to the best traditions of the bar.

Leaks

2 Allies Aided Bin Laden, Say Panel Members
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan let terrorists flourish before 9/11, apparently in return for protection from attacks by Al Qaeda.

By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Pakistan and Saudi Arabia helped set the stage for the Sept. 11 attacks by cutting deals with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden that allowed his Al Qaeda terrorist network to flourish, according to several senior members of the Sept. 11 commission and U.S. counter-terrorism officials.

The financial aid to the Taliban and other assistance by two of the most important allies of the United States in its war on terrorism date at least to 1996, and appear to have shielded them from Al Qaeda attacks within their own borders until long after the 2001 strikes, those commission members and officials said in interviews.

"That does appear to have been the arrangement," said one senior member of the commission staff involved in investigating those relationships.

The officials said that by not cracking down on Bin Laden, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia significantly undermined efforts to combat terrorism worldwide, giving the Saudi exile the haven he needed to train tens of thousands of soldiers. They believe that the governments' funding of his Taliban protectors enabled Bin Laden to withstand international pressure and expand his operation into a global network that could carry out the Sept. 11 attacks.

Saudi Arabia provided funds and equipment to the Taliban and probably directly to Bin Laden, and didn't interfere with Al Qaeda's efforts to raise money, recruit and train operatives, and establish cells throughout the kingdom, commission and U.S. officials said. Pakistan provided even more direct assistance, its military and intelligence agencies often coordinating efforts with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, they said.

Such efforts allowed Al Qaeda's network of cells to burrow deeply into the social and religious fabric of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, enabling the organization to survive the U.S.-led demolition of its headquarters in Afghanistan in 2001, to regroup and to launch new waves of attacks — including the kidnapping and beheading of an American engineer in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, last week.

Time for some rank speculation, kids. This leak is exclusive to the LATimes, and it looks like it comes from Kean and/or Hamilton themselves. The other of the big three papers are hammering the "no direct link between Iraq and 9/11" meme, and Bush attacking his hand-selected commission as "partisan,"so it is interesting to see this story get play. I wonder what else is in this report that we haven't heard about yet?

Today in Mesopotamia

A Transition Under Fire in Iraq

One Bush administration forecast about Iraq is clearly coming true. As the days count down to next week's transfer of limited powers to an interim Iraqi government, things are getting worse. Attacks against Iraqis working with the American occupation authorities seem increasingly frequent and audacious. Last Thursday, Iraq's deadliest car bombing in months killed at least 35 people waiting to sign up for the new national army and injured more than 100 others.

Without a turnaround in the security situation, significant progress toward a self-governing, let alone democratic, Iraq is unlikely. So far, neither increasing American troop levels nor crash efforts to recruit and train reliable Iraqi security forces have helped. Improving the Iraqi military and police forces is critical, but increasingly problematic now that recruitment offices have become a prime target for attack.

Control over Iraq's small and wobbly national army is one of the few scraps of real power Washington has agreed to hand over to the interim government, and last week Iraq's newly named interior minister floated the idea of declaring martial law. Given the state of the Iraqi forces, the gesture was both politically jarring and militarily futile.

The ceremonial passage of power on June 30 is unlikely to usher in any immediate improvement in the security situation. With millions of Iraqis resentful of American occupation and attendant horrors like Abu Ghraib, residential neighborhoods terrorized by kidnappers and other criminals, another stifling summer under way without adequate electric power and economic revival a distant dream, it takes only a few thousand armed insurgents to generate an atmosphere of random carnage and rampant anarchy.

With this in mind, the Pentagon now plans to keep 138,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely, almost 25,000 more than it was projecting a few months ago. Even more may be needed, although the idea of a larger and more visible American military presence will not be popular with Iraqis. According to a recent poll commissioned by the occupation authorities, increasing numbers of Iraqis would like to see American troops go home.

The road that got us to this point will be fully examined during the American election cycle. But there is no way to avoid the current reality. Iraqis are being protected — to the degree they are protected at all — by American troops they do not want and Iraqi soldiers who have shown a disturbing tendency to melt away in battle. Building a reliable Iraqi military and police will take time, and will depend on how well the country's interim leaders can establish their own authority and win the trust of a highly skeptical Iraqi population.

Juan Cole tells us this morning:

Guerrillas detonated a bomb outside Iraq's central bank in Baghdad on Sunday, wounding 2 employees and a guard.

