On the Horizon

Bailout Feared if Airlines Shed Their Pensions
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Published: August 1, 2004

n an echo of the savings and loan industry collapse of the 1980's, the federal agency that insures company pensions is facing a possible cascade of bankruptcies and pension defaults in the airline industry that some experts fear could lead to another multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout.

``The similarities are incredible,'' said George J. Benston, a finance professor at Emory University in Atlanta who has written extensively on the regulatory failures that led to the costly savings and loan bailout.

Deposits in savings institutions are, like pensions, guaranteed by a federal insurance program. The savings industry first sickened because changes in market conditions made the traditional way savings and loans operated unprofitable, but government delays and policy missteps then made the situation much worse. In the end taxpayers bailed out the industry - at a cost, according to various estimates, of $150 billion to $200 billion.

Now experts say they see similar forces gathering in the pension sector, with United Airlines perhaps the first to go down the path. Operating in bankruptcy, United is striving to attract the lenders and investors it needs to survive. It said last month that it would no longer contribute to its pension plans; United also seems intent on shedding some or all of its $13 billion in pension obligations as the only way to succeed in emerging from bankruptcy proceedings.

If United manages to cut itself loose from the costly burden of its pension plans, it might force others determined to keep their costs similarly under control to emulate its move. ``Rivals may feel they are at a competitive disadvantage and follow suit, raising the specter of a domino effect in the industry,'' said Bradley D. Belt, the executive director of the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which insures pensions. If every airline with a traditional pension plan were ultimately to default, the government would be on the hook for an estimated $31 billion. Its insurance coverage is limited, so some employees would have their benefits reduced.

“The pension insurance program is there to protect workers’ benefits,” said Mr. Belt, who took over the agency in April. “It shouldn’t be used as a piggy bank to help companies restructure.”

Already, some airline employees are taking steps to protect themselves against future pension losses. Each month, for example, about 30 pilots normally retire from Delta Air Lines. But in June, almost 300 did.

Andrew Dean, one of the new retirees, said he and his colleagues watched in dismay as the financial debacle unfolded at United. He said that he and many of his fellow pilots decided they had better grab their pensions right away while the money was still there.

“These are very scary times right now for someone in my position,” said Mr. Dean, who at 58 walked away from his job just as he was reaching the peak earning period of his career. His pension was also reduced because he retired early.

But his decision now looks prescient. On Friday, Delta asked its pilots for a 35 percent pay cut and proposed a smaller pension plan.

Foremost on the minds of the departing pilots, Mr. Dean said, were arcane pension rules that can offer advantages to workers who quit before a pension plan fails. At Delta, for example, as long as the pension plan stays afloat, pilots are allowed to take half of their benefit in a single check when they retire. But if the plan fails, the pilots lose their chance to take a big payout.

“What I’ve managed to do is secure half of my retirement,” Mr. Dean said. He may still lose the rest if the government takes over the program and limits future payouts. “I really lose sleep over that,” he said.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is already hobbled by debt, having picked up the pieces of more than 3,200 failed pension plans in its 30-year life. The scale of the failures has risen sharply in the last three years, but the agency has few tools at its disposal to prevent the situation from becoming worse.

Now it faces a possible $5 billion default by United which would be a record and the possibility of more big airline defaults after that.

I know that this is a long excerpt, but I wanted to give you time to absorb the weight of the implications of this possibility. The economic "recovery" is slowing (in no small part under the weight of the deficit) and wouldn't need much to push it over the edge into a double dip recession. If United defaults (or, God help us, goes bankrupt) the effect on the rest of the economy is nearly incalculable. I got the chills reading this. You should, too.

UPDATE: reader palamades adds information in "Comments" from inside the airline industry (you can't pay for this stuff, people)

The problem is that there are too many airlines operating within the US, with profit margins that are very, very thin. On top of that, there is still a strong reliance on the hub-and-spoke system of moving passengers (Place A to Place B, but with a stopover at O'Hare or Atlanta or Denver), which isn't working as efficently as in the past for various reasons. Add to that the increased convenience of meetings via telecommunications and the web, and the lingering fears after 9-11, and you have an industry that's just plain in pain.

United would just hurt the most.

Trust me, United is going to hurt the most no matter what happens. God, this is awful. Jackie, you are in my prayers, since that is about all I can do.

Dems Are The Good Times

Michael Kinsleycrunches the numbers on economic performance under Republican and Democratic presidents:

It turns out that Democratic presidents have a much better record than Republicans. They win in a head-to-head comparison in almost every category. Real growth averaged 4.09% in Democratic years, 2.75% in Republican years. Unemployment was 6.44%, on average, under Republican presidents, and 5.33% under Democrats. The federal government spent more under Republicans than Democrats (20.87% of GDP, compared with 19.58%), and that remains true even if you exclude defense (13.76% for the Democrats, 14.97% for the Republicans).

What else? Inflation was lower under Democratic presidents (3.81% on average, compared with 4.85%). And annual deficits took more than twice as much of GDP under Republicans than Democrats (2.74% of GDP versus 1.21%). Republicans won by a nose on government revenue (i.e., taxes), taking 18.12% of GDP, compared with 18.39%. That, of course, is why they lost on the size of the deficit.

Personal income per capita was also a bit higher in Republican years ($16,061 in year- 2000 dollars) than in Democratic ones ($15,565). But that is because more of the Republican years came later, when the country was more prosperous already.

There will be many objections to all this, some of them valid. For example, a president can't fairly be held responsible for the economy from the day he takes office. So let's give them all a year. That is, let's allocate each year to the party that controlled the White House the year before. Guess what? The numbers change, but the bottom-line tally is exactly the same: higher growth, lower unemployment, lower government spending, lower inflation and so on under the Democrats. Lower taxes under the Republicans.

But maybe we are taking too long a view. The Republican Party considers itself born again in 1981, when Ronald Reagan became president. That's when Republicans got serious about cutting taxes, reducing the size of government and making the country prosperous. Allegedly. But doing all the same calculations for the years 1982 through 2002, and giving each president's policies a year to take effect, changes only one result: The Democrats pull ahead of the Republicans on per capita personal income.

As they say in the brokerage ads, past results are no guarantee of future performance.

Some talking points to share with friends who still need convincing. This wasn't in the data Kinsley was looking at, but the markets perform better under Ds than Rs.

Network Failure

What We Missed in Boston
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

PEOPLE, particularly network anchors, complain that conventions are too tailored to television. Actually, they are not tailored enough. If the parties really wanted the networks to give them gavel-to-gavel coverage, they would cut the event down to one night, not select a nominee in advance, and let viewers call in and, as they do on the Fox Network hit, vote for their favorite speaker - Convention Idol.

That would get Dan Rather's folksy idioms flowing.

Instead, Republicans and Democrats plod on with their creaky tradition, dragging out a foregone conclusion over four days, flattering state delegates, wining and dining donors, and letting obscure elected officials, even the nutty ones, have their say at the podium. Political analysts disparage the display as a political "infomercial," but to the credit of the organizers, they are not catering to the network audience nearly as much as they could.

So, are Americans getting the convention coverage they deserve? Or are the television networks shirking the civic responsibility that was implicit when the government gave them the airwaves and let them rake in billions off a public trust?
....
Ratings for cable news and PBS increased over the convention. If the broadcast networks had provided more coverage and given a sleeker presentation, millions more viewers might have been tempted to tune in. Conventions will never get huge ratings or make the networks money, but they only come once every four years.

NBC has proved ingenious at luring viewers who don't like sports to watch the Olympics by milking each athlete's résumé for Hallmark moments; it could stir up similar mini-dramas around elected officials. An NBC promotional spot highlighting the Olympic swimmer Natalie Coughlin starts this way: "A lifetime spent alone under water." The story of Dennis Kucinich could be packaged much the same way, though perhaps more succinctly: "A lifetime spent alone."

For now, Mr. Jennings says ABC's "mini-me" digital channel coverage is at least a consolation. When Mr. O'Reilly of Fox News asked him, "So you're not offended by this contrived display?" Mr. Jennings replied: "I don't see any point in being offended by it. We are here. It is an opportunity. They do what they do. We do what we do. And it'll be exactly the same for the Republican Party."

Some things for the network execs to think about: they missed one of the great speeches of the century (there aren't that many really good ones, ever) by not broadcasting Barack Obama's keynote. That young man is going places and the networks are going to have to go to C-Span or PBS for file tape (and believe me, they'll want it when that young man makes a splash in the Senate and then runs for president.) Stanley's piece also makes a powerful argument for reform of the FCC and the way that licenses are granted (but not the way that Michael Powell wants to do it.) I'd like to see the use of the public trust taken a whole lot more seriously.

The Responsibility Administration

9/11 action? Not before Nov. 2

July 30, 2004

BY ANDREW GREELEY

It seems that there is a new rule in American politics: Nothing is done during an election year, lest it affect the outcome of the election. This law was spoken by the speaker of the House of Representatives last week when he solemnly announced that members were going to take a very close look at the report of the 9/11 commission and not rush into anything during an election year. So the representatives went on vacation, and the senators with them. After all, members of Congress work very hard and are entitled to free time. Recklessly driving up the national debt isn't easy work. Besides, because only 38 at most of the 435 seats in the House are ''in play'' this year, no one has to worry about losing their job.

When there was some public outcry, Congress replied that the relevant committees would return after a couple of weeks to begin working on legislation. Given the record of Congress in getting anything done, it is safe to bet that there will be no legislation before the election.

And no one will raise the question of why Congress failed to enact the recommendation of the Gore Commission in 1995 that the cockpit doors on airplanes be bulletproof and locked -- which would have saved 3,000 lives on Sept. 11.

The president said he would study the report very carefully. That is an interesting comment because he stonewalled the idea of the commission for a couple of years on the grounds that it would distract from the war on terror, and he was forced into it by the families of the victims. Moreover, he tried to appoint the ineffable Henry Kissinger as commission chairman. It is therefore the president's own fault that the report -- with its criticisms of his actions both before Sept. 11 and his foreign policy since -- appeared during an election year. The commission was restrained in its comments because it wanted unanimity during an election year. Republican members of the commission doubtless hoped that people will not read it too carefully.

At this writing, the president is busy trying to turn the report into a political asset. Since he does not read books, he has not read the pages following 363, which are an implicit but stinging indictment of the terrorism policies of his administration.

Then there is the Senate committee, which studied the failures of the American intelligence services before the Iraq war -- failure that in ordinary times would have humiliated a president, but not these days. Again in the name of unanimity, the committee postponed the completion of its investigation until -- guess when? -- after the election.

It is also said that the grand jury investigation into who in the White House ''outed'' a CIA officer (to punish her husband for reporting that there was no yellow cake uranium shipped from Niger to Iraq) will continue until after the election.

Heaven forefend that the issues of who messed up on Sept. 11 and in preparation for the Iraq war should affect the outcome of the election. Heaven equally forbid that these matters be debated during the campaign. Heaven protect the American people from thinking there are issues besides abortion and gay marriage, and whether people will ''warm up'' to John Kerry. Nor should anyone dare to ask why it required almost three years since the World Trade Center attack to produce a detailed report of the failures of our intelligence agencies and a blueprint to reform them. Nor should there be a debate about a foreign policy that has alienated the world, nor about why the dead in Iraq are now about a third of those who died in the 9/11 explosion. No one should ask about how much safer Americans really are today. Not during an election year.

There is a conspiracy of silence to protect the Bush administration from the voters' judgment about its mistakes. Such pretense supports the president's insistence that he has not made any mistakes, and is not responsible in any way. It is all the fault of the CIA and the FBI -- and, of course, the Bill Clinton administration.

American elections used to be about responsibility and accountability. Now it would seem those subjects are taboo. A president is neither responsible nor accountable -- not till after the election!

Something tells me Fr. Greeley isn't going to be voting R this fall. This points to multiple system failures: failure of congressional oversight of almost every aspect of executive branch operations; the complete bankruptcy of the "fourth estate, and a cynical and disengaged electorate. I think the Dems stand a decent chance of taking back the White House, but one of the things the politicians need to be doing in this campaign season is raising the voters' awareness of how the system is supposed to work.

It'll be interesting to see how the New York convention works out for the Repubs. The Chicago convention of '68 was a disaster for the Dems. If New York erupts the way Chicago did, Bush could see a fall in the polls like Humphrey did in '68.

Unserious Editorial

Iraq's Mixed Month

Saturday, July 31, 2004; Page A22

THE FIRST month of sovereign government in Iraq ended badly. A national conference that was to choose a 100-member assembly to function alongside the interim government was postponed for two weeks because key factions refused to participate. A car bombing that killed 70 people and a rash of kidnappings, meanwhile, underlined the fact that security remains a crippling problem. Those in Washington who believe that Iraq is headed for disaster will find confirmation in these events, and they may be proven right. Yet woven through the broader record of the past 30 days are signs that the formal end of the U.S. occupation may have advanced Iraq closer to the goal of stability under a representative government.

This is a deeply dishonest editorial by a pro-war ed board. This is unwarranted self justification by an ed board that isn't reading its own news pages. In the month since the "handover" we've lost more troops than in the preceeding month, we've installed a CIA employee as Prime Minister and the caucus scheduled for last week has been postponed because of rising violence. Contrary to the WaPo ed board, the situation is spinning out of control. The Post has bested the New York Times in the quality of its straight new coverage in the last couple of years, but its ed board is as unserious as the Times. Crappy thinking is crappy thinking.

Imaginary Battalions

Iraqi clerics oppose Muslim, Arab force

KUFA: Radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Sunni Muslim religious elders on Friday preached against a Saudi proposal to send an Arab or Muslim force to Iraq.

"I advise all countries that want to help Iraq, not to send forces here," said al-Sadr in a sermon at Friday prayers in the main mosque in Kufa, south of Baghdad.

"If such forces come to Iraq, they will be seen as collaborators of the occupation," he said.

In Fallujah, Sheikh Ihsan al-Duri said he opposed "any Arab or Muslim force in Iraq". "Such forces could have served before (the occupation) but never now," he told worshippers at the Rawi mosque in the flash-point city.

In Baghdad, Sheikh Mehdi Sumaydai, a strict Wahhabi Muslim also denounced the idea, which was on Thursday welcomed by US Secretary of State Colin Powell after talks with his Saudi counterpart and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

"We don’t want (Arab and Muslim) forces to shield the occupier because we don’t want to see Muslims killed," he said.

Otherwise, al-Sadr devoted most of his sermon to criticising Allawi’s interim government for failing to restore basic services and safeguard security.

"The government said it wants to give al-Sadr’s movement a chance, but several of his leaders are in prison and others have been threatened with death for refusing to accept occupation," he said.

"I call on the occupation forces to release honest resistance fighters, otherwise we will unleash civil disobedience," he said.

Powell's little diplomatic feint with the Saudis to talk up a bunch of Arab battalions for Iraq is just PR. If such a force was actually deployed, there would be things blown up in Morroco, Dubai or whereever such troops came from. The carnage visited upon Riyadh in recent months is a shout out to the rest of the Arab world that cooperating with the US means death.

Paying the Price

Iraq is costing us plenty here at home
by Karen Dolan
The Pilot-Independent
Last Updated: Friday, July 30th, 2004 12:28:51 PM

The number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq has just about hit 900. Add the fallen troops from the United Kindom and other countries, and that figure already topped the 1,000 mark. An estimated 16,000 additional U.S. soldiers have been wounded and sickened. Many lost at least one limb. And over 11,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the war.

Most Americans realize that people are dying, even if they don't see photos or footage of the body bags. Yet they haven't heard enough about the many costs of the Iraq War. The facts are startling.
The government has spent more than $150 billion in taxpayer money thus far, and that price tag is likely to grow by at least $50 billion a year while Iraq remains occupied. Economist Doug Henwood estimates that this war, if the U.S. military stays there for three more years, will cost U.S.households an average of $3,415.

The war is also affecting U.S. communities, health care and education, as military spending pushes domestic needs to the back of the bus
.
For the money spent thus far on the war, the National Priorities Project estimates the government could have provided 23 million housing vouchers for America's growing homeless population.
Or the government could have funded or provided health care to 28 million Americans, helping reduce the roughly 18,000 unnecessary U.S. deaths every year suffered by the uninsured.

The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is growing more rapidly than in any other industrialized country. Programs for low-income children, like Head Start, can help fix this in the long run, yet more than half of all Head Start programs endured cuts in the past year, as the United States occupied Iraq with military force. If the United States hadn't spent all this war money, and instead made young children its top priority, 20 million more youngsters could have gotten a better shot at success through a Head Start.

Meanwhile, state and local governments are falling short. Federal policies like the tax cuts President George W. Bush gave the wealthy, coupled with the huge military costs, are contributing to costs and lost revenues in all states of nearly $200 billion between 2002 and 2005.

Tight state budgets have forced states to cut drug assistance to AIDS patients, to freeze or cut state assistance for college tuitions and to cut eligibility for Medicaid.

Drastic cuts in education are felt at the local level too. Last summer, Cleveland cut all summer classes. Buffalo saw 300 teachers lose their jobs and closed three schools. South Carolina laid off 2,000 teachers and greatly increased class sizes.

Reserve troops and National Guard are being called up in enormous numbers and are spending long successive tours in Iraq. Military families left behind face hardships associated with the loss of a breadwinner. Some report experiencing bankruptcy, hunger, unemployment and poor housing conditions.

Despite these sacrifices, we are actually less secure at home and abroad now than before the United States invaded Iraq.

According to a new survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, less than one quarter of surveyed cities have received any of the promised homeland security funds designed to assist state and local first responders, such as police officers and firefighters who handle emergencies.

National Guard troops make up about one-third of the U.S. troops in Iraq. Their deployment places a particularly heavy burden on homeland and community security, as many of these troops are local first responders. Almost half of all police forces across the nation have lost officers as a result of deployment to Iraq.

Finally, even the State Department admits that terrorism is rising. Last year reported the largest number of terror-related incidents deemed "significant" than any time in the history of these records. The Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that the war in Iraq has accelerated recruitment to Al Qaeda and made the world less safe. Anti-Americanism has skyrocketed dramatically around the world since the invasion of Iraq.

Taken together with the insecurity in basic human needs and quality of life at home, it seems that we have paid too high price and gained too little in return.

Karen Dolan is a Fellow at the Foreign Policy in Focus/Institute for Policy Studies and Director of the Cities for Peace and Progressive Challenge projects there.

Walker is the kind of small town that is paying a disproportionate price in blood in the sands of Iraq. These small towns staff our guard and reserve units with their city council members, sherrifs, cops and fireman. There are small towns across America which have lost nearly their entire government structure to guard and reserve call ups. But we don't hear about that. Why is that?

CYA

Bush Faces New Obstacles in Keeping Allies' Support

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

Published: July 31, 2004

ASHINGTON, July 30 - With the demands of the presidential campaign adding new urgency to the search for a strategy to exit Iraq, American officials are facing many complications in holding together the coalition of countries they persuaded to support the war.

The kidnappings and executions of foreign workers, and the decision by some companies and several countries to leave the American-led forces, have compounded the burdens on the 140,000 American troops there and the diplomatic pressures on Bush administration officials intent on staying the course.

For the first time, administration officials are acknowledging the delicate nature of their "coalition of the willing" - the group of some 30 nations that lent their names and limited numbers of troops to the occupying force built mainly of American and British forces. The multinational force, which the administration stitched together as traditional NATO allies balked, is increasingly tattered.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged his dismay this week over the erosion of support, signaled most recently by the Philippines' decision to withdraw its troops and moves by Ukraine, with its 1,600 soldiers, to follow suit. Four other nations have withdrawn from the country - Spain, with 1,300 troops, and the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras, with nominal representations.

"Sure it worries me," Mr. Powell said in an interview with the Arabiya television network. "We've lost some members of the coalition, and there are some companies who have had to restrict their operations because of the dangers. But this seems to me to be an incentive to the rest of us to redouble our efforts to get after these insurgents," he said. "You cannot just say, 'Well, gosh, they are causing all of these troubles, so let's all pull out."

The United States received some encouragement on Friday when NATO allies reached an agreement to begin sending military trainers to Iraq, which should result in the deployment of 20 to 30 officers there by mid-September. The administration, which has long pushed for a more muscular role for NATO - several of whose members opposed the war - welcomed the action, however symbolic the initial deployment. The trainers are intended to speed the process of putting capable Iraqi forces on the streets.

20 to 30 officer/trainers. That's a real muscular role.

Powell is pathetic. "You cannot just say, 'Well, gosh, they are causing all of these troubles, so let's all pull out." Colin, "these troubles" are "our people are getting killed, kidnapped and beheaded." There is no damn support for this made-up war anywhere in the world and you know it and the other governments you bribed to send in a token force are finding the political cost at home to be too high. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

"Everything is different"

I want to linger a moment with this idea (which usually means that I am a)pissed, or b)curious about something, or sometimes both.) I heard it from the lips of both David Brooks and Mark Shields on the Newshour tonight. "Everything changed on 9-11." We've all heard it. It has become a trope. Is it true? Yes and no.

Say what you will about it, our intelligence services and military have been tracking terrorist groups for decades. I'm old enough to remember the Munich Olympics, the Achille Lauro, the IRA, the Scottish separatists and Red Brigade. The last three nearly killed me on several occasions. My own antennae have been set on high since the Scottish separatists failed to blow up my section of the grandstand at the Edinborough Tattoo in 1971. The other side of the field wasn't so lucky. I went through the trainstation in Bologna one day before the Red Brigade blew it up in 1980. I was with the British bandsmen who were blown up on parade in 1983 only the month before. Really, each of those disasters could have been any of us at any time. All of these groups are non-state actors with multi-national operatives (the IRA may plausibly have had a relationship with the government of Ireland, but I've never seen it proved.) The fact that foreign nationals hadn't blown things up in this country before the WTC in 1993 was an accident of timing. The rest of the world has been dealing with this reality for a while now. Decades.

What change on September 11, 2001? We became aware of a reality that our imperfect intel and military communities had already known about for a long time. By that point in time, I had already read the Bremmer and Hart-Rudman commission reports and had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen. I was in class when the first plane went into the WTC and learned of it, the second plane and the Pentagon while on coffee break during class from radios in the school refectory and reception area. I went back to class which proceeded as normal (the otherwordly Carmelite teaching it hadn't heard the news) and ran to the student lounge after class to look at cable just as the first tower fell. The streets of Washington were impassible, so I went to my then-office to begin scanning the internet. It was a short Google search to Bin Laden, a name I already knew well.

What's different after September 11 is us, not our situation. The threat is the same as it has been for at least a decade, when Osama started dreaming big dreams. The world hasn't changed. We have, and not always in directions that are so nice. The fear 9-11 provoked gave Bush carte blanche to go into Iraq. That was dumb, and I was told by many friends that my opposition to the war, before and after our arrival in Baghdad, made me an enemy of America. Turns out I was right and Saddam had nothing to do with Osama, and Saddam's regime was just as weak as I thought it was, which I learned from open sources and Google. One doesn't need access to the PDB to learn most of what's out there. I blogged a story yesterday about the way that Muslim Americans and Arabs (there are non-Muslim Arabs, by the way) are being treated. That's another not so good thing we've become in the years after 9-11. The way that I changed, and did so very deliberately, in the months after 9-11 (once the shock wore off, I was as raw and damaged as everyone else for the first weeks) was to remember that we are fragile people whose lives are contingent on circumstances we do not control. I renewed all of my relationships because those lives around me, and mine, became even more precious to me.

Remember that, remember life and death and that we don't control those things. This is crucial, because the Bushies are planting the lie in people's minds that these things can be controlled and that, in fact, Flightsuit boy is able to control them. That's magical thinking and he probably believes it himself, but it isn't true. Bushco's "success" with the voters he attracts is based on really primal fears and dreams of a kind of control which none of us really possess. It is the part of us which still responds to superstition. Yes, luck exists, but we don't summon it. It happens or it doesn't, and your special red shirt doesn't bring it.

This is the theological essence of the Bush campaign: that because of his magnificent leadership after 9-11, he's our lucky charm against terrorism. That's the theological foundation of the "don't changes horses in the middle of a war" claim, and makes no truck with facts. If you read Chapter 8 of the 9-11 Commission report you'll discover that, in the broad strokes, Michael Moore got it right. Bush's appeal is for people who desperately want to believe that something is true which isn't. This isn't politics, it is theology, but we must be careful that we are not all contributing to the lie by spouting the familiar tropes of Brooks and Shields. The world is not different, the threat has been there for years and we knew about it for years. We are different and it is time to take stock of the ways in which we are different. Introspection is hardly an American virtue, but it is time to learn it. How are we as a people being changed? It is a question worthy of pondering.

UPDATE: Reader pollythewriter reminded me of this piece, which has been making the media rounds. It is a very superficial piece.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President George W. Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the September 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

"We are saying this is psychologically useful," said Solomon.

Read the article. What I wrote above is in no small part a response to this meme. None of us are psychologically determined: we have choices of responses. But if we are unreflective, we will react out of base instinct (and that instinct may not have been so healthily formed.) From this study, it appears that about a third of the subjects were those unreflective people, which sounds to me like about the proportion in the general public.

I have a friend, a therapist, who likes to say that "there are two kinds of people in the world: the ones who carry on conversations with themselves in their heads and the ones who don't."

SCLM and the Polls

Rove's Blunder
How Bush wrote Kerry's acceptance speech.
By William Saletan
Posted Thursday, July 29, 2004, at 11:18 PM PT

In his determination to unite the right, Bush hasn't just united the left. He has lost the center. Look at last week's New York Times/CBS News poll of registered voters. "Do you think the result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq or not?" Fifty-nine percent say it was not. "Which do you think is a better way to improve the national economy—cutting taxes or reducing the federal budget deficit?" Fifty-eight percent say reducing the deficit. "When it comes to regulating the environmental and safety practices of business, do you think the federal government is doing enough, should it do more, or should it do less?" Fifty-nine percent say more.

One more Bush voter on the right, balanced by one more Kerry voter on the left, plus the tilting of one more voter in the middle toward Kerry, is a net loss for the president. That's the lesson of this administration, this election, and this convention. Kerry doesn't have to write any good lines. He just has to read them.

So, why does the race still appear to be so close? Taegan Godard has at least a piece of the answer:

Why the Presidential Race Remains Close

It turns out that on four of these traits (excluding party affiliation), voter evaluation of the candidates is virtually identical. This is why, after record advertising campaigns, the election essentially remains a dead heat.

Of course, these preceptions wouldn't have anything to do with this, would it?

• Carlson attempted to downplay Republican attacks on Cleland
• Deficit deceit: Matthews falsely claimed "deficit is not being caused by tax cuts"
• FOX talking heads obsessed with Democratic "hate"
• CNN amnesia: Forgot TNR report on Bush plans when Al Qaeda suspect arrested during Dem Convention
• Cables, right-wing radio ran with debunked Drudge charges on Kerry combat films
• Savage commentary on Dem Convention: "Obergrupenführer Clinton," "Grupenführer Carter," "Brigadeführer Daschle," "dirtbag" Maya Angelou
• Limbaugh's snow job on the Dem Convention
• Mitchell and Fineman mimicked GOP talking points on Edwards's foreign policy experience
• In "World Exclusive," Drudge dredged up discredited charge that Kerry filmed reenacted combat scenes for future political career
• O'Reilly on Michael Moore's "power": "[T]his happened in Nazi Germany"
• Tucker Carlson's amnesia: "Nobody prevented anyone from voting" in Florida

The Hubbert Curve

N.Y. Crude Oil Rises to Record on Supply Disruption Concern,

July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil in New York rose to a record for the second time this week on concern that supply from the world's top exporters will be disrupted as fuel consumption surges.

Crude oil for September delivery was up $1.07, or 2.5 percent, at $43.82 a barrel at the 2:30 p.m. close of floor trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures reached $43.85 a barrel, the highest price since they began trading in New York in 1983. Oil was up 5.1 percent this week and 18 percent for the month. Prices are 43 percent higher than a year earlier.

Why 2004 Will Be Remembered as the Year World Oil Production Peaked
By Keith Miller
Jul 18, 2004, 12:47

Mr. Miller, who holds a Ph.D. in history, is a Member of the Council of Energy Advisors, auspices Gerson Lehrman Group (New York City).

Mr. Hubbert, we should have listened. In 1957 M. King Hubbert (1903-1989) predicted in a publication of the American Petroleum Institute, Drilling and Production Practice (p. 17), that the peak of world oil output would come "about the year 2000." And it has. As Richard A. Kerr stated in "The Next Oil Cirisis Looms Large--and Perhaps Close," Science 281 (21 August 1998): "the gush of oil from wells around the world will peak at 80 million barrels per day, then begin a steady, inevitable decline . . ." (p. 1128).

That prognostication, by way of a paraphrase of a report of the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), was not expected to come true, however, until sometime between 2010 and 2020, but I believe that the world's oil production peak has been reached in recent weeks. Why? The answer derives from Tim Appenzeller's "The End of Cheap Oil," National Geographic 205 (June 2004): demand for oil globally is "now 80 million barrels a day, [and] continues to grow, . . ." (p. 90). And, from Bhushan Bahree's "OPEC Is Likely to Lift Ceiling of Its Oil Production by 11%," Wall Street Journal (3 June 2004) comes the following: "a world market now consuming 80 million barrels daily" (p. A2). The implication is crystal clear--if the people on planet earth are now consuming 80 million barrels per day--some 29 billion barrels per year--then we must be at the peak in world oil production, as forecast by the IEA back in the spring of 1998, information utilized by Kerr in his article. And, then too, we're back to Hubbert!

9-11 Report: The Review

Postie (and sometime spy novel author) David Ignatius offers a book review of the 9-11 Commission report. Only in Washington, I think, would a blue ribbon commission report get a book review. However, if someone had actually read the predecessor Hart-Rudman commission and Bremer (remember him?) commission reports on national security, maybe 9-11 wouldn't have happened.

The Book on Terror

Reviewed by David Ignatius
Friday, July 30, 2004; 7:30 AM

If the 9/11 report had been written as a novel, nobody would believe it. The story is too far-fetched: an attack by a group of Islamic fanatics that the CIA saw coming, had been warning about for years but could do nothing to stop; the murder of nearly 3,000 people to which investigators had the necessary clues before the event but couldn't see the pattern; a multiple airplane hijacking in which a computer system identified 10 of the 19 hijackers as potentially suspicious but prevented none from boarding; a morning of mayhem that knocked the United States so far off balance that, nearly three years later, it still hasn't recovered.

Think about it this way: Imagine that key details of al Qaeda's plot had been known beforehand -- the names of several operatives, their possible method of attack, their likely timing. Suppose one backup member of the team, Zacarias Moussaoui, had actually been arrested beforehand. How could the terrorists still have succeeded, and with such devastating consequences?

The 9/11 commission was charged with unraveling this mystery -- with making sense of an implausible, heartrending story. For months, its hearings provided a kind of national theater, in which witnesses tried to explain how the tragedy happened and why they had failed to avert it. Now, in its final report, the commission has compiled its findings in a book that is something of a literary phenomenon. In the 10 days since it was published, the report has become a runaway bestseller. And deservedly so. For in its meticulous compilation of fact, the report makes the horrors of 9/11 even more shocking. Try to read the story as a narrative, a nonfiction thriller in which the characters move inexorably toward the cataclysm of that cloudless morning. The strength of the report is precisely in its narrative power; by telling all the little stories, it reveals the big story in a different way. We see the bland evil of the plotters, the Hamlet-like indecision of government officials, the bravery amid chaos of the firefighters.
....
The report's tone is evenhanded and nonpartisan, but the facts gathered here are devastating for the Bush administration. The Clinton team may have dithered over plans to kidnap (or kill) Osama bin Laden in 1998 and '99, but they did manage to mobilize the government at every level to deal with al Qaeda's Millennium Plot. The Clinton administration gathered a small crisis group at the White House that made sure every agency worked to thwart al Qaeda's planned terrorist attack. The Bush team, in contrast, didn't get serious about bin Laden until those planes hit their targets. Indeed, it's shattering to read the report's account of the summer of 2001, well before the assault, when al Qaeda operatives couldn't stop chattering about the big, big terrorist attack they were planning -- and the Bush administration never went into full crisis mode. "Many officials told us they knew something terrible was planned, and they were desperate to stop it," the report notes. But they didn't, in part because the White House didn't take control.

Even after 9/11, some senior Bush officials didn't seem to get it. Another of those little-noticed footnotes describes a Sept. 20, 2001, memo prepared by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, apparently for his boss, Donald H. Rumsfeld. According to the commission, "the author expressed disappointment at the limited options immediately available in Afghanistan and the lack of ground options. The author suggested instead hitting terrorists outside the Middle East in the initial offensive, perhaps deliberately selecting a non-al Qaeda target like Iraq. Since U.S. attacks were expected in Afghanistan, an American attack in South America or Southeast Asia might be a surprise to the terrorists." If Feith really wrote such a memo, how is it possible that he is still in his job?

That's a very good question.

Weak Fundamentals

Economic Growth Weaker Than Expected

By Martin Crutsinger
AP Economics Writer
Friday, July 30, 2004; 8:58 AM

The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of just 3 percent in the spring, a dramatic slowdown from the rapid pace of the past year, as consumer spending fell to the weakest rate since the slowdown of 2001, the government reported Friday.

The Commerce Department said that the gross domestic product, the country's total output of goods and services, slowed sharply in the April-June quarter from a 4.5 percent growth rate in the first three months of the year.

The size of the slowdown caught economists by surprise. Many had been looking for GDP growth to come in around 3.8 percent in the second quarter. Even that would have been a sharp deceleration for an economy that had been growing at a 5.4 percent annual rate through the year ending in March.

It raised the issue of whether the economy, which Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said last week had encountered a "soft patch" in June, could be in danger of seeing growth falter even more in coming quarters.

2nd-quarter wage increases slow
Employment cost index rises 0.9%

From Tribune news services
Published July 30, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Wages and benefits for U.S. workers increased less in the second quarter than in the first, adding to evidence that this year's job gains haven't pushed wages higher.

The Labor Department said Thursday that its employment cost index rose 0.9 percent, matching economists' forecasts. In the first quarter, labor costs rose 1.1 percent.

Separately, the department said initial jobless claims increased by 4,000 last week, to 345,000, a gain that some economists say reflected the difficulty the government has in adjusting the data for seasonal automobile plant shutdowns.

"While the employment recovery will continue, there will remain much slack in the labor market," said Joshua Shapiro, an economist at MFR Inc. in New York. "This ought to result in continued modest readings from wage and salary costs."

The slowdown in wage and benefit costs reflected a significant decrease in the pace of benefit increases, which rose 1.8 percent, down from a 2.4 percent increase in the first quarter.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been telling you that the underlying fundamentals of this economy are not at all strong and I expected a slowdown beginning in Q3. This is one time when I hate it that I'm right.

Falling Through the Cracks

There are a number of stories about unaccounted for funds for Iraq, money "lost" by the DoD and 27 separate corruption investigations. Al Kamen's Inside the Loop column in the WaPo this morning has some valuable backstory. Kamen's column is inside the A section, towards the back, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and is as "insidery" as you can get in any of the dailies.

Simplifying the Pentagon Spreadsheet

By Al Kamen

Friday, July 30, 2004; Page A17

Last fall, urged by the administration to get some fast cash to Baghdad, Congress approved a quick infusion of $18.4 billion. But as reported earlier this month, only 2 percent of the money had been spent.

The data came from an unclassified weekly Pentagon report called "Iraq Status." The reports show how reconstruction efforts are going and how the money was flowing. A page for the Pentagon project and contracting office had columns listing how much money had been "apportioned," "committed," "obligated" and spent in various aid categories.

The Washington Post article noted that, as of June 22, nothing had been spent on construction, health care, sanitation or water projects, and that more money had been spent on administration costs than education, human rights and governance.

Some folks on the Hill were most unhappy with this.

Subsequent reports showed improvement, with a total of $458 million spent as of the July 20 report, though nothing had been spent on roads, bridges, construction, health care, water resources or sanitation. The Hill was still grumpy.

Finally, this silliness has stopped. Someone at the Pentagon appears to have hit on a simple yet elegant solution to the problem. The latest (July 27) report has taken care of any concerns. The column listing expenditures has disappeared.

Perfect. But a Pentagon spokesman says there are no secrets, and if you ask for the amount spent they'll be happy to tell you. It's now $668 million.

Maher on the Media

Tune In, Turn On and Decide

By Bill Maher, Bill Maher is host of HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher."

The media treat these conventions as if they're pointless interruptions of their real job, which is covering the Scott Peterson trial. No drama, no excitement.

Hey, you know what's exciting? It's exciting when politicians get drunk with power because people aren't keeping an eye on them. That's when the high jinks really begin: Who expected we'd invade Iraq because of 9/11? Unpredictable, whoo!

And by the way, it's good that these conventions are "produced." "Produced" is good. I like the produced version of the "Let It Be" album better. It's good that someone produces my show, and when I find out who it is, I'm gonna shake his hand! It's good when you produce a date: Most women like it when their boyfriends pick the restaurant and make the reservations. The postwar in Iraq is something that could have used a little more production value.

The point of "producing" political conventions is to make it easy for us to make a choice. In recent years, the parties have gone out of their way to give you their pitch in the one medium all Americans respect and can still understand, the infomercial — and yes, they produced it so as not to waste your time, or drag you away for too long from the challenges of the "Andy Dick Show."

They put on a pageant for you: "These are our faces, these are our voices, this is our vision of America's future" — like a car show, but instead of cars, they have ideas, ideas about where our country is going and about how the people who take such a huge chunk of our money are going to use it.

And you'd think, after all that's hit the fan since the last conventions, viewership would have gone up from 2000. What does John Kerry have to do to get your attention, fire Omarosa?

I'm not asking you to pore over issues and read everything that's out there; we can't even get our president to do that. But the conventions are one of the only times when the election isn't reduced to a war of sound bites and attack ads, one of your last chances to form an opinion that means something.

Americans don't get taught anything, but they get asked their opinions every day, so we get the impression that having an opinion is the same as knowing something. Which it isn't. And I've got the polls to back that up.