I don't mean to be a killjoy, but for an Occupying Power to drop bombs on residential neighborhoods is a war crime. The three women and five children killed are not "collateral damage." They are human beings. They were killed by the United States. There are no such things as "precision strikes" in residential neighborhoods. Bombs not only throw off shrapnel themselves, they create lots of deadly flying debris, including flying glass from broken windows, that can kill and maim. Dropping bombs on an tank corps assembled in the desert and intending to do harm is one thing. Dropping bombs on a residential district is another.

It's Still the Economy

The Slump Has Ended, but Not the Gloom
By DAVID LEONHARDT

Published: June 20, 2004

AFTER enduring three years of a deteriorating job market and one economic false start after another, Americans finally have reason to think that the long slump of the early 21st century has ended. Employers are hiring again. The stock market has risen more than 40 percent since early last year.

And how have the American people celebrated? By becoming a lot grumpier about the economy.

Since January, more than a million jobs have been added to the payrolls, yet the percentage of people who say the economy is in good shape has dropped, polls say. Fewer people now than at the start of the year are willing to say it is improving. George W. Bush's marks for economic stewardship have reached the lowest level of his presidency, according to recent Gallup and CBS News surveys.

It may sound discordant, but the early days of the new boom really do feel worse for many families than the recession of 2001 or its long aftermath did. The layoffs of the past three years totaled in the millions, but they touched only a small segment of the population. The stagnant wages that have followed job losses, the recent spike in gasoline and other consumer prices and the slow climb of interest rates, by contrast, reach into the pocketbooks of every household. Americans notice when milk reaches $4.43.

The gap between economic indicators and public mood has left strategists for both Mr. Bush's campaign and that of Senator John Kerry swearing that the economy will benefit their man in November. On Monday, Mr. Kerry began what aides described as two weeks of focus on the economy by saying that people who work hard should be able to pay their bills. Mr. Bush countered that he is an optimist and chided those who "can't see the sunshine."

Republicans argue that the nation's angst is merely an echo of the downturn and that it will soon fall silent. "The economy has really turned," said Senator Jim Talent, Republican of Missouri, a swing state. "It just takes awhile longer for that to filter through to folks."

If this does end up being the high point for pessimism, Mr. Bush will stand for re-election while Americans are feeling pretty good about the economy. Even with gloom rising, consumer confidence is at roughly the level as it was during the summers before Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon won second terms, according to University of Michigan monthly surveys. It is significantly higher than it was in the run-up to losses by Jimmy Carter and Mr. Bush's father.

But unlike recent presidents who won twice, Mr. Bush has presided over a significant slide in confidence, from record highs in 2000. The recent burst of worry has given Democrats new reason to think he is vulnerable on more than Iraq. Swing voters are even more concerned than the rest of the population, according to the Gallup Poll. Only 16 percent of independents described the economy as excellent or good, compared with more than 30 percent of people who say they usually vote for one party of the other.

It may come as news to media elites, but working class to middle class salaries aren't up, even as inflation starts to rise. The long term unemployment rate is at historical highs. Nathan Newman has the charts and graphs. Nathan says,

Look at that graph some more. Get some friends to look at it. And they should just get really, really, really pissed that Bush took such good care of his corporate buddies during the recession, while giving working americans the shaft.

FUBAR

As Handover Nears, U.S. Mistakes Loom Large
Harsh Realities Replaced High Ideals After Many Missed Opportunities

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 20, 2004; Page A01

First of three articles

In many ways, the occupation appears to have transformed the occupier more than the occupied. Iraqis continue to endure blackouts, lengthy gas lines, rampant unemployment and the uncertain political future that began when U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad. But American officials who once roamed the country to share their sense of mission with Iraqis now face such mortal danger that they are largely confined to compounds surrounded by concrete walls topped with razor wire. Iraqis who want to meet them must show two forms of identification and be searched three times.

The Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. entity that has administered Iraq, cites many successes of its tenure. Nearly 2,500 schools have been repaired, 3 million children have been immunized, $5 million in loans have been distributed to small businesses and 8 million textbooks have been printed, according to the CPA. New banknotes have replaced currency with ousted president Saddam Hussein's picture. Local councils have been formed in every city and province. An interim national government promises to hold general elections next January.

But in many key quantifiable areas, the occupation has fallen far short of its goals.

The Iraqi army is one-third the size U.S. officials promised it would be by now. Seventy percent of police officers have not received training. When violence flared across the country this spring, many soldiers and policemen refused to perform their duties because U.S. forces failed to equip them, designate competent leaders and win trust among the ranks.

About 15,000 Iraqis have been hired to work on projects funded by $18.6 billion in U.S. aid, despite promises to use the money to employ at least 250,000 Iraqis by this month. At of the beginning of June, 80 percent of the aid package, approved by Congress last fall, remained unspent.

Electricity generation remains stuck at around 4,000 megawatts, resulting in less than nine hours of power a day to most Baghdad homes, despite pledges from U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to increase production to 6,000 megawatts by June 1.

Iraq's emerging political system is also at odds with original U.S. goals. American officials scuttled plans to remain as the occupying power until Iraqis wrote a permanent constitution and held democratic elections. Instead, Bremer will leave the Iraqis with a temporary constitution, something he repeatedly promised not to do, and an interim government headed by a president who was not the Bush administration's preferred choice.

Credibility Problem

Politicians Face Censure From Bishops on Abortion Rights
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: June 19, 2004

The nation's Roman Catholic bishops approved a statement on Friday on "Catholics in Political Life" that brands politicians who support abortion rights as "cooperating in evil" and leaves the door open for bishops to deny communion to such lawmakers.

The bishops, meeting outside Denver, stopped short of saying that those lawmakers should be forbidden to take communion. But they reminded all Catholics that they were not worthy to receive communion until they had examined their consciences, including their "fidelity to the moral teaching of the church in personal and public life."

The bishops also asserted unequivocally that "the Catholic community and Catholic institutions" should not give "awards, honors or platforms" to Catholics who "act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles."

This means that Catholic universities, for example, may not give honorary degrees or speaking invitations to politicians who have a record of supporting abortion. Some Catholic universities already have such bans, but many do not. Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president and a Catholic who supports abortion rights, for example, recently gave an address at Georgetown University, which often provides a forum for presidential candidates.

The statement provides backing to bishops on both sides of what has become a very public debate set off by the candidacy of Mr. Kerry, who would be the first Catholic to obtain a major party nomination in 44 years. It lends support to both those who would sanction defiant politicians and those who draw the line at teaching and persuading. It says, "Bishops can legitimately make different judgments on the most prudent course of pastoral action."

What bishop is going to take this take when their credibility is already through the floor?

Report: Accused Priests Moved Around World

Saturday June 19, 2004 3:01 PM

DALLAS (AP) - Between 100 and 200 Roman Catholic priests around the world were moved from country to country after they were accused of sex offenses against minors, according to an 18-month investigation by the Dallas Morning News.

Brooks Egerton, one of three reporters on the series, gave an overview of the investigation Friday on National Public Radio's ``Morning Edition'' program. The first story in the series will run in Sunday editions.

Vatican officials declined comment Friday on the report.

``We're focusing on international movement of abusive priests, people who have been accused and in many cases criminally charged, in some cases even convicted or otherwise admitted'' abuse, Egerton said. He did not say what time period was covered by the investigation.

He said initial coverage will focus on the Salesians, a large order that was founded in 19th century Italy by St. John Bosco. It works mainly with poor and needy children.

``We have found a systematic practice of moving the most serious abuse cases on to other countries to protect the accused,'' Egerton said.

Egerton also said the newspaper found that some of the priests who were shuffled between countries spent long periods of time in the United States.

``Frequently, what we've seen are priests who worked for a long time in America but remained citizens of another country,'' he said. ``They came here and, when trouble arose, there was an easy escape hatch, and that was to go back to their native lands.''

Miserable Failure

US paranoid and isolated as Green Zone policy fails
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

19 June 2004

This isolation helps explain the CPA's repeated mistakes. When it arrived 14 months ago Iraqis were evenly divided on whether they had been liberated or occupied by the US. The CPA's own poll shows that just 2 per cent of Iraqis say they feel liberated and 92 per cent say they are occupied. The CPA may be the least successful organisation ever created by the US government. It is certainly one of the strangest. "It is really like living in an open prison,' said one CPA official.

Much of the security is in the hands of private companies. One day I had an interview with an Iraqi minister inside the zone. We had arranged it over the phone. The meeting never took place. I was first asked who I was by a friendly Nepalese soldier, then questioned by a nervous Algerian and finally stopped by a paunchy security man who, from his accent, came from Mississippi or Alabama.