So instead of downgrading the conventions, let's elevate them so that campaigns are no longer reduced to just sound bites, and come November, I guarantee that voters will finally be able to make informed decisions based on speeches they TiVo'd but never got around to watching.

Amen. Television completely doesn't understand what the conventions are about. The coverage this year stank. The broadcast channels and the cable channels, even PBS turned it into "all about them," when it is all about us. The contempt television has for us was never on display more baldly.

The Whole World...

World media paying attention to U.S. election

By JIM MORRILL

Knight Ridder Newspapers

BOSTON - Although the American TV networks have cut back their coverage of the Democratic and Republican political conventions, international news organizations are paying closer attention than ever.

A record 1,700 international journalists covered this week's Democratic convention. Many said their audiences are tuned in because U.S. policies on war, terrorism and foreign relations are increasingly important to them.

"The elections are the political Olympics," said Diana Molineaux, a correspondent for Spain's Catalunya radio.

"It's one of the biggest international stories of the moment," said BBC producer Rajini Vaidyanathan. "And whether George Bush can stay in power has captured the imagination of a lot of people in Britain."

International journalists reporting on the convention and Sen. John Kerry's nomination have the added challenge of explaining America's political system. Electoral votes are a foreign notion to international audiences. Some journalists also found themselves frustrated by the scripted, four-day event, which they dismissed as Hollywood-shallow.

"There are foreign media here trying to cover the substance . ... There's no substance, what's the point?" asked Miroslav Konvalina, a correspondent for Czech radio.

International reporters examined how the outcome of the election could affect their countries and regions.

"Whether It's Bush or Kerry, Israel's Laughing," read Tuesday's headline in the Arab News, a Saudi-based English-language daily newspaper.

"For us they seem like look-alikes," said correspondent Khaled Batarfi. "Both are sons of (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon. Both are running their politics out of Tel Aviv, not Washington."

In the Arab world, "I suspect the majority would love to see change, even though a lot of Sen. Kerry's positions on the Arab-Israeli issue are not very encouraging," said Mohammed Alami, chief correspondent for Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV network that reaches 40 million viewers.

In Spain, which ousted a government that was closely allied with Bush after terrorists bombed a commuter train in Madrid in March, many people "will think pretty well of any Democrat who has a chance to unseat the president of the United States," said Molineaux, the correspondent for Spanish radio.

Gianni Riotta, a correspondent for Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper, said Italians were "mesmerized by the American presidential campaign, especially after the war."

Riotta's article on Thursday discussed "the triumph" of Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., Kerry's running mate, who spoke on Wednesday night.

Italians, he said, loved Edwards' speech about two Americas, one of the wealthy and another of people who struggle from paycheck to paycheck. "Italians don't understand how it's possible that such a rich, powerful country can't take care of its social problems," Riotta said.

The US is a puzzle wrapped in an enigma to the rest of the first world. As a nation, we are seen as large and rather clumsy adolescents who are unaware of the damage when we sweep the lamps off of the end tables. We seem stubborn in our reliance on "the invisible hand of the marketplace" to resolve our social problems, which has manifestly not worked, at least not yet. For all of our wealth and power, we score poorly in education, health, life span and a host of other social wellness scales, and that puzzles the rest of the world. We tolerate third world living conditions in our poorest communities and with our homeless. A citizen of Amsterdam or Brighton or Toronto or Auckland looks at us and shakes their head.

Iraq Friday Morning

Read Juan Cole. In fact, start every day by reading Juan Cole first. I do.

Iraqis Postpone Conference as Kidnappings Rise
By IAN FISHER and SOMINI SENGUPTA

Published: July 30, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 - Iraq postponed a major national conference billed as one of its first steps toward democracy and national reconciliation on Thursday, as the epidemic of kidnappings widened sharply with insurgents announcing that they had kidnapped five more foreign hostages.

Kidnapping has grown into a major tactic in the conflict here, with roughly 20 people taken hostage since the Philippine government withdrew its troops from Iraq last week to save the life of an abducted Filipino truck driver.

The day after two Pakistani hostages were executed, a group calling itself the Death Squad of the Iraqi Resistance said Thursday that it had kidnapped four Jordanians and would take "appropriate measures" if the transport company they worked for did not shut down operations in Iraq, according to a videotape delivered to Dubai Television.

[Secretary of State Colin Powell made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Friday, flying into Iraq after visiting Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Reuters reported. He is the most senior American official to visit Iraq since the United States transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on June 28.]

Also on Thursday, a group led by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has claimed responsibility for killing several hostages, said it had kidnapped a Somali truck driver and threatened to behead him unless the Kuwaiti company he works for did not also cease operations here.

Meantime, a group that kidnapped seven truck drivers - three Indians, three Kenyans and one Egyptian - last week released a videotape showing a rifle pointed at the head of one terrified Indian, shown wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, as have several hostages who have been executed. A voice on the videotape threatened to kill him within 24 hours unless the captors' demands, which include the withdrawal of the hostages' Kuwait employer, were met.

Saudi Plan for Muslim Force in Iraq Gains in U.S.
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

WASHINGTON, July 29 - The Bush administration expressed interest on Thursday in a Saudi proposal to send an all-Muslim security force to Iraq, but foreign policy experts voiced skepticism that the plan would result in substantial contributions of troops.

The proposal, made to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell this week during a visit to Jidda, Saudi Arabia, aims to help stabilize Iraq and lend regional credibility to the interim government in Baghdad.

Some members of the coalition in Iraq are considering pulling out, having served through the June 28 transfer of authority to a new government. Ukraine, for example, said Thursday that it had begun talks with the United States and Poland on withdrawing its 1,600 troops.

Nations are also under pressure from terrorists in Iraq, which are increasingly using kidnapping and execution as a way to deter cooperation with the Americans and the interim government. Five American allies have withdrawn their troops, including the Philippines, which won the release of a hostage by departing ahead of schedule.

One possible contributor to a Muslim force, Pakistan, has engaged in high-level talks with Saudi officials about a role. But Pakistan was rocked by the news on Thursday that Islamist extremists had executed two Pakistani hostages in Iraq.

Mr. Powell, in an appearance on Thursday with Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, called the Saudi proposal "an interesting idea." He suggested that a Muslim force could provide security for facilities or protection for United Nations personnel.

Islamic States Discuss Muslim Force for Iraq

In Jakarta yesterday, Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said: “Our position remains that any possible Indonesian involvement, including dispatching our military personnel to Iraq, has to be within and under a UN framework.”

Yemen had offered earlier this month to help in a UN mission in Iraq, provided all coalition forces withdraw. Bahrain has said it was ready to send a naval force if asked by the new Iraqi government.

Commenting on the Muslim force proposal, Arab League envoy to Britain Ali Hamid said in London that the idea could gain international support as long as it was accompanied by a clear US commitment to withdraw from Iraq and was mandated by the United Nations Security Council.

Many Arab countries have indicated they would be willing to get more involved in Iraq if they can do so under the UN, rather than a perceived US, umbrella.

After the Lovin'

Reclaiming the Center
How Democrats Are Striking Back on 'Values'

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, July 30, 2004; Page A19

Since the late 1960s, the Republicans have often cast Democrats as living outside the American "mainstream," supporting exotic values popular in places such as San Francisco and, yes, here in Massachusetts, home to both Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy.

Sometimes directly and often indirectly, Republicans linked Democrats to flag burning, libertine personal values, indifference to family life and a preference for self-indulgence over hard work. In 1972 Richard Nixon's campaign came up with a snappy formula, deriding Democrats as the party of "acid, amnesty and abortion," amnesty referring to forgiveness of draft resisters. A similar line of attack helped create the Reagan Democrats of the 1980s, elected this president's father in 1988 and is being used relentlessly by the current president's campaign.

Bill Clinton had some success beating back the charges in the 1990s, largely by declaring that Democrats favored the same values as Republicans. But at this year's convention, the Democrats -- including, interestingly, Clinton himself -- scrapped the defensive approach and went on offense.

Thus emerged a major theme of this fall's campaign: that Republicans are a party of dividers who can win only by setting one group of Americans against another.

Clinton established the theme in his speech on the convention's first night. "They need a divided America," Clinton said of Republicans. "We don't." Clinton saw the country as favoring Democratic solutions on the practical issues of education, child care, job creation and tax fairness. Republicans thus need to bury such issues beneath controversies over gay rights, abortion and race.

A stout rejection of that sort of politics lay at the heart of Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama's remarkable keynote address. "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America," Obama declared and then riffed on the division of the country between red, Republican states and blue, Democratic states. "We coach Little League in the blue states and yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states."

And vice presidential nominee John Edwards kept up the barrage, contrasting "the tired, old, hateful, negative politics of the past" with "the politics of hope, the politics of what's possible."

Attacking divisiveness could yield multiple dividends in the fall. Having laid down their argument, Democrats can respond to Republican attacks with a breezy, Reaganesque "there they go again." The Kerry campaign expects President Bush to continue his withering assault on the Democratic candidate. By placing every Republican attack in the context of "old, hateful, negative politics," Democrats hope to raise the cost to Republicans of running the campaign that Bush's advisers will need to run if the president's popularity ratings don't improve.

But Democrats see the call for national unity as providing them an even larger benefit in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina argued that Americans felt "a sense of common purpose" after the terrorist assaults, are disappointed that the feeling of solidarity has ebbed and yearn to bring it back. Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota linked Bush directly to the loss of national cohesiveness. "Bush said he was going to be a uniter, not a divider," Conrad said, "and now it turns out that he's divided us at the very moment when we most need to be united."

It's commonly said that this convention was designed to "move the Democrats to the center." Actually, it was a convention designed to move the center toward the Democrats. Throughout the convention, the large screen above the podium showcased stories of Republicans who are now for Kerry and former Republicans who are now Democrats.

Since when has a Democratic convention featured so many retired generals? Since when have Democrats spoken so much about the needs of veterans, reservists and the nation's military personnel? Since when have Democrats argued so explicitly and vociferously that their approach to national security is both tougher and smarter than the Republican approach?

This was the convention of a party that thinks discontent with President Bush could move the political argument in a different direction and new constituencies the Democrats' way. A party so accustomed to beating back the attacks of others has made clear that this time it is taking the fight to its adversary.

I'll be pulling in "reaction" stories from papers across the country today. Here are some excerpts from the WaPo this morning, taking the temperature in Virginia, which is moving into "battleground" status for the fall.

Across State, Kerry Backers Sense a Shift
Echoing Warner's Words, Democrats Think Nominee Can Upend Decades of GOP Domination

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 30, 2004; Page A21

Democrats who gathered last night in bars and restaurants and at small house parties across Virginia to watch John F. Kerry accept their party's nomination bubbled with anticipation at the possibility that, finally, their vote for president might just matter again.

Earlier, Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) told a national audience what he and the leaders of the Massachusetts senator's campaign have been saying to pundits and reporters all week in Boston: that Virginia, which has not gone for a Democratic presidential candidate in four decades, is in play.

"Moses wandered in the desert for 40 years," Warner said in his convention speech. "Virginia has been wandering in the Republican desert for 40 years. But let me tell you: This Bush can't lead us to the promised land. This year, our wandering is over."

At Uncle Louie's in Norfolk, home to the world's largest naval base, Kerry supporters crowded around televisions to see the first Vietnam War veteran to become a major party nominee. It is at places such as Louie's -- a bar in a strip mall frequented by uniformed officers -- that Democrats are launching their drive to upend conventional wisdom.

The crowd there erupted when Kerry started with a salute.

"Yes, yes," they shouted moments later.

"He's slicing them up," said Wanda Byrd, whose husband is a retired naval officer. "Man, he is on fire, isn't he?" she asked her friends as the bar's crowd of about 120 rose out of their seats, waved flags and shouted approval.

Census figures show that more than one-third of the residents in some counties around Norfolk, which President Bush narrowly carried in 2000, are veterans. Many more are active-duty military men and women.

Audrey Weston, 47, the wife of a naval petty officer who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq, predicted that Kerry would carry Virginia because so many military families, like hers, are disillusioned with Bush.

"It's almost like they've been in a tunnel and they've just been awakened," she said.

Starting in 1968, the Democrat presidential nominee has always lost to the Republican in Virginia and neither major party has bothered to buy television ads, mail glossy fliers, stage rallies or hold news conferences. And as the candidates traveled across America, they usually skipped right over the commonwealth.

This year, though, Kerry strategists and leading Democrats in Virginia are convinced they have a shot at the state's 13 electoral votes because of dissatisfaction among veterans, lost jobs in rural areas and the changing demographics of Northern Virginia.

Virginia is rapidly becoming part of the New South. Northern Virginia, the Virginia suburbs of DC, are younger, tech-savvy and among the fastest growing areas in the nation. There is a thriving tech sector, rapidly growing defense contractors and "homeland security" firms (lean Repub) along with the predictable retail suburban and exurban mix. Virginia is home to the largest Naval base in the world at Hampton Roads, and the military presence is felt in the Pentagon population in Northern Virginia, as well. In short, this is a complex demographic, given the military's reaction to Bush this year, the left to libertarian leanings of the tech crowd and the historic conservatism of Southy Virginia which is dealing with serious unemployment. Virginia elected a techy Democratic millionaire governor two years ago. Mark Warner is popular in the state and brought it back from the brink of budget death.

I'd call my state leaning Bush but in play in November.

I Want Better Media

Triumph of the Trivial
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: July 30, 2004

Under the headline "Voters Want Specifics From Kerry," The Washington Post recently quoted a voter demanding that John Kerry and John Edwards talk about "what they plan on doing about health care for middle-income or lower-income people. I have to face the fact that I will never be able to have health insurance, the way things are now. And these millionaires don't seem to address that."

Mr. Kerry proposes spending $650 billion extending health insurance to lower- and middle-income families. Whether you approve or not, you can't say he hasn't addressed the issue. Why hasn't this voter heard about it?
....
Somewhere along the line, TV news stopped reporting on candidates' policies, and turned instead to trivia that supposedly reveal their personalities. We hear about Mr. Kerry's haircuts, not his health care proposals. We hear about George Bush's brush-cutting, not his environmental policies.

Even on its own terms, such reporting often gets it wrong, because journalists aren't especially good at judging character. ("He is, above all, a moralist," wrote George Will about Jack Ryan, the Illinois Senate candidate who dropped out after embarrassing sex-club questions.) And the character issues that dominate today's reporting have historically had no bearing on leadership qualities. While planning D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower had a close, though possibly platonic, relationship with his female driver. Should that have barred him from the White House?

And since campaign coverage as celebrity profiling has no rules, it offers ample scope for biased reporting.

Notice the voter's reference to "these millionaires." A Columbia Journalism Review Web site called campaigndesk.org, says its analysis "reveals a press prone to needlessly introduce Senators Kerry and Edwards and Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, as millionaires or billionaires, without similar labels for President Bush or Vice President Cheney."

As the site points out, the Bush campaign has been "hammering away with talking points casting Kerry as out of the mainstream because of his wealth, hoping to influence press coverage." The campaign isn't claiming that Mr. Kerry's policies favor the rich - they manifestly don't, while Mr. Bush's manifestly do. Instead, we're supposed to dislike Mr. Kerry simply because he's wealthy (and not notice that his opponent is, too). Republicans, of all people, are practicing the politics of envy, and the media obediently go along.

In short, the triumph of the trivial is not a trivial matter. The failure of TV news to inform the public about the policy proposals of this year's presidential candidates is, in its own way, as serious a journalistic betrayal as the failure to raise questions about the rush to invade Iraq.

P.S.: Another story you may not see on TV: Jeb Bush insists that electronic voting machines are perfectly reliable, but The St. Petersburg Times says the Republican Party of Florida has sent out a flier urging supporters to use absentee ballots because the machines lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote."

P.P.S.: Three weeks ago, The New Republic reported that the Bush administration was pressuring Pakistan to announce a major terrorist capture during the Democratic convention. Hours before Mr. Kerry's acceptance speech, Pakistan announced, several days after the fact, that it had apprehended an important Al Qaeda operative.

Florida Republicans Tell Some Voters to Skip Touchscreens, Vote Absentee

By Brent Kallestad Associated Press Writer
Published: Jul 29, 2004

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Republican Gov. Jeb Bush has tried for months to persuade Florida voters touchscreen voting machines are reliable. His own party apparently hasn't gotten the message.

The state GOP paid for a flier critical of the new technology and sent it to some south Florida voters where a primary election is scheduled next month.

"The new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," the message states. "Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today."

That's what Democrats and a coalition of civil rights groups have been saying in legal challenges, trying to force the state to provide a paper trail in case the touchscreen machines malfunction.

"It is insulting that the leadership's own party would believe that the system is broke," said Sharon Lettman Pacheco, spokeswoman for People for the American Way.

The machines are being used in 15 of the state's largest counties.

The governor, unaware of the mailing beforehand, wasn't happy.

Pakistan Holds Top Al Qaeda Suspect
Key Figure in 1998 Embassy Bombings Arrested After 10-Hour Shootout

By Kamran Khan
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, July 30, 2004; Page A10

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 30 -- Pakistan has captured Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who is sought by the United States as a suspect in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, officials said Friday.

Ghailani, a Tanzanian citizen said to be in his early thirties, was seized early Sunday, along with his wife and five other African or Pakistani al Qaeda suspects, following a joint Pakistani-U.S. intelligence operation, senior Pakistani police and intelligence officials said. The capture followed a 10-hour shootout in the industrial city of Gujrat, 125 miles south of Islamabad.

"This is a big success," Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said in an unusual late-night announcement on Pakistan's Geo television network. "More importantly, we are certain of gathering some latest intelligence on al Qaeda from him," Hayat said in an interview later.

The operation to capture Ghailani, who is on the list of the FBI's 22 most wanted terrorists, was supervised by agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency and coordinated with CIA and FBI officials, according to an official in Punjab state who was present. The official said 240 Punjab policemen conducted the raid on a rented house in a middle-class neighborhood of Gujrat.

No U.S. official was visible on the scene, the official said.

In Washington, a senior FBI official said the capture "looks like the right guy." The FBI did not play a role in the raid, said the official, who declined to be identified because of FBI policies.

Reminder

Over on the right, there is a new button which takes you directly to the nomination form for the washingtonpost.com blog contest, one nomination per category to a customer. It's right next to the Paypal button (cough.) Below the "Search" box are links, including a new one to my resume, if you or your organization (in the DC Metro area) are in search of a writer/editor, fundraiser, Web content provider or chief cook and bottle washer. There's a link to my Amazon wishlist, too, which some thoughtful reader hit earlier this week, I think, as UPS brought me a rather nice package yesterday morning.

Speeches Open Thread

And whatever else is on your mind. Discuss, pontificate, bloviate, whatever.

UPDATE: First blush review: I thought he hit it out of the park, I may not feel that in the morning. I've never seen Kerry like this before. He's still awkward with his body, but he's doing things with his voice I've never heard before. If this is going to be our man on the stump, I love the smell of hope in the morning.

And the set up was brilliant: having his daughters frame him was FABULOUS. They did the humanizing thing in a way that Teresa simply couldn't, she's as much a policy wonk as he is. The girls were talking about Dad, and the little Spielberg video was the real into. It was pretty seamless.

As I said, this is first blush, and I was very emotional through the whole thing, I'll see how I feel in the morning after I've slept on it. And hassled my way through the DMV in the morning (yah, yah, I put it off and tomorrow is the drop dead day for my license so light posting.) We'll see. I'll leave some open threads for your reactions. I thought tonight was red meat, while sending out some pretty fine signals to the pursuadables.

See you in the morning.

--Melanie

Quiet Boston

Activists appear to save anger for NYC

By Marcella Bombardieri and Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | July 29, 2004

To prepare for the protesters expected to swarm Boston during the Democratic National Convention, security planners amassed a force of 5,000 law enforcement officers. The city built a razor-wired protest zone that attracted comparisons to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. Suffolk County officials cleared enough jail cells and courtrooms to handle 2,500 arrests.

Total number of protest-related arrests so far this week: One.

As the convention culminates today, protesters are planning a bike ride, a flashlight peace vigil near the FleetCenter, and unpredictable "decentralized actions" throughout the city. But signs suggest that there simply aren't enough activists here to create the kind of chaos that hit Miami, Seattle, or even the major party conventions in Los Angeles and Philadelphia in 2000. Now the question on the minds of activists, police, and local residents is: Where are the protesters?

"Clearly, what this represents is that folks on the left have decided it would be counterproductive to protest the DNC," said Jason Pramas, a labor organizer from Cambridge who helped create the Boston Social Forum, which attracted 5,000 people last weekend for several days of lectures, discussions, and performances.

"At this moment you could call it a truce" with the Democrats, he added.

This attitude is a sharp change from 2000, when many in the booming antiglobalization movement saw both parties as equally distasteful. One group's name lampooned the candidates' interchangeability: "Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)."

But this time, with an administration that many on the left blame for getting the country into a needless war, many progressives, radicals, and Greens are saving their protests for the Republican National Convention in New York. "We are confident the New York demonstrations will be quite massive," said Leslie Cagan, national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of antiwar groups.

The biggest demonstration of DNC week was Sunday's antiwar rally; organizers said 3,000 people attended, but police now estimate the number at 700. By contrast, some of the antiwar rallies held across the country in the past year-and-a-half have drawn tens of thousands of people. At the previous Democratic National Convention, in Los Angeles, almost 200 protesters were taken into custody. About 390 were arrested at the last Republican convention, in Philadelphia.

In Boston, many activists say heavy police presence and the fortified "free speech zone" discouraged protesters from turning out. Some suggested police predictions were deliberately overblown.

"The real question for me is why Boston was manipulated into believing that hordes of protesters would descend on the city," Tom Hayden, who led protests at the infamous Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, wrote in an e-mail to the Globe. "It plays into the politics of fear, suppresses civil liberties, and becomes a blank check for police overtime and the procurement of bone-crushing gadgets."

But authorities needed to be prepared, said Boston Police spokeswoman Beverly Ford. "We have studied demonstrations at the G8 [conference in Georgia], in Seattle, everyplace, and they're a good indicator of what we should expect here," she said.

Activists themselves seem to have overestimated possible turnout. Despite predictions of hundreds, even thousands, by some group members, a pro-Palestinian demonstration in the "free speech zone" attracted about 150 people. A "Close Down Guantanamo" rally in Copley Square yesterday brought out about 300.

Suffolk Lawyers for Justice sent home more than half of the attorneys it had available to handle arraignments of arrested protesters.

"We all would have liked to have seen more people out on the streets," Cagan said. "One way to hold on to your right to protest is to actually keep doing it."

Cagan's group, however, brought only a few activists to Boston. In New York it is sponsoring an antiwar rally for which it received a permit for 250,000 people.

Get a clue, BoGlo: while the left isn't particularly happy with John Kerry's stance on the war, this year he's our guy. The other side, however, has sent 140,000 of our troops into harm's way, and that is going to fuel some protests in New York. Oh, yes.

Sibel Edmonds Redux

Whistle-Blowing Said to Be Factor in an F.B.I. Firing
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: July 29, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 28 - A classified Justice Department investigation has concluded that a former F.B.I. translator at the center of a growing controversy was dismissed in part because she accused the bureau of ineptitude, and it found that the F.B.I. did not aggressively investigate her claims of espionage against a co-worker.

The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that the allegations by the translator, Sibel Edmonds, "were at least a contributing factor in why the F.B.I. terminated her services," and the F.B.I. is considering disciplinary action against some employees as a result, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the bureau, said in a letter last week to lawmakers. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times.

Ms. Edmonds worked as a contract linguist for the F.B.I. for about six months, translating material in Turkish, Persian and Azerbaijani. She was dismissed in 2002 after she complained repeatedly that bureau linguists had produced slipshod and incomplete translations of important terrorism intelligence before and after the Sept. 11 attacks. She also accused a fellow Turkish linguist in the bureau's Washington field office of blocking the translation of material involving acquaintances who had come under F.B.I. suspicion and said the bureau had allowed diplomatic sensitivities with other nations to impede the translation of important terrorism intelligence.

Look at that last sentence carefully. There was, apparently, an active espionage program going on in the middle of the translation operation. This whole shop looks like a disaster. I hope the FBI has gotten in cleaned up because we kinda need translations in those languages.

Impolite Fiction

Saudis Propose Islamic Force in Iraq
Idea Pushed as Way to Expedite Pullout of U.S.-Led Military Coalition

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 29, 2004; Page A16

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, July 28 -- Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, in talks Wednesday with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, proposed the creation of an Islamic force to help stabilize Iraq and potentially quicken the withdrawal of the U.S.-led military coalition, according to senior Arab and U.S. diplomats.

Saudi Arabia has spent about three weeks exploring the possibility of an Islamic force with Arab and Muslim countries and the United Nations. The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, discussed specifics of the idea with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan last week in Vienna, according to a senior Saudi diplomat.

Saudi officials said they launched the initiative to address mounting concerns in the Islamic world about the ongoing deployment of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq as well as Saudi Arabia's own security concerns.

"We're taking this initiative because a) we want to help the Iraqi people get back on their feet and reclaim their sovereignty as quickly as possible, b) because there is a tremendous desire in the Arab and Muslim world to help Iraq and help the Iraqi people get back on their feet and c) we're doing this because instability in Iraq has a negative impact on Saudi Arabia and stability in Iraq has a very positive impact on Saudi Arabia. We want to stabilize the situation in Iraq," said Adel Jubeir, chief foreign policy adviser to Abdullah.

A senior Saudi official said that no countries had signed on but that Pakistan, Malaysia, Algeria, Bangladesh and Morocco were among strong possibilities. Countries that border Iraq, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, would not be included, he said.

The State Department, which has been in charge of Iraq policy since the June 28 handover of political power to an interim government, reacted positively to the concept.

"We discussed some ideas with the Saudis that they have been discussing with others about how to facilitate the deployment of troops from Muslim countries not bordering on Iraq," the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, told reporters traveling with Powell. "The goal they have is to help Iraqis establish security. It's a goal we support. And we'll keep talking to them about it."

A senior State Department official traveling with Powell said the United States was interested in exploring specifics of the plan. He initially described the Islamic force as "supplemental" but later retracted that and said the force could help "lower the demand" for coalition forces. The coalition has no Arab members.

Ain't gonna happen, not a chance. This is pure image-buffing before the RNC.

AP Spouts RNC Talking Points

Stephen Crockett of DemocraticTalkRadio sends along this article:

AP Story Giving Bush Electoral Lead Is Faulty

Recently, the Associated Press ran a story that was widely published in newspapers and on the Internet titled, “Bush Leads Kerry In Electoral Votes” that could have been written by the Bush campaign. The assignment of states to candidates, the headline and the conclusions were all simply wrong. The Associated Press should print a retraction and work to see that it is widely published.

Using their numbers, the solid Bush states (even including the faulty assignment of Tennessee) have only 144 electoral votes. The solid Kerry states (even without adding Pennsylvania) give Kerry 168 electoral votes.

The AP ran this story last Saturday and it was picked up everywhere--Google reveals 120K hits--so this extremely misleading perception has been disseminated everywhere. But now you know the truth.

Bigotry Remains

Arab Americans Report Abuse
U.-Mich. Study Finds Nearly 60 Percent Fear for Families

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 29, 2004; Page A05

Fifteen percent of Arab Americans in the Detroit area said they have experienced harassment or intimidation since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and a significant number wish other Americans understood them better, according to a University of Michigan report to be released today.

Derogatory comments -- "Go back where you came from!" or "Ooh, are you a member of al Qaeda?" -- were the most common form of abuse. Others alleged job discrimination and a small number reported physical assaults, researchers said.

Forty-two percent of Muslim Arabs interviewed for the survey in Detroit -- an area with one of the largest concentrations of Arab Americans in the nation -- feel their religion is not respected by mainstream society. Nearly 60 percent said they worry more about their families' future than before the attacks.

The report comes as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, among other groups, relays a steady stream of allegations of poor treatment of Muslims in this country. Many Muslims have complained that harassment and unfair law enforcement tactics are byproducts of the Bush administration's battle against terrorism.

Wayne Baker, the Institute for Social Research professor who led the Michigan study, said Arabs and Chaldeans -- mostly Iraqi Christians -- suffered from misinformation and stereotypes that flowed into a void after the terrorist attacks.

"After 9/11, it was very clear that most Americans knew very little about Arab Americans," Baker said. The report also found that 50 percent of respondents believe U.S. news coverage is biased against Muslims.

Researcher Sally Howell said violent incidents were few, with 3 percent reporting a "serious" negative experience. One said a relative had been beaten. Another said a neighbor had held a gun on his family.

Some of the 1,016 Arab American respondents reported harassment at shopping malls or job supervisors turning cold. They included complaints such as one from a store worker who said a customer often greeted him with the crack "How's Osama doing?"

Howell said the news was not all bad. Thirty-three percent of respondents said a non-Arab had offered a helping hand or a positive comment since the Sept. 11 attacks.

This is a discouraging article which goes on to survey non-Arab American attitudes toward Arab Americans and finds a great deal more prejudice than I would have hoped for.

Making Nice

Meant Well, Messed Up
By THEODORE C. SORENSEN

Published: July 29, 2004

Only 96 days remain to take back our country from the most secretive, hypocritical and dangerous band of ideologues in our governmental history. Let no doubt remain; this is the most important election of our time. Either we take the road forward to national unity and international cooperation, or we fall further into despair, division and dangerous isolation.

Our nation cannot go on like this - squandering brave young lives and hundreds of billions of dollars on unnecessary war, losing old friends and creating new enemies, abandoning the middle class while making the rich richer and saddling our children with unsustainable debt and pollution.

The Kerry-Edwards administration, unlike the Cheney-Bush agenda, will invest in jobs, health care and education, not Halliburton and other corporate cronies. We will practice transparency, not evasion. When trouble comes, we will find solutions, not scapegoats. We will protect our borders without bending our Constitution.

I am proud to have led Americans under fire, proud to have fought hard in the Senate for hard-working families; proud to have protected the environment without sacrificing jobs; proud to have prosecuted corporate predators; proud to have devoted my life to public service and the search for peace, and proud that I am the only presidential nominee this year who can make any of those statements.

Mr. Bush, you meant well and tried your best. But by weakening our alliances, our economy, our national unity and global respect for our values, you have weakened our security. Too many American lives have been lost already and too many more are at increased risk. We can and must do better. We can restore our security, our economy and our global standing. I beseech thee, in the name of all we hold dear, go home before you do any more harm.

Ted's making nice. I have no evidence, anywhere, that Bushco was ever well meaning but simply misguided. To the contrary, the evidence is that this is the most ruthless group of blackguards to ever enter politics. They have an agenda and they started working it before the inauguration.

Working for Less

I.R.S. Says Americans' Income Shrank for 2 Consecutive Years
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Published: July 29, 2004

The overall income Americans reported to the government shrank for two consecutive years after the Internet stock market bubble burst in 2000, the first time that has effectively happened since the modern tax system was introduced during World War II, newly disclosed information from the Internal Revenue Service shows.

The total adjusted gross income on tax returns fell 5.1 percent, to just over $6 trillion in 2002, the most recent year for which data is available, from $6.35 trillion in 2000. Because of population growth, average incomes declined even more, by 5.7 percent.

Adjusted for inflation, the income of all Americans fell 9.2 percent from 2000 to 2002, according to the new I.R.S. data.

While the recession that hit the economy in 2001 in the wake of the market plunge was considered relatively mild, the new information shows that its effect on Americans' incomes, particularly those at the upper end of the spectrum, was much more severe. Earlier government economic statistics provided general evidence that incomes suffered in the first years of the decade, but the full impact of the blow and what groups it fell hardest on were not known until the I.R.S. made available on its Web site the detailed information from tax returns.

The unprecedented back-to-back declines in reported incomes was caused primarily by the combination of the big fall in the stock market and the erosion of jobs and wages in well-paying industries in the early years of the decade.

In the past, overall personal income rose from one year to the next with relentless monotony, the growth rate changing in response to fluctuations in economic activity but almost never falling.

But now, with many more ordinary employees joining high-level executives in having part of their compensation dependent on stock options and bonus plans, a volatile and relatively unpredictable new element has been introduced to the incomes of millions of workers.

"Risks used to be confined largely to executives and business owners with large incomes,'' said Edward N. Wolff, an economist at New York University who studies wealth and income.

"But now for many people with more modest incomes their earnings are more volatile,'' Mr. Wolff added, leaving them more vulnerable to losing pay they count on to meet regular expenses like mortgage payments, car loans and day-to-day living costs.

The new data also helps explain why personal income taxes, the government's most important source of revenue, are subject to much greater fluctuations than in the past. It may help analysts do a better job in predicting changes in government receipts and provide businesses with clues to help anticipate bigger ups-and-downs in spending for their goods and services.

Before the recent drop, the last time reported incomes fell for even one year was in 1953. The only other time since World War II that the I.R.S. reported an interruption in income gains was from 1947 to 1949, but that was because of changes in the tax law at the time that affected how income was reported rather than an actual fall.

From 2000 to 2002, individual income taxes fell 18.8 percent, more than three times the decline in adjusted gross incomes, the I.R.S.'s latest statistical reports show. (Adjusted gross income is the broadest category of income taxpayers report to the government, excluding only a small portion of income in other forms, notably interest on tax-free bonds.)

This is shocking. That vague sense of unease that most of us have felt for several years has a statistical underpinning: we really are getting poorer. The Bandit Prince and his Merry Band of Thieves have accelerated the pace at which this is happening, but the privileging of wealth over work as tax policy started with Reagan.

Still the Economy

Oil Price Hits Record Over Yukos Troubles

By Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 29, 2004; Page A01

Crude oil prices jumped to record levels yesterday as already jittery international oil markets reacted to turmoil at Russian's largest petroleum producer.

Tight supplies and fears of global terrorism have kept the cost of crude and gasoline hovering near all-time highs for months, and some analysts said prices at the pump may soon rise further because of yesterday's spike.

The price of benchmark crude oil for September delivery rose $1.06, to $42.90 a barrel, the highest recorded level on the New York Mercantile Exchange since the exchange began offering the contracts in 1983.

Traders were acting on reports that Yukos Oil Co. might have to shut down production within several days as part of the Russian government's effort to seize company assets. A top Yukos official said that while the company's production subsidiaries had received a notice forbidding the sale of company property, he did not believe it would affect crude oil sales. [See story, Page A18.]

Yukos produces about 1.7 million barrels oil a day, or about 2 percent of the world's crude oil.

Oil traders said that prices were also pressured yesterday by new Department of Energy statistics showing that domestic gasoline and heating oil inventories were lower than had been hoped. "There was nothing pointing downward in price and almost everything pointing upward," said Eric Bolling, an independent energy trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This volitility isn't good for W and it has implications for job growth, which has been soft since June. Financial analyst Barry Ritholtz says:

"Ned Davis Research did a recent study on post-World War II presidential campaigns and determined that while "job growth does not guarantee a victory, sluggish job growth historically has hurt the incumbent party." According to the study's data, the party in power lost the presidency whenever the change in nonfarm payrolls during the president's term was below 5%. This isn't a Republican or Democratic issue, but rather an incumbent vs. a challenger issue.

In light of these data, ask yourself: Are politics roiling the market, or are the economy and the market ailing the politicians? . . . While it may not always be "the economy, stupid," incumbents who ignore economic data do so at their own peril."

Back in the Saddle

Former NPR Host Bob Edwards To Be XM's New Morning Star

By Jennifer Frey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 29, 2004; Page A01

Radio host Bob Edwards, who drew millions of listeners to National Public Radio for three decades but was demoted earlier this year, is taking his signature voice to a competing radio universe, according to Edwards and executives of Washington-based XM Satellite Radio.

Starting Oct. 4, Edwards will host his own morning show on a new channel being launched by XM, as the growing subscription radio service makes its move into public-radio programming.

Edwards, who was unceremoniously dumped as anchor of NPR's "Morning Edition" in March, prompting widespread public protests, will bring the blend of news, talk and interviews he was famous for at NPR to the new "Bob Edwards Show," airing 8 to 9 a.m. daily -- opposite "Morning Edition." The show will repeat immediately afterward.

"They want to give me a program, so I can continue to host and be heard every day instead of occasionally, as I would have been at NPR," Edwards said Tuesday while driving around Maine as part of a three-month book tour/public radio fundraising effort that ends this weekend.

"It's also new. It's like being at NPR when I joined NPR in 1974. It was less than three years old -- as old as XM is now. I get to be a pioneer again. How often does someone get that opportunity twice?"

Edwards, 57, had agreed to remain at NPR as a correspondent -- he was expected to return to work shortly -- but had hinted recently that he might be moving on. What NPR didn't know, however, was that Edwards had been won over by the largest satellite radio network in the country. After developing its own music programming in its first three years, XM is pursuing its ambition to distribute public-radio programming and its own original shows in the public radio vein.

With that in mind, XM President and CEO Hugh Panero, who has been developing the new channel (XM Channel 133, premiering Sept. 1), heavily wooed Edwards in hopes his presence would expand XM's subscriber base (By the end of his 25 years as anchor, Edwards drew 13 million early-morning listeners to NPR's "Morning Edition" every week). XM, which offers more than 100 channels, currently has 2.1 million subscribers, who pay $9.99 per month for the nationwide service. An XM receiver that can be switched from home to car to boombox costs $99.

XM Satellite Radio has yet to officially announce the Edwards deal. But Panero, reached on vacation with his family yesterday, could not hide his excitement.

"Bob Edwards is a guy I respect, a guy who has done nothing but contribute his entire life to public radio, and continues to offer great value to his listeners," Panero said. "I could not be more thrilled to be able to offer him a place to continue to do what he does extremely well."

NPR management, which has acknowledged that the Edwards move was mishandled, issued a statement after news of the deal leaked yesterday: "We understand that Bob has decided to end his distinguished tenure at NPR. We wish him the best of luck in his new endeavor and thank him for the contributions he has made to public radio."

Edwards -- who will be working with former NPR producer Mark Schramm -- is still in the early stages of developing the show's format.

"It'll be loose," he said. "It'll be long interviews, short interviews, and then maybe departments. . . . You've got to have the news . . . it's not going to be all features, yet it's not going to be the Financial Times, either."