"We can't let in journalists," he said in a suspicious and hostile tone. "They are a security threat." I asked exactly whom they had threatened. The security man said: "They killed the president of Afghanistan."

It turned out he had read somewhere of Ahmed Shah Massood, the Afghan warlord, being assassinated by two Moroccans with Belgian passports pretending to be a television crew. I said these were hardly typical of the journalistic profession but he was unconvinced.

Uncertain where real threats come from, the guards of the CPA - both regular US army and private security firms - treat all Iraqis as equally suspicious. According to one former Iraqi minister a suicide bomber was able to blow up Izzedin Salim, the head of Iraq's Governing Council, on 17 May after his convoy had been prevented from passing through US security into the Green Zone because a vital document was missing. His vehicle turned around giving the bomber his opportunity.

The difficulty getting into the Green Zone is less than that of CPA officials getting out. It is now truly dangerous for them to do so but most remained cocooned behind the walls even when it was less so.

One official remarked: "What shocks me is the number of people in the CPA who never even want to see the city where they live." Even the plastic cutlery in the dining hall was imported and almost ran out in April when insurgents destroyed the convoys bringing it in.

Presiding over the CPA until 30 June when power is supposedly handed over to an Iraqi government, is Paul Bremer. He has remained a remote figure to his own staff as well as Iraqis. When a rocket hit the Republican Palace, where the CPA has its headquarters earlier this month, officials wondered if he would make a reassuring visit, but were not entirely surprised by his absence.

It is still unclear why Mr Bremer and the CPA showed such poor judgement. The swift overthrow of Saddam Hussein showed few Iraqis supported him. But Mr Bremer disbanded the army and persecuted the Baath party pushing their members towards armed resistance.

By last summer he had alienated the Sunni Arabs (20 per cent of Iraqis) and by this spring he had infuriated the Shia (60 per cent). He turned the hitherto marginal Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr into a respected martyr and the hillbilly city of Fallujah into a patriotic symbol.

Many able and intelligent CPA officials are mystified by the extent of the failure, perhaps the greatest in American foreign policy. "Bremer stuffed his office full of neo-conservatives and political appointees who knew nothing of the country or the region," one said. "They actively avoided anybody who did."

Impeachment is too good for these incompetents. Criminal prosecutions and jail time should be awaiting those who have done this TO US.

Whistleblowing

Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands
Al-Qaida may 'reward' American president with strike aimed at keeping him in office, senior intelligence man says

Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday June 19, 2004
The Guardian

In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them.

He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his organisation from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the "war against terror" yesterday with the killing of a tribal leader, Nek Mohammed, who was one of al-Qaida's protectors in Waziristan.

But Anonymous, who has been centrally involved in the hunt for Bin Laden, said: "Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area. We sometimes forget how big the tribal areas are." He believes President Pervez Musharraf cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without endangering his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt. "He walks a very fine line," he said yesterday.

Imperial Hubris is the latest in a relentless stream of books attacking the administration in election year. Most of the earlier ones, however, were written by embittered former officials. This one is unprecedented in being the work of a serving official with nearly 20 years experience in counter-terrorism who is still part of the intelligence establishment.

The fact that he has been allowed to publish, albeit anonymously and without naming which agency he works for, may reflect the increasing frustration of senior intelligence officials at the course the administration has taken.

Peter Bergen, the author of two books on Bin Laden and al-Qaida, said: "His views represent an amped-up version of what is emerging as a consensus among intelligence counter-terrorist professionals."

Anonymous does not try to veil his contempt for the Bush White House and its policies. His book describes the Iraq invasion as "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage.

"Our choice of timing, moreover, shows an abject, even wilful failure to recognise the ideological power, lethality and growth potential of the threat personified by Bin Laden, as well as the impetus that threat has been given by the US-led invasion and occupation of Muslim Iraq."

In his view, the US missed its biggest chance to capture the al-Qaida leader at Tora Bora in the Afghan mountains in December 2001. Instead of sending large numbers of his own troops, General Tommy Franks relied on surrogates who proved to be unreliable.

"For my money, the game was over at Tora Bora," Anonymous said.

Yesterday President Bush repeated his assertion that Bin Laden was cornered and that there was "no hole or cave deep enough to hide from American justice".

Anonymous said: "I think we overestimate significantly the stress [Bin Laden's] under. Our media and sometimes our policymakers suggest he's hiding from rock to rock and hill to hill and cave to cave. My own hunch is that he's fairly comfortable where he is."

The death and arrest of experienced operatives might have set back Bin Laden's plans to some degree but when it came to his long-term capacity to threaten the US, he said, "I don't think we've laid a glove on him".

"What I think we're seeing in al-Qaida is a change of generation," he said."The people who are leading al-Qaida now seem a lot more professional group.

"They are more bureaucratic, more management competent, certainly more literate. Certainly, this generation is more computer literate, more comfortable with the tools of modernity. I also think they're much less prone to being the Errol Flynns of al-Qaida. They're just much more careful across the board in the way they operate."

As for weapons of mass destruction, he thinks that if al-Qaida does not have them already, it will inevitably acquire them.

The most likely source of a nuclear device would be the former Soviet Union, he believes. Dirty bombs, chemical and biological weapons, could be home-made by al-Qaida's own experts, many of them trained in the US and Britain.

Anonymous, who published an analysis of al-Qaida last year called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place.

"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said.

"One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."

The White House has yet to comment publicly on Imperial Hubris, which is due to be published on July 4, but intelligence experts say it may try to portray him as a professionally embittered maverick.

The tone of Imperial Hubris is certainly angry and urgent, and the stridency of his warnings about al-Qaida led him to be moved from a highly sensitive job in the late 90s.

But Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations at the CIA counter-terrorism centre, said he had been vindicated by events. "He is very well respected, and looked on as a serious student of the subject."

Anonymous believes Mr Bush is taking the US in exactly the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy.

He said: "It's going to take 10,000-15,000 dead Americans before we say to ourselves: 'What is going on'?"

Intel Dump

The Big Lie
by Andrew Wilkie

By early 2003, as part of my work at the Office of National Assessments (ONA), I was spending considerable time trawling through the vast intelligence database on Iraq so as to be ready to help cover the war once it started.

What jumped out at me was that the war had little to do with weapons of mass destruction and almost nothing to do with al-Qaeda. We were on the cusp of waging an unjustified war on the basis of a preposterous lie. Importantly, my work with ONA on transnational issues, such as people smuggling, had exposed me to some raw intelligence of very poor quality, which gave me a more critical eye in general when it came to analysing intelligence information. BY LATE 2002 nothing could stop the countdown to war.

Tony Blair and John Howard understood this clearly because their intelligence agencies were telling them so - I know this was the case in Australia and I'm certain the situation was identical in the UK. ONA knew Australia would participate in a war by late 2002; the Australian Defence Force had begun to prepare even earlier. As far back as mid-2002, for example, the Special Air Service Regiment in Perth was focused on the need to be ready for the formal order to deploy troops to Iraq.

Blair and Howard knowingly recycled the US's case for invading Iraq so as to stay in step with Bush. They understood the broader US agenda and were sympathetic to much of it.

Although Howard had clearly decided by late 2002 to support Bush's war, this decision was not a formal decision of Government. Rather it was an understanding of the US's intentions and a determination to support them, at any cost. In this sense, Howard is correct in saying, as he has repeatedly, that no decision was made by the Government to support the war until just before the invasion began.

Nevertheless, Howard knew what was brewing long before the National Security Committee of Cabinet formally deliberated on the decision to commit Australian troops. ONA's reporting on the US - in accordance with the Government's direction - was prolific during the lead-up to hostilities. Moreover, the occasional telephone conversations with George Bush, about which Howard boasted publicly, also ensured that the Australian Government was well informed enough to be able to read the situation in Washington.

Washington was not always frank with its allies during the build-up to the war, so little so that UK and Australian intelligence agencies sometimes needed to treat the US more as a focus of intelligence interest than as a close ally. A reluctance to share information with allies is fine some of the time. US and UK officials presumably aren't fussed about not receiving the Australian intelligence assessments on issues such as border security that shed light on the effectiveness or otherwise of specific Australian government policies. But it is a different matter when vitally important information, such as the latest thinking in the White House, isn't shared about an issue as grave and all-encompassing as the impending invasion of Iraq.

To overcome problems of this kind, the agreement between the US, UK and Australia (as well as Canada) not to spy on each other is interpreted somewhat loosely. Although Australia is not inclined to spy on the US, it has always been my assumption, one shared by at least some of my former colleagues, that the US spies on Australia.