Panero hopes the show will anchor a still-developing lineup of programming, some of it created by XM and some coming from public-radio providers, including Public Radio International, American Public Media (an arm of Minnesota Public Radio) and WBUR in Boston. NPR has an exclusive distribution agreement with Sirius, the other major satellite radio network, whose subscription base is a fraction of XM's.

The people at XM "get radio," Edwards said. "They're excited about it. They remember how it was and they want to go off in new directions and be part of radio's future. With all those channels, you can do both, of course, and that's exciting."

Can NPR's screwup become XM's big success? We'll see. I'm going to have to buy one of these radios to find out if my favorite morning voice for 30 years can craft his way in a new medium. We're all doing it.

Reminder

Over on the right, there is a new button which takes you directly to the nomination form for the washingtonpost.com blog contest, one nomination per category to a customer. It's right next to the Paypal button (cough.) Below the "Search" box are links, including a new one to my resume, if you or your organization (in the DC Metro area) are in search of a writer/editor, fundraiser, Web content provider or chief cook and bottle washer. There's a link to my Amazon wishlist, too, which some thoughtful reader hit earlier this week, I think, as UPS brought me a rather nice package this morning.

From Auckland: Throw the Bums Out

A reader in New Zealand sent me this, telling me that this columnist is the most conservative at the New Zealand Herald. I don't feel that much commentary from me is necessary. The whole world really is watching.

Garth George: The best place for George W. Bush is back at the ranch

29.07.2004
COMMENT

Back in 2000 I hailed the election to the presidency of George W. Bush, mainly because he was a Christian. I should have known better.

I must have forgotten that religion and politics don't ever mix; and that too many Christians equate conservative moral values with conservative - indeed, extreme hard-right-wing - economic policies.

Bush has been no exception and the effect of his Administration, not just on the international scene but on America domestically, has been nothing short of disastrous.

While I have no problem with the idea that thugs like Saddam Hussein ought to be dealt with, I nowadays seriously question Bush's motives in starting that pre-emptive war.

In light of new evidence - particularly the investigations into the political and bureaucratic omissions and cock-ups before September 11, 2001 - I have concluded that he did so simply because he had become obsessed with proving himself to his Daddy by finishing off what Daddy had started.

I can see no end to the fiasco in Iraq, which is sad not just for the long-suffering Iraqis but for Americans as well. Not that they don't have enough to worry about at home. And the things that are troubling Americans are the same sorts of things that are worrying many New Zealanders.

All of which persuades me that Bush is a mediocre, common, inarticulate and visionless President, the puppet of a powerful cabal of neo and crytpo-fascists.

He is, according to an American friend of mine, "a suit puffed up by the likes of [Vice-President] Cheney, [Defence Secretary] Rumsfeld, [Deputy Defence Secretary] Wolfowitz et al. His USA Patriot Act is his crowning glory - the worst invasion of individual rights and privacy since the Americans interned the innocent Japanese during World War II. If you speak out against it, you are branded a traitor".

The agenda of this powerful group which cocoons a rather dull-witted President, my mate says, is simple. Among other things it includes: pre-emptive warfare; despoiling the environment to plunder resources; transferring wealth to an elite, untaxed, hereditary upper-class; moving the goals of corporations (especially the multinational conglomerates) ahead of the common good; and getting into bed with the likes of the Saudis.

But it is the effect of Administration policies on ordinary Americans - people like you and me - that really strikes a chord.

Says my friend: "The shift of money away from the middle-class to the upper-classes is something you have to see to believe. Ever since Reagan the middle-class has been on the ropes, having lost its purchasing power - which really means loss of independence, health care, education, travel, security in old age, new cars every three years, upward mobility, and all those things that characterised the American way of life in earlier years."

He says a brief populism emerged under President Clinton "but that was quickly snuffed out by soaring corporate profits, dwindling security for the middle-class, of whom I am one, and a real cascade of money uphill to the rich, super rich, and seriously rich like Bill Gates - a return, really, of the gilded Victorian age".

All over America, he says, the middle-class has descended, and continues to descend, to the status of the "working poor". He admits he is blessed that he and his wife own their own home - something that has become harder and harder for middle-class folk to do - and have jobs with health insurance, "which has become a fleeting commodity for the American working-class".

Education, he says, went out the window with Ronald Reagan, and now all the middle-class can do is get "loans" instead of scholarship money, "so when their children graduate from college to nab that $25,000 job they already owe over $100,000 in education loans which they may not be able to fully pay off in their lifetimes".

In spite of being well up on the middle-class salary scale, he says that if he had to send his two daughters to university today, he couldn't afford to do it.

"Something is wrong here," he says. "Medical insurance is a scandal throughout the country, which is the only significant industrial nation in the world with no national healthcare plan. Yet our home is now worth 700 per cent more today than we paid for it." Sound familiar? Of course it does.

Substitute Roger (Douglas) for Ronald (Reagan) and my mate might as well be recording the tale of the New Zealand middle-class over the past 20 years - and the cabal that surrounded Douglas had the cheek to celebrate the fact with a big party a few weeks ago.

There is no doubt that Bush has to go, not just for the good of Americans but for the safety of the world at large.

What? No WMD?

A tip from reader rw:

The real reasons Bush went to war

WMD was the rationale for invading Iraq. But what was really driving the US were fears over oil and the future of the dollar

John Chapman
Wednesday July 28, 2004
The Guardian

There were only two credible reasons for invading Iraq: control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Yet the government has kept silent on these factors, instead treating us to the intriguing distractions of the Hutton and Butler reports.
....
Over the past 15 years, the overall US deficit with the rest of the world has risen to $2,700bn - an abuse of its privileged currency position. Although about 80% of foreign exchange and half of world trade is in dollars, the euro provides a realistic alternative. Euro countries also have a bigger share of world trade, and of trade with Opec countries, than the US.

In 1999, Iran mooted pricing its oil in euros, and in late 2000 Saddam made the switch for Iraqi oil. In early 2002 Bush placed Iran and Iraq in the axis of evil. If the other Opec countries had followed Saddam's move to euros, the consequences for Bush could have been huge. Worldwide switches out of the dollar, on top of the already huge deficit, would have led to a plummeting dollar, a runaway from US markets and dramatic upheavals in the US.

Bush had many reasons to invade Iraq, but why did Blair join him? He might have squared his conscience by looking at UK oil prospects. In 1968, when North Sea oil was in its infancy, as private secretary to the minister of power I wrote a report on oil policy, advocating changes like the setting up of a British national oil company (as was done). My proposals found little favour with the BP/Shell-supporting officials, but Richard Marsh, the then minister, pressed them and the petroleum division was expanded into an operations division and a planning division.

Sadly, when I was promoted out of private office the free-trading petroleum officials conspired to block my posting to the planning division, where I would surely have advocated a prudent exploitation of North Sea resources to reduce our dependence on the likes of Iraq. UK North Sea oil output peaked in 1999, and has since fallen by one-sixth. Exports now barely cover imports, and we shall shortly be a net oil importer. Supporting Bush might have been justified on geo-strategic grounds.

Oil and the dollar were the real reasons for the attack on Iraq, with WMD as the public reason now exposed as woefully inadequate. Should we now look at Bush and Blair as brilliant strategists whose actions will improve the security of our oil supplies, or as international conmen? Should we support them if they sweep into Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, or should there be a regime change in the UK and US instead?

If the latter, we should follow that up by adopting the pious aims of UN oversight of world oil exploitation within a world energy plan, and the replacement of the dollar with a new reserve currency based on a basket of national currencies.

The 9-11 Commission Tour

Force of 9/11 Panel Is Felt
Kerry wants to extend the bipartisan group's charter until 2006. Bush aides say the White House has accelerated a review of its findings.

By Josh Meyer And Matea Gold, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The juggernaut known as the Sept. 11 commission gathered momentum and influence Tuesday as Sen. John F. Kerry called for extending its charter until 2006 and a Senate oversight committee moved up its first hearing on reforming U.S. counterterrorism agencies to later this week.

Campaigning in Norfolk, Va., Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, proposed keeping the independent panel of congressionally appointed commissioners together for at least another 18 months so they can forcefully advocate for their 41 recommendations and issue regular progress reports.

In response, Bush administration officials reiterated that they are accelerating a review of the commission's 567-page report, which was released Thursday. Several Bush aides said the president and his staff are working to adopt at least some of the commission's recommendations in August.

Some commission officials questioned whether Kerry's suggestion was practical. Though panel members plan to tour the country pushing their proposals, the commission's charter expires Aug. 26, and it wasn't clear where the money would come from to keep the group intact for so long or whether its members and staff would agree to do so.

But the mere suggestion that a blue-ribbon panel become a semi-permanent part of the landscape demonstrated the surprising political effect the commission has managed to wield since it published its final report last week.

Kerry had immediately embraced the group's recommendations. After President Bush's initial lukewarm response, congressional Republicans pushed him to get out in front of a groundswell of public support for the commission's ideas.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, for instance, showed that more than six in 10 Americans approve of the congressionally established commission's work.

Great. I want those commissioners out there talking about what went wrong. They can go ahead a talk about what Clinton did wrong--he isn't running for president--as long as they keep Bushco's indifference to terrorism in front of everybody's eyes and ears all the way to November.

Abu Ghraib

U.S. General Witnessed Abuses, Iraqi Says

Associated Press
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A02

The American general who headed the U.S. military prison at Abu Ghraib personally witnessed abuses there, an Iraqi man alleged in a federal lawsuit protesting his treatment.

In a videotaped deposition from Iraq played yesterday, Saddam "Sam" Saleh Aboud said he endured beatings at the prison. During one session, he said, his hood was removed and he saw Army Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski.

Aboud identified Karpinski in a news magazine photograph that his lawyer, Michael Hourigan, showed him.

"He was adamant that there was an occasion when he was being tortured, in Tier 1A, when she was present and watching and laughing as he was being tortured," Hourigan said. He said Aboud did not know Karpinski's identity until he told him.

"He knew she was a supervisor, because she had a star on her hat and she was in an American uniform," Hourigan said. "He said the other soldiers would defer to her."

Neither Karpinski nor her lawyer returned several telephone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Joseph Yoswa, said it would be inappropriate for him to comment on the pending litigation.

It won't go away. WaPo is running it inside, but on A2, not buried. I can't believe how foolish the DoD is being with letting this fester: we know Sy Hersh has more stuff and he controls the timing. If I were Rumsfeld, I would have dumped this completely early in the spring and counted on the lousy memory of the American voter.

Boiled Down

Dumbing Him Down
The networks condense John Kerry's foreign-policy speech to 45 words (or less), and the public doesn't know what he stands for. Imagine that.

By Todd Gitlin

Is it a huge surprise that American multitudes say they don’t know what John Kerry and the Democrats stand for? How would they know? And who bears responsibility?
....
Meanwhile -- third point about what the candidate and his supporters say and when they say it -- it’s not as though Kerry has been exactly quiet. The pundits may roll their eyes at Kerry’s prolixity, but the networks aren’t exactly giving Americans more than a nibble. Take the gigantic question of foreign policy. George W. Bush’s White House, Kerry said in Seattle on May 27, has “looked to force before exhausting diplomacy; they bullied when they should have persuaded. They've gone it alone when they should have assembled a whole team. They have hoped for the best when they should have prepared for the worst. They've made America less safe than we should be in a dangerous world. In short, they have undermined the legacy of generations of American leadership, and that is what we must restore, and that is what I will restore.

Kerry went on in this vein for 3,500 words. And the night of this speech, how many did America’s still dominant news channels convey? ABC: 28 words. NBC: 42 words. CBS: 43 words.

And what's the big news on CNN this afternoon? Those new headsets that Blitzer et al are wearing on the floor of the Convention.

File this under Brad de Long's "why oh why can't we get a better news media."

Reminder

Over on the right, there is a new button which takes you directly to the nomination form for the washingtonpost.com blog contest, one nomination per category to a customer. It's right next to the Paypal button (cough.) Below the "Search" box are links, including a new one to my resume, if you or your organization (in the DC Metro area) are in search of a writer/editor, fundraiser, Web content provider or chief cook and bottle washer. There's a link to my Amazon wishlist, too, which some thoughtful reader hit earlier this week, I think, as UPS brought me a rather nice package this morning.

President 2012

Obama ROCKED last night. Here is the transcript.

Liberation

In Iraqi Homes, A Constant Battle Just to Stay Cool
Energy Rationing Prompts Rudimentary Alternatives

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, July 27 -- In the oppressive swelter of the Iraqi summer, where temperatures reach 110 degrees by morning rush hour, life in thousands of run-down apartments and shops in this once-modern capital revolves around a primitive routine for heat survival.

This is the second summer since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and people here widely expected power to be restored by now. Instead, the city's electricity shuts off four or five times a day under a government energy-rationing scheme while officials struggle to revive a power system ravaged by war, vandalism and years of neglect.

When the lights die and the air stops moving, Thakaa Abrar, 45, picks up a newspaper and begins fanning her husband, a customs worker bedridden by a stroke. Her refrigerator is almost empty, a precaution against spoilage, and she will buy only enough food to cook for supper.

Her daughter Duniya, 21, fills dozens of soft drink bottles with water, ready to pour into an ancient cooler that pushes air through a filter of wet wood shavings. Even at night, someone must get up every 15 minutes to empty another bottle into the contraption.

"This is no way for a family to live. We are tired. Everyone is tired, because it is impossible to sleep," said Abrar, offering visitors a tray of warm soft drinks in her cramped apartment. "We could never afford to buy a generator. When the pipes break, I have to beg for water in the shops. And with all this terrorism, I can't even let my daughters go out for ice cream."

Even in a place accustomed to stultifying summers, the heat seems especially rankling to Baghdad residents this season. In the streets, where traffic is perpetually jammed and many cars are without air conditioning, tempers and radiators frequently boil over in the long lines at checkpoints set up by U.S. Army patrols and Iraqi police.

In the shops, merchants depend on daily supplies of ice blocks, produced round-the-clock in local factories and delivered early in the morning on dripping flatbed trucks or wooden handcarts. The price of ice, once about 25 cents a block, has shot up since most factories had to purchase large generators last year to keep up production; now a single block can cost $2 retail on delivery.

Calling it "energy rationing" is a misnomer. There is less electricity, much less, than before the war. The quality of life for the ordinary Iraqi is a whole lot worse than before "liberation." It's worth spending a couple of minutes to think about the word liberty, and what it is worth when you don't have safe water, employment, safe streets or the ability to sleep at night.

Bloody Day

68 Dead in Blast Near Iraqi Market, Police Station
In a Separate Incident, 35 Insurgents Killed in Firefight Near Suwayrah

By Pamela Constable and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; 7:58 AM

BAGHDAD, July 28 -- An apparent suicide bomber plowed a vehicle into a crowd outside a police station Wednesday morning killing and injuring scores of people in the city of Baqubah, according to initial reports provided by Iraqi officials.

The Iraqi Ministry of Health put the number of dead at 68 and said the number of injured was at least 40 and perhaps 70.

The casualties included men who were lined up seeking jobs with the police, passengers in a bus that was passing nearby and many bystanders on the street, according to early reports. The bomber, witnesses told wire services, was driving a minivan or a small bus.

While the estimates of dead and injured tend to vary in the hours after attacks, the current number would make it the worst attack since the interim government of Iraq took office on June 28.

Today's attack follows a pattern established by insurgents of targeting police stations and other government installations in an attempt to discourage Iraqis from going to work for the American-backed government.

In recent weeks, insurgents have also killed half a dozen senior Iraqi officials in targeted assassinations.

Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, was the site of numerous attacks against U.S. forces in the months prior to the handover of political authority.

Reuters television showed pictures of at least a dozen dead bodies scattered across a street, some of them still on fire. A severely wounded man, his clothes burnt and torn and his body covered in blood, sat amongst smoldering ruins with several dead, some of whom looked like children, lying near him.

Also Wednesday, Reuters reported that a rocket hit a busy Baghdad street, wounding several people, witnesses and hospital officials said.

Politics have blown Iraq off the TV. Bad things continue to happen. This was a particularly awful day. This was another attack against the indigenous police, and anybody else who happened to be on the street.

August in New York

Of Grass Roots and Protests

With the Republican convention about one month away, the city has so far kept protesters off the Great Lawn in Central Park. Organizers of a large protest planned for Aug. 29 were denied its use. Park officials said the 250,000 people organizers expect would do too much damage to the grass and surrounding foliage. Then the National Organization for Women wanted the 13-acre lawn for a rally of 50,000 - far fewer than the 85,000 people who went to the Dave Matthews concert last year. Again, the city said no. It made us wonder why the city was so intent on keeping free speech off the grass.

City officials seem to have two sets of rules- one for approved music lovers, who attend warm-weather events by the tens of thousands - and another for political activity. The latter, of course, is protected by the Constitution. Yet city officials lack compelling reasons for denying protesters' requests to use parts of the park, especially the Great Lawn.

Granted, millions were spent to bring back the lawn from its scraggly days. But much of that money was spent to ensure exceptional durability. Resilient Kentucky bluegrass sod was planted in a soil mix with coarse sand mined in eastern Long Island - a proven base for sturdy golf courses. It also drains quickly, which makes officials' complaints that the protests lack rain dates seem curious.

The largest of the planned protests will be allowed to march past Madison Square Garden the day before the convention opens there. The marchers will then stretch along the West Side Highway at the city's edge. The site lacks an open area to see and hear speakers but is certainly better than the awfully named "free speech zone" at the Democratic convention in Boston - a dirt field under a highway overpass surrounded by barbed wire and chain-link fencing.

NOW will be able to use the East Meadow, on the northeast edge of Central Park. According to Rita Haley, president of NOW's New York chapter, the organization agreed to the East Meadow after park officials committed to repairing holes and gaps on its grounds. There's no such hazard on the Great Lawn, but the chief concern of city officials seems to be aesthetics, not ankles.

It is understandable that those who labored - and those who gave large contributions - to make the park more beautiful would feel a sense of ownership. But the park, no matter how elegant the private residences that line it, is a public space, not a gated community's playground.

The protesters have a right to have their say in a proper venue. In a recent poll, three-quarters of New Yorkers believed that venue to be Central Park. The 50,000 or so Republicans and others attending the G.O.P.'s own political demonstration next month don't have such worries. City officials are worrying about their every need, even concierge and spa services. They'll also be treated to a concert, in Central Park.

Judging from what I hear, Central Park isn't going to be an issue next month. The protests will be in the streets and I wouldn't be wanting to get to work anywhere on the west side. If you aren't going to be in town for the convention or the protests, this would be an excellent time to learn about Vermont or Atlantic Canada. Lac Bras D'or in Nova Scotia is lovely this time of year.

Try Anything Once

A Novel Tactic on Warming

Published: July 28, 2004

Moving aggrively to compensate for Washington's unwillingness to tackle the threat of global warming, New York, seven other states and New York City filed suit last week against five of the country's largest power companies. Though the suit's legal prospects are unclear, its political implications are not. Once again, the states are asserting their right to remedy environmental problems that the Bush administration and Congress have ignored.

The lawsuit is the first by local governments aimed at forcing companies outside their jurisdictions to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas believed to be largely responsible for the warming trend. The list of defendants reads like a who's who of the industry: the American Electric Power Company, the Southern Company, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Xcel Energy and the Cinergy Corporation. Together, they own or operate 174 power plants in 20 states that emit almost a quarter of the utility industry's carbon dioxide emissions and about 10 percent of the nation's total emissions.

The companies do not dispute the notion that carbon dioxide is a big contributor to climate warming. They complain instead that they are being unfairly singled out and, further, that the states are usurping Congress's power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. But since neither Congress nor the administration has shown much interest in pushing comprehensive legislation to regulate these gases, the states can hardly be blamed for using the levers at hand.

The attorneys general, including Eliot Spitzer of New York, are to some extent in uncharted legal waters. The novel basis for their action is the common law of public nuisance, and the states will have to persuade a judge that global warming is a "public nuisance'' that harms, or might harm, the residents of the states bringing the action.

They could well prevail. Few mainstream scientists doubt that the threat of warming is real and that carbon dioxide is a major cause. Moreover, this particular group of attorneys general, mostly Northeasterners, have already demonstrated an ability to use the courts to force action on problems that Washington ignores - most recently lawsuits pressuring utilities to reduce emissions of nitrogen and sulfur dioxide. Their hope now is to do the same with a gas that could ultimately prove far more dangerous.

I have dreams at night about Elliot Spitzer.

Fleeing

Medecins Sans Frontiers Group Will Leave Afghanistan, AP Says

July 28 (Bloomberg) -- Medecins Sans Frontiers, a Brussels- based aid agency, said it is withdrawing from Afghanistan because of the lack of security and attempts by the U.S.-led coalition to make aid a political issue, the Associated Press reported.

The Nobel Peace prize-winning agency, in a statement from the capital, Kabul, criticized an Afghan government investigation into the killing in June of five of its workers in northeastern Afghanistan, AP said. It also said there are concerns about more attacks on aid workers, the news agency reported.

U.S.-led forces are trying to use the delivery of aid for ``military and political motives,'' AP cited the group as saying.

The fatalities last month were the first ever suffered by Medicins Sans Frontiers, which was set up in 1971. Coalition forces have distributed leaflets in southern Afghanistan saying information must be given on suspected Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters so that humanitarian aid will continue to be delivered in the region, the group said in May on its Web site.

When Doctors Without Borders decides to leave, you have trouble on your hands. They are the first in/last out agency, and will go where no one else will go. If they are leaving Afghanistan, the message is that we've lost. If you've been hanging out here, you already knew that.

News

I've got to take care of a bunch of business in the morning away from the glowing screen. I'll get back as fast as I can, start as early as I can. Notice the washpo blog link over on the right, up top. A little further down on the right is my resume, if you have a job on offer. I'm for bed now.

I offered a friend a kidney today. I'll be tested for compatibility in three weeks. If I'm the match, I'm going through with it. You couldn't have a better friend than Br. Ben. If I'm the one who can clean his blood, he's got a kidney. Now, I'm exhausted and I'll be back with you in the morning. Don't forget to leave comments.

Watch the convention and leave your remarks. I've had enough for one day.

cheers.

Just Change the Last Letter

Caution on Iran

July 27, 2004

THE SHAPING of US policy toward Iran will be a crucial task for the next president. The soundest approach will avoid the extremes of forceful regime change or abject appeasement. The president will need to find pragmatic yet principled ways of dealing with a clerical regime that is despised by most Iranians but is nevertheless capable of causing enormous grief before it goes the way of other aggressive dictatorships.

The Bush administration's stance toward Tehran has fluctuated, with periods of dialogue and incipient cooperation interrupted by confrontation over Iran's nuclear program, its involvement in terrorism, and its flagrant meddling in postwar Iraq. This drift cannot go on. The stakes are too high not only for Washington and Tehran but also for the Gulf region, central Asia, and the larger Middle East.

The difficulty of dealing with the regime in Tehran is illustrated by the recent disclosure that eight of the Sept. 11 hijackers were allowed to enter Iran from Afghanistan without having an Iranian entry stamp recorded in their passports. the acting CIA director, John McLaughlin, said, "We have no evidence that there is some sort of official sanction by the government of Iran for this activity." Though it is unlikely Iranian officials knew what the Al Qaeda operatives were going to do, US intelligence suspects that Tehran colluded with Al Qaeda in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia and has sheltered Al Qaeda figures.

One answer to the question of how to deal with Iran comes from a report by an independent task force of the Council on Foreign Relations. Since the ruling mullahs are "solidly entrenched and the country is not on the brink of a revolutionary upheaval," the report argues, Washington should explore a "limited or selective engagement" with Tehran.

The report draws upon unofficial talks between task force members and diverse Iranian interlocutors. It reflects the judgment of Iran specialists, retired diplomats, former CIA director Robert Gates, and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Some of these notables have long favored rapprochement with Tehran. They propose eschewing any "grand bargain," seeking instead a "compartmentalized" dialogue that could lead to cooperation in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also would give Iran access to fuel for peaceful nuclear energy if the regime ceases its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

This issue alone is worth the replacement of W. The Iranians threw the IAEA out and restarted it's nuclear program.

International Man of Mystery

Probably the biggest news in the lefty blogosphere around the convention is the outing of Atrios. He did it himself a day or so ago rather unobtrusively on his own blog. Jeralyn Merritt of Talk Left has a photo. He is Duncan Black, an economist who taught most recently at Bryn Mawr.

The Kindness of Strangers

Thanks to the generous efforts of Reid Stott, Web designer and photographer extraordinaire, some improvements have been made to the site today, and there are more to come if I can find time to update the blogroll. The links above take you to Reid's blog and photography and Web design portfolios. He does superb work.

Look over on the right sidebar. At the top of the column you'll see a button which allows you to make direct nominations to the washingtonpost.com blogging contest. You're one click away.

Underneath the "Search" box on the right is a link to my resume. If you or your organization are looking for a writer/editor, professional fundraiser, web content provider or....I'm open to suggestions...please take a look and follow the contact information. I'd prefer to stay in the Washington, DC, area but I'm willing to move for the right situation.

No Excuses

Robert Scheer:
An Excuse-Spouting Bush Is Busted by 9/11 Report

Bush was not the first U.S. president to play footsie with Muslim extremists in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, nor was the Clinton administration without fault in its fitful and ineffective response to the Al Qaeda threat. But there was simply no excuse for the near-total indifference of the new president and his top Cabinet officials to strenuous warnings from the outgoing Clinton administration and the government's counter-terrorism experts that something terrible was coming, fast and hard, from Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden's gang, they said repeatedly, was planning "near-term attacks," which Al Qaeda operatives expected "to have dramatic consequences of catastrophic proportions."

As early as May 2001, the FBI was receiving tips that Bin Laden supporters were planning attacks in the U.S., possibly including the hijacking of planes. On May 29, White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke wrote national security advisor Condoleezza Rice that "when these attacks [on Israeli or U.S. facilities] occur, as they likely will, we will wonder what more we could have done to stop them." At the end of June, the commission wrote, "the intelligence reporting consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a calamitous level." In early July, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft was told "that preparations for multiple attacks [by Al Qaeda] were in late stages or already complete and that little additional warning could be expected." By month's end, "the system was blinking red" and could not "get any worse," then-CIA Director George Tenet told the 9/11 commission.

It was at this point, of course, that George W. Bush began the longest presidential vacation in 32 years. On the very first day of his visit to his Texas ranch, Aug. 6, Bush received the now-infamous two-page intelligence alert titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States." Yet instead of returning to the capital to mobilize an energetic defensive posture, he spent an additional 27 days away as the government languished in summer mode, in deep denial.

"In sum," said the 9/11 commission report, "the domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have the direction, and did not have a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened. Transportation systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat. State and local law enforcement were not marshaled to augment the FBI's efforts. The public was not warned."

All together now: MISERABLE FAILURE!

Blogging the Bloggers

This is the obligatory "straight press notices the bloggers" blogpost. Just to get it out of the way.

The Blogger Circus

By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; 9:54 AM

National Public Radio correspondent Robert Smith covered the bloggers in a report that aired Tuesday morning. He noted that their "sometimes quirky, often shrewd novelty made them media stars." Smith took note of the special breakfast where convention chief executive Rod O'Connor greeted the famous 35 personally. NPR followed up with some more analysis of what it means to be a blogger -- and the "definite coolness factor attached to it" -- citing New York University journalism department head Jay Rosen (himself a blogger) as saying that "their impact may be exaggerated" but they provide a nice change from "jaded journalists."
• National Public Radio: Bloggers Offer Intimate View of Convention

The Journal also included some other noteworthy blogger thoughts: "Several bloggers were disinvited because too many people had been accepted, says Mike Liddell, the convention's online communications director. One of them, Adele Stan, decided to come to Boston anyway. 'The great thing about blogging is you don't need no stinking badges,' she writes. 'Whatever happens to you, wherever you wind up, whoever you meet, that's what you write about.' Mr. Liddell expects bloggers to give readers an unvarnished look at what goes on at the convention. But the topic on many minds inside the media pavilion is the creeping impact that blogs are having on the mainstream press. In a recent dispatch on his site truthlaidbear.com, N.Z. Bear wrote: 'They may not know it yet, but the bloggers aren't there to cover the convention. They're there to cover the journalists.'"

Conventional Wisdom

Here's the link to the DNC blog aggregator. Click only if you have nothing to do today.

Community of Nations

John Kerry's America
The Democratic convention and the challenge to Bush

by Gianni Riotta
www.corriere. it/riotta

Nothing unites European public opinion so much as the undisguised or barely concealed hope that Mr. Kerry will win, not just so that Mr. Bush is sent back to his torrid ranch in Texas. There is a conviction that with the Democrats in the White House, the storms that have plagued the Atlantic since 2002 will at last abate. That analysis is flawed. Of course, Mr. Kerry would silence the more raucous unilateralist tones and the neocon propaganda, but US-European Union understanding on Iraq, Afghanistan, trade, NATO and relationships with Russia and China still needs to be patiently sewn back together, stitch by stitch.

If he is elected, Mr. Kerry will offer a climate of collaboration, but will ask for diplomatic and military commitment. Mr. Bush's adversaries, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder, and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, will no longer be able to restrict themselves to saying no. If the dialogue is going to bear fruit, they will have to discuss proposals, negotiate, and cooperate. All through his life, from peace marches to the Senate, Mr. Kerry has built up a personality that is more suited to maturing with events than forcibly imposing itself on reality. In tandem with John Edwards as vice president, he may reopen the debate, but to make any progress on the difficult agenda of the present, he will need a new, united Europe that can maneuver on everything from tariff agreements to peacekeeping in Sudan.

That is what a President John Kerry will be asking for, and it is already written in the ponderous party platform that will be elected at Boston. We shall see how many of Mr. Kerry's current fans will actually give him a hand. The "struggle of ideas" to root democracy and rights, and to defeat terrorism, cannot be fought and won by the United States alone. Mr. Kerry will probably listen more than Mr. Bush, but the Europeans will have to do their bit. If they offer Mr. Kerry elegant chit-chat, we will no longer find agreement on anything - war or peace - and the storm over the Atlantic will be set to lash the entire planet.

The whole world is watching. It really is.

Here We Go Again

Bush's 9/11 Farce

By Richard Cohen

The spirit of Mrs. Hobby lives on in George W. Bush. Almost three years after the events of Sept. 11, 2001 -- the biggest intelligence failure in U.S. history -- and after his own administration went to war for reasons that did not exist, the president has ordered his crack staff to see which of the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations can be implemented fast and without congressional approval. Bush, you will recall, opposed the creation of the commission in the first place.

"We will move on all fronts very aggressively in the coming days and weeks," a presidential aide told reporters down at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Tex. "We're going to focus on all the recommendations and determine which ones can be done through executive branch action. The president said he wants this on a fast track."

This is Hobbyism at its most egregious. She, too, was a wealthy Texan, and maybe there is a kind of softheadedness that afflicts that state's more affluent citizens. But it takes a New York kind of chutzpah for Bush to suddenly announce he will do what he has put off doing for lo these past three years. In that time the president steadfastly stood by his team of jolly incompetents who, rather than explain what had gone wrong, merely slapped Bush on the back and bonded with him in a manly fashion. George Tenet stayed at the head of the CIA even after he had assured Bush that it was a "slam-dunk" that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction.

Why the sudden alacrity? It's because the chairman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton, have been all over the airwaves warning that another terrorist attack could be imminent and that the nation's intelligence apparatus, so obviously broken, has yet to be fixed. They recommended a host of measures, some of which -- improved border and port security, an integrated "watch list," etc. -- you would have thought would have been implemented on Sept. 12, 2001. Insistently, the commissioners recommended speed. To paraphrase: Lives are in danger and little is being done.

So dire is the situation that even Congress is threatening action. It will actually hold hearings in August and then, if the past is prologue, do nothing more. Very often this is the very best thing Congress can do for a grateful nation, but not in this case. Some serious work needs to be done -- more serious than campaigning or taking a vacation or, as is happening here, downing the canapes so kindly supplied by lobbyists. In fact, there is something a bit wacky about the Democratic Party taking a week to mount a meaningless Mardi Gras when the terrorism clock supposedly ticks closer to midnight.

Still, it is the president who runs the government. Now he suddenly discovers he is expected to do something about national security. He cannot be serious -- and rest assured he is not. The many months of inactivity in this area offer eloquent testimony to Bush's firm belief that little needs to be fixed. In the same way he could not answer earlier this year what mistakes he had made as president, he cannot even say what mistakes his government made that might have led to Sept. 11 and the debacle in Iraq.

Now we are engaged in a great farce. Outside my hotel room, a good piece of the nation's political talent is engaged in a purposeless convention to nominate a man who has already been nominated. And down in Crawford, the White House staff is dutifully feeding the press accounts of Bush's newfound concern about what ails the intelligence community and even -- imagine! -- that Bush took the Sept. 11 commission's report with him. From somewhere, Oveta Culp Hobby smiles. She is finally off the hook.

Let's see: the 9/11 commission and John Ashcroft tell us that another attack is imminent and W goes on vacation. Where have we seen that before?

Where DID I put that duct tape?

Opening Night

Bill Clinton's speech

For those of us who missed it--it was too late for me--click to go below the fold.

UPDATE: This is one hell of a speech.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to be here with you.

I am honored to share this podium with my senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. And I want to thank the people of New York for giving the best public servant in my family a chance to continue serving the public. Thank you. I am also — I'm going to say that again, in case you didn't hear it.

I'm honored to be here tonight. And I want to thank the people of New York for giving Hillary the chance to continue to serve in public life.

I am very proud of her. And we are both very grateful to all of you, especially my good friends from Arkansas, for giving me the chance to serve in the White House for eight years.

I am honored to share this night with President Carter, for whom I worked in 1976 and who has inspired the world with his work for peace, democracy and human rights.

I am honored to share it with Al Gore, my friend and my partner for eight years, who played such a large role in building the prosperity and peace that we left America in 2000.

And Al Gore, as he showed again tonight, demonstrated incredible patriotism and grace under pressure. He is the living embodiment of the principle that every vote counts.

And this year, we're going to make sure they're all counted in every state in America. My friends, after three conventions as a candidate or a president, tonight I come to you as a citizen, returning to the role that I have played for most of my life, as a foot soldier in our fight for the future, as we nominate in Boston a true New England Patriot for president.

Now this state, who gave us in other times of challenge John Adams and John Kennedy, has given us John Kerry, a good man, a great senator, a visionary leader. And we are all here to do what we can to make him the next president of the United States.

My friends, we are constantly being told that America is deeply divided. But all Americans value freedom and faith and family. We all honor the service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform, in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world.

We all want good jobs, good schools, health care, safe streets, a clean environment. We all want our children to grow up in a secure America leading the world toward a peaceful and prosperous future.

Our differences are in how we can best achieve these things in a time of unprecedented change. Therefore, we Democrats will bring to the American people this year a positive campaign, arguing not who is a good or a bad person, but what is the best way to build a safe and prosperous world our children deserve.

The 21st century is marked by serious security threats, serious economic challenges and serious problems, from AIDS to global warming to the continuing turmoil in the Middle East.

But it is also full of amazing opportunities to create millions of new jobs and clean energy and biotechnology, to restore our manufacturing base and reap the benefits of the global economy, through our diversity and our commitment to decent labor and environmental standards for people all across the world and to create a world where we can celebrate our religious, our racial, our ethnic, our tribal differences because our common humanity matters most of all.

To build that kind of world, we must make the right choices. And we must have a president who will lead the way. Democrats and Republicans have very different and deeply felt ideas about what choices we should make. They're rooted in fundamentally different views of how we should meet our common challenges at home, and how we should play our role in the world.

We Democrats want to build a world and an America of shared responsibilities and shared benefits. We want a world with more global cooperation where we act alone only when we absolutely have to.

We think the role of government should be to give people the tools to create the conditions to make the most of their own lives. And we think everybody should have that chance.

On the other hand, the Republicans in Washington believe that America should be run by the right people — their people — in a world in which America acts unilaterally when we can and cooperates when we have to.

They believe the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their economic, political and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on important matters like health care and retirement security.

Now, since most Americans aren't that far to the right, our friends have to portray us Democrats as simply unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America.

But we don't.

Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all just wanted to be one nation. Not a single American on September the 12th, 2001, cared who won the next presidential election.

All we wanted to do was to be one country, strong in the fight against terror, helping to heal those who were wounded and the families of those who lost their loved ones, reaching out to the rest of the world so we could meet these new challenges and go on with our democratic way of life.

The president had an amazing opportunity to bring the country together under his slogan of compassionate conservatism and to unite the world in the struggle against terror.

Instead, he and his congressional allies made a very different choice. They chose to use that moment of unity to try to push the country too far to the right and to walk away from our allies, not only in attacking Iraq before the weapons inspectors had finished their work, but in withdrawing American support for the climate change treaty and for the international court on war criminals and for the anti-ballistic missile treaty and from the nuclear test ban treaty.

Now, now at a time when we're trying to get other people to give up nuclear and biological and chemical weapons, they are trying to develop two new nuclear weapons which they say we might use first.

At home, the president and the Republican Congress have made equally fateful choices, which they also deeply believe in.

For the first time when America was in a war footing in our whole history, they gave two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top 1 percent of us.

Now, I'm in that group for the first time in my life.

And you might remember that when I was in office, on occasion, the Republicans were kind of mean to me.

But as soon as I got out and made money, I became part of the most important group in the world to them. It was amazing. I never thought I'd be so well cared for by the president and the Republicans in Congress. I almost sent them a thank you note for my tax cuts until I realized that the rest of you were paying the bill for it. And then I thought better of it.

Now look at the choices they made, choices they believed in. They chose to protect my tax cut at all costs while withholding promised funding to the Leave No Child Behind Act, leaving 2.1 million children behind.

They chose to protect my tax cut, while cutting 140,000 unemployed workers out of their job training programs, 100,000 working families out of their child care assistance, and worst of all, while cutting 300,000 poor children out of their after-school programs when we know it keeps them off the streets, out of trouble, in school, learning, going to college and having a good life.

They chose — they chose to protect my tax cuts while dramatically raising the out-of-pocket costs of health care to our veterans and while weakening or reversing very important environmental measures that Al Gore and I put into place, everything from clean air to the protection of our forests.

Now, in this time, everyone in America had to sacrifice except the wealthiest Americans. And most of us, almost all of us, from Republicans to independents and Democrats, we wanted to be asked to do our part, too. But all they asked us to do was to expend the energy necessary to open the envelopes containing our tax cuts. Now, if you like these choices and you agree with them, you should vote to return them to the White House and the Congress. If not, take a look at John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats. We've got a different economic policy.

In this year's budget, the White House this year wants to cut off all the federal funding for 88,000 uniformed police officers under the COPS program we've had for 10 years. Among those 88,000 police are more than 700 members of the New York Police Department who put their lives on the line on 9/11.

With gang violence rising, and with all of us looking for terrorists in our midst and hoping they're not too well armed or too dangerous, the president and the Congress are about to allow the 10- year-old ban on deadly assault weapons to lapse.

Now, they believe it's the right thing to do. But our policy was to put more police on the street and to take assault weapons off the street. And it gave you eight years of declining crime and eight years of declining violence. Their policy is the reverse. They're taking police off the streets while they put assault weapons back on the street.

Now, if you agree with that choice, by all means, vote to keep them in office. But if you don't, join John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats in making America safer, smarter and stronger again.

On homeland security, Democrats tried to double the number of containers at ports and airports checked for weapons of mass destruction. It cost $1 billion. It would have been paid for under our bill by asking the 200,000 millionaires in America to cut their tax cut by $5,000. Almost all 200,000 of us would like to have done that, to spend $5,000 to make all 300 million Americans safer.

The measure failed. Why? Because the White House and the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives opposed it. They thought our $5,000 was more important than doubling the container checks at our ports and airports.

If you agree with that, by all means, re-elect them. If not, John Kerry and John Edwards are your team for the future.

These policies have turned a projected $5.8 trillion surplus that we left, enough to pay for the baby boomer retirement, into a projected debt of almost $5 trillion, with over $400 billion in deficit this year and for years to come.

Now, how do they pay for that deficit? First, by taking the Social Security surplus that comes in every month and endorsing the checks of working people over to me to pay for the tax cuts. But it's not enough.

So then they have to go borrow money. Most of it they borrow from the Chinese and the Japanese government.

Sure, these countries are competing with us for good jobs, but how can we enforce our trade laws against our bankers? I mean, come on.

So if you think — if you believe it is good policy — if you believe it is good policy to pay for my tax cuts with the Social Security checks of working men and women and borrowed money from China and Japan, you should vote for them. If not, John Kerry's your man.

We Americans must choose for president...

... we've got to choose for president between two strong men who both love their countries, but who have very different world views: our nominee, John Kerry, who favors shared responsibility, shared opportunity and more global cooperation; and their president and their party in Congress who favor concentrated wealth and power, leaving people to fend for themselves and more unilateral action.

I think we're right for two reasons.

First of all, America just works better when more people have a chance to live their dreams.

And, secondly, we live in an interdependent world in which we cannot possibly kill, jail or occupy all of our potential adversaries. So we have to both fight terror and build a world with more partners and fewer terrorists.

Now, we tried it their way for 12 years. We tried it their way for 12 years. We tried it our way for eight years. Then we tried it their way for four more. But the only test that matters is whether people were better off when we finished than when we started. Our way works better.

It produced over 22 million good jobs, rising incomes for the middle class, over 100 times as many people moved from poverty into the middle class, more health care, the largest increase in college aid in 50 years, record home ownership, a cleaner environment, three surpluses in a row, a modernized defense force, strong efforts against terror and a respected America in the world. More importantly, more importantly we have great new champions in John Kerry and John Edwards, two good men, with wonderful wives: Teresa, a generous and wise woman, who understands the world we're trying to shape; and Elizabeth, a lawyer and mother, who understands the lives we're trying to live.

Now, let me tell you know what I know about John Kerry. I've been seeing all of the Republican ads about him. Let me tell you what I know about him.

During the Vietnam War, many young men, including the current president, the vice president and me, could have gone to Vietnam and didn't. John Kerry came from a privileged background. He could have avoided going too, but instead, he said: Send me.

When they sent those swiftboats up the river in Vietnam and they told them their job was to draw hostile fire, to wave the American flag and bate the enemy to come out and fight, John Kerry said: Send me.

And then, on my watch, when it was time to heal the wounds of war and normalize relations with Vietnam and to demand an accounting of the POWs and MIAs we lost there, John Kerry said: Send me.

Then when we needed someone to push the cause of inner-city children struggling to avoid a life of crime or to bring the benefits of high technology to ordinary Americans or to clean the environment in a way that created new jobs, or to give small businesses a better chance to make it, John Kerry said: Send me.

So tonight, my friends, I ask you to join me for the next 100 days in telling John Kerry's story and promoting his ideas. Let every person in this hall and like-minded people all across our land say to him what he has always said to America: Send me.

The bravery that men who fought by his side in battle, that bravery they saw in battle, I have seen in politics. When I was president, John Kerry showed courage and conviction on crime, on welfare reform, on balancing the budget, at a time when those priorities were not exactly the way to win a popularity contest in our party.

John Kerry took tough positions on tough problems. He knows who he is and where he's going. He has the experience, the character, the ideas, the values to be a great president.

And in a time of change, he has two other very important qualities: an insatiable curiosity to understand the world around him, and a willingness to hear other views, even those who disagree with him. Therefore...

Therefore, John Kerry will make choices that reflect both conviction and common sense. He proved that when he picked John Edwards to be his partner.

Now, everybody talks about John Edwards' energy and intellect and charisma. You know, I kind of resent him.

But the important thing is not what talents he has, but how he has used them. He chose — he chose to use his talents to improve the lives of people like him who had to work for everything they've got and to help people too often left out and left behind. And that's what he'll do as our vice president.

Now their opponents will tell you...

Their opponents will tell you we should be afraid of John Kerry and John Edwards, because they won't stand up to the terrorists. Don't you believe it. Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.

They go hand in hand.

They go hand in hand, and John Kerry has both. His first priority will be to keep America safe.

Remember the scripture: Be not afraid.

John Kerry and John Edwards are good people with good ideas, ideas to make the economy work again for middle-class Americans, to restore fiscal responsibility, to save Social Security, to make health care more affordable, college more available, to free us from dependence on foreign oil and create new jobs with clean energy and a cleaner environment...

... to rally the world to our side in the war against terror and to make a world with more friends and less terror.

My friends, at every turning point in our history, we, the people, have chosen unity over division, heeding our founders' call to America's eternal mission to form a more perfect union, to widen the circle of opportunity deep in the reach of freedom and strengthen the bonds of our community. It happened every time, because we made the right choices.

In the early days of the republic, America was divided and at a crossroads, much as it is today, deeply divided over whether or not to build a real nation with a national economy and a national legal system. We chose to build a more perfect union.

In the Civil War, America was at another crossroads, deeply divided over whether to save the union and end slavery. We chose a more perfect union.

In the 1960s, when I was a young man, we were divided again over civil rights and women's rights. And again we chose to form a more perfect union.

As I said in 1992, I say again tonight, we are all in this together. We have an obligation, both to work hard and to help our fellow citizens, an obligation both to fight terror and to build a world with more cooperation and less terror.

Now, again, it is time to choose. Since we're all in the same boat, we should choose a captain of our ship who is a brave good man, who knows how to steer a vessel through troubled waters, to the calm seas and the clear sides of our more perfect union. That is our mission.

So let us go in tonight and say to America in a loud, clear voice: Send John Kerry.

God bless you.

L'Etat, C'est Moi

Krugman.

Some states, worried about the potential for abuse with voting machines that leave no paper trail, have banned their use this November. But Florida, which may well decide the presidential race, is not among those states, and last month state officials rejected a request to allow independent audits of the machines' integrity. A spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush accused those seeking audits of trying to "undermine voters' confidence," and declared, "The governor has every confidence in the Department of State and the Division of Elections."

Should the public share that confidence? Consider the felon list.

Florida law denies the vote to convicted felons. In 2000 the state hired a firm to purge supposed felons from the list of registered voters; these voters were turned away from the polls. After the election, determined by 537 votes, it became clear that thousands of people had been wrongly disenfranchised. Since those misidentified as felons were disproportionately Democratic-leaning African-Americans, these errors may have put George W. Bush in the White House.

This year, Florida again hired a private company - Accenture, which recently got a homeland security contract worth up to $10 billion - to prepare a felon list. Remembering 2000, journalists sought copies. State officials stonewalled, but a judge eventually ordered the list released.

The Miami Herald quickly discovered that 2,100 citizens who had been granted clemency, restoring their voting rights, were nonetheless on the banned-voter list. Then The Sarasota Herald-Tribune discovered that only 61 of more than 47,000 supposed felons were Hispanic. So the list would have wrongly disenfranchised many legitimate African-American voters, while wrongly enfranchising many Hispanic felons. It escaped nobody's attention that in Florida, Hispanic voters tend to support Republicans.

After first denying any systematic problem, state officials declared it an innocent mistake. They told Accenture to match a list of registered voters to a list of felons, flagging anyone whose name, date of birth and race was the same on both lists. They didn't realize, they said, that this would automatically miss felons who identified themselves as Hispanic because that category exists on voter rolls but not in state criminal records.

But employees of a company that prepared earlier felon lists say that they repeatedly warned state election officials about that very problem.

Let's not be coy. Jeb Bush says he won't allow an independent examination of voting machines because he has "every confidence" in his handpicked election officials. Yet those officials have a history of slipshod performance on other matters related to voting and somehow their errors always end up favoring Republicans. Why should anyone trust their verdict on the integrity of voting machines, when another convenient mistake could deliver a Republican victory in a high-stakes national election?

This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Think about what a tainted election would do to America's sense of itself, and its role in the world. In the face of official stonewalling, doubters probably wouldn't be able to prove one way or the other whether the vote count was distorted - but if the result looked suspicious, most of the world and many Americans would believe the worst. I'll write soon about what can be done in the few weeks that remain, but here's a first step: if Governor Bush cares at all about the future of the nation, as well as his family's political fortunes, he will allow that independent audit.

"He will allow." I guess that is the divine right of kings.

Dr. Krugman, we get to demand such things. That is our right as mere citizens.

The Virus Lottery

Virus Overwhelms Google, 3 Other Search Engines
Automated Queries Clog Sites for Hours

By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page E01

BLOCKQUOTE>Many computer users were unable to reach the Google, Yahoo, Lycos and AltaVista search engines yesterday after a new computer virus surfaced that apparently overwhelmed the Internet services with automated queries.

Access to Google was blocked for as long as five hours, some users reported. Visitors attempting to reach the Web site instead received an error message: "The service you requested is not available at this time."

For Internet users, search engines are an indispensable tool for finding information and news scattered across seemingly innumerable Web pages.

"It was like going without power and having to use a candle," said Andy Beal, vice president of marketing at WebSourced Inc., a Web site promotion firm based in Morrisville, N.C. "Google has become so much a part of everyday life that I was lost without it."

Beal said he forgot the site was down and instinctively typed "Google and attack" into his browser's Google search box in an attempt to find news about the problem. When the Google site didn't work, he turned to Yahoo's search engine, which also didn't work on his computer.

Several search engine companies and computer security experts blamed the problem on MyDoom.m, the newest version of a virus that first appeared in January. The variant appeared in the morning and quickly infected thousands of computers, judging from Internet traffic monitored by computer security experts yesterday.

The virus circulates the Web disguised as an e-mail with various subject lines, such as "Mail System Error," or "Undeliverable Mail."

Many messages purported to come from the user's corporate e-mail or Internet service provider: "Your e-mail account was used to send a large amount of junk mail messages during this week," read one message bearing the malicious software. "We suspect that your computer was compromised and now contains a trojan proxy server."

The e-mail then urges the user to click on an attachment embedded in the missive. Users who do so unwittingly activate the worm, which often gives hackers remote access to the computer and also sends copies of the infected e-mail to everyone in the user's e-mail address book.

Unlike its predecessors, the newest variant apparently also was programmed to enter a portion of the addresses it found, the domain name after the "@" sign, into various search engines in an effort to collect further e-mail addresses.
....
Craig Schmugar, the virus research manager at McAfee who named the "MyDoom" virus when it first appeared in January, agreed.

Schmugar said that the MyDoom source code has been widely available on underground Web sites since at least February and that the latest version is only different in that it uses search services to help spread itself.

MyDoom was credited by some computer security firms as being the fastest-spreading e-mail virus ever, though its sequels have generally had less impact than the first one. Schmugar said that it would not require a gifted programmer to figure out how to craft the latest modification of the bug.

"If you already had the source code, it wouldn't take a really sophisticated programmer to make the changes," he said.

There was some Internet speculation yesterday that the attack was a targeted effort at Google on the day it announced its IPO price range, computer security experts generally dismissed such speculation.

"If it were a targeted attack against Google, it was not done in an effective manner," said Oliver Friedrichs, senior manager with Symantec Corp., a Cupertino, Calif., software security firm.

Update your virus blockers. This one is particularly nasty. Do you think this was an accident on the day Google went public?

Blogging Biz

The Washington Post is having a contest:

Right wing. Left wing. Indifferent. Irreverent. There's a blog for every taste, opinion and attitude. washingtonpost.com's 2004 Best Blogs - Politics and Elections Readers' Choice Awards is your chance to speak out and vote for your favorite politics and election blogs.

Nominate your favorite blogs*

(Cough.) (Cough.)
.

Invocations

The quintessential politics and religion story, via Philocrites:

O'Malley won't offer blessing; Paulist priest to deliver invocation

By Michael Paulson and Patrick Healy, Globe Staff | July 26, 2004

In a break from past practice, the Democratic Party is not inviting the archbishop of Boston to offer a blessing at the Democratic National Convention, but instead is inviting a Paulist priest who has taken Senator John F. Kerry's side in a national debate over whether politicians who support abortion rights should receive Communion.

The Kerry campaign said last night it is seeking to have the Rev. John B. Ardis, director of the Paulist Center, deliver an invocation at the convention. The Paulist Center is on Beacon Hill, where Kerry lives, and the senator and his wife have often worshiped at the chapel there.

The Kerry campaign said it has not invited Sean P. O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston. O'Malley's spokesman, the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, said recently that O'Malley planned to be out of town this week.

''We never reached out to Archbishop O'Malley to deliver the invocation," said a Kerry spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter. ''We are seeking to arrange having [the priest] from the Paulist Center to deliver the invocation, since that is John Kerry's home church."

Ardis is a member of the Paulist Fathers, an order of Catholic priests dedicated to the evangelization of America. The Paulist Center, which he heads, is particularly popular among liberal Catholics, many of them disaffected from neighborhood parishes.
....
The Democratic National Convention Committee has declined requests to identify clergy speaking this week. Convention organizers have named only the Rev. James A. Forbes, Jr., senior minister of the Riverside Church, a New York City congregation affiliated with the American Baptist Churches and the United Church of Christ.

The Rev. Stephen T. Ayres, vicar of Old North Church, an Episcopal parish in Boston's North End, said he has been invited to give an invocation at this afternoon's session.

The Paulist fathers are the first indigenous American male religious order. They have a reputation for theological liberalism, as well as excellent credentials in ecumenical and interfaith work. One of my best friends is a Paulist. I don't think I can remember ever seeing him in a collar.

The Rise of Corporatism

I first read this early this morning but declined to use it because the language seemed a little over the top. The more I thought about it, however, the more it seemed to be an accurate representation of our political situation. It's extracted from a much longer article, but I think these paragraphs lay out the central argument pretty well.

Groupthink and the slide into fascism
By Ritt Goldstein

In discussing questions of contemporary fascism with Asia Times Online, Dr Parenti said, "When fascism came to power [in the 1930s], what it did was cut back on the public sector, privatize a lot of state-owned industries, abolish inheritance taxes and other taxes on the rich, abolish corporate taxes, cut wages, destroy labor unions, and destroy or undermine opposition parties." He described fascism as simply a tool employed by ruthless power-elites in achieving their ambitions. He added: "There's a concern that we're [the US] heading towards fascism, or that we're replicating fascism today."

Notably, with the Nuremberg Tribunals, society long ago determined that those who may commit criminal acts while influenced by groupthink are nevertheless criminals, and should be judged accordingly.

World Opinion

The Guardian articulates a theme we surfaced over the weekend:

Kerry's chance to shine

Leader
Monday July 26, 2004
The Guardian

The world will not be watching out of any expectation of witnessing the kind of gritty political dramas which occasionally still marked nominating conventions in those earlier times. Like British party conferences, but on a far more extravagant scale, US conventions long ago became entirely presentational events aimed at television viewers back home rather than at party enthusiasts in the hall. Yet the whole world will be watching Boston this week none the less. It will be doing so because there has never been a US presidential election in which the interests and sympathies of the peoples of the world are more at stake than this one. George Bush has been the most divisive and dangerous president to occupy the Oval Office. It is not just a narrow majority of American voters who, according to current polls, want Mr Bush to be defeated in November. It is an overwhelming majority of the citizens of other lands, those of this country very much included.

Senator John Kerry comes back to his political base in Boston as overwhelmingly his party's preferred choice to topple the incumbent president. But he also arrives leading by a nose in the match-up with Mr Bush. Since he added Senator John Edwards to his ticket as vice-presidential running-mate, Mr Kerry has led in over a dozen reputable nationwide polls. Mr Kerry may not have excited the media or the Michael Moore militants very much these past few months. But do not be misled. This is not a volatile campaign and Mr Kerry is steadily building a strong position in the polls, especially in crucial swing states - places like Florida, Ohio, Missouri and New Hampshire - that will again decide the outcome, while also harbouring his big campaign war chest for when the going gets tougher. The longer the campaign has gone on - this contest effectively lasts for nine months - the better shape Mr Kerry seems to be in, and the shrewder his decision to play the long game.

Nevertheless, the hard pounding of the 2004 campaign is about to begin, and it will get much harder and much dirtier once the summer is done. Mr Kerry still has heavy lifting to do before he takes his support across the gap between the 47% or so of the electorate who seem determined to vote for him anyway and the around 53% of voters who say it is time for a change - and who are thus making themselves available to support him if he can complete the sale. The Boston convention - which Mr Kerry addresses on Thursday in his acceptance speech - represents the key opportunity for the Democratic challenger to move his campaign across this gap. It is a chance to present a programme, a man and, above all, a better way of governing America. In the end, US voters have got to want Mr Kerry in as well as wanting Mr Bush out. That is why the senator's task this week is to move from being Mr Not-Bush to being a positive candidate in his own right. The question posed at Boston is: "Why Mr Kerry?" Here is the senator's moment to answer, not only for Americans, but also for a world that is watching and willing him to rise to the occasion.

This is the week for Kerry to begin "closing the sale" with the undecideds. All 150 or so of them. Depending on who you read, I'm seeing a range of 4-7% of the electorate. That is historically small for this point in the election cycle.

Fixing the Medical Puzzle

The Pocketbook Issue

By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, July 26, 2004; Page A11

GOP pollster Bill McInturff recently lectured the Republican Governors Association that bland assertions of economic recovery won't win over the voters. Americans want candidates who actually have policies.

If so, what should the Democrats talk about? Kerry and his party could start by devoting a lot more attention to the issue that, measured in dollars, is already the candidate's biggest proposal: health care. Opinion surveys suggest that a majority of Americans feel so strongly about this subject that they'd be willing to roll back all the Bush tax cuts to insure every American, and that two out of five have trouble paying their own health bills. Addressing this anxiety should be a political no-brainer.

Moreover, health is a Bush weak spot. Nearly 44 million Americans lack health insurance, and the rest have suffered steeply rising costs. President Bush's attempt to inoculate himself by signing the Medicare prescription drug law has failed: Fairly or not, the measure is not popular. Meanwhile, Kerry can boast that, according to the leading independent analysis of the candidates' health proposals, by Emory University's Kenneth Thorpe, his underdiscussed plan would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 27 million, whereas Bush's proposals would reduce the number by just over 2 million, albeit at one-seventh of the cost.

But health ought to appeal to the Democrats for bigger reasons. Like Bush's tax plan in 2000, Kerry's health plan is at once a populist pocketbook issue and a way of talking about national competitiveness. Indeed, if you compare America to its leading rivals, it's easier to argue that future prosperity is threatened by the nation's dysfunctional health system than by excessive taxes.

The United States manages to spend nearly 15 percent of GDP on health, way more than the average in advanced economies, which stands around 9 percent. America's extra spending does not buy better health: In the global life expectancy tables, the United States ranks 48th. That poor performance partly reflects factors outside the health system's control (a higher poverty rate, obesity and so on). But the hard truth is that much of the premium Americans pay for their health care -- 6 percent of GDP, or a bit over $600 billion a year -- appears to be wasted.

If that waste is shocking now, imagine the future. Technology is forever creating new drugs and medical procedures. In principle, these could save money: A high-tech operation might reduce recovery time spent in expensive hospitals, for example. But the American medical system, in which doctors decide which new treatments are necessary while also profiting from them, makes it overwhelmingly likely that technology will drive costs up. As a result, health economists contemplate a future in which 30 percent of GDP may be consumed by health care -- a doubling that might also double the amount wasted to 12 percent of the economy.

Dysfunction on this scale ought to alarm Americans. Any who doubt that the perversity of a single sector can paralyze an economy should recall Japan, where wasteful banks (coupled with a lack of political will to fix them) derailed an industrial express train. Whether that happens in America will depend partly on the share of the soaring health bill that's paid by firms, whose costs could be driven so high that competitiveness would suffer. Already Ford Motor Co. spends $3.2 billion a year on health premiums, and General Motors Corp. spends more on health than on steel. But even if rising health costs are passed on to individuals, via co-pays and taxes, the future is bleak. The middle-class squeeze lamented by Kerry will grow far worse than now imagined.

People are not aware of the systemic problem with our health delivery system--they are aware of their own pocketbook issues, but not the fact that the system as currently consituted, the entire system, is on the verge of complete breakdown. My insurance went up 27% last year, 16% the year before. Those kinds of percentages are not sustainable. This is a public health issue: having ever greater numbers of uninsured people walking around with communicable diseases that they cannot afford to treat is a hazard. Untreated sick or injured people are also a threat to productivity, which is one of the engines of American economic growth. I've been arguing for single payer since I was in high school oratory. As it stands, we are getting at best mediocre median care in this country and I don't know why anyone is willing to put up with that.

Bush's Environmental Rollbacks

Bush's Dark Pages in Conservation History

By Stewart L. Udall, Stewart L. Udall has written, edited or contributed to dozens of books, most recently "The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking the History of the Old West" (Shearwater Books, 2002).

The word "conservation" — and the concept of science-based management of resources — did not exist until Teddy Roosevelt became president. He initiated the reforms and raised the banner, halting raids on the public's resources and creating millions of acres of national forests, parks and wildlife refuges.

Even during the Great Depression, the second President Roosevelt enlarged his cousin's legacy. FDR put people to work replanting forests, bringing electricity to rural areas and enlarging the nation's national parks.

A third wave of conservation got underway in 1961 when Kennedy called for the establishment of wilderness reserves and the addition of seashores to the park system, inspiring conservationists to revive ideas that had been shelved after Pearl Harbor.

My office sorted through the results: Should I urge the New Jersey governor to oppose the powerful New York Port Authority's plan for a super jetport in order to preserve the Great Swamp? Should I travel to Maine to help Sen. Edmund Muskie stop a dam that would flood the storied Allagash River? Could I persuade the budget people to spend $30 million more to prevent development inside the new Point Reyes National Seashore in California? We did all that, and more.

In those days, partisan lines were never drawn where conservation issues were concerned. Kennedy's Wilderness bill passed the Senate by a vote of 78 to 12, with only six members of each party voting no. Republicans overwhelmingly voted for the bill largely because of the leadership of a farsighted Californian, Thomas Kuchel.

From 1961 to 1981, every president — Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter — gave his unwavering support to environmental reforms. Richard Nixon set a high goal by declaring that the 1970s should be the "environmental decade." He created the Environmental Protection Agency and approved laws to protect endangered species.

As the country moved rightward with Reagan, the rhetoric may have been negative, but in the end no effort was made to repeal important environmental laws. George H.W. Bush had a positive record, and although Bill Clinton was stymied by a hostile Congress, he used his executive powers to achieve positive results.

Overall, it's a record that bolsters my thesis that this administration is rowing against the tide of American history. Otero Mesa symbolizes its narrow focus. Bush and company have not put forward a single positive new conservation concept. They have systematically lowered pollution regulations to please favored industries. They have allowed park and forest maintenance to be neglected and under-funded. I view these events and developments with dismay. This is a time for straight talk, for those who love the land to make their voices heard before more damage is done to the resources we all own.

This is a powerful reminder of what is at stake in this election. From God-only-knows what kind of judicial wingnuttery and Supreme Court appointments to despoilation of the environment, Bushco has been a complete disaster.

Spook Goes Mission

Failures of the Sept. 11 Commission

By William Raspberry
Monday, July 26, 2004; Page A11

For all its somber-faced seriousness, the report of the Sept. 11 commission turns out to be a childlike explanation of what went so tragically wrong nearly three years ago.

It acknowledges the obvious, but it manages to avoid any semblance of individual responsibility. "The lamp broke," a child might say. Or, as the report would have it, the "system" failed.

Which surprises Ray McGovern not a whit.

"The whole name of the game is to exculpate anyone in the establishment," says McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA and a member of a group of former agents called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. " 'Mistakes were made,' but no one is to blame. Why is it that after all this evidence and months and months of testimony, the commission found itself unable even to say if the attacks could have been prevented?"

McGovern has no doubt they could have been. He cites the FBI report of "all those Arab fellows training on aircraft but with no interest in learning how to land them." The report was rejected, unread, he says, by an FBI official, Spike Owen, who nonetheless "received a $20,000 cash award from the administration for his duties in safeguarding the American people."

McGovern cites as well the President's Daily Brief titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" as evidence that President Bush and his top advisers had information on which they might have acted to prevent the attacks. Instead, he said in an interview Thursday, "the president went off to chop wood in Texas."

The combination of neglecting credible information and acting precipitously on highly questionable intelligence is something he'd not previously encountered in his government service, says McGovern, whose wife's cousin died in one of the World Trade Center towers. He is speaking out now "simply to spread a little truth around," he says.

And the truth as he sees it is that the commission has made two errors in judgment -- first, the refusal to place responsibility for intelligence shortcomings on particular individuals and, second, the attempt to repair the damage by proposing creation of a super spy chief, perhaps with Cabinet rank.

Both errors stem from the same impulse to politicize things that ought to be outside politics, according to McGovern, who has a chapter in a forthcoming book from the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation: "Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense: Restoring America's Promise at Home and Abroad."

Take the legal memorandum prepared by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales saying, in effect, that the president wasn't bound by the Geneva Convention in his treatment of certain war prisoners.

"Not a lawyer in the country believes that opinion holds water," McGovern said. "It was essentially a political document, one that told the president what he wanted to hear."

Much the same thing happened with the intelligence services, which strained to give the president what he clearly wanted to hear -- only to watch the administration stretch that already strained intelligence into a pretext for war.

Putting the top intelligence officer in the Cabinet would only exacerbate that problem, says McGovern. "Being in the Cabinet automatically politicizes the post. The director of central intelligence need not be above the battle, but he should certainly be apart from it."

I agree with McGovern. Intel needs to be out of the partisan fray. But part of what is interesting to me about this OpEd is McGovern himself. When he retired from the CIA under Bush Sr., he went into social justice work in the inner city. A Russia specialist in the Agency, he went on to serve on the board of Bread for the City in DC. Currently, he is co-director of the Servent Leader School, a training program for lay leadership constructed by the District's Church of the Savior, the founding organization for a group of non-denominational, lay-led mission groups. The model has now spread across the country and is part of the Emerging Church movement.

Being Seen

Officers Question Visibility of Army in Iraq
Some in Military Urge Lower Troop Profile

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 26, 2004; Page A01

Some top U.S. military officers are questioning whether the practice of keeping U.S. troops highly visible in Iraq is doing more harm than good, challenging a key tenet of the Army's approach to occupying the country.

Advocates of the new approach say U.S. troops would be more effective if they were kept out of view of the Iraqi public, and even removed to remote desert bases, appearing only when needed to conduct operations beyond the capacity of Iraqi security forces.

For most of the Iraq occupation, the U.S. military has assumed -- based on lessons drawn from peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo -- that maintaining "presence" through extensive patrols, large-scale raids and other highly visible operations would increase stability. Now, however, some officers are saying that such operations are doing more to inflame anti-American feelings among Iraqis than to secure the streets, and the resulting debate may shape the military's future structure and tactics in Iraq.

"Sometimes the best way is to be less present, and to be focused in your presence and successful in what you do," Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said in little-noticed comments made last week during the final moments of a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. "And by exposing more and more of your formation to this kind of [guerrilla] warfare may not be the smartest thing to do. And we're looking and working very hard to do that through the commanders over there."

The view that high-profile U.S. military operations may be counterproductive departs from the basic U.S. military approach in Iraq over the past year. As one 1st Armored Division soldier put it in summarizing his unit's operations in Baghdad for the past 14 months, "We were everywhere all the time day and night 24-7 for a year -- I mean everywhere. You could not go anywhere in Baghdad without seeing a 1st AD patrol or convoy or soldiers on some point."

The changing view on presence also presents a new challenge to critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who have called for boosting the number of U.S. troops there. In May, Murtha, a decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, said the administration should either increase its troop strength in Iraq or withdraw. Until now, U.S. commanders have generally agreed with the need for troops, postponing plans for cuts this summer and instead maintaining a level of about 145,000 troops.

Somewhat belatedly, the revised approach to presence also provides new ammunition for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's approach to Iraq, which, beginning with the government- toppling campaign in the spring of 2003, favored maneuverability and speed over sheer bulk and big troop numbers.

Tom Ricks is an old hand and one of the better military correspondents working today, but he doesn't seem to understand that you can't have it both ways: more boots on the ground AND less visibility makes no sense. The only point of greater force size is more visibility, not less. He may be reporting what are incoherent mouthings coming out of the DoD, which wouldn't be unheard of. If so, it is discouraging news, and further evidence that very little thought is being expended in the direction of repairing our disaster in the sands.

Boston and Other Short Subjects

Markos Moulitsos asks the question, Can the Democratic Party stay relevant? It's one of the things I'll be reflecting on as the party national convention runs this week. I'll watching it by C-Span. But there is a lot going on besides the Dem Convention, lots of other news to cover, and our eventual nominee is going to have one hell of a complex world to deal with, if elected. One of the reasons this blog exists is to mark the meta-narratives in culture, public affairs and politics behind the horse race, which is not of so much interest to me. Wonkette has the Botox beat covered, and Kos and My DD will give you the latest twitches in the polls. I'm aiming for larger themes, the backstories, the landscape against which the minutiae play themselves out. Keep in touch and let me know what you want to read about.

Plan of Attack

Iraqi Insurgents Using Abduction as Prime Weapon
By JAMES GLANZ

Published: July 26, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 25 - Two Pakistani civilians working in Iraq were reported missing on Sunday in a suspected kidnapping by insurgents, who have rapidly developed hostage-taking as their most powerful weapon in recent days and issued fresh threats against other foreign nations.

The United States military also reported that 15 insurgents had been killed by American and Iraqi forces in an hourlong battle north of Baghdad that involved small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and artillery fire. No Iraqi or American forces were reported killed.

The missing Pakistanis, a truck driver and an engineer working for Al Tamimi Group, a Kuwait company, disappeared as they were driving to Baghdad along heavily traveled supply routes. The family of one of the men made an emotional appeal for his release, speaking from their village 55 miles south of Islamabad.

"I miss my father very much," said the 21-year-old daughter of the missing man, Azad Khan, as she wept, according to Reuters. "I urge the Pakistani government and Iraqi people to help find my father."

In another display of their increasing ability to track and kidnap foreigners, hostage-takers seized an Egyptian diplomat as he left a mosque on Friday, and on Sunday appeared to flaunt their unchallenged control.

The television channel Al Arabiya reported that the kidnappers of seven employees of a Kuwaiti transport company from Kenya, India and Egypt had appointed a tribal leader, Sheik Hisham al-Dulaymi, to negotiate for their release.

Whether or not all of this is coordinated remains unknown. I've seen some sources over the weekend which suggest it is, but I'm not yet willing to publish that. I'm beginning to hear things which suggest that the entire "insurgency" is under some coordination, and the facts seem to be beginning to bear that out.

Mainstream Values Win

Loony Over Labels

By Michael Kinsley
Sunday, July 25, 2004; Page B07

You would not know from the Democrats' three decades of defensiveness about themselves and the label liberal that the Democratic candidate got more votes than the Republican one in each of the past three presidential elections. Another way of putting this is that the candidate the world labeled a liberal, whether he admitted it or not, got more votes than the candidate who proudly labeled himself a conservative.

Going back to 1976, when self-flagellation first became mandatory for liberals and Democrats, the Democratic presidential candidate got more votes in four out of seven elections. Going back to 1960, the record is six out of 11.

Even if you start counting in 1980 -- the first Reagan election, and a turning point in the history of the universe to many Republicans -- the result is a tie, 3-3.

That ungainly formulation "got more votes" is necessary, obviously, because in 2000 the candidate who got more votes didn't win. Or he did win, but was wrongfully denied the prize. Take your pick.

Republicans and most neutral commentators are very, very tired of this sore-loser stuff about how Al Gore won the election in 2000. But even if you put this entire controversy aside (and I see no reason why you should), there is no disputing the fact that the Democratic candidate in 2000 got more votes. He got more than the Republican, even though that year's third-party pest -- another recent but treasured election-year tradition -- took more votes from the Democrat.

Look for very little mention of the whole 2000 imbroglio this week in Boston. This is partly because that year's Democratic nominee, Al Gore, seems to be undergoing some kind of metamorphosis and is not a popular figure at the moment. It is also because suggesting that the Bush presidency may be illegitimate is itself considered illegitimate. Although Democrats sincerely believe that election was stolen from them, they have been cowed by the successful Republican campaign to make any reference to 2000 seem like bad form.

However, it is one thing to shut up about cheating. It is another to pretend that George W. Bush is president today because he got the most votes. And yet the Democrats-must-abandon-extremism story line is so ingrained that professional commentators and freelance scolds often give 2000 the same will-they-never-learn treatment they use to explain the Democratic losses of 1980 and 1988.

Sure, it might have made the crucial difference if Gore had been just a bit more moderate in this or that, or if voters watching the Democratic convention had heard yet another heartfelt assurance that the party had learned its lesson and had written "I will not be McGovernite" on the board a thousand more times. But the party that gets the most votes is not "out of the mainstream," whether getting the most votes is enough to win the election or not.

God bless you, Michael.

The Fun Party

The Politics of Fun

By Richard Morin
Sunday, July 25, 2004; Page B05

Nearly everybody in the greater Washington area agrees this is a fun place to live. But in a town where politics is a participatory sport, who has more fun, Democrats or Republicans?

By a narrow margin, Republicans are this area's fun bunch, according to a recent Washington Post survey.

Six in 10 Republicans said they were satisfied with the way they spent their weekends, compared with half of all Democrats. Meanwhile, a majority of Democrats said they wished they had more fun on weekends, a complaint expressed by fewer than half of all GOP partisans.

To explore this very serious issue, The Post interviewed 1,001 randomly selected adults living in the District and the Maryland and Northern Virginia suburbs from June 28 to July 1. The margin of sampling error for the overall results was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Respondents were asked how they had spent their leisure time on the previous weekend or their usual days off. "The previous weekend" -- June 25-27 -- was a fairly typical Friday through Sunday in early summer. The weather was warm, with generally clear skies.

Specifically, they were asked whether they did any one of 38 leisure-time activities, such as going on a hike, shopping at a mall, dining out or entertaining friends. They were also asked about their political leanings.

So does party affiliation help separate the party animals from the party poopers? Not really. Yet a few differences emerged: Thirty-six percent of the Republicans reported that they had swum in or lounged by the pool the previous weekend compared with 23 percent of Democrats -- perhaps because more of the Republicans, who were somewhat wealthier as a group, had pools of their own to lounge by.

Republicans also were more likely to say they had puttered in the yard. Democrats were more likely to have had people over. Nearly half -- 47 percent -- said they had entertained guests during the previous weekend, compared with to 37 percent of Republicans. Democrats also were more likely to say they had gone to a movie or watched television -- about an hour more on average per weekend than the Republicans who were surveyed.

No surprise at all: we're more sociable.

Funding the Left

Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy
By MATT BAI

As Democrats converge on Boston this week to hold their party convention and formally anoint Kerry as their nominee, all the talk will be of resurgence, unity and a new sense of purpose. Don't be fooled. It's true that a kind of all-consuming, blue-state animosity toward George W. Bush -- not just for the war and the tax cuts, but also for what Democrats see as his venality and secrecy, his contempt for all things coastal, the way he walks and the way he laughs, the fact that he was ever sworn in as president to begin with -- has, remarkably, brought a sense of coherence to a party that had been groping for a mission. Nearing the end of his first term, Bush has at last delivered on his promise to be ''a uniter, not a divider,'' except that the people he has united will be crammed, standing room only, into Boston's FleetCenter for the next four days, rhetorically -- if not literally -- burning him in effigy.

But whether the Democrats win or lose in November, what will happen -- to put a twist on the old Engelbert Humperdinck song -- after the hating? Four years from now, in 2008, these same Democrats will come together again, in Miami or Phoenix or Las Vegas, perhaps to renominate President Kerry or perhaps to give the stage to Hillary Rodham Clinton or John Edwards or to some now-obscure governor. Either way, Bush will be receding into history, and the party's left and center factions will again be wrestling over free trade, social programs and tax cuts for the middle class. The questions that will loom over the Democratic Party will be the same ones that have resurfaced regularly since the end of the Great Society: what, beyond a series of disconnected policy proposals, is the party's reason for being? What does it stand for in the era after big government?

Andy Rappaport isn't the only one asking these questions. The party's decline is a constant source of gallows humor among Democrats in Washington. It is true that in terms of voter identification, the country remains more or less evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and in fact, the best data show that Democrats still enjoy a slight advantage among the ever-shrinking pool of voters who do identify themselves with one party or another. But the historical arc of the parties tells a different story. Since the 1950's, when nearly half of all voters called themselves Democrats, nearly one in six Democrats has left the party, according to a University of Michigan study, while Republican membership has held close to steady.