Australia's corresponding capacity to collect information concerning the US and the UK is far more limited; we must rely instead on the work of diplomats, military staff and intelligence liaison officers who prowl like bottom-feeders for scraps and titbits in the corridors of power in Washington and London.

Thanks to such efforts, Howard (and by his own means, Blair) knew before the war began that the US was intent on invading Iraq for many reasons, not only those involving WMD and terrorism. I recall numerous ONA assessments that explored the machinations in Washington and the thinking of George Bush and his circle.

If this knowledge is juxtaposed with the public case for war that was made in London and Canberra, something very interesting is revealed: Blair and Howard's oft-repeated justifications for going to war were quite hollow. Their statements about WMD and terrorism were made in the full knowledge that such justifications were not the central reasons for the US's actions.

The invasion of Iraq was sold on the basis of that country possessing a massive arsenal of WMD and co-operating actively with terrorists. These claims were made in many different ways and have since been radically re-engineered, but the heart of the official case against Iraq made in Washington, London and Canberra was always as follows: Iraq possessed significant quantities of chemical and biological weapons, it was determined to acquire nuclear weapons, and it was consorting with al-Qaeda.

For his part, John Howard made it quite clear in his February 4, 2003, address to the Australian Parliament that his Government endorsed the views being expressed in Washington and London, including those contained in the American and British reports released on Iraq. He also sought to make clear Iraq's association with the war on terror: "The Australian Government knows that Iraq still has chemical and biological weapons and that Iraq wants to develop nuclear weapons." THERE is no single issue, or shocking secret report, or classified intelligence assessment that I can refer to in order to explain how the Iraq threat was blatantly exaggerated for political purposes. The process was not that dramatic. Most often the deceit lay in the way Washington, London and Canberra deliberately skewed the truth by taking the ambiguity out of the issue. Key intelligence assessment qualifications were frequently dropped and much more definite words put in their place, even though such embellishments had not been offered to the governments by their intelligence agencies. Before we knew it, our political leaders had created a mythical Iraq, one where every factory was up to no good.

Crucially, there were significant intelligence gaps on Iraq.

These were consistently filled with sequences of doubtful information based on worst-case assumptions, all of this finely tuned to reinforce the need to invade.

Two of these gaps are especially important: the unaccounted-for pre-1991 Gulf War WMD, and the uncertainty surrounding Iraq's actions between the withdrawal of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1998 and the arrival of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in late 2002.

The US, the UK and Australia all went to a great deal of trouble to highlight that, based on UN assessments, unaccounted for WMD material included up to 360 tonnes of bulk chemical agent, up to 3000 tonnes of precursor chemicals, enough growth media to produce tens of thousands of litres of biological agent, and over 30,000 special munitions suitable for delivery of chemical and biological agents.

However, the continued reference to these figures in the case for war appeared to me to be simply ridiculous, not least because no one, not even the Iraqis themselves, knew exactly how much chemical and biological agent they'd produced, exactly how much was used during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war or exactly how much was destroyed later outside of UNSCOM control.

On balance the strong, unambiguous language contained in the case for war seemed more the work of salespeople than professional intelligence officers. The claims that the repeated assertions reflected accurately the views of national intelligence agencies are plainly wrong. They were simply too much at odds with the piles of intelligence material I was privy to. In all the material I saw on Iraq, never did I see such a string of unqualified and strong judgements as was contained in the official case for war presented by Bush, Blair and Howard.

By late 2003, however, there was no possibility that Bush, Blair and Howard were unaware of the true situation in Iraq or that they were in some form of understandable denial. No, they were well aware of the fix they were in, but decided to deal with it with more prevarications, fabrications, distortions and exaggerations. Lies beget lies, as they say.

IN Australia, the intelligence chain, from the Iraq WMD analyst through to the director-general, was a ludicrously short one: only a single full-time strategic analyst on Iraq, one middle manager and the director-general, Kim Jones. All three are decent people - two remain friendly to me - who most of the time adopted a commendably measured view on Iraq.

Except in one case: the marked shift made clear in the unexpectedly hardline ONA assessment produced in mid-September 2002. This was an unclassified report put together at the request of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Specifically, the September 13 ONA assessment on Iraq stated that a range of intelligence and public information suggests that "Iraq is highly likely to have chemical and biological weapons". It also commented that, "there is no reason to believe that Saddam Hussein has abandoned his ambition to acquire nuclear weapons". Yet only the previous day, the 2004 inquiry revealed, ONA had reported that there was no firm evidence of new chemical and biological weapon production.