Reflected in this trend -- although it is by no means the entirety of the problem -- is that the Democratic Party has seen an exodus of the white working-class men who were once their most reliable voters. In the suburbs, according to the Democratic pollster Mark Penn, the percentage of white men supporting the party has plummeted 16 points just since Bill Clinton left office.

For liberals, this is the single most important article the NYT has published this year (and it prominently features Bump friends Media Transparency. sponsored by the invaluable daily read cursor.org.) I disagree with yesterday's David Brooks NYT OpEd (which means that I disagree with Kevin Drum) that our conflict with radical Islam is primarily ideological--it's not, it is much more basic than that, at the level of the gut and of rage--but the political conflict in this country IS ideological and our side is bringing knives to a gunfight. The left has been intellectually incoherent for a while and it is time to get our best and brightest (we have quite a few) to sit down together and re-create the ideological underpinnings of a new progressive movement. I will tell you that I think there is considerable creative energy around this project, though it still lacks direction. I was able to spend part of a day at the Take Back America conference sponsored by the Center for American Progress and the Campaign for America's Future, two of the new advocacy/think tanks that have sprung up in the last year. While it was thrilling to be around a charged up group of a couple of thousand liberals, the panel sessions were more exhortatory than substantive. I didn't learn anything I didn't already know and could have been a member of any of the panels I saw.

Read the article as a backgrounder to this week's convention. I was amused to just learn (via Blitzer on CNN) that Al Jazeera will be carrying more live coverage from Boston than any of the three broadcast networks here in the States.

T Shirts for Victory

I don't normally link to commercial sites, but I got an email this morning which rather charmed me, and I'll be wearing one of these real soon. Take a look. I'm going to do everything I can to elect John/John in November. I like the progressive values on this site.

Who Owns What?

Just As Scary As Terror
Anyone Seen Our Economic Policy?

By David J. Rothkopf
Sunday, July 25, 2004; Page B01

As American voters contemplate their choices in this presidential campaign year, the world's investors have been voting with their money. The early results are in -- and they don't look good for the United States.

Last month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released figures showing that last year for the first time, China supplanted the United States as the No. 1 destination for foreign direct investment worldwide -- that is, money that goes into factories, equipment, real estate or existing companies. And in a blow to fans of "freedom fries," No. 2 was France. Though other major economies also suffered a drop-off in this category , no nation fell as far in percentage terms as the United States.

While such numbers fluctuate and foreign direct investment is just one type of capital flow, this dramatic swing can be seen as further evidence that in the 21st century, America is going to have to fight hard for its piece of the global investment pie -- money that translates directly into new jobs and the industries of tomorrow. Clearly, the world economy is shifting around us and our place atop it is being challenged.

Yet the Bush administration's attention has seemingly been elsewhere -- which may be natural, given the trauma of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and their aftermath. But just as last week's 9/11 commission report revealed the terrible costs of not attending to looming terrorist threats, so do we need to recognize the danger of focusing so intently on one threat that we are distracted from the others we face.

Even as our efforts to combat terrorism continue -- as they must -- we need to regain enough perspective to put economic issues back among our list of top priorities. Just as a National Security Strategy is mandated by law, having a National Economic Strategy should be mandated by self-interest and common sense. Failure to view these twin aspects of our security as interlocking pieces of a single whole will hand our enemies around the world the kind of victories they can't achieve on their own; it will erode our strength, deplete our resources and undercut our way of life.

The OECD report included another revealing statistic: Investment flows into emerging economies grew dramatically between 2002 and 2003, with investors pumping more than six times as much into developing markets as they did in the prior year -- nearly $200 billion. OECD analysts concluded that the primary reason for this redirection of capital was not simply that countries like China offer cheap labor; rather it was the size and promise of their markets. This is a big deal, because even when low wages in these countries go up, that will mean increased buying power -- so the attractive labor markets of today will gradually become the attractive consumer markets of tomorrow.

At the same time, the image the United States is presenting to global investors is increasingly tainted by our apparent disregard for both economic and diplomatic fundamentals. The message we have conveyed in recent years is that there is no economic problem we confront today -- from gigantic deficits to huge under-funded liabilities -- that we wouldn't prefer to have our children solve tomorrow. So, it should not be surprising that other important measures of investor interest have also taken a dramatic turn for the worse in recent months.

For example, foreign purchases of Treasury bonds and other government securities are up, because the way the government finances higher budget deficits is by selling more paper. But the percentage of those foreign purchases made by private investors -- people with confidence in the U.S. economy -- is falling sharply. Instead, foreign governments, which bought only 47 percent of such securities in the first quarter of 2003, bought 86 percent in the first quarter in the same period this year. Almost all the government buyers were Asian, and the effect of their purchases was to prop up the value of the dollar and make U.S. exports less competitive with foreign products. Given their motivation and America 's growing dependence on such investors, this is an ominous turn of events.

Yet our economic leadership seems to be looking the other way. Two weeks after the OECD report came out, Treasury Secretary John Snow told a Cleveland audience, "There is no more serious threat to our economy than the threat of terrorist attacks on our soil."

What did Dick Cheney say? Deficits don't matter? Hmmm.

Amnesia

Republicans having selective amnesia about Iraq

MOLLY IVINS

AUSTIN, Texas – We cannot let pass without salute Martha Stewart’s remarks after being sentenced to five months in prison. In the long history of amazing things said by people in peculiar circumstances, you must admit, this ranks right up there. “There are many, many good people who have gone to prison,” she observed. “Look at Nelson Mandela.”

We live in a great nation.

Unfortunately, we are all likely to be driven batty if this presidential campaign gets any worse, which it is likely to do. Last week, I was on book tour doing one chat show after another and so got to experience firsthand the Republican orchestration of their talking points. And an impressive display it is. Truly, they speak with one voice, repeating the same thing over and over, never off-message – just remarkable.

For the first two days I was on this media marathon, the story du jour was the Senate Intelligence Committee report that concluded the CIA was just flat wrong on its pre-war calls on Iraq. Wrong about the weapons of mass destruction, wrong about connections to al-Qaida, wrong about Saddam Hussein having a nuclear program and so on. All of which we already knew the government had been wrong about, but this was the Official Report.

So here’s the Republican reaction: “See, the CIA was wrong, so you people owe President Bush an apology.” I’m sitting there, brilliantly riposting, “Huh?” Here’s the chain of logic. The CIA was wrong, therefore those on the left who say President Bush lied to us are wrong because he wasn’t lying, he just believed the CIA. And you people are being rude and hateful and ugly and just mean about President Bush, and we want an apology.

What I’m worried about here is the amnesia factor. Am I the only person around who distinctly remembers an entire 18 months ago? This is what happened: The CIA was wrong, but it wasn’t wrong enough for the White House, which kept pushing the spies to be much wronger. The CIA’s lack of sufficient wrongness was so troubling to the anxious Iraq hawks that they kept touting their own reliable sources, such as Ahmad Chalabi and his merry crew of fabulists. The neo-cons even set up their very own little intelligence shop in the Pentagon to push us into this folly in Iraq.

Which brings us to the second talking point last week. Iraq never happened. I swear to you, this war and its disastrous aftermath never happened is the new official line. Down the memory hole. Never happened. You dreamed the whole thing. Iraq is now like Ken Lay and Chalabi. They never heard of it. Only met it once. Besides, Iraq contributed to their opponents.

According to The New York Times, “several Republicans,” presumably speaking for the Bush campaign, noted that American casualties in Iraq are down from last month. Actually, that is quite untrue. Forty-two Americans were killed in Iraq in June, presumed to be an unusually bloody month because it was leading up to the big handover of sovereignty. As of July 21, 43 more Americans have been killed in Iraq, with 10 days still to go in the month.

Total number of Americans killed so far is 901, but the new line is: What War? We turned it over to the Iraqis, see? Presto, it disappears, just like magic. It’s their problem now. Doesn’t have anything to do with us. Bush is out campaigning by calling himself “the peace president.” Honest. “He repeated the words ‘peace’ or ‘peaceful’ many times, as he had done increasingly in his recent appearances,” reported The New York Times from Iowa this week.

Watch the media compliantly take up this line. Truly fascinating.

We’re also getting a new round of “9/11 was all Clinton’s fault anyway.” I don’t think this one will work for the Rs. It’s kind of pitiful, after four years, to still go around saying, “It’s all Clinton’s fault.”

Tell you what’s not Clinton’s fault, and that’s the shape this country is going to be in by the time we get rid of this administration.

I sit in awe at the feet of an accomplished master

Alone

Kenya Tells Citizens in Iraq to Go After 3 Are Abducted
By MARC LACEY

Published: July 23, 2004

NAIROBI, Kenya, July 22 - Trying to save three Kenyan hostages threatened with execution by Iraqi insurgents, the government of Kenya acknowledged Thursday that it was following in the footsteps of the Philippines in ordering all its citizens in Iraq to leave.

The Philippines recently pulled its troops from Iraq, over the objections of the Bush administration, to secure the release of a Filipino threatened with beheading.

"We feel, like the Philippines, we have to look out for our citizens," a government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, said in an interview. "We don't want any of our citizens to suffer."

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell criticized Kenya's response to the threat. "When you negotiate in this manner, all you do is encourage it," he said after a meeting with the Bulgarian foreign minister, Solomon Passy.

He added that the United States might work with other countries to establish a "code of conduct" for abductions in Iraq.

The Kenyans were seized over the weekend with four other men, three Indians and an Egyptian. Their captors said they would be killed one by one if their home countries did not pull their troops and citizens from Iraq.

News of the kidnappings was splashed across Kenya's front pages, and family members of the detained men came forward to say all three were Muslims who were not involved in any hostilities in the country.

"He's a Muslim brother," said Idd Khamis Mambo, the older brother of one of the three men, Ibrahim Khamis Mambo. "I am appealing to the vigilantes to release my brother. He's the father of four children. The mother is old, and since she received this news, she is unwell."

The Kenyan government said it had records of about 100 Kenyans working in various capacities in Kuwait. But officials said they had no idea how many of those, or others, might be working in Iraq. As part of its announcement today, the government called on family members of any Kenyans working in Iraq to immediately report to the authorities.

Clueless. Powell is clueless. The "insurgents" are going to pick off the "allies," none of whom want to be in Iraq, all of whom were bullied to be there, one at a time. We are alone in this misadventure and the guerrillas are going to show us. Will the American media pick up on it? No.

To the North

MONTREAL — The November elections may still be ahead of him but U.S. President George W. Bush came out a big winner yesterday — at the World Stupidity Awards.

Bush was a dominating presence at the second edition of the awards presented at the Just for Laughs comedy festival.

Host Lewis Black, whose biting satire is a highlight of TV's The Daily Show, took pride in the recognition the United States received at the awards, saying: "we are the gold standard."

Black said the awards "celebrate the pros" and "perfection in idiocy" because real stupidity is hard work.

"It's easy to fall down a manhole, it's easy to put the candles too close to the drapes, it's easy to launch a military invasion of another country based on a few blurry satellite photos," he observed.

"This year my people, we scaled the Everest of stupidity and we stand upon its peak."

Bush took the Stupidest Man of the Year Award and for the second time in the history of the two-year-old awards won the Stupidity Award for Reckless Endangerment of the Planet.

That award was presented by Justin Trudeau, son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. He got the biggest reaction of the night from females in the packed house, who hooted, whistled and yelled "yum" at him while he was on stage.

Bush didn't take the category alone, however, and tied with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The controversial Texan president shared in two other awards as the United States was noted for having the Stupidest Government of the Year.

"What was interesting about that is that the decision was made overwhelmingly by Americans who voted," said Albert Nerenberg, of the Main Organization Revealing Obvious Numbskulls which runs the awards.

Nominations and voting took place at the organization's online site, except for the lifetime achievement award which is settled by the judges.

The nominations were judged by experts in their fields — "a bunch of idiots" and overseen by the Academy for Recognizing Stupidity Everywhere.

Stupidest Statement of the Year was Bush's pronouncement that "combat operations have ended in Iraq," where fighting still rages more than a year after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Bush beat out pop princess Britney Spears, nominated for saying, "I do," at her brief Las Vegas wedding, and singer Jessica Simpson, who wondered aloud on TV: "Why does Chicken By the Sea taste like tuna? Is it chicken or tuna?"

Though he is facing war crimes charges after being captured by U.S. forces, Saddam can take solace in the Lifetime Achievement Award for Stupidity, which was bestowed on him with a musical tribute and a montage of film clips and photos, including one of him getting a fashion makeover from the cast of Queer Eye For the Straight Guy.

Iraq and the conservative right in the United States figured heavily in the awards, which declared Fox's The O'Reilly Factor the Stupidest TV Show and gave Fox News the nod for Media Outlet Which Has Made the Greatest Contribution to Furthering Ignorance Worldwide.

Canada's relationship with the US is really complicated, in no small part because Americans really don't know that Canada exists and that we HAVE a relationship with our northern neighbor. For Americans, North America and the USA are one entity, and this discomfits our large bordering country.

For fifty points: Who is the prime minister? How many provinces can you name? Each is headed by what figure of government? What are the official languages of Canada?

UPDATE: As promised, the answers.

Paul Martin became Prime Minister of Canada on December 12, 2003, suceeding Jean Chretien, his Liberal predecessor who served for 10 years. Martin survived a by-election last month and returned to his post leading a minority government. Canada has a bi-cameral, parliamentary form of federal government. The provinces of Canada, from east to west, are: Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario (in which is located the seat of national government, Ottawa,) Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories and Yukon. Consult your Rand McNally to learn the provincial capitals. Each province is headed by a premiere. Canada has two official languages, English and French, but neither are directly analagous to either American or British English or Parisian French. The local dialect of the latter might more be correctly identified as Quebecois. Scottish dialect English and Acadian French are both widely spoken in the Atlantic provinces, also known as Maritime or Atlantic Canada.

Why do I bring this up? Because I love Canada and wish more Yanks would develop some appreciation for the distinct culture across the border. I know Maritime Canada the best, have camped across it for years. I grew up on the Minnesota border with Ontario and spent as much time "over the border" as on the American side while a child. Many of my friends are Canadian to this day, and there is a lot we could learn from Canada, particularly as liberals. Canadians have crafted a genuinely liberal culture and I stand in some awe of it. They are more "European" than we are, while creating a definitely North American iteration of European culture, yet welcoming at least as much diversity as we do through their membership in the Commonwealth of Nations. Toronto is the most diverse city in North America, and that's saying something to this citizen of Greater DC.

If I weren't broke right now, I'd be camping on the beach at Anchorage Provincial Park on Grand Manan Island. Some of the best birding in North America. Period.

And a terrific (and cheap) lobster roll shack right at the door of the park. I can live on this stuff.

Pay to Play

Brain injuries lead Iraq war injuries

By Brad Amburn
United Press International
Published 7/23/2004 4:42 PM

WASHINGTON, July 23 (UPI) -- Nearly two-thirds of injured U.S. soldiers sent from Iraq to Walter Reed Army Medical Center have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries -- a percentage thought to be higher than any other past U.S. conflict, military officials told United Press International.

About 60 to 67 percent of soldiers coming through the hospital with wounds as well as injuries from blasts, severe falls and motor vehicle accidents have suffered these potentially life-altering brain injuries, said Dr. Deborah Warden, national director of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center at Walter Reed, where the majority of patients with suspected head injuries from Iraq are sent.

Warden said this trend may seem grim but the increased number of cases actually serves as proof of an improved head injury survival rate from better armor, more sophisticated diagnostic tools, and soldiers and medical staff better trained to look for and treat these kinds of injuries that would have been fatal or gone unnoticed in past wars.

An ongoing investigation into the lifelong effects of war-related head injuries is at the forefront of these advancements in knowledge and treatment.

"As a medical field, we're much more sensitized to mild, closed brain injury ... and we know that there are consequences and ramifications for milder traumatic brain injury," Warden told UPI. "So we are screening and identify soldiers who have had less severe traumatic brain injury," which was not the case in Vietnam or earlier wars.

With the development of more sophisticated body armor and helmets made of Kevlar -- a bullet resistant material -- the survival rate of soldiers with traumatic brain injuries has greatly improved, whereas in past wars similar injuries would have been fatal, Warden explained.

She said soldiers who survive head injuries often suffer from a range of cognitive and emotional problems, including difficulty with memory, attention and reasoning, as well as high rates of depression, alcohol use, post-traumatic anxieties and irritability.

During the Vietnam era, brain-scanning technology, such as magnetic resonance imaging, did not exist to detect the extent of brain injuries, said Dr. Karen Schwab, assistant director at the Walter Reed brain injury center. This likely resulted in under-detection of traumatic head injury and inadequate treatment, she added.

This led to the beginning of a long-term investigation studying the effects of penetrating brain injuries on Vietnam veterans. A penetrating brain injury is one where a bullet or piece of shrapnel has passed through the skull and pierced the brain. The study is now entering its third phase of research at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

The study was started in the 1960s at Walter Reed by Dr. William Caveness, who wanted to investigate how penetrating head injuries affected epilepsy in soldiers -- who had a high incidence rate of the disease, said Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the study's principal investigator.

Grafman and fellow investigator, Dr. Andres Salazar, wanted to expand the scope of the investigation to learn more about cognition and brain function, yielding results that improved the evaluation of patients with head injuries and identified key components to their long-term outcomes.

"If you have a brain injury and you can no longer do a specific task then it is likely that that area of the brain was very important -- perhaps stored the memories that enabled you to do that task," Grafman told UPI.

"We knew the patients' long-term outcome was going to depend a lot more on their cognitive status than it would on whether they had epilepsy or not," Grafman continued. "And we probably would learn a whole lot about how the brain works and help the military change how they handle head injuries because during Vietnam there was no real standard of care."

In the early 1980s, the Department of Defense granted funding for the second phase of the study, to conduct a 15-year follow-up evaluation of 520 Vietnam veterans with head injuries who had participated in the first phase of research.

The investigation led to many neuropsychological advances that proved the importance of the prefrontal cortex in social functioning, and showed the Army that veterans with head injuries still experienced cognitive deficits -- in social behavior, reasoning, attention and planning -- that needed effective diagnosis and rehabilitation.

"We were able to see that many of these guys were not worked up or evaluated well after Vietnam, which led to new (head injury) units being established in military hospitals," Grafman said. "It also got the military, especially the Army, just extremely interested in head injuries in general and trying to figure out ways to minimize injuries when they occur medically or even prevent them by changing the helmet. So it had a powerful clinical impact."

The development of better helmets has reduced the number of penetrating head injuries in Iraq, but internal, concussive head injuries are more of a problem in this war, Warden said, particularly among paratroopers injured by rough landings.

Only Your Friends Will Tell You

Fortress America: George Bush's re-election hopes may well hang on al-Qaida's ruthless ingenuity

Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Guardian

I have just entered the United States. Since I was on a so-called J-1 visa, this was quite an achievement. First I had to fill in a form asking my host university to send me another form. Armed with that form, I filled in three further forms, including such obviously relevant information as my brother's telephone number, and the names of two people who could verify this information. Then I had to go to Barclays bank to get a special receipt for paying the fee. Then I had to supply a passport photograph 2 inches square in which "the head (measured from the top of the hair to the bottom of the chin) should measure between 1 inch to 1 inches (25mm to 35mm) with the eye level between 1 1 18 inch to 1 inches (28mm and 35mm) from the bottom of the photo". Only a few photoshops do these and, once found, Snappy Snaps charged me £24.99 for a double set. Snappy, indeed. The first time you apply, you also have to go for an interview at the embassy.

Finally armed with this precious patent of nobility, I arrived at San Francisco airport, where I was fingerprinted and photographed. Last year, I was taken aside for further investigation, while at the next desk an official of the department of homeland security reduced a girl to a nervous wreck by intrusive questioning about what she would be up to with her American boyfriend. And she, like me, was from Britain, the United States' closest ally. Imagine what it's like if you come from Libya or Iran.

Yes, I know that the United States was attacked by terrorists on September 11 2001, and some of those terrorists had entered the US on J-1 visas. I understand, obviously, that the country has had to tighten up its security controls. But this is more than just a personal grouse. Heads of leading American universities have publicly complained that such bureaucratic and intrusive procedures are reducing the number of foreign students willing and able to come to study in the US. (I have heard it argued in London that this creates a significant opportunity for British universities.) This raises the larger question of whether the United States' "soft power", its power to attract others and to get them to do what it wants because they find it attractive, has been diminished by the way the Bush administration has reacted to the 9/11 attacks. That, in turn, raises the even larger question of who is winning this "war": al-Qaida or the US?

"God bless America," wrote WH Auden, "so large, so friendly and so rich." And American hyperpower, by contrast with the one-dimensional superpower of the Soviet Union, has always depended on having all three dimensions: military, economic and "soft". The soft power of a country is more difficult to measure than its military or economic power, but one yardstick is what I call the "Statue of Liberty test". In this test, countries are rated by the number of people outside who want to get into them, divided by the number of people inside who want to get out. Thus, during the cold war, many people wanted to emigrate from the Soviet Union, while very few wanted to go and live there, whereas hundreds of millions wanted to enter America and very few to leave it. By this rough measure, America still has bags of soft power.

Yet its overall attractiveness surely has been diminished, not just by such bureaucratic procedures, but by Guantánamo, by Iraq, by a certain harsh, militarist, nationalist approach to world affairs, and by a mistaken belief that the "war on terror" can be won mainly, if not solely, by military, intelligence and police means.

f you look at the results of the worldwide survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre, you can see that resentment of America around the world has reached unprecedented levels in the last two years. The Bush administration has imperilled the economic dimension of American power, by running up $500bn trade and budget deficits while increasing military spending to $400bn, and it has largely neglected the third, soft dimension. Meanwhile, even the one in five Americans who possess a passport have become more reluctant to travel outside North America. To give just one small example: American customers of Avis car rentals in Europe are down 40% on 2000 levels. There's a real sense of a "Fortress America".

Could the liberal, multilateralist, French-speaking John Kerry, who launches his campaign in earnest at the Democrats' convention in Boston next week, change all this, and restore a Kennedyesque glow to America's image in the world? I find many people in Europe already answer that question with a firm no. Something deeper has changed, they say. Even if America reverts to its previous form, attitudes towards America will not.

B ut I wouldn't be so sure. Perhaps it's just the effect of sitting here in the Californian sunshine, watching this extraordinary multi-ethnic society working all around me, but I think America's underlying attractions are still all there - damaged by 9/11, diminished by economic competition from booming Asia, but still formidable. If Kerry can summon a spark of charisma, aided by his appealing running mate John Edwards, and if the monstrous ego of Ralph Nader will kindly fall under an appropriately eco-friendly bus, the Democrat has a chance of reminding us that the other America still exists. And much of the world, even the Arab and Muslim world, will respond.

Which is why, if Osama bin Laden is still in a fit state to make political calculations, he must be backing an election victory for George Bush. The object of the terrorist is often to reveal the "true" repressive character of the state against which the terror is directed, and thus win further support for the terrorists' cause. If the United States had just acted in Afghanistan, and then concentrated on hoovering-up the remains of al-Qaida, the United States might clearly be winning the war on terror today. But, as bin Laden must have hoped, the Bush administration overreacted, and thus provided, in Iraq and Guantánamo, recruiting sergeants for al-Qaida of which Osama could only dream.

I've given you what I think is the most salient section of Garton Ash's article, but I urge you to read the rest. This may be THE piece you want to print out or email to family and friends, pastors and parents who support W. This may surprise you, but this little Bump in the Beltway has readers around the world, and I hear from my readers. The rest of the world is horrified by Bush, and horrified that someplace north of 40% of the American electorate is prepared to support him in the next election. They wonder if there is something wrong with the American character, if we are as greedy, shortsighted, narcissistic and selfish as we appear with the Bushes, Cheneys, Rummys and Ashcrofts at the helm. They always thought we were arrogant, that's nothing new. But the world put up with that character flaw because they also know that we as people are essentially friendly, if not particularly curious about the rest of the world. That friendly face is gone now, replaced by Bush and Cheney's opportunistic, warmaking smirk and sneer. The charisma and extroversion and genuine piety of the Clinton years have been replaced by wealthy theocrats who think of nothing but their own wealth and that of people like them, the worst parody of Calvinist theology.

Your family and friends may say, "But it is up to us, we don't care what the rest of the world thinks." When historical friends like the Brits are saying things like this about us, you have to ask if there isn't a germ of truth in their critique would be my reply.

Preaching the Convention

via Philocrites:

Convention preacher offers US views

By Rich Barlow, Globe Staff | July 24, 2004

Politics and religion rub shoulders in the pew next week. Advocates for the poor have invited delegates to the Democratic National Convention to an interfaith service and rally from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Wednesday at Old South Church.

The featured preacher, the Rev. James A. Forbes Jr., once got an impressive nomination himself: Newsweek named him one of the dozen ''most effective preachers" in the English-speaking world. Forbes has been the senior minister at Manhattan's Riverside Church since 1989. He also will address the convention Tuesday night. Excerpts from an interview follow.
....
Regular churchgoers overwhelmingly vote Republican. What does that suggest about the two political parties?

In my sermon, I may call people to read Isaiah 58. In it, we get evidence that religion can express itself in two directions. One is personal piety, reflected in church attendance and public display of one's religious identification. Another aspect is the prophetic critique. In [Isaiah], it's almost as if God would say, forget about how often you go to church, forget about how many times you pray; what I want you to do is feed the hungry, take the homeless into your homes, care for those who are incarcerated. In Matthew 25, the issue is, when I was hungry, you didn't feed me, when I was poor and naked, you didn't clothe me.

The polls will give the impression that folks are more religious on the basis of how much they go to church. I'm a pastor; I want folks to come. But the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights are rooted in a call for justice. Otherwise, people will punch their cards -- ''See, I went [to church] 12 times." But you did not provide resources for [the needy].

Where I studied theology, I was told that religion is about love and justice, not wealth and power. In fact, I was taught that wealth and power get in the way of spiritual growth. I think they told me something like, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven.

Partisan Season

Voters Are Very Settled, Intense And Partisan, and It's Only July
By ROBIN TONER

Published: July 25, 2004

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Clif Kelley, a retired economist, stood in the leafy backyard of his suburban home one recent evening and summoned his Democratic neighbors, 62 of whom were arrayed before him, to the political barricades.

"We firmly believe that another four years of Bush in the White House will do incredible damage to this country," declared Mr. Kelley, 87, imploring his neighbors to get involved, knock on doors, make sure their precinct (which went to President Bush by six votes four years ago) goes for Senator John Kerry this time around.

"I am one of those World War II veterans who are dying off at a rapid pace, and I can't stand the thought of dying under a Bush administration."

That same intensity was palpable the following day, in Beckley, W.Va., where thousands of people like Jim Farnsworth, a 32-year-old telephone technician holding his 1-month-old son, turned out for a rally with Mr. Bush. "Voted for him last time, will vote for him again, would even vote for him a third term if he would run," Mr. Farnsworth said. "I like the convictions that he stands on. Abortion, family."

His wife, Tina, chimed in, "His belief in God." Behind them, as far as the eye could see, snaked a line of like-minded voters, patiently waiting for hours in the scorching sun to see their president.

This is not the typical July of a presidential election year.

Rarely has a presidential campaign been this intense, this polarized, this partisan, this early. The conventions historically begin the general election season, ending a lull after the primary season has wound down. But for months now, the general election battle has been fully joined.

Crowds are bigger than normal for this time of year, campaign veterans say, and money has poured in at an astonishing rate. Voters sometimes seem on the verge of tears as they reach for their candidate's hand on the rope line. They wait in the rain, they line up for hours to go through the metal detectors and the increasingly elaborate security, they cheer every biting partisan line.

The idea of a red America and a blue America, Republican and Democratic, two countries separated by a yawning cultural divide, has become a cliché, dismissed by many experts as overdrawn. The electorate, taken as a whole, is no more divided over hot-button issues like abortion than it was in years past, those experts ar

gue; a large middle ground still exists on many other issues, like the need for more affordable health care.

But the increasing partisanship of the 1980's and 1990's has left its mark on politics, culminating in the intensity of this campaign. Most voters have already chosen sides - sometimes angrily, often passionately. The swing voter and the independent, once thought to be the models of the modern voter, are harder to find this year, according to pollsters in both parties.

One telling measure: 79 percent surveyed in the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll said their minds had been made up about whom to vote for in November; 64 percent felt that way in July 2000. Similarly, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that one in five voters this summer were "persuadable," compared with one in three at this stage in past campaigns.

I would argue that there is a broad consensus in this country about a large bushel basket of "traditional liberal" values, but the infotainment that we call news seeks out conflict in order to gain interest. Take a look at the headlines in your paper some morning and circle with a pencil all of the headlines containing a set-up conflict. Headline writers are taught this stuff. Look at the he said-she said pairings on the TV or radio "new and analysis" programs. Same dynamic.

That's part of it. The extreme partisanship of the post-Gingrich congressional Republicans, their awful treatment of the Clintons and their congressional colleagues has hardened the opinions of those of us on the traditionally tolerant left. The congressional Repubs, in particular, are virtually the only party in that branch of the government, the Democrats reduced to little more than nibbling at the edges of governance by the outlandish procedural excesses of the majority.

I don't know that the electorate can maintain the fever pitch of emotion that is bubbling below the political surface of this election season and predict that by the time John Kerry is sworn in next January, a lot of the edge will be off of the public's partisanship. I don't think Kerry is going to have an easy time of it, even if we take back the Senate, as a DeLay-led House is still going to be a roadblock to substantive legislative policy changes. But if the Dems retake the Senate--a genuine possibility--at least the the Judiciary will be safe for a couple of years.

Name the Problem before you can Fix It

Honorable Commission, Toothless Report
By RICHARD A. CLARKE

Published: July 25, 2004

Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions.

Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation. (Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of Americans have already come to these conclusions on their own. )

What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in 9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts may cause many people to conclude that the Bush administration focused on the wrong country. They would be right to think that.

So what now? News coverage of the commission's recommendations has focused on the organizational improvements: a new cabinet-level national intelligence director and a new National Counterterrorism Center to ensure that our 15 or so intelligence agencies play well together. Both are good ideas, but they are purely incremental. Had these changes been made six years ago, they would not have significantly altered the way we dealt with Al Qaeda; they certainly would not have prevented 9/11. Putting these recommendations in place will marginally improve our ability to crush the new, decentralized Al Qaeda, but there are other changes that would help more.

First, we need not only a more powerful person at the top of the intelligence community, but also more capable people throughout the agencies - especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. In other branches of the government, employees can and do join on as mid- and senior-level managers after beginning their careers and gaining experience elsewhere. But at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., the key posts are held almost exclusively by those who joined young and worked their way up. This has created uniformity, insularity, risk-aversion, torpidity and often mediocrity.

The only way to infuse these key agencies with creative new blood is to overhaul their hiring and promotion practices to attract workers who don't suffer the "failures of imagination" that the 9/11 commissioners repeatedly blame for past failures.

Second, in addition to separating the job of C.I.A. director from the overall head of American intelligence, we must also place the C.I.A.'s analysts in an agency that is independent from the one that collects the intelligence. This is the only way to avoid the "groupthink" that hampered the agency's ability to report accurately on Iraq. It is no accident that the only intelligence agency that got it right on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department - a small, elite group of analysts encouraged to be independent thinkers rather than spies or policy makers.
....
Unfortunately, because of America's low standing in the Islamic world, we are now at a great disadvantage in the battle of ideas. This is primarily because of the unnecessary and counterproductive invasion of Iraq. In pulling its bipartisan punches, the commission failed to admit the obvious: we are less capable of defeating the jihadists because of the Iraq war.

Unanimity has its value, but so do debate and dissent in a democracy facing a crisis. To fully realize the potential of the commission's report, we must see it not as the end of the discussion but as a partial blueprint for victory. The jihadist enemy has learned how to spread hate and how to kill - and it is still doing both very effectively three years after 9/11.

As I've said elsewhere, I don't think that adding an additional executive at the top of the structure is the right way to go. There are structural problems at the middle levels, where the work is actually done, that need to be fixed. Clarke's second point is bang on, however, and this is the part that the neocons are constitutionally unable to do. Regime change here for effectiveness; anything else will cost us lives.

Looking Out the Window

The Real Show
by Bill Moyers

First, a confession: I haven't seen Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." It's not that I haven't wanted to; it's just that I have not been able to tear myself away from the real show-the political theatre playing out in full sight right before our eyes. Who needs a movie when you have the news?

You think I'm kidding. But believe me; I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to. Unfortunately, I don't have to.

Fantasy Plans

NATO Short on Troops for Afghan Elections

Saturday July 24, 2004 12:31 PM

By PAUL GEITNER

Associated Press Writer

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - After months of delay, NATO has ordered hundreds more peacekeepers to Afghanistan to help provide security during presidential elections, but the deployment still appeared to fall short of 3,500 troops that were promised.

NATO ambassadors meeting late Friday approved two more battalions for Afghanistan, one each from Italy and Spain. A battalion has between 600 and 1,000 soldiers.

The alliance also cleared another 500 or so troops to beef up provincial reconstruction teams. Assuming the battalions were large, that would still make only about 2,500 troops.

``We need a little bit more to get to 3,500,'' said Lt. Col. Ludger Terbrueggen, spokesman at NATO's military headquarters in southern Belgium.

Cdr. Chris Henderson, a spokesman for the NATO-led peacekeeping force in the Afghan capital of Kabul, said a third battalion would be on standby as part of a reserve contingent outside the country. He said the alliance had yet to decide which countries would supply the reserve force but insisted ``NATO has not failed in meeting its commitment.''

Um, Cdr. Henderson, if you are still more than a thousand troops (a third) short of your commitment, I'd say you've "failed to meet your commitment."

This is the reason that Kerry is fantasizing when he talks about "internationalizing" the Iraq war: NATO hasn't got the warm bodies and neither does the UN. What multilateral forces there are being tied up in peace keeping/nation building actions from East Timor to Bosnia. There ain't nobody to bail us out. What we need to do is bail out.

August Hearings

Congress Plans Special Hearings on Sept. 11 Panel
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and PHILIP SHENON

Published: July 24, 2004

In Congress, which received withering criticism in the panel's report for lax oversight of the intelligence apparatus, House and Senate leaders stopped short of calling for a special session to consider the recommendations. Still, it was clear that the leaders felt enough urgency to work through the August recess, a time that in even years is traditionally devoted to campaigning.

"The threat of terrorism will be with us for a long time," the majority leader, Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said on Thursday night on the Senate floor with the minority leader, Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, by his side. "We need to fix the problems and correct the shortcomings cited by the commission so that we can make America safer."

To that end, Dr. Frist and Mr. Daschle deputized Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who is chairwoman of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat who is the ranking Democrat on that panel, to produce bills by Oct. 1 that would carry out two of the 9/11 panel's central recommendations. Those points are creating the post of director of intelligence and a counterterrorism center.

The Senate leaders also promised to name a bipartisan group to address the other central recommendation - changing the way Congress oversees intelligence agencies. That is a politically thorny task that could result in some lawmakers' losing power and others gaining it. The group will also be charged with making recommendations by Oct. 1, the leaders said.

Changing the way Congress conducts oversight is more a matter of changes in its rules than passing measures for the president to sign.

As the Senate leaders began to act, House leaders raced to keep pace. First, they announced that they had ordered committee chairmen to work through the summer recess to examine the report and recommend changes. Later, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who on Thursday said that he was not certain that any recommendations could be adopted this year, declared that a hearing schedule would be announced next week.

I can't remember Congress EVER holding hearings in August, the leadership is obviously feeling political heat. Stepped up congressional oversight is a good thing if it doesn't devolve into partisan wingnuttery, which is all that is going on these days. I am adamantly opposed to a cabinet-level intel "czar" for the same reason. It was the politicization of the CIA (and George Tenet) that allowed Bush to pin his Iraq war on a batch of mythologized intel.

The Fertile Triangle

Health fears grow in polluted Iraq
By Caroline Hawley
BBC correspondent in Baghdad

It's not just the violence in Iraq that is keeping doctors busy. The country is facing an environmental crisis.

"Imagine yourself that somebody throws you into the sea, asking you to swim when you don't know how to swim and you don't have any equipment - what will you do? This is the situation here."
....
More than half the children now being treated at the hospital have water-borne diseases. The doctors say they can only treat the symptoms of the real problem - the state of Iraq's infrastructure.

Judy Woodruff, Media Whore

Notice how she conclusion-jumps. It's a leading question and Jamie MacIntyre doesn't answer.

WOODRUFF: So, Jamie, to clarify, this indicates that President Bush was present and putting his service while he was in the Air Guard, even though he wasn't flying, am I correct?

MCINTYRE: Well, it doesn't show that he accrued any credits during that three-month period, but again, the White House never asserted that he had during that three months. They say that he fulfilled his obligation over a 12-month period and that the records for that exist that show he accumulated the necessary points to have done what he was supposed to do. Critics charge at that point that he was away working on a senatorial campaign and was essentially AWOL for 12 months. The White House says that the documents refute that, but there was always a question about what this gap -- how this gap in the documents came by and now they say they've found that missing document.

I'm still looking around for a media outlet that says what is actually in those recovered records. Send me a link if you've found it.

Abu Ghraib Redux

This is eerie. The echo chamber hits the ed pages. Maybe the national dailies aren't willing to let this die, or maybe they are going to publish their outraged editorials just before they go into snooze mode for August and never mention it again. Hard to know. It will depend on what Warner does.

Abu Ghraib, Whitewashed

A week ago, John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was satisfied that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was keeping his promise to leave no stone unturned to investigate the atrocities of Abu Ghraib prison. A newly released report by the Army's inspector general shows that Mr. Rumsfeld's team may be turning over stones, but it's not looking under them.

The authors of this 300-page whitewash say they found no "systemic" problem - even though there were 94 documented cases of prisoner abuse, including some 40 deaths, 20 of them homicides; even though only four prisons of the 16 they visited had copies of the Geneva Conventions; even though Abu Ghraib was a cesspool with one shower for every 50 inmates; even though the military police were improperly involved in interrogations; even though young people plucked from civilian life were sent to guard prisoners - 50,000 of them in all - with no training.