ONA's sudden shift to a more gung-ho position on Iraq is striking. For years it had treated the CIA's claims about Iraq with great caution and, along with Australia's military intelligence agency, the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO), it had continued to take a much more measured view than the US and the UK. What happened to change this stance? I believe the explanation is at its core rather simple. The Australian Government's extraordinary request in mid-September for an unclassified report for use in the preparation of the Prime Minister's and Foreign Minister's speeches sent a clear signal to ONA to deliver something much stronger. Crucially, ONA is not a policy organisation and does not normally prepare unclassified notes for anyone's public speeches.

All [ONA reports to the Government] are rigidly capped in length and written in simple terms for the benefit of the non-experts who will read them; often only the most basic explanation of the issue at hand is provided. Adding to the pressure to condense was Howard's personal direction that ONA's reports be produced in a larger 13-point script so that they would be easier for him to read.

This is an edited extract from Axis of Deceit by Andrew Wilkie, published by Black Inc. Agenda, $29.95, available from Tuesday.

It remains to be determined if any of the other parties can mount a creditable challenger to Howard, but the man is clearly not popular in Australia

Who's Fooling Who

The Wrong Elections For Iraq

By Michael Rubin
Saturday, June 19, 2004; Page A23

On June 30 the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq will cease to exist. A caretaker Iraqi government will run the country until elections in January. While the transfer of sovereignty is a watershed, Iraqis say true legitimacy will come only with the elections.

But now technocratic decisions having to do with these elections are threatening to undercut the durability of any democracy in the country. There are two ways to hold direct elections: by party slates, with each party gaining representation according to its portion of the vote, or by single-member constituencies, somewhat like our own congressional districts. On June 4 Carina Perelli, head of the U.N. electoral advisory team in Iraq, endorsed party slates.

When I was a roving CPA political adviser, I lived outside the Green Zone and interacted not only with Iraqi politicians but also with ordinary people. Voting was the topic of conversations at teahouses and mosques. Islamist parties tended to favor a party-slate system. Advocates of an Iranian-style Islamic republic were blunt: "The first article in a democracy is the rule of the majority over the minority," Sayyid Hadi Modarresi, one of Karbala's most influential clerics, told the Arabic daily Al-Hayah.

Liberal Iraqis favor constituency-based elections. The Transitional Administrative Law calls for a 275-member National Assembly, which translates into each district's member representing approximately 87,000 people. Contests would occur not between parties but between individuals, who would be accountable to local residents rather than party bosses. Former Governing Council members condemned as irrelevant by CPA administrator L. Paul Bremer could win some districts. Raja Khuzai, an outspoken Shiite advocate for women's rights, is popular in her home town of Diwaniyah. Residents of Khadimiya favor Iraqi National Congress head Ahmed Chalabi. A religious party leader, Abdul Aziz Hakim, is popular in Najaf. Less successful would be uncharismatic, corrupt or abusive party hacks who hope to win power on the coattails of party bosses.

Older Iraqis also favor constituencies. Distrust of political parties is deeply rooted. One recent poll indicated that political parties have only a 3 percent favorability rating. Pensioners remember the 1960s as a time of pitched street battles between adherents of leftist and nationalist parties. Younger generations view parties through the lens of the Baath Party experience, in which employment depended on a party membership card. Distrust of parties extends to Iraqi Kurdistan, where I taught in the 2000-01 academic year. With few exceptions, my students associated local Kurdish parties with corruption, abuse of power and nepotism.

Even Perelli, the U.N. official, acknowledged Iraqi ill feeling toward political parties. "The anti-political party feeling of the population is extremely high," she told journalists in May. But at her news conference this month, Perelli explained her rationale for abandoning the accountability of single-member constituencies in favor of pursuing party-slate elections. "There are a lot of communities that have been broken and dispersed around Iraq," she said, "and these communities wanted to be able to accumulate their votes and to vote with like-minded people."

With that one sentence, Perelli would set Iraq on the slippery slope to the failed Lebanese-style communal system. According to an Iraqi electoral commission member, Bremer agreed to a party-slate system to bypass the tricky question of who votes where, thereby trading Iraq's long-term health for short-term expediency.