Never mind any of that. The report pins most of the blame on those depressingly familiar culprits, a few soldiers who behaved badly. It does grudgingly concede that "in some cases, abuse was accompanied by leadership failure at the tactical level," but the report absolves anyone of rank, in keeping with the investigation's spirit. The inspector general's staff did not dig into the abuse cases, but merely listed them. It based its findings on the comical observation that "commanders, leaders and soldiers treated detainees humanely" while investigators from the Pentagon were watching. And it made no attempt to find out who had authorized threatening prisoners with dogs and sexually humiliating hooded men, to name two American practices the Red Cross found to be common. The inspector general's see-no-evil team simply said it couldn't find those "approach techniques" in the Army field manual.

Even the report's release on Thursday was an exercise in misdirection, timed to be overshadowed by the 9/11 commission's report. Senators on the armed services panel were outraged at the report's shoddiness and timing, but should not have been surprised. The Defense Department has consistently tried to stymie Mr. Warner's investigation. It "misplaced" thousands of pages from Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba's report on Abu Ghraib, the only credible military account so far. It stalled the completion of a pivotal look at Army intelligence by two other Army generals until lawmakers went off to the political conventions and summer vacations. And it ignored Senate demands for the Red Cross reports on American military prisons for months.

The Pentagon finally brought those documents to the Senate in the last two weeks, in a way that ensured they would be of minimal use. The voluminous reports were shown briefly to senators and a few members of the Armed Services Committee staff after the senators' personal aides were ushered out. Then the reports were hauled back to the Pentagon.

Mr. Warner has admirably resisted pressure from the White House and Republican leaders in Congress to stop his investigation. But he is showing signs of losing appetite for the fight. Mr. Warner held only one hearing in the last month - on the new report - and agreed to the ground rules on the Red Cross reports. We've always been skeptical that the Defense Department can investigate itself credibly, and now it's obvious that it plans to stick to the "few bad apples" excuse. The only way to learn why innocent Iraqis were tortured by American soldiers is a formal Congressional inquiry, with subpoena power.

An Army Whitewash

Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A20

THE ARMY'S attempt to hold itself accountable for the abuse of foreign prisoners is off to a terrible start. On Thursday, while the media and political worlds were focused on the report of the Sept. 11 commission, the Army inspector general released a 300-page summary of an investigation of "detainee operations" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though it identified 94 cases of confirmed or possible abuse, including 20 prisoner deaths, the probe concluded by sounding the defense offered up by the Pentagon ever since the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison were published: that the crimes did not result from Army policy and were not the fault of senior commanders but were "unauthorized actions taken by a few individuals."

This conclusion is contradicted by the independent investigations and reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross, by an earlier Army investigation undertaken before the scandal became public, and by testimony given to Congress. Oddly, it doesn't even square with some of the findings buried in the inspector general's own report, which confirm that commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan ordered "high-risk" interrogation procedures to be used on prisoners without adequate safeguards, training or regard for the Geneva Conventions.

No matter: The report effectively communicates the strategy of the military brass on the detainee affair, which is to focus blame on a few low-ranking personnel, shield all senior commanders from accountability, and deny or bury any facts that interfere with these aims. In that sense, the signal it sends to Congress is clear: The Pentagon cannot be counted on to reliably or thoroughly investigate the prisoner abuse affair. An independent probe by an outside authority is desperately needed.

To the credit of Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), the Senate Armed Services Committee quickly assembled for a hearing on the Army report, despite the not-so-subtle timing of its release, and some Republican as well as Democratic senators rightly voiced incredulity at the Army's findings. They pointed out that, while identifying no "systemic failures" in the military, the inspector general's team chose not to investigate such episodes as the hiding of "ghost detainees" from the Red Cross -- a Geneva Convention violation that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has publicly stated was authorized by him. Nor did the investigation explore the handling of Red Cross reports by the staff of the Iraq commander in chief, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez -- which, rather than acting to stop abuses, reportedly tried to restrict further Red Cross access. In fact, no one above the rank of brigade commander was considered culpable, the inspector general candidly told the senators. "We think it ended there," said Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek.

Really? That's hard to square with the general's own report, which says that top U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, under pressure to collect more intelligence, "published high risk [interrogation] policies that presented a significant risk of misapplication if not trained and executed carefully." Yet "not all interrogators were trained," "some inspected units were unaware of the correct command policy," and some officers "with no training in interrogation techniques began conducting their own interrogation sessions." Moreover, some of the techniques set forth by Gen. Sanchez and other senior commanders previously had been approved only for "unlawful combatants" held at Guantanamo Bay. That "appears to contradict the terms of" the Pentagon's own legal judgments, which said some interrogation methods permissible at Guantanamo could not be used in Iraq.

All this -- and yet, purportedly, there were no failures of policy, and responsibility ended at the level of a lieutenant colonel, or a reserve one-star general. The senators who rejected this whitewash were correct: It is implausible and unacceptable. If the reputation and integrity of the Army are to be restored, some other authority will need to do better.

Union Busting

Boy, has this story developed during the day. The NYT broke it earlier as United delaying a pension payment. I have a personal stake in this story, a friend is a 38 year vet of United. She's trying to figure out if she'll be able to retire before she dies.

United Airlines to Quit Paying Into Pension Plans
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH and MICHELINE MAYNARD

Published: July 24, 2004

United Airlines said yesterday that it would not contribute to its employee pension plans while it remains under bankruptcy protection. That move could save it more than a billion dollars in cash over the coming year, but pension experts said it signaled the likelihood that United would terminate some or all of the plans.

A full-blown default by United on all four of its pension plans would send tens of thousands of current and future retirees, and billions of dollars in unfunded obligations, to the government's pension insurance program, dealing the program its biggest blow since the government began insuring pensions in 1974. Such a huge default could also set off a chain reaction, prompting other airlines to reduce their own costly pension plans to stay competitive. That, in turn, would worsen the pension agency's finances.

But the rare and drastic measure would also make United much more attractive to the lenders it needs for the financing to help it emerge from bankruptcy. United filed for bankruptcy in December 2002, hit hard by the decline in travel that began even before the terror attacks of September 2001, when it lost two planes, and the struggle to compete with low-cost rivals.

Terminating a pension plan is a drastic measure that requires approval of the bankruptcy court. In a so-called distress termination, the government takes over the failed pension plan's assets and liabilities and uses the money to pay benefits to the retirees, within certain limits. When there are not enough assets in the plan to cover the obligations, the government's insurance program, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, makes up the difference. Retirees whose benefits exceed those limits would lose some of them.

The federal agency cannot reject such a termination, although it can go to court to try to get more resources from the defaulting company. The company's workers can also try to block such a termination, either in court or by striking. But success could also be failure, because they could drive the company into liquidation, leaving themselves with neither a pension plan nor jobs.

Federal law requires companies that offer pensions to contribute to their pension funds once a year, or quarterly when a fund is severely weakened, as United's funds are. It is highly unusual for a company to withhold contributions, and virtually unheard-of for a bankrupt company that has skipped contributions to revive the neglected plan later on.

There are virtually no good options here, for either the unions or the company, short of the airline economy strengthening suddenly and rendering the whole issue moot, which ain't gonna happen. United is hanging on by a thread, and so are the employees, who don't have a basketful of options. Elsewhere today I read that Delta is going back to the pilots' union with huge, really huge wage giveback demands.

I tell you, the economy is fragile and the airline industry is the canary in the mineshaft.

I went to a presentation on bankruptcy a few years ago when I was still wearing the labor organizer hat and employers were using threats of bankruptcy to avoid salary increases. The employees are last in the queue when it comes to cashing the company out. Unfortunately for the industry and the employees, these aren't negotiating ploys, these are the real deals, as the airline industry Wal-marts to cheapy, non-union carriers. That $39 dollar, cheapy fare you just picked up on Jet Blue or Southwest? Non-union employees with no salary or working condition protections is what you just paid for. If your pilot is groggy and your cabin crew snappish, don't be surprised.

Links

Here is a link to the 9-11 commission report in HTML, courtesy of Kottke.org.

UPDATE: Sorry. As David Byron notes in comments, this is only the executive summary. I still haven't found an HTML version of the entire report. Kottke.org is usually one of the first places where HTML shows up.

Plane Scandals

Investigators Probe Air Force Planes

MATT KELLEY

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Air Force has spent $2.6 billion to buy 50 planes which do not meet the military's requirements and cannot be flown in combat zones, Pentagon investigators reported Friday.

The Air Force has continued to order more C-130J planes despite the fact that contractor Lockheed Martin hasn't delivered one that met requirements in the eight years since the program began, the report said.

Problems with the propeller-driven cargo planes include faulty computer and diagnostic systems and inadequate defense measures, the Pentagon's Office of Inspector General concluded. So far, none of the planes has been cleared for some of their primary missions: Dropping troops and cargo into war zones and flying in conditions requiring the crew to wear night-vision goggles.

The inspector general's report concluded that Air Force and Defense Department officials mismanaged the program, requiring millions of dollars in upgrades and thousands of hours of work to make the planes capable of performing as well as the aging models they're supposed to replace.

The Air Force strongly denied the report's conclusions.

Marvin Sambur, the Air Force's top acquisition official, wrote to the investigators that the program is within its cost, schedule and contract guidelines. Lockheed Martin has started delivering planes which meet Air Force specifications and the necessary upgrades have either been completed or scheduled, Sambur wrote.

"While some of the facts presented in the DOD/IG report are accurate, the findings and conclusions ascribed to these facts cannot be supported," Sambur wrote in response to the inspector general's office. "The Air Force fully endorses the C-130J program."

Lockheed Martin spokesman Jeff Rhodes said Friday the company agrees with the Air Force.

"The Air Force, ultimately the end user who is flying the aircraft, also says that the C-130J program is meeting cost, schedule, contract and regulatory commitments," Rhodes said in an email statement.

Two Air Force squadrons haven't been able to perform their missions for more than four years because they only have C-130Js, the report said. The 815th Air Squadron at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi and the 135th Airlift Squadron of the Maryland Air National Guard are supposed to drop troops and supplies into hostile areas.

Five other Air Force and Marine units have the C-130J planes but use older C-130s to perform their missions, the report said.

Air Force testers found so many problems with the planes they stopped evaluations in 2000 so the problems they already found could be fixed, the report said.

Then there is the Boeing scandal:

It's simply not true that the Bush administration is hostile to congressional oversight. Why just a couple of weeks ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld answered an eight-month-old request by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for Defense Department e-mails and other records pertaining to Air Force decision-making about a controversial $23.5 billion tanker leasing deal with Boeing Co.

Okay. It took eight months. But Rumsfeld fully agreed to allow Congress to see the documents. Just a couple of teensy restrictions. The Pentagon, not Congress, will decide which documents the lawmakers can see.

Isolating the Hyperpower

Egyptian Diplomat Is Seized by Gunmen in Iraq
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Published: July 23, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 23 — An Egyptian diplomat was seized by gunmen in Iraq today, and the American military conducted a strike in Falluja on a group of Iraqis it said were known allies of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has claimed credit for some of the deadliest attacks and kidnappings in Iraq.

The kidnapping of the diplomat, reported by the Arabic television station Al Jazeera, was the latest by insurgents who have seized and held foreigners to demand countries withdraw troops or stop doing business in Iraq.

The Egyptian embassy confirmed one of its diplomats was seized by a group of gunmen, calling itself the Lions of God Brigades, according to a statement on Al Jazeera. The station broadcast a video of the man, who was identified as Mohammad Qutb, seated in front of six masked and armed kidnappers, according to The Associated Press.

The group said it abducted him because the Egyptian government had said it was prepared to deploy security experts to help Iraq's interim government, the A.P. said.

The American military said in a statement today that the "precision strike" in Falluja on 10 to 12 "terrorists with known ties" to Mr. Zarqawi's network was coordinated with the Iraqi government. It gave no details about casualties or the type of weapon used in the strike, which hit the courtyard of a house.

The insurgents are turning up the heat. They want to isolate the US and they are beginning to have some success, because we don't have much more than a cosmetic multinational presence.

Scary Skies

FAA Faces Exodus Of Traffic Controllers
Union Calls for Increase in Hiring

By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A03

Federal officials said yesterday that they are preparing to deal with a nationwide wave of retirements by air traffic controllers over the next decade and that passenger safety will not be jeopardized.

Regional officials with the Federal Aviation Administration are gauging how a potential exodus of nearly half the nation's air traffic controllers will affect individual airports, including Reagan National, Dulles International and Baltimore-Washington International, said Doug Simons, manager at National's control tower.

"Neither the FAA nor its controllers will permit the system to operate in ways that are unsafe or with staffing that is inadequate to the task," Simons told reporters yesterday. "We will be there, with the numbers of people we need, everywhere, at all times."

The FAA estimates that nearly half of the nation's 15,000 air traffic controllers will be eligible for retirement before 2013. Many of the potential retirees were hired in 1982 after President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization the year before.

In the Washington region, nearly 700 air traffic controllers direct more than 3,000 daily flights from six towers and radar centers. Ten percent of those controllers will be eligible to retire in 2006, said FAA spokesman Greg Martin.

This is serious. The skies are much busier now than they were in 1982. Most civilian air traffic controllers got their training in the military, which is smaller now than it was in 1982. This system is already stretched to the max. I'm already a white knuckle flier, this isn't going to make me feel any easier.

The Inescapable Conclusion

William Pfaff: Reclaiming the U.S. Army

The United States now is in its second year of fighting two wars, neither of them victorious, both promising to go on for years to come. The reservists and National Guard members who originally contracted for duty one weekend a month, and two weeks in summer, find themselves locked into active duty that in many cases is already in its second year. Regular soldiers have had their terms of service extended.
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The marriages these people left behind, their businesses or professional practices, are under enormous strain or have collapsed. Yet army planners are relying on the National Guard alone to supply 43 percent of the American troops needed in Iraq next year.
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Once again there is a widening sense of exploitation and broken moral contracts for a war of still-obscure motivations, interests, and purposes. Resentments and cracks in solidarity and discipline reappear.
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Critics of the liberal movie-maker Michael Moore accuse him of "class warfare" because his "Fahrenheit 9/11" says that an American elite is exploiting patriotic volunteer soldiers, usually recruited from the poorest groups in American society, who signed up to learn skills, earn money for education and escape long-term unemployment in dying towns.
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These soldiers are disproportionately black (in roughly twice the proportion of African-Americans in the general population). To say this is not class warfare. It is to tell a truth the government neglects to its peril.
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Vietnam was a war where those who were selected had to go. Iraq is an affair that now depends on people who originally volunteered but now are being forced to serve multiple 12-month duty tours, in what amounts to their de facto conscription.
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As a result, army re-enlistments are dropping; new enlistments in fiscal year 2005 (beginning in October) are expected to fall 10 percent short of the total needed. If the United States means to keep 140,000 troops in Iraq for the next five years, there will be no alternative to reinstating conscription after the presidential inauguration in January.
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With that, the American people - however many times they are warned of impending "totalitarianism and anarchy" - may again end the political paralysis and simply say no. They may reclaim the American Army - their army - from its abuse by what they have concluded is a bankrupt political leadership.

Emphasis mine. Contrary to what we've heard out of Rummy, this simply has to happen and protestations to the contrary are disingenuous.

Torture and the Army

Guantanamo techniques improperly used elsewhere, report finds

By Elise Ackerman

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Military interrogators working in Iraq and Afghanistan improperly embraced harsh techniques that had been approved only for use on detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a 321-page report released Thursday by the Army Inspector General.

The report, written by Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek, said commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan incorporated the harsher techniques into their interrogation policies based in part on memos they had read about the Guantanamo interrogations.

But the report said the commanders failed "take into account that different standards applied" to Guantanamo, where suspected members of al-Qaida were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Geneva Conventions largely applied.

Mikolashek's report, the result of a five-month investigation into how Army policies might have contributed to prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, found no evidence of a "systemic failure."

But his report is certain to bolster criticism by human rights advocates that Bush administration policy toward prisoners at Guantanamo created an atmosphere that led to prisoner abuse elsewhere. Democrats in Congress were quick to criticize the report.

"Interrogation techniques witnessed by the International Committee of the Red Cross during visits to Abu Ghraib appear consistent with techniques that we now know were approved and later rescinded by high-level Defense Department officials or by commanders in the theater in Iraq," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said at a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing where the report was unveiled. "In light of the frequently changing `rules of engagement,' as they were called, for interrogators in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, it is difficult to believe that there were not systemic problems with our detention and interrogation operations."

Mikolashek, however, told the committee that his investigation of individual abuse cases found "they were not the result of any widespread systemic failure, but ... the result of an individual's failure to adhere to known standards of discipline, training or Army values."

I blogged a little of this yesterday without much commentary, but after a chance to do some more reading and listening to a report on NPR last night, it is clear that this is a very flawed report and the Democrats on the SASC criticized it heavily since we know from other reports that the abuses and torture WERE systemic.

Mikolashek virtually contradicts himself:

During the fall of 2002, officers in charge of supervising interrogations at Guantanamo sought approval for more aggressive measures. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld eventually approved the use of 26 specific "counter-resistance techniques" but required the use of seven safeguards, including approval from commanders.

However, when the techniques were imported to Afghanistan and Iraq, not all the safeguards were communicated to interrogators, Mikolashek found. Not all interrogators were trained on the use of the techniques, he said, and some interrogators were not even aware which policy was in place.

"These are very high-risk measures that require an awful lot of oversight, supervision and insurance," Mikolashek said. "And they were not always disseminated thoroughly, properly and well understood, nor were there all the safeguards in place ... to ensure the techniques were properly applied."

If Guantanamo techniques were imported into Iraq and Afghanistan, that implies a pretty high level up the chain of command.

The NYT report on the hearing indicates that the issue has become highly politicized with partisan splits on the committee with the Democrats sharply questioning witnesses and the Repubs defending the Army. It seems to me that a search for the truth is in the best interests of everyone, but Repub obfuscation is the order of the day.

The Sunshine Rule

A Lesson From 9/11: Openness

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

And that is why the second stage of the debate is about accountability, which cannot be dismissed as blame-mongering. Simply put, our government has a lot to answer for. Kean and the commission carefully avoided singling out individuals, but Kean's words yesterday were unequivocal: "This was a failure of policy, management, capability and above all a failure of imagination. . . . What we can say with a good deal of confidence is that none of the measures adopted by the United States government before 9/11 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al Qaeda plot."

The report has critical things to say about both the Bush and Clinton administrations. But the attack happened on this president's watch, and Chapter 8, (titled after former CIA director George Tenet's evocative phrase) "The System Was Blinking Red," makes clear that the Bush administration had a lot of warning about the general threat, if not its particular locus. "There were more than 40 intelligence articles in the PDBs [President's Daily Brief] from January 20 to September 10, 2001, that related to Bin Ladin," the report says.

As for that famous Aug. 6 brief, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," the report offers what little it learned from Bush as to what he did with the information. "He did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether [national security adviser Condoleezza] Rice had done so," the report says. "He said that if his advisers had told him there was a cell in the United States, they would have moved to take care of it. That never happened."

The report said at another point: "No CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] or other NSC [National Security Council] meeting was held to discuss the possible threat of a strike in the United States. . . . We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of the threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States."

There may be perfectly good explanations for this. The public should know what they are. A president asking for reelection on the basis of his handling of terrorism needs to explain far more clearly what he did with what he learned that summer. And, yes, Bill Clinton should do exactly the same thing concerning his decisions when he was president.

So let's be bipartisan: Clinton and Bush owe the nation back-to-back news conferences to react to the criticisms contained in the report. The news conferences should be open-ended. No plausible question should be left behind or evaded. If we want to move forward, we have to put the recrimination behind us. As the Sept. 11 commission has shown, openness and honesty are the best means to that end.

Nah. Ashcroft will just reclassify all the documents. This most secretive administration of modern times is unlikely to change its spots at this point in time.

Blue Ribbon Tour

Panel Isn't Going Away -- It's Going on the Offensive

By Doyle McManus and Maura Reynolds, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — Blue-ribbon committees usually produce long reports that assign blame, and then go quietly out of business.

But Thursday, the commission on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 boldly defied those rules: It refused to assign blame — and, more importantly, it refused to go out of business.

So far, at least, the effect appears to have put President Bush on the defensive — and to have handed his Democratic rival, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), an opportunity to question the president's record.

The commission's decision to avoid assigning blame for the 2001 terrorist attacks was a boon to Bush, who had been in office for eight months at the time. But its decision to press for sweeping organizational changes in the government's intelligence agencies put the onus for action on the president, who has resisted such proposals.

The president received Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, at the White House on Thursday morning and praised the commission for "making very solid, sound recommendations."

"I assured them that where government needs to act, we will," Bush said.

But Bush and his aides appeared to resist the commission's plea for quick action.

This is a wildcard thrown into the campaign season. I have no idea how this is going to play. What it will mean is that more people will pay attention to the commission's report--more than the six policy wonks, like me, who normally read these things--and it will enter into the political process. I'll need to read more of it to get a clue about how.

Hair on Fire

Juan Cole on the 9-11 Commission Report:

The question is, "Should he have known it was coming?"

Clinton tried, and tried hard. The gods weren't with us on that one.

We already know a fair amount about who knew what and when they knew it. By August 6, 2001, the spooks were checking their watches and waiting for it to happen, while Bush decided to do nothing and watch from Crawford. And he is doing nothing now: port security hasn't been improved, nor has airline freight. Chemical and nuclear plants have not been hardened and first responders remain underfunded. All of this is going to cost money, money currently flowing into Halliburton and tax cuts. Bush lives in a fantasy world, not the one we live in.

UPDATE: At The Left Coaster, CA Poll Junkie has a terrific review of Chapter 8 and concludes:

There is a line which separates competence from incompetence and delegation from indifference. Bush went way over it.

Checks and Checkbooks

Accounting and Accountability
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last month we learned that the United States, while it has spent vast sums on the war in Iraq, has so far provided almost no aid. Of $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds approved by Congress, only $400 million has been disbursed.

Almost all of the money spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq until late June, came from Iraqi sources, mainly oil revenues. This revelation helps explain one puzzle: the sluggish pace of reconstruction, which has yet to restore many essential services to prewar levels.

But it creates another puzzle: given that the authority was spending Iraq's money, why wasn't it more careful in its accounting?

When a foreign power takes control of an oil-rich nation's resources, it inevitably faces suspicion about its motives. Fairly or not, the locals are all too ready to believe that the invaders came to steal their oil.

The way to deal with such suspicion is to let in as much sunlight as possible by appointing financial officials with strong reputations for independence, keeping meticulous books, and welcoming and cooperating with international audits.

What actually happened was just the opposite. Every important official with responsibility for Iraqi finances was a Bush administration loyalist. The occupying authority dragged its feet on an international audit, which didn't even begin until April 2004.

When KPMG auditors hired by an international advisory board finally got to work, they found that no effort had been made to keep an accurate record of oil sales, and that accounting for the $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq consisted of "spreadsheets and pivot tables maintained by a single accountant."

The auditors also faced a lack of cooperation. They were denied access to Iraqi ministries, which were reputed to be the locus of epic corruption on the part of Iraqis with connections to the occupiers. They were also denied access to reports concerning what they delicately describe as "sole-source contracts."

Translation: they were stonewalled when they tried to find out what Halliburton did with $1.4 billion.

By obstructing international auditors, by the way, the U.S. wasn't just fueling suspicion about the misappropriation of Iraqi oil money - it was also breaking its word. After Saddam's fall, the U.N. gave the U.S. the right to disburse Iraqi oil-for-food revenues, but only on the condition that this be accompanied by international auditing and oversight.

A digression: yes, oil-for-food is the U.N.-administered program from which Saddam undoubtedly siphoned off billions. But we expect America to be held to a higher standard.

There are also allegations that Saddam's revenue diversion was aided by corrupt U.N. officials. I think we should wait and see what Paul Volcker, the genuinely independent head of the U.N. inquiry - the sort of person the U.S. occupation should have employed - has to say. Meanwhile, it's worth noting that these accusations are entirely based on documents that are purported to be in the possession of none other than Ahmad Chalabi, who has himself been accused of corruption.

And there are a few curious side stories. On the day the U.S. raided Mr. Chalabi's offices, a British associate of Mr. Chalabi who had been promising to come out with a devastating report told London's Daily Telegraph that a remarkably effective hacker attack had destroyed all his computer files, including the backup copies.

After the United States's falling-out with Mr. Chalabi, the oil-for-food investigation was taken out of the hands of Mr. Chalabi's allies. But the new head of the investigation was assassinated on July 1.

Meanwhile, the war, fed by the failure of reconstruction, goes on. The transfer doesn't seem to have made any difference: more American soldiers were killed in the first three weeks of July than in all of June, even though Knight-Ridder reports that the U.S. military has stopped patrolling in much of Anbar Province, the heart of the insurgency.

And while the U.S. has yet to disburse any significant amount of aid, the Government Accountability Office says that war costs for this fiscal year alone will run $12.3 billion above Pentagon projections.

Will anyone be held accountable?

Krugman falls back from economics to basic bookkeeping. Billions of dollars arefloating around the DoD unaccounted for. Graft and fraud are fully funded while there is no electricity in Baghdad, and we wonder why the ghost war isn't getting better.

Reading Lessons

The 567-Page Story Of a Humbled America

By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 23, 2004; Page A01

After al Qaeda set out in 1999 to deliver a devastating attack on America using hijacked airplanes, only one thing worked right in the nation's defense.

According to the final report of the 9/11 commission, it wasn't the FBI, CIA, FAA or Air Force. Not the National Security Council or the Department of Defense. Not the State Department or Border Patrol. Not Congress or any president.

"The institutions charged with protecting our borders, civil aviation, and national security did not understand how grave this threat could be, and did not adjust their policies, plans, and practices to deter or defeat it," the bipartisan commission unanimously declared.

Only a small band of civilians, strangers to one another -- without benefit of staff meetings, bylaws, uniforms or task forces -- communicating by cell phone with loved ones who happened to be watching TV -- managed to figure out what was going on in time to thwart a guided-missile attack on Washington.

Brave passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 forced hijackers to crash the plane into an empty field far short of its target.

The final report is a document of historic breadth and almost unprecedented detail, offering the sort of examination of a highly classified subject that customarily would not be possible for decades after the fact. From the findings of spy agencies to the tactics of fighter pilots, from the conversations of heads of state to the verbatim texts of secret presidential briefings, this is the government laid bare.

It is not a pretty picture.

Many of the specifics have been revealed in interim reports released by the commission in recent months. Here, they come together in a long and depressing narrative, by far the most comprehensive account of the catastrophe available.

It begins with a view of the enemy larger than just Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda operation. "The problem is that al Qaeda represents an ideological movement, not a finite group of people. It initiates and inspires, even if it no longer directs," the commissioners found. "Killing or capturing [bin Laden], while extremely important, would not end terror."

Unforeseen -- yet lethal -- this new challenge to American security rose quickly from the ruins of the Cold War. U.S. agencies, configured to fight the Soviets, were caught flat-footed.

Even after bin Laden called on Muslims everywhere to kill Americans wherever they found them -- and then pulled off coordinated attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania -- the U.S. response was feckless, because of bureaucratic squabbling, poor communications, misdirected resources and "failures of imagination."

The signs were there. Radical Islamists associated with 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed hit the World Trade Center with a truck bomb in 1993, and two years later were discovered plotting mass hijackings of U.S. airliners. Nevertheless, bin Laden and Mohammed had no trouble, between 1999 and 2001, communicating, meeting and planning the destruction of the twin towers using hijacked planes. Indeed, the summer of 2001 was "a drumbeat" of alarming, if unspecific, reports that -- as President Bush was told in August of that year -- "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

"The 9/11 attacks were a shock," the panel concluded, "but they should not have come as a surprise."

If you've read all the documentation, what should come as a shock is W sitting in a Florida classroom, reading "My Pet Goat." His intel people were off-the-map outraged with worry. But W went on vacation. He didn't give a good Goddamn then and he doesn't now. We've been told by Ashcroft and associates that the possibility of attack is about what it was on 9-11. And I assume the Dim Son will get to read his little book again to another classroom of innocents. That's the sort of President we want.

Real Life Intrudes

Posting will be light in the morning. I've got to go take care of the DMV things, including an expired registration. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it happens, and I need a new license. I hope the new picture is better than the old one, and I get one of those by going to bed early. I look like a spaced out narco-terrorist in the last photo. I'll try to put up four posts before I hit the road to The Place Of Ultimate Pain. The VA DMV has the worst seats in the world.

It's a Whodunit

Does anyone have a link to a piece of downloadable freeware that would allow me to cut and paste from PDFs? I don't want to spring for the the crap at BestBuy. I'm running Win2K with Mozilla, if that matters.

I want to blog some of Chapter 8 of the 9-11 Commission report. God, I hate PDFs. That was a prayer, not a curse. It appears to me that this Chapter is the crux of the report. I read this stuff so you don't have to.

This is the Chapter which pretty much disproves everything the media reported about the Report today. Bush and Condi look very, very bad. Even without any snark from me.

If you want to fight your way through the PDF, here is the "executive summary," here is the full report, downloadable by chapters. I haven't read it all, but I think Bumpers will be most interested in chapters 6-8. The Big Dog wasn't perfect, but he got the urgency, which Bushco did not. Wot a surprise, since missile defense and Saddam were the tail wagging the dog in January 2001, along with "he tried to kill my daddy," I think we know which regime to change.

Mr. Greenspan has Left the Planet

Greenspan Says Workers' Lack of Skills Lowers Wages

By Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A01

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, disputing election-year assertions that the U.S. economy is producing lower-quality jobs than it has in the past, said yesterday that continuing wage sluggishness reflects the fact that many workers are ill-prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that the economy offers.

Growing U.S. income inequality largely reflects differences in workers' education and job skills, not an underlying problem with the economy, Greenspan said during a House Financial Services Committee hearing, echoing many of the remarks he made before a Senate committee the day before.

The growing pay gap reflects the "skill premium" commanded by relatively higher-educated, better-trained workers, and represents "a major problem of matching skills of workers to the technological base of the economy, which I believe is an education issue and requires that we address that as quickly and broadly as we can."

Greenspan, in similar remarks earlier this year, said it is critical that the nation better prepare its workers. The alternative is a workforce increasingly divided between those able to earn and compete and those struggling to get by.

"I think that the effective increase in the concentration of incomes here, which is implicit in this, is not desirable in a democratic society," Greenspan told the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday.

I was tempted to let this pass without comment, but it has made me so angry all day that I can't. All the people I know who are long term unemployed have graduate degrees, excellent technical skills in their fields and can manipulate a computer at least as well as I can. We're all white collar knowledge worker types or people with scientific/engineering backgrounds. For the last five years or so, Greenspan has been increasingly removed from reality. He has now moved into an alternate universe.

Iraq Roundup

Fearing Big Battle, Residents Flee
U.S. Weighs Move on Samarra, Now Controlled by Factions

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A14

BAGHDAD, July 21 -- Tens of thousands of people have fled Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, in recent weeks, expecting a showdown between U.S. troops and heavily armed groups within the city, according to U.S. and Iraqi sources.

Residents of the city said guerrillas told people to leave neighborhoods in anticipation of a larger battle after a clash on Tuesday in which U.S. warplanes bombed two houses, killing at least four people, according to military authorities.

"I will not go back to Samarra," said Mohammed Mohammed, 37. He brought his extended family of more than 70 brothers, cousins and children to Baghdad this week because of the dangers. "We expect the resistance will be very strong when the Americans go in. And the Americans have no mercy."

Samarra is now controlled by a volatile mix of tribes and gangs, some split along religious lines, and supporters of ousted president Saddam Hussein, according to interviews with numerous Samarra residents who have fled to Baghdad. On July 8, some of those groups launched an attack in which a car bombing was followed by a fierce volley of mortar fire. Five U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi National Guardsman were killed and 40 people were injured.

Even before that, U.S. military authorities had been planning how to retake control of the city without a bloodbath. Officers said they were determined not to let Samarra follow what they call the Fallujah model. U.S. forces made an agreement to stay outside Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad, in order to end fierce clashes there during April. The city is now under the control of insurgents.

25 Rebels Are Killed in Daylong Firefight in Iraq, U.S. Says
By IAN FISHER

Published: July 22, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 22 — American troops killed 25 insurgents in a daylong firefight on Wednesday in the hardline Sunni Muslim city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, the military said today. Meanwhile, insurgents said they were holding a seventh foreign truck driver, a day after announcing they had kidnapped six hostages and would behead one every three days unless their demands were met.

The seventh hostage was from Kenya, one of three from that country now held by the kidnappers. Kenya said today that it was ordering all its citizens out of Iraq, and urged the captors to release the Kenyans.

"We just feel like the Philippines," said the government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, in an interview with The New York Times. "We have to look after our citizens. We don't want any of our citizens to suffer."

No, things are neither more peaceful nor more free. We are still losing a couple of soldiers or Marines a day, and Iraqi deaths are in groups.

More troops killed in July than June in Iraq, says military

By Tom Lasseter

Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - More U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq during the first three weeks of July than in the entire month of June, dashing hopes that the handover of sovereignty at the end of last month would ease U.S. losses or bring Iraqis a respite from violence.

During June, 26 American soldiers died in hostile fire in Iraq. As of Thursday, 30 had been killed so far in July, according to numbers from U.S. Central Command.

In Anbar province, change of course rankles many U.S. soldiers

By Tom Lasseter

Knight Ridder Newspapers

RAMADI, Iraq - Scaling back the military and political goals in Iraq's Anbar province has hurt the morale of many U.S. soldiers stationed there, and some have begun to question openly not only their mission, but also the leaders who sent them to Iraq in the first place.

It's not just buck privates. Several sergeants - the backbone of the enlisted military - said they felt the same way.

Instead of neighborhood patrols, most of the convoys that leave the bases in Ramadi these days are on their way to guard main roads and the government building downtown. There are also observations posts throughout the city, where soldiers sit and watch, waiting for something to happen.

To carry food from one base to the next in Ramadi, a matter of a few blocks, takes four vehicles - armored Humvees and trucks - all with .50-caliber machine guns mounted on top.

"I'm tired of every time we go out the gate, someone tries to kill me," said Staff Sgt. Sheldon Rivers.

Asked whether most Americans have an idea of how bad the security situation is in Ramadi, Sgt. Maj. John Jones said recently that he was annoyed every time he heard analysis about Iraq from politicians and journalists on TV.

"When people come over here, where do they stay? In the Green Zone. I call it the Safe Zone," he said, referring to the secure area in Baghdad where the government is housed. "They miss the full picture."

What is the full picture?

"It's just like the West," Jones said, "when we were trying to settle it with the Indians."

He wouldn't elaborate.

Emerging Pieces

Army Finds 94 Cases of Abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan

By Matt Kelley
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 22, 2004; 10:46 AM

The U.S. military has found a total of 94 cases of confirmed or alleged abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan since the fall of 2001, the Army's inspector general said Thursday in a long-awaited report made public at a hastily called Senate hearing.

The Pentagon had refused until now to give a total number of abuse allegations since the prisoner abuse scandal broke this spring. The 94 number is significantly higher than all other previous estimates given by Pentagon officials.

The inspector general investigation, ordered Feb. 10 after the allegations of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to the attention of top Army officials in Washington, concluded that there were no systemic problems that contributed to the abuse. In some cases, the report found, the abuse was abetted or facilitated by officers not following proper procedures.

In contrast to its own findings, however, the Army report also cites a February report from the International Committee for the Red Cross that alleged that "methods of ill treatment" were "used in a systematic way" by the U.S. military in Iraq.

Sen. John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had been pressing for the results of the inspector general report for several weeks, called a last-minute hearing Thursday before Congress leaves for the rest of the summer Friday.

Warner apologized for the late notice of the hearing, but said he had wanted to get the information to the committee members as soon as it was available.

The Army has not yet made the entire report public but released parts during the public hearing.

If I can find a link to the section of the report which has been released, I'll put it up, but an hour of Googling has so far yielded nothing. I caught a bit of the hearing on C-Span this morning. Warner is really angry.

Burying the Lede

Musicians' call-up is not playing well in Congress Some lawmakers doubt the necessity

By Tom Squitieri
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- When the Army announced recently that it was going to tap into its rarely used Individual Ready Reserve to fill vital slots for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, top military and civilian personnel said the activation was a proper response to a temporary manpower crisis.

But among the tasks included in the 5,674 jobs deemed critical to the war on terrorism are slots for two trumpet or cornet players, two French horn players, one trombonist, four clarinet players, three saxophonists, one electric bass player, one percussionist and one euphonium player.

Their call-up from civilian life -- along with intelligence analysts, human resources specialists, insect experts, construction workers, truck drivers, healthcare providers, morticians and scores of other occupations -- is crucial, Army officials say.

''They contribute significantly to the Army's morale and operations,'' says Andrea Wales, a spokeswoman for the Army Human Resources Command in St. Louis, which sends out the notices to IRR members. Army bands support the morale of fellow soldiers through their musical performances, and when they're not performing, the musicians also carry out ''essential core missions'' such as guard duty, Wales says.

Gen. Richard Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, told the House Armed Services Committee July 7 that the IRR call-up is focusing on combat service support because ''that's where the stress and strain is.'' Cody noted that among the units being stressed ''quite a bit'' are bands, because ''as you know, our bands do an awful lot of our burial services.''

Some members of Congress are less certain of the need to call up soldier-musicians. ''I'll have to look into that,'' says Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. ''I knew there was a shortage over there. I didn't know there was a shortage of musicians.''

''This call-up of French horn players, among others, is just the latest consequence of the Pentagon's outrageous and inexcusable poor planning,'' Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., says. ''Average Americans continue to pay the price for the Pentagon's failure to do what it should have: adequately plan for the right number of active-duty troops in Iraq and refuse to deploy National Guard and Reserve members at length while breaking promises about when they will return.''

Faced with the need to keep many more troops in Iraq than it had originally forecast, the Pentagon has resorted to a series of controversial moves that critics say show the Army has been stretched to the breaking point by the twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pentagon officials have deployed an unusual number of part-time troops from the Army Guard and Reserve, added three extra months to the one-year tours of some units in Iraq, issued ''stop-loss'' orders to bar Iraq-bound soldiers from leaving or transferring when their voluntary commitments are up, moved troops from South Korea to Iraq and announced the mobilization of elite Army training units to fill Iraq combat roles.

In late June, the Army announced it would call up more than 5,600 members of the Individual Ready Reserve, which is made up of soldiers who were honorably discharged after completing their active-duty Army tours, usually a stint of four years or more. But soldiers make a minimum eight-year commitment when they volunteer for the Army, and the Army has the right to call them back until that time is up. The last time the Army called up significant numbers from the IRR was during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

The Army says the call-up is aimed at filling acute shortages in skills badly needed for the war effort. The initial call-up includes 790 truck drivers, 627 supply specialists, 361 mechanics and 315 administrative specialists. The call-ups will also include combat engineers, food service personnel, carpenters, masons, petroleum supply specialists and cable system installer-maintainers.

The first call-up notifications are now in the mail to about 1,600 of the 5,674 Ready Reservists to be activated, about two weeks later than the planned July 6 mailing.

Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., a member of the Armed Services Committee, says he is skeptical of the need for calling musicians back from civilian life. ''Did somebody go line by line through this and recognizing that each one of these 5,600 is a person who has a family that did not expect that they would be called back, to say: Is there not a way to do without a euphonium player? Do we need to really draft an electric bass player, to pull them back in?''

Emphasis mine. Rep. Snyder calls it for what it is: a backdoor draft.

In my past life, I worked with military musicians very often; DC is filled with service bands. The service bands function as a sort of relief valve for the music business, a place where you can go to get some experience before heading out to orchestra auditions. The people being recalled are likely to be called out from orchestras or other hard fought professional situations, if they are still in the profession. Quite frankly, the competition for work is so stiff that most people leave the profession within a couple of years after leaving the bands, unless they are able to come up with a playing job immediately. 90% of the people who graduate from music schools and departments and conservatories on wind and brass instruments will end up in another field.

Fighting Fourth Generation Warfare

Better Spies Won't Add Up to Better Foreign Policy

By Robert B. Reich, Robert B. Reich, a professor at Brandeis University, is the author most recently of "Reason" (2004, Alfred A. Knopf). He was secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. This is adapted from his book.

By all means, let's have better intelligence. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that better intelligence is a substitute for better policy. This is especially true when the threat comes in the form of terrorism.

Terrorism is a tactic. It is not itself our enemy. There is no finite number of terrorists in the world. At any given time, their number depends on how many people are driven by anger and hate to join their ranks. Hence, "smoking out," imprisoning or killing terrorists, based on information supplied by our intelligence agencies, cannot be the prime means of preventing future terrorist attacks against us. It is more important to deal with the anger and hate. This means, among other things, restarting the Middle East peace process rather than, as President Bush has done, run away from it. It requires shoring up the economies of the Middle East, now suffering from dwindling direct investment from abroad because of the violence and uncertainty in the region. And it means strengthening the legitimacy of moderate Muslim leaders, instead of encouraging extremism — as the current administration's policies have undoubtedly done.

Equally fatuous is the notion that "preemptive war," based on what our intelligence agencies say a potential foreign adversary is likely to do to us, will offer us protection. Terrorists aren't dependent on a few rogue nations. They recruit and train in unstable parts of the world and can move their bases and camps easily, wherever governments are weak.

The United States cannot control or police the world. Instead, we will have to depend on strong treaties and determined alliances to prevent illegal distribution of thousands of nuclear weapons already in existence in Russia, Pakistan, India and other nuclear powers, and of biological or chemical weapons capable of mass destruction. The administration's "go-it-alone" diplomacy takes us in precisely the wrong direction. That the United States suffers from a failure of intelligence is indisputable. The calamitous state of our spy agencies is only one part of that failure.

I don't always agree with Bob Reich, but he hits the nail on the head here. Bush's skewed view of the Middle East/South Asia is driving us further into a very expensive, very deadly hole. His "with us or against us" theory is the simplistic formulation of a 15 year old, which he frequently seems to be.

PPPPPPP*

War Funds Dwindling, GAO Warns
Pentagon Needs Billions More This Year in Iraq, Afghanistan

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A01

The U.S. military has spent most of the $65 billion that Congress approved for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is scrambling to find $12.3 billion more from within the Defense Department to finance the wars through the end of the fiscal year, federal investigators said yesterday.

The report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress's independent investigative arm, warned that the budget crunch is having an adverse impact on the military as it shifts resources to Iraq and away from training and maintenance in other parts of the world. The study -- the most detailed examination to date of the military's funding problems -- appears to contradict White House assurances that the services have enough money to get through the calendar year.

Already, the GAO said, the services have deferred the repair of equipment used in Iraq, grounded some Air Force and Navy pilots, canceled training exercises, and delayed facility-restoration projects. The Air Force is straining to cover the cost of body armor for airmen in combat areas, night-vision gear and surveillance equipment, according to the report.

The Army, which is overspending its budget by $10.2 billion for operations and maintenance, is asking the Marines and the Air Force to help cover the escalating costs of its logistics contract with Halliburton Co. But the Air Force is also exceeding its budget by $1.4 billion, while the Marines are coming up $500 million short. The Army is even having trouble paying the contractors guarding its garrisons outside the war zones, the report said.

Running Low on Ammo
Military Turns to Overseas Suppliers to Cover Shortages

By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page E01

The U.S. military has assembled the most sophisticated fighting arsenal in the world with satellite-guided weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles that shoot Hellfire missiles. But as billions of dollars have poured into the technology for futuristic warfare, the government has fallen behind on more mundane needs -- such as bullets.

The protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and heightened combat training with live ammunition have left the military short of small-caliber bullets. To offset the squeeze, the Army is taking unusual stopgap measures such as buying ammunition from Britain and Israel. It is also working to increase domestic production.

"The big complex programs don't do any good if there aren't bullets for the rifles," said Marcus Corbin, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a research group based in the District.

Shortages in basic battlefield gear struck soon after the start of the Iraq war, when combat forces outfitted in high-tech uniforms ran short of body armor and armored Humvees. The tight supplies of bullets reflect a shutdown of factories in recent years and the unexpected level of resistance in Iraq, industry analysts said. The Army relies on one plant for its small-caliber ammunition, sharply limiting its options.

The Army estimates that it will need 1.5 billion rounds of small ammunition this year for M-16s and other rifles, triple the amount produced in 2001. The primary U.S. military supplier is the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, a government-owned facility run by Alliant Techsystems Inc. It will manufacture 1.2 billion rounds this year. "To fill that gap, we had to do some things rather quickly," said Brig. Gen. Paul Izzo, the Army's program executive officer for ammunition.

*Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance

The Employment Picture

This is about as fine a summary of the jobs data as I've seen. Stephen Roach is an economist and analyst for Morgan Stanley who publishes a weekly column on their website.

More Jobs, Worse Work
By Stephen S. Roach

Published: July 22, 2004

The state of the American labor market remains the defining issue of the current economic debate. Through February, the United States was mired in the depths of the worst jobless recovery of the post-World War II era. Now, there are signs the magic may be back. More than a million jobs have been added to total nonfarm payrolls over the past four months, the sharpest increase since early 2000.

These gains certainly compare favorably with the net loss of 594,000 jobs in the first 27 months of this recovery. But there's little cause for celebration: the increases barely make a dent in the weakest hiring cycle in modern history. From the trough of the last recession in November 2001 through last month, private sector payrolls have risen a paltry 0.2 percent. This stands in contrast to the nearly 7.5 percent increase recorded, on average, over the comparable 31-month interval of the six preceding recoveries.

Nor is there much reason to celebrate the type of jobs that have been created over the past four months. In general, they have been at the lower end of the economic spectrum.

By industry, the leading sources of hiring turn out to be restaurants, temporary hiring agencies and building services. These three categories, which make up only 9.7 percent of total nonfarm payrolls, accounted for 25 percent of the cumulative growth in overall hiring from March to June. Hiring has also accelerated at clothing stores, courier services, hotels, grocery stores, trucking businesses, hospitals, social work agencies, business support companies and providers of personal and laundry services. This group, which makes up 12 percent of the nonfarm work force, accounted for 19 percent of the total growth in business payrolls over the past four months.

That's not to say there hasn't been any improvement at the upper end of the labor market, with the construction industry leading the way. At the same time, there has been increased hiring in several of the higher-end professions: there is more demand for lawyers, architects, engineers, computer scientists and bankers. Manufacturing, however, has continued to lag.

Putting these pieces together, there can be no mistaking the unusual bifurcation of the recent improvement in the American labor market. Lower-end industries, which employ 22 percent of the work force, accounted for 44 percent of new hiring from March to June. Higher-end industries, which make up 24 percent of overall employment, accounted for 29 percent of total job growth over the past four months.

In short, jobs are growing at both ends of the spectrum, but the low-paying jobs are growing much more quickly. The contribution of low-end industries to the recent pick-up in hiring has been almost double the share attributable to high-end industries.

An equally dramatic picture emerges from the survey of American households. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total count of persons at work part time - both for economic and non-economic reasons - increased by 495,000 from March to June. That amounts to an astonishing 97 percent of the cumulative increase of the total growth in employment measured by the household survey over this period. By this measure, as the hiring dynamic has shifted gears in recent months, the bulk of the benefits have all but escaped America's full-time work force.

Finally, the occupational breakdown of the American labor market, as also sampled by the survey of households, provides yet another facet of the character of the recent hiring upturn. It turns out that fully 81 percent of total job growth over the past year was concentrated in low-end occupations in transportation and material moving, sales and repair and maintenance services. At the upper end of the occupational hierarchy, increases in construction and professional jobs were partly offset by sharp declines in the numbers of production workers, who mainly toil in manufacturing plants.

Personnel Shortages

Fewer Army Recruits Lined Up
Manpower Concerns Raised as Pool Shrinks to Three-Year Low

By Thomas E. Ricks and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A02

The Army's pool of future recruits has dwindled to its lowest level in three years, worrying Pentagon officials as the service is being stretched by the unexpectedly difficult occupation of Iraq.

The Army watches the number of future soldiers in the "delayed entry" program -- those who have enlisted but have not been shipped to boot camp -- as a way to make sure it has enough recruits to keep training camps fully manned in the coming months.

That number has declined to about 23 percent of the number of recruits being shipped this year -- the lowest percentage in three years, said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the Army's personnel office.

"It is an indicator that troubles us, but it isn't shocking," Hilferty said. He said Army officials believe that the situation is "cyclical" and is likely to recover.

The slippage, Hilferty said, reflects statistical factors more than a new reluctance among American youth -- the Army, he said, has expanded its training base, and so it can take in more recruits rather than making them wait for spaces to become available.

Overall, Hilferty said, Army officials continue to watch the recruiting situation with concern but remain confident that they will meet their targets. The Army's recruiting target for this year was recently raised from 71,500 and is expected to be set at about 77,500, Hilferty said. "There's no doubt that we'll make this year's mission, and we're confident we'll make next year's," he said.

Army to Call Up Recruits Earlier
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER

Published: July 22, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 21 - In what critics say is another sign of increasing stress on the military, the Army has been forced to bring more new recruits immediately into the ranks to meet recruiting goals for 2004, instead of allowing them to defer entry until the next accounting year, which starts in October.

As a result, recruiters will enter the new year without the usual cushion of incoming soldiers, making it that much harder to make their quotas for 2005. Instead of knowing the names of nearly half the coming year's expected arrivals in October, as the Army did last year, or even the names of around one in three, as is the normal goal, this October the recruiting command will have identified only about one of five of the boot camp class of 2005 in advance.

Army officials say that they have been unable to defer as many enlistments as in the past because 4,500 more recruits were needed at midyear to help meet a temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers in the active duty force, which is to grow to 512,000 by 2006. The increases are largely driven by the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The two stories don't entirely agree, do they? I'll be watching through the day for the consensus position to emerge.

Distract and Annoy

White House Was Aware of Berger Probe, Aide Says (Update3)

July 21 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's legal advisers knew about the investigation of former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's handling of classified documents before the probe became public this week, a White House spokesman said.

Spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed suggestions by Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, that the information was given to the media by the administration, saying ``I know of no one in the White House that is aware of how this story came about.''

Berger, who served under former President Bill Clinton, quit yesterday as an adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry because of the Justice Department investigation into Berger's removal of highly classified documents on terrorism from the National Archives. Kerry told NBC News that he had been unaware Berger was under investigation.

McAuliffe said it was suspicious that the investigation, started in October 2003, became public the same week the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is releasing its final report. The commission's report is to be released tomorrow.

``The criminal investigation only came to light three days prior to the release of a report expected to be critical of the Bush administration's lack of focus on the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks,'' McAuliffe wrote in a Freedom of Information Act request for documents shared between the Justice Department and the White House.

McAuliffe said there is a ``possibility that the Bush administration and the Justice Department have politicized an ongoing investigation.''

House Probe

The Republican-controlled House Government Reform Committee plans to conduct an investigation into Berger's actions, said the panel's chairman, Tom Davis, 55, a Virginia Republican.

``At worst, his actions suggest an intentional effort to keep critical information away from the commission and the American public,'' Davis said. ``It's our constitutional responsibility to find out what happened and why.''

Bush today called the Justice Department investigation ``a serious matter,'' while declining to comment to reporters about when he learned about it.

``I'm not going to comment on this matter,'' Bush said during an Oval Office meeting with the prime minister of Romania. ``It will be fully investigated by the Justice Department.''

Distribution of Documents

McClellan said the White House counsel's office was informed about the probe because it coordinated the distribution of documents for the Sept. 11 commission.

``It would be logical to conclude that they would contact the counsel's office as part of the investigation,'' McClellan said. McClellan referred questions to the Justice Department because it is an ongoing investigation.

Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said he was not aware of any contacts between the department and the White House.

Berger was reviewing the documents last July, September and October to prepare for hearings by the Sept. 11 commission, Berger's lawyer, Lanny Breuer said. Berger testified before the commission in March.

Berger said this week that he ``inadvertently'' took some documents and returned everything he had when he was contacted by authorities. In a statement outside his Washington office, Berger yesterday said that he ``made an honest mistake'' that he regrets. He said he dealt with the issue last October and that he has sought to support the work of the Sept. 11 commission.

At issue, according to the Associated Press, are drafts of a sensitive after-action report on how the Clinton administration handled a wave of terror threats late in 1999. Some drafts of the report are missing from the National Archives, AP said, citing officials and lawyers it didn't name.

The only reason I keep putting this story up is to knock it down. Hello, the 9-11 report comes out this week and this story is so weak the prosecuter never charged Sandy. Hello. Are you paying attention? It's working rather nicely with CNN and I don't even want to think about how it is playing on FOX, but this is a DISTRACTION story. Of course, distracting Daryn Kagin or Wolf Blitzer isn't much of a chore, but it gives the Pretty Heads something to talk about, and God knows they need all the help they can get. I'm looking forward to November 3, when I can finally deep six the shouting Blitzer. God, does he piss me off.

Experiment

I'm going to be trying some new things over the next couple of weeks and I'd like your input, Bumpers. I'm a little concerned that I'm not reading as widely as I should be, but it is hard to filter the Internet. I've got a bookmark/favorites list that I can't get through in one day, but I'm tired of reading the same, pretty predictable stuff. I'm afraid I'm getting stale.

Here is what I propose to do. It is now the hour of the day in which I set up my task bar for the morning. The first three positions are always held by the NYT, WaPo and LAT, which have earned their positions as national papers. What I'd like to do is have the fourth slot rotate, by your suggestion. Nominate a daily or a weekly that I should place into that fourth slot and follow for a week. Or it might be a website that you'd like me to follow for a week. With any source that updates often, it takes at least a week to get a feel for them, and I want to hear about what speaks to you. I'm also planning to update the blogroll soon and I'd like to include some of your favorites so you don't have to skip around too much. Mel Goux, the benefactress of this site tells me that bump readers are about the most sophisticated consumers of politics and culture on the planet, so I figure that I can learn from you. Tell me something about what I can do to make this site (Okay, Reid will actually handle the heavy lifting, I'm not allowed in the source code, and with good reason) more useful for you.

A note on the mechanics: I work in Mozilla, which is about the most flexible browser for the kind of work I do. My task bar can handle eight open windows with multiple tabs (with two open Word Windows and one for mail,) which is perfect for reading papers and keeping a bunch of their stories open at a time. The first four windows I've mentioned above. The other four rotate throughout the day, sometime they are blogs, sometimes they are "books" (magazines to those in the publishing trades), sometimes they are me trying to get through to the DMV. I don't like to open a second task bar--it's a personal quirk, one task bar is about all I can handle without my pulse rate going up. I'm open for candidates for the four open slots. Note: one of them is usually given over to an aggregate of what's on the four aggregator sites over on the blog roll+Anti-war.com. Yes, I read commoncause, cursor.org, tompaine and the predictable lefty sites daily. Tell me what I'm missing. This site gets over a thousand hits a day by really smart people. Tell me what you know that I don't know.

The common faith of the blogosphere is that we are going to build this thing together and I trust you. Show me where to go with that which I don't already know. You've seen my quirks. Care to share to our collective brain? I promise I'll give you another recipe this week, that got the most links.

Now I'm going to bed. In the morning the cats get fed first and then the coffee gets made. Dogs have masters, cats have staffs.

Flip Flopper

Hawking Says He Was Wrong About Black Holes
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:39 p.m. ET

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Wednesday that black holes, the mysterious massive vortexes formed from collapsed stars, do not destroy everything they consume and instead can fire out matter and energy ``in a mangled form.''

Hawking's radical new thinking, presented in a paper to the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, capped his three-decade struggle to explain an elemental paradox in scientific thinking: How can black holes destroy all record of consumed matter and energy, as Hawking long believed, when subatomic theory says such elements must survive in some form?

Hawking's answer is that the black holes hold their contents for eons but themselves eventually deteriorate and die. As the black hole disintegrates, they send their transformed contents back out into the infinite universal horizons from which they came.

Previously, Hawking, 62, had held out the possibility that disappearing matter travels into a new parallel universe within the black hole -- the very stuff of most visionary science fiction.

``There is no baby universe branching off, as I once thought. The information remains firmly in our universe,'' Hawking said in a speech to about 800 physicists and other scientists from 50 countries.

``I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes,'' he said.

``If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state,'' he said with a smile, sparking laughter from the audience.

Hawking added, ``It is great to solve a problem that has been troubling me for nearly 30 years, even though the answer is less exciting than the alternative I suggested.''

In a humorous aside, Hawking settled a 7-year-old bet made with Caltech astrophysicist John Preskill, who insisted in 1997 that matter consumed by black holes couldn't be destroyed. He presented Preskill a favored reference work ``Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia'' after having it specially flown over from the United States.

``I had great difficulty in finding one over here, so I offered him an encyclopedia of cricket as an alternative,'' Hawking said, ``but John wouldn't be persuaded of the superiority of cricket.''

Later, Preskill said he was very pleased to have won the bet, but added: ``I'll be honest, I didn't understand the talk.'' Like other scientists there, he said he looked forward to reading the detailed paper that Hawking is expected to publish next month.

So, we will don't understand the relationships between space, time and matter. I'll be looking forward to the new edition of "Brief History of Time."

Dangerous Concentration

Ted Turner on the ill effects of media consolidation:

Today, media companies are more concentrated than at any time over the past 40 years, thanks to a continual loosening of ownership rules by Washington. The media giants now own not only broadcast networks and local stations; they also own the cable companies that pipe in the signals of their competitors and the studios that produce most of the programming. To get a flavor of how consolidated the industry has become, consider this: In 1990, the major broadcast networks--ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox--fully or partially owned just 12.5 percent of the new series they aired. By 2000, it was 56.3 percent. Just two years later, it had surged to 77.5 percent.

In this environment, most independent media firms either get gobbled up by one of the big companies or driven out of business altogether. Yet instead of balancing the rules to give independent broadcasters a fair chance in the market, Washington continues to tilt the playing field to favor the biggest players. Last summer, the FCC passed another round of sweeping pro-consolidation rules that, among other things, further raised the cap on the number of TV stations a company can own.

In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can't compete by imitating the big guys--they have to innovate, so they're less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They steal market share from the big companies, spurring them to adopt new approaches. This process promotes competition, which leads to higher product and service quality, more jobs, and greater wealth. It's called capitalism.

But without the proper rules, healthy capitalist markets turn into sluggish oligopolies, and that is what's happening in media today. Large corporations are more profit-focused and risk-averse. They often kill local programming because it's expensive, and they push national programming because it's cheap--even if their decisions run counter to local interests and community values. Their managers are more averse to innovation because they're afraid of being fired for an idea that fails. They prefer to sit on the sidelines, waiting to buy the businesses of the risk-takers who succeed.

Unless we have a climate that will allow more independent media companies to survive, a dangerously high percentage of what we see--and what we don't see--will be shaped by the profit motives and political interests of large, publicly traded conglomerates.

Voila! This explains a lot.

During Watergate, we learned one of the eternal verities: follow the money. I've used that lesson successfully when studying everything from economics to church history (think about that for a moment) and it is all too true here. The media megaconglomerates are Washington's creation so they are going to genuflect in the direction of greater deregulation.

Campaign '04

via Suburban Guerrilla:

Rig My Election, Please
Just how far will desperate Republicans go to trick America into another BushCo victory?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Semi-clever, ultra-wealthy Bush supporters suddenly donating piles of money to the Nader campaign in an obvious attempt to steal votes from John Kerry? Pshaw. Ptooey. Child's play. Tip of the iceberg. A mere distraction.

We ain't seen nuthin' yet.

This is the time of desperation and anxiety. This is the time of hysterical Orange Alerts and imminent al Qaeda attacks coming from outta nowhere at any minute and violating our children and kicking our puppies and badly denting our Honda Accords. And, yes, this is the time of election-year political tactics coming from the increasingly anxious Right that will make Sun Tzu's "Art of War" look like a cupcake cookbook.

Do you feel it? Can you smell it in the air? The sensation that the Republican Party, though various tentacles, will stop at absolutely nothing to maintain power in the White House? It's true. It's the feeling that, during the next few months, it's all about to get very shrill, and very surreal, indeed.

How about another "imminent" terrorist threat? Pretty much a given, really. Followed, of course, by another. And then another. And then another and another until every other day the newscast features a thick-necked, panicky Tom Ridge saying yes, oh my God yes, we now have definitive proof that terrorists are more or less sort of maybe planning to strike the U.S. maybe very soon and disrupt our shopping and screw with our TV reception and blot out the sun. We just don't know, you know, where, or when, or how, or what the hell to do about it. P.S.: Vote Republican.

Look, times have changed. Of course politics has always been a truly ugly business, and each party's strategy to gain or regain power as election time rolls around has always become increasingly low down and nasty and mudslinging and soul cringing and borderline illegal.

But this time it all feels, somehow, different. Uglier. More sadistic.

There is a sense of lawlessness, of desperation, among the Republican Party right now. It is no longer a question of simply which party will run the show or which platform will have the most influence on policy. Rather, it's about a radically polarized worldview: Are we going to be an aggressive macho globally disrespected isolationist nation that has burned all bridges and molested all foreign relationships and mocked all global sympathy, or are we, as the GOP wants you to believe, going to become some liberal namby-pamby country where gays can marry each other and sexually deviant women can have abortions every day and everybody speaks French?

Because there is no middle ground. This is the GOP message. You are either with us, or you are a terrorist. You are either on the side of the "patriotic," pro-war party of WMD lies and homophobia and violence toward the global community, or you're a liberal hippie 'Nam protester like that jerknose Kerry.

What else could they do to guarantee a November win? What are they capable of, in the wake of 2000's stolen election and the rigging of the Florida recounts and a sneering, despoiled Supreme Court? Just about anything, really.

How about a nice October Surprise of suddenly finding Osama somewhere in a remote cave in Afghanistan as the news media receives an "anonymous" delivery of a big glossy photo of Dubya himself standing outside said cave in a manly flight suit and lookin' all tough in his cowboy boots and confused smirk as he waves an American flag in one hand and holds Osama by a chain in the other? What, too obvious?
....
It is not going to merely be BushCo spending millions of its enormous war chest, as it already has, to launch incredibly vicious attack ads against Kerry and Edwards that dare to question the veracity and validity of Kerry's many Vietnam War medals or of Edwards' political experience, although Bush himself is the least-qualified president in U.S. history, one who ducked military service and went AWOL and makes all military service people wince in embarrassment.

No, it's going to be far worse. And more nauseating. Who, for example, isn't sighing in appalled disgust as the Pentagon suddenly discovers that, oh my goodness, Bush's own military-service records were "accidentally" destroyed? How amazing! And would you believe it, but the records in question just so happened to be the exact months of just those exact years that Bush was supposedly to have "served." What a crazy coincidence! Now we can never really know if he even bothered to show up for duty at all! Gosh, what a shame.
....
So, then, let this be a warning: Get ready. Expect the unexpected. Watch the headlines, look to the skies, dust off your stash of duct tape. Because Karl Rove and the BushCo war hawks and the corporate cronies who run the show aren't about to go down without a screaming, sickening, fiery fight.

And if BushCo has proven anything in the past four violent, budget-gutting, honor-molesting, nearly unbearable years, it's that there ain't no international law that can't be broken, no fear synapse that can't be hammered to death, no fraudulent power tactic that can't be abused. Anything is possible. You have been warned. God bless America.

I usually find Morford pretty over the top, but he is actually just laying out the facts. I guess that would make him shrill and unpatriotic. This is already the ugliest campaign in my life, and Morford doesn't even go into the way the press is shilling for W. That'll begin to change when the press figures out that Bush has lost the voters.

Republic of Fear

The Committee of Fear:
Joe Lieberman and John Kyl
July 20, 2004

We cannot overstate how dangerous this development is at this moment in the struggle for democracy in America. Joe Lieberman and John Kyl, the epitome of AIPAC and conservative Congressional power, have revived the Committee on the Present Danger. As the foreign threat flipside of McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee, the CPD kindled fear and preyed upon the ignorance of everyday Americans to push through aggressive defense spending programs.

The reality is, we are attacked and hated because of our unjust policies. This is the present danger. Our economic engine is addicted to oil, members of Congress are addicted to AIPAC and defense industry money, and right now that system is falling apart. If there is a danger, it is to the power base of these cynical elite.

I saw these two clowns on "Inside Politics" on CNN yesterday with Woodruffian soft-balls being thrown all around. Why doesn't Lieberman just sign the Republican Party form? This idea is both dumb and dangerous, a distraction. The Congress has more important things to do, like maybe holding the White House accountable and exercising some oversight.

Religious Pluralism

Protestants soon to be minority in U.S., study finds

July 21, 2004

BY CATHLEEN FALSANI Religion Reporter

America's Protestant majority is about to disappear, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Chicago.

Since the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock nearly 400 years ago, America has been a largely Protestant nation.

But as early as the end of this year, Protestants likely will make up less than 51 percent of the population for the first time in history, sociologists at the university's National Opinion Research Center surmise in a new report released Tuesday.

According to survey results from more than 43,000 Americans gathered over the last 30 years, the percentage of Protestants in the national population has shrunk from 63 percent in 1993 to 52 percent in 2002.

Surveys defined Protestant as any Christian denomination that was formed at the time of the Reformation or thereafter, including groups such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said Tom Smith, director of the NORC's General Social Survey, where most of the data was collected.

"Our projection is that the Protestant percentage in the 2004 survey will probably be somewhere between 50 and 51 percent," Smith said. "It's particularly striking because for 30 years, it was absolutely stable.''

Smith said media have covered "the rise of nontraditional American religions ... and the rise of people without any faith, but what was missing from that story was, OK, the number of people with no faith was rising but nobody was paying attention to where they were coming from."

In the last 30 years, the number of people who say they were brought up with no religion at all has risen from 2 percent to 7 percent, according to the NORC report.

From 1993 to 2002, the number of people who said they had no religion rose from 9 percent to nearly 14 percent, and in that same time period the number of people who said they were raised Protestant fell from 64 percent to about 56 percent.

While this change represents the declining membership in the Protestant main line, it is also a reflection of the change in our immigration patterns: we have more Muslims, Hindus, Baha'is, Sikhs, Buddhists and Orthodox Christians than ever before. Also, one of the fastest growing Christian denominations is the American Orthodox, which is growing by conversions out of the Protestant denominations.

America is now a religious bazaar. Our diversity is now enormous. Check out the link to Harvard Divinity School's Pluralism Project over there on the sidebar on the right, under "Organizations."

Osama bin Forgotten

Afghanistan's rocky road to freedom
Nearly three years after Operation Enduring Freedom was launched, not much of the operation endures and many basic freedoms -- from insecurity, from fear, from poverty -- remain elusive.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Duncan Campbell

July 21, 2004 | Earlier this month, it was announced that the elections in Afghanistan were to be delayed for a second time, with the country now supposedly choosing a president in October and a new parliament next spring. The announcement made few waves. Afghanistan is the day before yesterday's story. Nearly three years after Operation Enduring Freedom was launched to remove the Taliban regime and bring liberty and prosperity to one of the world's most impoverished countries, not much of the operation endures and many basic freedoms -- from insecurity, from fear, from poverty -- remain elusive.

As it happens, the announcement of the election date comes as an independent research body has published a report on what it sees as the failure of the security policy in Afghanistan, accusing the international community of serious neglect. The report, by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), points out that, compared with countries where the international community has intervened militarily, Afghanistan has been badly let down.
....
"Shamefully, Afghanistan has the lowest international troop to population ratio of any recent intervention," asserts Col Philip Wilkinson, who co-authored the paper with Michael Bhatia and Kevin Lanigan. The report says that Afghanistan now has one member of the military to 1,115 members of the population, compared to one per 50 at an equivalent period in Kosovo, one per 111 in East Timor, one per 161 in Iraq and one per 375 in Haiti.

It is worth remembering that Afghanistan is where the actual 9-11 terrorists are based. This isn't just shameful, it's dangerous.

Incompetence and Corruption

Halliburton's boss from hell
Dick Cheney campaigned on a platform of business know-how. But his tenure as Halliburton CEO left the company mired in bad deals, investigations and lawsuits.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Robert Bryce

July 21, 2004 | In early September, during the Republican National Convention, the GOP is almost certain to name Dick Cheney as its nominee for vice president of the United States. In the meantime, it's clear that Cheney deserves another nomination: as one of the worst CEOs in recent American history.

Add in a recent $106 million legal judgment against the company for its involvement in a Kazakh oil deal done during Cheney's stint as CEO, along with the Pentagon's ongoing investigations into Halliburton's overbilling (investigators have recently found that Halliburton spent $11 million to house personnel at the five-star Kuwait Hilton), and it becomes clear that Halliburton may have trouble surviving Dick Cheney.

It figures that a multiple failure businessman would pick an incompetent manager for his vice president. A little Freud 101 tells one that idiots don't choose underlings who outshine them.

Desperation

Let's dispense with this, shall we?

A Kerry Adviser Leaves the Race Over Missing Documents
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: July 21, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 20 - Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, resigned abruptly Tuesday as a senior adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign after the disclosure that he had improperly removed classified material on terrorism from a secure government reading room last year.

The decision came after Mr. Berger endured a day of furious criticism from Republican leaders, who accused him of breaching national security and possibly passing classified material to Mr. Kerry's campaign. Democrats, in turn, accused the Bush administration of leaking word of an F.B.I. investigation of Mr. Berger as a way of diverting attention from the release of the Sept. 11 commission's final report Thursday.

The FBI has been on the case since last October and no charges have been filed. Does that tell you anything? The Ashcroft Justice Department is so politicized that if they could have found a way to bring charges and embarrass a Clinton appointee, they would have done it by now, and trumpeted it all over the media. They couldn't, so they sprang a leak to try to blow the 9/11 Commission report off the front pages. This is a pathetic gesture by a deeply frightened political shop.

It Means What I Say It Means

Troops scale back Anbar patrols

By TOM LASSETER

Knight Ridder Newspapers

RAMADI, Iraq - After more than a year of fighting, U.S. troops have stopped patrolling large swaths of Iraq's restive Anbar province, according to the top American military intelligence officer in the area.

Most U.S. Army officers interviewed this week said the patrols in and around the province's capital, Ramadi - home to many Iraqi military and intelligence officers under Saddam Hussein - have stopped largely because the soldiers and commanders there were tired of being shot at by insurgents who've refused to back down under heavy American military pressure.
....
The apparent failure of a long line of Army and Marine units to bring peace to the province, which makes up about 40 percent of Iraq's landmass, will be a major challenge for Iraq's new government and could prove to be a tipping point for the nation as a whole. Increasingly, Iraq is a place in which cities or part of cities have been taken over by insurgents and radicals.

U.S. officers in Ramadi openly acknowledge that the Iraqi security force trained to take over the hunt for insurgents, the national guard, has become a site-protection service that so far is incapable and unwilling to conduct offensive operations.

When the governor of Anbar left town last month, the head of the national guard, who since has been replaced, took part in an attempt to overthrow him. National guardsmen in town have refused to go on patrols either alone or with the Americans. The 2,886 national guardsmen in Ramadi so far have detained just one person.

To show how operations in Anbar have changed, Jasper sketched a map on a piece of paper.

Pointing to a neighborhood outside the town of Habbaniyah, between Fallujah and Ramadi, he said, "We've lost a lot of Marines there and we don't ever go in anymore. If they want it that bad, they can have it."

And then to a spot on the western edge of Fallujah: "We find that if we don't go there, they won't shoot us."

Marine Cpl. Charles Laversdorf, who works in his battalion's intelligence unit, said the Marines averaged just five raids a month and no longer were running any patrols other than those to observation posts.

I guess this is what W means by "success." Being shut out of basic security patrols means failure in a world where language isn't dictated by Humpty Dumpty.

The Second Term

President Is Still Mum on Agenda For Second Term

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 18, 2004; Page A01

As he campaigned around the country last week, President Bush asked voters to give him another four years to make the nation "safer and stronger and better." But with the election less than four months away, one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the president's campaign is what he would actually do if he wins a second term.

Bush's failure to detail a second-term agenda -- beyond his pledge to keep waging an aggressive war on terrorism -- represents a stark contrast to his previous campaigns, in which he set out a handful of priorities almost from the opening day and rarely deviated from them.

Throughout the year, Bush has focused on Iraq and terrorism and on drawing attention to improved economic statistics, but has barely begun to make the case about second-term priorities. Whether there is room for a bold domestic agenda, given the fiscal strains his first term has created, and whether Bush has fresh ideas on issues such as health care, education and the economy are questions yet to be answered.

Bush's advisers, in a series of interviews in recent days, were quick to rebut those questions. They asserted that there will be a vigorous new agenda and challenged those who have suggested that a second-term blueprint could be little more than a warmed-over version of what Bush ran on in 2000 but has failed to enact.

They said Bush plans to use the period around the time of the Republican National Convention in late August to put forward the main elements of a new agenda in an effort to draw a clear contrast with Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and seize control of the debate during the final two months of the campaign.

"After their [the Democrats] convention is over and we're into the August phase and into our convention, we will begin aggressively talking about the president's vision for the next four years," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said.

Said another adviser: "We are going to have a window after the Democratic convention and at our convention where people are going to say, what are you going to do the next four years? We will robustly seize that opportunity."

The details remain closely held. Presidential advisers said elements of the plan have been agreed to, with debate still underway on others. Fighting terrorism remains paramount to the president, and on domestic issues there is a consensus outside the administration that Bush likely will renew his call for changes in Social Security.

Outside analysts are in far less agreement on whether, beyond calling for making his tax cuts permanent, Bush will push for significant tax law revisions or simplification. Bush's education focus may shift to higher education, while his health care agenda is likely to focus on some combination of medical liability reform, efforts to curb rising costs with the help of information technology and programs to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance.

Bush began this campaign year sketching out several new initiatives, including manned exploration of the moon and eventually Mars and immigration reform. Neither, however, captured sustained attention or support. Another major proposal, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, was soundly defeated in the Senate last week.

Waiting until his convention to offer a campaign agenda represents a major strategic shift for Bush. Some administration allies worry that the time is late to introduce a new agenda and expect voters to digest it and give the president a mandate to implement it. And Bush's political team will not say whether they will use their advertising dollars this fall to push that agenda, or continue to attack Kerry.

But former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said he agrees with the White House decision to wait, and predicted an ambitious package when it is unveiled. "I am told by people who have heard him talk privately that it is very powerful, that he's deeply, passionately committed and in many ways wants to stake his place in history in achieving substantial change in the country, not just as the president who led the war on terror," Gingrich said.

One Bush adviser said, "The general feeling is we've got to have the same ambition and clarity we're bringing to the international agenda to some important domestic policy issues. . . . I don't think it's accurate to say we're making a turn. It's accurate to say we're filling out a message."

Great. Deepening the deficit. Star Wars. Mars. These folks really have a vision for the next four years. Let's hope that Diebold doesn't give it to them.

This morning:

Bush Plans No Rest in Next Month; 2nd Term Agenda Near
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: July 21, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 20 - Seeking to blunt any advantage Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts might enjoy from the Democratic convention, President Bush's campaign has planned a monthlong offensive that will blend criticism of the Democratic ticket with what aides said would be Mr. Bush's first effort to set out a second-term agenda.

Even as Mr. Kerry is being nominated in Boston next week, Vice President Dick Cheney will campaign on the West Coast, signaling the urgency of the White House's drive to stop Mr. Kerry from breaking the deadlock in the race. Republicans are also assembling a squad of elected officials in Boston to offer a running, critical commentary of the Democratic convention as it unfolds.

And on July 30, the morning after Mr. Kerry accepts the nomination, Mr. Bush is scheduled to head to the Midwest for the start of what aides said would be a month of intensive campaigning. They also said that after months in which Mr. Bush has repeatedly attacked Mr. Kerry, the president would pivot and begin offering ideas for what a second Bush term would look like.

Mr. Bush hinted at that shift in emphasis at an Iowa campaign rally on Tuesday. The president, who is to speak again in Washington on Wednesday night and campaign in Illinois and Michigan later this week, suggested that he might not even wait until the Democratic convention to introduce a new approach.