The U.N. endorsement of a party-slate system fails to correct the mistakes of the past year. While Bremer condemned the Governing Council as irrelevant, the truth was more nuanced. Many Iraqis adopt the same "throw-the-bums-out" mentality that Americans voice about Congress, even while supporting their own representatives. Distrust of the Governing Council was more pronounced in towns such as Kut, which had no representation, than in cities, such as Najaf, which were represented. Even in Iraq, politics is about patronage.

The party-slate system will not bolster representation. Many Iraqis share ethnicity but not local interests. Tel Afar, a town of 160,000 east of Mosul, is 95 percent Shiite Turkmen. Its Turkish-speaking residents have little in common with Turkmen in Erbil or Kirkuk. The party-slate system might also undercut religious freedom. Christians, for example, represent less than 3 percent of Iraq's population. They remain concentrated in towns such as Alqosh, Ainkawa and Duhok. Many Christians do not support parties such as the Assyrian Democratic Movement. Without district-based elections, they may find themselves without representation. Smaller religious communities that do not have their own political parties but who live in clustered districts may find themselves without political representation in the important constitutional process.

Four years ago, my University of Baghdad-trained translators repeatedly stumbled over words such as tolerance and compromise, concepts that simply did not exist in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Now, with the decision to transfer responsibility for Iraq to an international body concerned more with technical convenience than with democracy, the White House threatens the future stability of Iraq. A one-person, one-vote, one-time election based on communal identity may please men like Hadi Modarresi, but Iraqi democrats will view it as a betrayal of their future.

No one is going to be fooled by this, least of all the Iraqis. If the rationale for going in to Iraq was building a free democracy, we're liars.

Remembering

Using the "D"

Show Us the Proof

When the commission studying the 9/11 terrorist attacks refuted the Bush administration's claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, we suggested that President Bush apologize for using these claims to help win Americans' support for the invasion of Iraq. We did not really expect that to happen. But we were surprised by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity for denial. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to rewrite history.

Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his contention that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong.

Before the war, Mr. Bush spoke of far more than vague "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said Iraq had provided Al Qaeda with weapons training, bomb-making expertise and a base in Iraq. On Feb. 8, 2003, Mr. Bush said that "an Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990's for help in acquiring poisons and gases." The 9/11 panel's report, as well as news articles, indicate that these things never happened.

Mr. Cheney said yesterday that the "evidence is overwhelming" of an Iraq-Qaeda axis and that there had been a "whole series of high-level contacts" between them. The 9/11 panel said a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made three visits to Sudan in the early 1990's, meeting with Osama bin Laden once in 1994. It said Osama bin Laden had asked for "space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." The panel cited reports of further contacts after Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, but said there was no working relationship. As far as the public record is concerned, then, Mr. Cheney's "longstanding ties" amount to one confirmed meeting, after which the Iraq government did not help Al Qaeda. By those standards, the United States has longstanding ties to North Korea.

Mr. Bush has also used a terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Mr. Bush used to refer to Mr. Zarqawi as a "senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner" who was in Baghdad working with the Iraqi government. But the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime, nor under the direction of Al Qaeda.

When it comes to 9/11, someone in the Bush administration has indeed drawn the connection to Iraq: the vice president. Mr. Cheney has repeatedly referred to reports that Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent. He told Tim Russert of NBC on Dec. 9, 2001, that this report has "been pretty well confirmed." If so, no one seems to have informed the C.I.A., the Czech government or the 9/11 commission, which said it did not appear to be true. Yet Mr. Cheney cited it, again, on Thursday night on CNBC.

Mr. Cheney said he had lots of documents to prove his claims. We have heard that before, but Mr. Cheney always seems too pressed for time or too concerned about secrets to share them. Last September, Mr. Cheney's adviser, Mary Matalin, explained to The Washington Post that Mr. Cheney had access to lots of secret stuff. She said he had to "tiptoe through the land mines of what's sayable and not sayable" to the public, but that "his job is to connect the dots."

The message, if we hear it properly, is that when it comes to this critical issue, the vice president is not prepared to offer any evidence beyond the flimsy-to-nonexistent arguments he has used in the past, but he wants us to trust him when he says there's more behind the screen. So far, when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration has been a losing strategy.

Minding the Gap

From the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committe blog, The Stakeholder, comes a new analysis of the economy that matches my experience. The rich are doing well, the rest of us are fscked:

The Economic Numbers May Appear Strong, But Many Folks Are Hurting