"Oh, I know, you're probably here thinking I'm going to spend most of the time attacking my opponent," Mr. Bush said in Cedar Rapids. "I've got too much good to talk about."

He's had four years to think about what he's going to do next, and he's just now getting around to an agenda for the second term? Since he reversed nearly every agenda item from the first campaign, I'm not particularly interested in hearing what he has to say now, other than running it through the Orwell filter: whatever he says, reverse it, that's what he'll actually do.

900 and Counting

Kerry: ‘Troops come first, period’
Kerry promises more respect for overworked forces

By Rick Maze and Tobias Naegele
Times staff writers

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., says senior civilian officials on the Bush administration have shown “ideological rigidity” toward the professional military by disregarding the advice of seasoned senior uniformed officers on the mission in Iraq. — Associated Press
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry leans back in an oversized black leather seat aboard his red, white and blue campaign plane and muses about his brief naval career.

What he liked most, he says, was “the camaraderie, the responsibility, the no-holds-barred commitment … you loved each other.”

That, in a nutshell, is what makes him different from President Bush, he says. It’s what the president doesn’t get.

“Troops come first, period,” Kerry said in a wide-ranging interview June 24 aboard his campaign plane between stops in California. “I am very sensitive to strain on the military.”

Over the course of 45 minutes, Kerry ticked off what he called the “failures” and “arrogance” of the Bush administration, and confidently spelled out how he would deal with key defense issues such as transformation, troop levels and stop-loss, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule for gays in uniform, relations with foreign allies, leadership and accountability and his suitability to be commander in chief.

“Look at this administration,” he said. “Four years ago they said, ‘Help is on the way,’ and they criticized the Clinton administration. They didn’t do anything to change what was really the deployable capacity of the military at the moment they began this war. This is the Clinton military.”

After promising help, Kerry said, the Bush administration cut support for public schools near military bases, tried to cut danger pay and family separation pay for deployed troops and failed to provide enough money for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“I think there has been a general disrespect — my own opinion is, personal disrespect — toward the realities of what this war is costing us in human terms for the rank and file. I remember from my own service, that is where it matters, not in offices in the Pentagon.”

Stopping stop-loss

Kerry, who was more relaxed and engaging during the interview than he sometimes seems in campaign appearances, called the Army’s continued use of stop-loss a “backdoor draft,” a way to extend the commitments of troops who have already completed their tours of duty. He said he did not fully accept the argument that stop-loss is necessary for unit cohesion and readiness in war zones.

“In my judgment, most units over there are not engaged in the kinds of activities where that is critical,” he said. “If you are engaged on the front line in a battle or some particular mission, you can make that argument, but if it is a routine patrol, I don’t think that is particularly persuasive when you make a commitment to somebody and they have a contract, in essence, saying this is the length of service.”

Forcing service members to remain in the military is “counter to good leadership,” he said, and vowed he would halt the practice “in a matter of months.”

One way to reduce the need for stop-loss, Kerry said, is to turn to foreign allies. As president, he said, one of the first things he would do is engage the United Nations and U.S. allies alienated in the run-up to the war to get them to share the burden of the Iraq occupation and relieve pressure on American active and reserve forces.

Only a change in leadership, he said, would convince allies to work with the United States.

“Allies have a distrust for this administration,” Kerry said. “If you are not prepared to share decision-making with them, how can you expect them to put troops on the ground?”

Kerry is in fantasy land. There isn't a government on the planet which is going to be willing to put troops in harm's way in Iraq. This is Bush's war and Kerry is going to inherit it, and the sequelae which flow from it. This was an unnecessary war, the world knows it and won't want to spend lives on it.

As of this morning, we've suffered 900 troop deaths. Funny, you won't find that on the front pages of any of the national dailies.

Kerry and Race

Assessing Kerry's Civil Rights Commitment

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Pacific News Service. Posted July 20, 2004.

No matter how much Kerry declares that he will talk to people on the right, or how many photo-ops he takes packing guns, he won't loosen Bush's iron grip on white Southern males, evangelicals and gun enthusiasts. Southern-born and bred Clinton couldn't do that. It would also be a fatal political mistake to assume that blacks fear and loathe another four years of Bush so much that they will stampede the polls to back Kerry. While blacks will again vote overwhelmingly for Kerry, and Latinos will give him the majority of their votes, it's not the percentage of these groups' votes that counts, but how many voters actually show up at the polls on Election Day.

In years past, a legion of Democratic presidents and presidential contenders have spoken before friendly, supportive NAACP conventions. They promised to put civil rights on the nation's front burner. Few have kept their word. If Kerry reneges on his word during the campaign, he could be the big loser.

I'm normally loathe to get into racial politics, which I consider a gaping wound on the Democratic body politic, but the stakes are so high this year that I'm going to venture into some niches where I normally would not go. We are seeking out a wedge advantage in a handful of Rustbelt states. I don't like to use the word "pander," but that is what Democratic presidential candidates have done with Black and Hispanic voters. I would love see the Dems stop it: I hate it that the only time Dems talk religion is in the pulpits of black churches, a knee-jerk habit that goes 'way back, perfected into an art form by Jimmy Carter.

Hutchinson's last point is a little oblique: Dems have been reneging on their word since LBJ, and minority voters have remained remarkably loyal. Where it could REALLY cost Kerry is if Black voters stay home in 2008.

Subsidizing the Mercs

Many elite soldiers leave for better pay

By PAULINE JELINEK
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- Just when the U.S. military needs them most, senior Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other elite forces are leaving for higher-paying jobs.

After getting years of training and experience in the military, they leave for other government jobs or for what defense officials said Tuesday has been an explosion in outside contractor work.

"What makes them so valuable to us makes them highly marketable on the outside," said Chief Master Sgt. Robert V. Martens Jr., senior adviser at the U.S. Special Operations Command, which also oversees equipping and training elite Army Rangers and Air Force special operations commandos.

Better salaries, retirement benefits and educational opportunities are among incentives that might help stem the problem, defense officials said as they met with lawmakers to discuss ways to keep forces who have become so crucial to the war on terror.

A soldier, sailor or airman gets $60,000 per year at 18 years of service - a figure that includes housing allowance and some types of special duty pay. Troops who go to work for civilian contractors can make up to $200,000 a year, one official has said.

The military command that oversees the covert forces "is the nation's single best weapon in the global war on terror," said Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J. Saxton opened Tuesday's session before his House Armed Services Committee terrorism subcommittee, saying he fears the military is losing such troops faster than they can be replaced for a counter-terror war that "has no foreseeable end point."

Officials from the command based in Tampa, Fla., didn't give specific numbers but said the Army, Navy and Air Force are all seeing an increasing trend in which senior people are retiring at their 20-year mark, though they could remain on active duty for several more years.

Force Master Chief Clell Breining, senior adviser at the Naval Special Warfare Command, said there has been a decline in people staying beyond the 10- to 14-year mark since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

This is a huge, and hugely expensive, problem that the DoD has created for itself. If Defense weren't hiring outside contractors in massive numbers, elite forces wouldn't be leaving. This is another facet of Donald Rumsfeld's misbegotten "transformation" of the Army, so that we can hire our own troops back at 4-5 times what we were paying them when they were in uniform. More of that "fiscal responsibilitiy" from the Republicans.

Special forces training takes years. We are paying for the training which they then take to the private contractors. We are using the military as a subsidy to private industry. We are, essentially, paying a tax for the use of private armies. Talk about your corporate giveaways. If anybody can find a link to the political contribution histories of these firms, I'd welcome it. What do you want to bet that Bush is rewarding his friends?

Strength for the Journey

Faith and Values (this is one to bookmark) has a series of profiles of the candidates which includes questions on the relationship of their faith to their politics. Since we've already given John Kerry a fair amount of pixels on this score, let's see what his running mate has to say:

What role has your faith played in your political life?
Well, my faith has been enormous to me in my personal life and of course my personal life is a big impact on my political life. I have had an interesting faith journey over the course of my life. I was born and raised in the Southern Baptist church, I was baptized in the Southern Baptist Church and then later in life joined the Methodist church and like a lot of people, when I was in my college years, and I went to law school and became a lawyer and was raising my young family I moved away somewhat from my faith. And then I lost a son in 1996 and my faith came roaring back and it played an enormous role in my ability to get through that period. It stayed with me and has been enormously important. And in terms of my political life I believe there's a lot of the things that are part of my faith belief is also part of my political belief. My responsibilities to others, to help others. My work for instance, with Urban Ministries. I have been on the board of Urban Ministries for years before I went to the Senate. To provide help to the homeless in the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina is an example of that. So I think it's just part of my entire life.

Are there specific examples you can remember where your faith made a contribution?
Well for example, my wife and I have been involved in starting after-school programs. Again it’s my belief that we have a responsibility to provide help to others who can't take care of themselves, who can't help themselves. And we saw it firsthand. My wife Elizabeth worked in an after-school care program almost full-time, and I was over there a lot myself. I saw firsthand how much impact you can have on the life of others if you’re committed and if you care about providing help to others. In the Urban Ministries, which I talked about earlier, I mean the Urban Ministries program exists through the generosity, in large part, of the churches, in the faith ministries in the Raleigh-Durham area and provides help to everyone, particularly the homeless. So these things are all connected for me.

Spoken like a religious liberal. Edwards religious journey is much like his political evolution: going to college frequently moves people to the left, so his journey out of Southern Baptism to Methodism makes sense.

Our Man with a Plan

This is a long, thoughtful profile of Kerry and an examination of the way his foreign policy stance has evolved over time. Well worth a read.

DAMAGE CONTROL
by PHILIP GOUREVITCH
Voters need to believe that John Kerry can put the country back on track.

Kerry’s position has not changed, and, seven months later, his critique of Bush is shared by a growing majority of voters. But passionate antipathy to Bush has not translated into a corresponding enthusiasm for Kerry. Even after his astonishing sweep of the primaries, and the widely celebrated selection of John Edwards as his running mate, Kerry perplexes much of the electorate. Although he has led Bush in the polls during the runup to the Democratic Convention, many voters still complain that they do not know what he stands for. Kerry can be frustratingly vague and inarticulate, but then Presidential challengers—who have no power to take action—have always thought it wise not to box themselves into specific foreign-policy commitments. In a race that is sure to be uncommonly harsh and uncommonly dirty, Kerry has sought to limit his size as a target. His ever-sharpening attacks on an ever more vulnerable President aside, he avoids taking firm positions on the immediate tactical questions of Iraq policy (whether the U.S. should send more troops, how to deal with the insurgents, how much de-Baathification is too little or too much), preferring to talk about strategy in broad terms that create the maximum contrast between his position and that of the President. Indeed, when it comes to Iraq, Kerry has been largely content so far to allow the Presidential race to play out as a one-man scramble, Bush vs. Bush.

Throughout the spring and early summer—with exposés of Bush’s rush to war stacking the best-seller lists, while the September 11th commission hearings filled television screens, alongside reports of rampant insurrection in Iraq and the irreparable disgrace of Americans torturing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison—Kerry seemed to be measuring out his comments on the war with deliberate reserve. “A few months ago,” Richard Holbrooke said to me, “I couldn’t go down the street in New York or Washington without people stopping me and asking, ‘Why isn’t he speaking out more clearly on Iraq?’” But Holbrooke, who is considered a leading contender for the post of Secretary of State in a Kerry Administration, thought that Kerry had just the right strategy. “We are in the throes of the greatest crisis since Vietnam and maybe even worse. Kerry has to allow events to unfold. But he should not be expected to lay out a plan significantly more detailed than he has, because it’s not necessary at this point. Everyone knows he would do it differently.” Sandy Berger, who was Bill Clinton’s national-security adviser and who is now advising Kerry, agreed, and he went further. “There are no silver bullets on Iraq,” he said. “So if people are waiting for John Kerry to say, ‘The answer is Rosebud,’ there is no Rosebud.”

Here is a shorter appreciation by Kerry friend Tom Oliphant of the BoGlo:

George Bush's machine has spent $100 million in a so far vain attempt to make Kerry conform to conservative caricatures of liberals. The season of media deconstructions of his life's details has yielded trees, not a forest. It's partly negative comment that no clear impressions of him have formed despite at least six months of genuine prominence, but that's another way of saying that what comes next is mostly up to him.

My long exposure to Kerry's life makes me think of a story about the late Richard Neustadt of Harvard, the 20th century's pre-eminent presidential scholar. In 1986, Mike Dukakis asked him: Did all of the country's presidents have anything important in common? Neustadt answered with a grin that each of them was pretty weird.

On that basis, someone should start drafting Kerry's inaugural address. More than once in the next two weeks, people will talk about his family, money, and schooling pedigrees; they should save their breath. The truth is he wasn't all that preppie in the view of most real preppies; he was a combat leader in Vietnam who turned against the war when people with his pedigrees didn't typically fight in wars. He was mostly a moderating influence in the radicalizing antiwar movement he gave new life to in 1971, but I remember vividly him telling me during the veterans demonstration here that he assumed his activism would preclude a political career. His confusion the following year of his brief celebrity with political support led to his punch-in-the-jaw loss for Congress.

Because so much attention goes to his pedigrees and to Vietnam, most Americans would be surprised to be reminded that 27 years passed between his defeat and his true arrival on the national political scene four years ago when Al Gore came close to picking him for the Democratic ticket. For all his supposed advantages, Kerry came up the hard, slow way. I had learned during the Vietnam period that because the atmosphere was so intense, powerful voices could appear and disappear quickly; what first caused me to respect his drive was when he checked in after his congressional defeat to say he was going to Boston College Law School and was thinking about becoming a prosecutor -- not a chic career move on the left in those days.

He did not, however, climb the ladder as a regular Democrat. His career-making nominations -- real squeakers for lieutenant governor in 1982 and for the Senate two years later against worthy opponents -- came from outside his party's establishment. Sharp elbows were thrown at him, and he threw plenty of his own.

In the Senate for 20 years, he had the sense to live with Edward Kennedy's surpassing status and accomplishments and to seize the opportunities that were open in another long climb. Most of the media attention goes to his investigations of devious war-making in Central America and international crooks, but I was always more impressed by his gradual emergence as one of the Senate's leading figures on the environment, energy policy, and affordable housing. He has been a new ideas Democrat consistently, and not without controversy, but always with firm progressive roots. He has also put Vietnam in its place -- not behind him, because it is too much part of him, but in his conviction that last resort should mean last resort and that reckless behavior costs soldiers' lives. That conviction is balanced by an awareness that Madeleine Albright was correct in arguing that foreign policy must be based on the lessons of Munich, and now 9/11, as well as Saigon.

Others have mostly failed to define this guy. Now it's his turn and his chance.

The better I get to know the man, the more I think that he may be just the man to undo all of the catastrophic mistakes visited on us by the Bushies. I appreciate the fact that he is complex, because the situation in which we find ourselves is a complex one. Snatching anything other than apocalypse from the sands of Mesopotamia is going to require the foreign policy equivalent of a triple axel with a triple flip.

Thoughts on Spooks

Reorganize the CIA?
Of Course, But Bad US Policies Will Outweigh Any Benefits

By BILL CHRISTISON (Former CIA analyst)
Counterpunch
July 15, 2004

Let's start by accepting that George Tenet's resignation was a good thing. He let himself be co-opted and too often told the Bush administration what it wanted to hear. He gave his superiors selective information that would strengthen their existing desire to invade Iraq rather than a balanced picture of the variety of analytical views within the intelligence community on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. He did not do this all of the time, but he did do it too much of the time. He got too close to the policymakers and tried too hard to please them. His calling it a "slam-dunk" (as reported by Bob Woodward) that Iraq did indeed possess WMD in the fall of 2002, is all the evidence required to reach this conclusion. But there is more, much more.

All covert operations other than those defined above as being allowed to the Defense Department should be carried out only by the new organization. In addition, all operations should be approved in writing by the president, by the chairmen and ranking minority members of the three House and three Senate committees on foreign affairs, military affairs, and intelligence, and by the chief justice of the Supreme Court as well. Covert operations are so important, and should be so exceptional, that henceforth all three branches of government – executive, legislative, and judicial – should be part of the approval process for such operations. If assigning such a function to the Supreme Court could be achieved only through a constitutional amendment, then we should seek such an amendment.

I like Christison's analysis a lot, particularly the last point: this country has an ugly history of covert operations. Removing deniability at the highest levels of government (Iran-Contra, Venezuala, Haiti) will mean that dirty tricks will be a lot harder to pull and, hopefully, a lot rarer than in the past.

Flashpoint

Kirkuk as Car Bomb

By David Ignatius
Tuesday, July 20, 2004; Page A17

Kirkuk is a special flash point, where the violence of the insurgency feeds off long-standing ethnic tensions. The city of about 850,000 is roughly 35 percent Kurd, 35 percent Sunni Arab and 26 percent Turkmen, according to U.S. estimates. The Kurds argue that they were dominant here until the former regime began brutally moving Arabs in and driving Kurds out, starting in the late 1960s. The Kurdish leaders want to control Kirkuk and its oil wealth.

The Turkmen make a similar claim that Kirkuk is historically their city, and their backers in the Turkish government have warned the Kurds against any attempt to seize control. For the moment, Kurdish leaders are avoiding a showdown -- betting that a steady tide of Kurds returning to their old homes will gradually tip the demographic balance their way. One sign of the tension is that the sons of prominent Kurdish and Arab security officials were each kidnapped over the past week, according to the Iraqi press.

Into this ethnic cauldron jumped the U.S. military 16 months ago. American officials now play the Iraqi version of affirmative action -- keeping careful records of how many members of each ethnic group are on the local governing council, in the city administration and at each police station. They hope a new Property Claims Commission will pay Arab squatters enough compensation to go back home, but so far there are no judges here to arbitrate the claims.

The Kurdish police chief, Sherako Shaker Hakim, admits there are tensions on the force but tells me his rule is: "As long as someone is in Iraq, he's an Iraqi." The United States is encouraging this sort of unity by funding a "Joint Operations Center" for the Iraqi police and military. It makes for a nice photo opportunity -- with new computers and televisions and a diverse mix of police and military officers answering the phones. But a U.S. adviser here concedes that "it's a challenge every day" to maintain ethnic peace.

Kirkuk is an explosion waiting to happen. A violent move by any group -- Kurds, Turkmen or Sunni Arabs -- could detonate the mix. It's the political version of that car bomb roaming the streets. "I tell my soldiers one of their most important responsibilities is buying time," says Col. Milo Miles, who commands the Army brigade based here. And in that, he sums up a basic truth about Iraq.

We don't have a clue

You've got the Power

What Dean Did

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004; Page A17

The revisionist history of the Dean campaign has already begun. In a powerful piece of reporting in the current issue of U.S. News & World Report, the veteran political writer Roger Simon demonstrates that Dean was never as strong going into the Iowa caucuses as many in the media -- and even in Dean's own campaign -- believed at the time. Dean's third-place showing ended his chances of becoming the nominee. The loss, not "the scream," is what beat him, Dean says.

Dean hadn't read Simon's article when I reached him by phone on Sunday, but he believes his campaign was doomed by a paradox: The ferocious opposition to President Bush among rank-and-file Democrats that fed Dean's movement early on eventually led Democrats to abandon him. "The most effective argument they made," Dean says of Kerry's campaign, "is that I was unelectable. And there was nothing the Democrats wanted more than to win."

It's interesting to consider in retrospect what made the electability argument work so effectively against Dean. His rivals for the Democratic nomination roundly denounced him when he said in December that "the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer." Yet, seven months later, polls suggest that a majority of Americans now doubt that the war in Iraq made the country safer. In politics, timing is everything.

Dean is also amused that, given his moderate record as a governor, he was somehow seen as a radical. "I've balanced budgets, I've supported the death penalty in some instances, I got an 'A' from the NRA -- and I'm the most-left-wing Democrat?" Dean laughs. The labeling, he says, is a mark of how the nation's political discussion has been pulled to the right. "What passes now for 'moderate,' " he says, "used to be called 'conservative.' "

Which introduces another paradox about Dean's effort: Whatever his campaign's failings, it will be seen as a turning point in the way Democrats approach politics. Dean's organizational innovations -- particularly his success in raising money on the Internet -- revolutionized fundraising and helped create a mass base of small donors the party has not had since George McGovern's 1972 campaign. Kerry and other Democrats are also copying Dean's use of "house parties" to turn citizens into activists by bringing them together in a congenial, low-key atmosphere. Appropriately, Dean's just completed book on politics is called "You Have the Power."

Above all, Dean's rise in 2003 was a symptom of the Democratic rank and file's intense desire to turn itself into a fighting force. The higher Dean went in the polls, the sharper his rivals became in their criticisms of Bush. "I don't mind that people took the message," Dean says. "I really think that was good for the Democratic Party, and that it is essential to beating George Bush."

So next week's convention will belong to John Kerry and John Edwards. But it will be held in the political house largely built by Howard Dean.

Sing it, EJ. Because of the Dean campaign, the Democrats remembered their populist roots. The reason Gore did so badly in 2000 is that the Dems lost their roots and began to run as brainy technocrats. Kerry still tends in that direction, but "I'm smarter than you" isn't much of a campaign slogan.

Turdblossom

This is The Summer of the Documentary Film. Next up: Bush's Brain, from the book of the same name. "“BUSH'S BRAIN” is a documentary that introduces the country to Karl Rove, the man known as “Bush's Brain”, the most powerful political figure America has never heard of, the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain of today's Presidential politics. It is based on the best-selling book BUSH'S BRAIN (Wiley, 2003) by journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater.

Karl Rove is President George W. Bush's closest adviser. He is a man who has almost single-handedly shaped the policies of our nation. A brilliant tactician, ruthless opponent, savvy policy maker, and one of the greatest political minds in the history of the Republic. "

I personally think he's been a disaster, but north of 40% of the electorate is still planning to re-select W, so I guess he is doing something right. Anyway, if you want to add the DVD to your growing collection of 2004 political films, click on the link.

State Sanctioned Murder

High Court Asked to End Executions Of Juveniles

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 20, 2004; Page A01

A broad array of individuals and groups ranging from Jimmy Carter to Mikhail Gorbachev and the American Medical Association to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged the Supreme Court yesterday to declare that it is unconstitutional to execute people for crimes they committed before turning 18.

The United States is one of five countries that execute juvenile offenders, a practice that shocks European allies and violates "minimum standards of decency shared by virtually every nation in the world," nine eminent former U.S. diplomats told the court in one of 15 briefs filed yesterday. Virginia is one of seven states that execute juvenile offenders.

In 2002 the court, invoking the concept of "evolving standards of decency," abolished capital punishment for mentally retarded offenders. The briefs filed yesterday are part of a campaign by death-penalty opponents to persuade the court to apply similar reasoning in regard to juveniles.

The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the fall in the case of Christopher Simmons, now 27, who was sentenced to death for the 1993 drowning of Shirley Crook, 46.

Simmons was 17 when he and a 15-year-old accomplice broke into Crook's mobile home near Fenton, Mo., intending to burglarize it. Fearing that she had recognized them, they bound her with duct tape and electrical wire and kicked her off a bridge into a river.

Missouri's Supreme Court overturned Simmons's death sentence in August, ruling that the execution of juvenile offenders violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The state of Missouri appealed that ruling.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in January to hear the case, which could lead to a reversal of a 1989 decision in which the court upheld the death penalty for crimes committed by 16- and 17-year-olds. Since 1988, the court has barred execution of those 15 and younger.

Four justices -- Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens -- have said that imposing the death penalty for offenses by 16- and 17-year-olds is "inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society." But thus far, they have not attracted the fifth vote they need to overturn the practice, which is increasingly rare.

The rest of the industrialized world is pretty much horrified that we still have the death penalty AT ALL. Our "culture of life" president seems to have really gotten off on signing death warrants and it still stuns me that a pro-life Republican party doesn't get the cognitive dissonance of their positions on abortion and the death penalty. State sanctioned murder is just that: murder. The premeditated ending of the life of a fellow human. There are a hundred arguments for eliminating the death penalty on pragmatic grounds. And one on moral grounds: it is wrong to take the life of another.

Personnel Shortages

Governors Tell of War's Impact on Local Needs
By SARAH KERSHAW

Published: July 20, 2004

SEATTLE, July 19 - With tens of thousands of their citizen soldiers now deployed in Iraq, many of the nation's governors complained on Sunday to senior Pentagon officials that they were facing severe manpower shortages in guarding prisoners, fighting wildfires, preparing for hurricanes and floods and policing the streets.

Concern among the governors about the war's impact at home has been rising for months, but it came into sharp focus this weekend as they gathered for their four-day annual conference here and began comparing the problems they faced from the National Guard's largest callup since World War II. On Sunday, the governors held a closed-door meeting with two top Pentagon officials and voiced their concerns about the impact both on the troops' families and on the states' ability to deal with disasters and crime.

Much of the concern has focused on wildfires, which have started to destroy vast sections of forests in several Western states. The governor of Oregon, Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat, said in an interview after meetings here Monday that the troop deployment had left his National Guard with half the usual number of firefighters because about 400 of them were overseas while a hot, dry summer was already producing significant fires in his state.

"We're praying a lot that a major fire does not break out," he said. "It has been dry out here, the snow pack's gone because of an extremely warm May and June and the fire season came earlier."

He added, "You're just going to have fires and if you do not have the personnel to put them out, they can grow very quickly into ultimately catastrophic fires.''

Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican of Idaho and departing chairman of the National Governors Association, also said through a spokesman that he was worried about the deployment of 2,000 members, or 62 percent of his National Guard, who are now training in Texas for a mission in Iraq.

"In the past we've been able to call on the National Guard," said Mark Snider, a spokesman for the governor. "We may not be able to call on these soldiers for firefighting capabilities."

California fire and forestry officials said they were not using National Guard troops to battle wildfires plaguing that state, but they did say that they were using nine Blackhawk helicopters borrowed from the Guard to fight the fires. Some of the helicopters are bound for Iraq in September.

More than 150,000 National Guard and Reserve troops are on active duty. Many of the Guard troops have received multiple extensions of their tours of duty since the United States went to war with Iraq last year.

Arizona is short a batch of prison guards. And then there is this:

And in a small town in Arkansas, Bradford, both the police chief and the mayor are now serving in Iraq, leaving their substitutes a bit overwhelmed.

"Our mayor and our police chief, along with six others were activated, and they're over in Iraq," said the acting mayor, Greba Edens, 79, in a telephone interview. "We had a police officer that could step in as chief, and I've been treasurer for 20 years so that just put me in the mayor's spot whether I wanted or it not."

My personal concerns, after living through Hurricane Isabel last year:

FORT COLLINS, Colorado (AP) -- A storm expert on Friday predicted a busier-than-usual Atlantic hurricane season [this] year, with seven hurricanes -- three of them major.

Funnin' for Christ

The Ha-Ha-Hallelujah Comedy Movement
At Christian Clubs, Humor Is Heavenly

By Natalie Hopkinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 20, 2004; Page A01

So it begins, down a narrow side street in a Beltsville strip mall, the type of place to get your acrylic nails filled, tighten up a fade haircut, and pick up all kinds of useful accouterments for a dollar. Across the street young men are pawing nudie magazines, but prayers can be said for them later.

Step inside the tiny storefront, where opening night for Synergy, a new comedy club, is in full swing. "Child? What about going through two services with a girdle on?" asks the voluptuous Miss Clareese as the spotlights in the dark room illuminate her mismatched thrift-store outfit, feathered hat and Mr. T gold chains.

"Martin Luther King say we free. Abraham Lincoln say we free. Why would I let Lane Bryant put me back in bondage?"

Rick Younger lumbers onstage and sighs loudly. He stares blankly at the crowd for a few awkward moments, then sighs again. "I guess you're wondering, 'When is this guy going to get to work?' " he says. "I'm just like you. I don't get to work as soon as I get to work. Right now I'm checking e-mails, hanging out by the water cooler . . . "

Sean Sarvis's black T-shirt is a few sizes too big and his matching baseball cap is rocked to the back. "I'm too nice to be an usher," he tells the audience. "The ushers are the thugs of the church, keep it real. My mother is a nice person, but when she puts on those white [usher] gloves" -- he pumps his fists in a boxer's stance -- "she be like, 'Somebody, you gon' get me wrong up in here!' "

Laughter is still bouncing off the club's four dark blue walls when fluorescent lights flick on in a blinding white flash. "And now it's time to give," Sarvis announces. He cues the deejay, and the theme music from "Sanford and Son" pipes in over the speakers.

"Back row, stand up," Sarvis says, and several chuckles erupt in anticipation of the next punch line. His face turns to stone, and this time, he adds a little bass to his voice. "Back row, stand up!" he barks.

Nobody's even thinking about trying to get him wrong up in here. Row by row, the audience marches to the stage and drops singles, fives and checks hastily made out to Synergy Ministries -- $1,260 by the end of the night. He's joking, but it's no joke. This is the house of the Lord.

You can call them "inspirational," "alternative," "Christian" and even, as some of them plead, "just clean." They are the dozens of comedians working the Washington area's gospel comedy scene. For years, these comedians have been performing at churches, community centers, parties and weddings. But now a small circuit of Christian comedy venues has popped up, struggling to make a go.

"God gave us the gift of laughter," says Erik Sellin, who with wife Kymberly took out a second mortgage on their College Park home to open Synergy on July 9 in the mall at Route 1 and Powder Mill Road. "These guys are using their talents for Him."

For the past nine months at Hyattsville's Gospel Live restaurant, comedians have been joking for Jesus while patrons dine on "right righteous crab cakes" and "sing praises T-bone steak" during "Holy Comedy" nights hosted by comedian Nita B. The four-year-old restaurant also hosts Christian-themed music and poetry and open-mike nights. Whether Christian comedy will take off "remains to be seen," says owner Donte Gardner. "We have to get some of the bigger promoters on board, then we can really see it go."

At the monthly Psalms 117, a Christian coffeehouse in Silver Spring, comics spread the Word alongside spoken-word poets in front of 80 or so people. Psalms recently leased a comedy space of its own in Lanham for an eight-month weekly trial, but didn't get a consistent enough crowd, says owner Carlana Acker.

"The Christian market is so funny," says Acker, a corporate travel agent. "Some of them would rather support secular stuff than Christian events. You are dealing with a very wishy-washy crowd."

This is really a story about Black evangelicals, but the Post can't say that. These clubs seem genuinely funny, and I'm a devotee of comedy clubs so I might try to be one of the few white faces at one of these venues this coming weekend. I had no idea that this movement was out there and I'm curious.

If you look at it from the standpoint of the analogical imagination of the comic mind, Christianity has enormous possibilities for jokes. Think of "The Life of Brian." I want to hear that from the Black, rather than Brit, perspective.

My experience has been that a $30 cover and a two drink minimum is at least as useful as a trip to the shrink. And a whole lot funnier. And cheaper.

Patriot Network

Fox vs. CNN: a deepening divide

'What happened today becomes something we're in danger of arguing over'

09:51 PM CDT on Saturday, July 17, 2004

This is a very complicated issue," said Mr. Sesno, who consults for CNN and teaches a class about media bias. "What you see mostly depends on where you stand."

CNN, he said, takes a traditional approach to news, reporting from a detached perspective and raising tough questions.

"There's a sense that when you watch Fox, you're on America's side," he said. "They have built a network that people expect to be more conservative, more supportive of the current administration."

Viewers and experts point to the two networks' coverage in Iraq and Afghanistan as an example of how CNN and Fox approach news differently.

In some ways, the two networks aren't even speaking the same language, as they use dueling spellings and phrases when referring to the same people and places.

Fox News' word choice often mirrors that of the Bush administration. The network regularly reports Iraq news under the heading "Operation Iraqi Freedom," and Fox is one of the only news outlets that refers to the al-Qaeda leader as Usama bin Laden.

CNN has reported on "the fight for Iraq," "the war in Iraq" and the "countdown to handover." And its anchors call Mr. bin Laden "Osama."

Breaking news dominates CNN's Iraq coverage – bombings, soldiers' deaths and government news receive prominent play. But Fox anchors make a concerted effort to tell positive stories about progress in Iraq. They regularly show pictures of grinning Iraqi children and ask viewers to write in describing soldiers' good deeds.

"While other networks focus only on the bad news in Iraq, we try to balance it out," Linda Vester told viewers recently. "Here's a little boy clearly grateful for the help."

Whether such feel-good pieces are newsworthy could be debated. But the coverage leaves the impression that the network is unwilling to ask challenging questions, said Joe Angotti, professor and chairman of the broadcast program at Northwestern University.

"Fox continues to take a flag-waving approach," said Mr. Angotti, a former vice president and executive producer at NBC News. "While the other networks are acknowledging people killed in the war ... Fox considers that almost unpatriotic."

It says something about how far to the right that the center has moved that CNN can be considered "liberal" by anyone.

FUBAR

Top commanders in Iraq allowed dogs to be used
By John Diamond, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — U.S. military commanders in Iraq authorized the use of dogs for interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison five months after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld barred the practice for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to classified military documents.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. commander in Iraq, allowed dogs to be present during interrogations beginning Sept. 14, 2003. In an update of his order a month later, Sanchez allowed dogs to be used at the discretion of interrogators without his specific approval, according to classified documents obtained by USA TODAY. It was in the next two months that abuses at Abu Ghraib were documented, including use of dogs to terrify naked prisoners.

In April 2003, Rumsfeld had issued an order banning the use of dogs during interrogations at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a technique he had allowed there previously. But Rumsfeld's order applied only to Guantanamo, so commanders in Iraq were not told about the restriction.

As commander in a war zone, Sanchez had the authority to establish interrogation rules in Iraq without consulting Rumsfeld. Pentagon officials say they did not know that rules for Abu Ghraib differed from Rumsfeld's order for Guantanamo until photographs were leaked to the news media that showed naked Iraqi prisoners cowering before snarling dogs.

As a policy shop, the Pentagon may be the most screwed up executive agency, and that's saying something. Rumsfeld is incapable of communicating clearly with his senior staff. Sanchez was obviously freelancing. Unbelievable. The right and left hands are not just out of touch, they aren't connected to the same body.

Mass Distraction

Editorial: Not-so-Curious George (Bush)

An editorial
July 19, 2004

The man, who more than a year ago declared that the heavy lifting in Iraq was done, only to discover that the fight had barely started, is now back with another over-the-top pronouncement. "Today," Bush said last week, "because America has acted and because America has led, the forces of terror and tyranny have suffered defeat after defeat, and America and the world are safer."

By any measure, the president is wrong.

Iraq, which posed no serious threat to the United States before the invasion, is now a chaotic and dangerous nightmare - not just for the 135,000 American soldiers who continue to occupy it, but for the world. Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups that had not previously operated there - because of the militant secularism of former dictator Saddam Hussein and his ruling Baath Party - appear now to be operating in many regions of the country.

In Afghanistan, from which resources were redirected to fight the Iraq war, there is now talk of delaying elections because the Taliban is resurgent. And beyond Kabul, there is little order.

North Korea has reportedly quadrupled its nuclear weapons capacity in a year.

Iran is reportedly developing the capacity to create nuclear weapons.

Osama bin Laden remains at large, and his al-Qaida terrorist network continues to strike - not just in Madrid, where this year's train bombings killed more than 200 people, but around the world. Indeed, according to the U.S. government's own analysis, terrorist incidents have been on the rise over the past two years.

Earlier this month, Vice President Dick Cheney appeared with Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge to raise a warning that al-Qaida might attack the United States this year in order to disrupt the political process - perhaps even targeting the November election itself. While there was plenty of speculation that Cheney and Ridge were hyping domestic threats for political advantage, the new warning would seem to contradict Bush's claim that the terrorists are on the run and American and the world are safer.

How can the president be so ill-informed? How can he not recognize what people around the planet, and an ever-growing percentage of the American population, see so clearly: That the invasion and occupation of Iraq drew resources, energy and attention away from efforts to combat the most serious threats facing the United States and the world?

Is he lying? Probably not. More likely than not, he is sincere, and that's what should really scare Americans.

It is entirely possible that President Bush really does not know that his approach to the war on terror has been a failure. Whether he scans the headlines, as Laura suggests, or really does avoid contact with news that has not been filtered by his staff, all indications are that this president is not a curious man. And his lack of curiosity is not just frightening. In times like these, it is dangerous.

Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential contender John Kerry, says that America needs "a president who is not fazed by complexity, a president who likes to read." President Bush's claim that he has made America safer, which we fear he may actually believe, proves her point.

And what's on CNN? Scott Peterson and Kobe Bryant.

Killed and Injured

US casualty rate high since handover
Long guerrilla war is feared in Iraq

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | July 19, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Nearly as many US soldiers lost their lives in Iraq in the first half of July as in all of June, even as Iraqi insurgents seem to have shifted focus from attacking US targets to aiming instead at Iraqi security forces and government officials.

The relatively high rate of US military casualties has dimmed hope that the handover of power to the Iraqi government would help stabilize the country and reduce pressure on US soldiers.

June was substantially less violent for US and coalition troops than the two preceding months, fueling hopes that US casualties were on the downswing. However, military officials and defense specialists are increasingly concerned that the guerrilla war could last for years and the number of dead could climb into the thousands.

Since the June 28 handover of power, the 160,000 coalition forces have averaged more than two deaths a day, among the highest rate of losses since the war began 15 months ago. By Saturday, 36 US soldiers had died this month, compared with 42 last month, according to a Globe analysis of official statistics.

The casualties have yet to reach the level they were in April, the bloodiest month of the US-led occupation, when 135 American soldiers died, or May, when 80 Americans died, many of them during a three-week offensive in the southern cities of Karbala, Najaf, and Al Kut against armed followers of a leading Shia cleric.

But this month marks an upsurge in the pace and sophistication of the attacks against US and coalition troops, even as more Iraqi security forces, government ministers, and civilians have also become targets.

Army doctor calls duty a sobering experience

By Maj. K. Albert Yazawa

I was called to active duty to work as a physician at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest U.S. military hospital outside the United States.

We receive an average of three planeloads a week of U.S. patients from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's 60 to 100 patients per load, with problems ranging from simple infections and kidney stones, to multitrauma injuries from bomb and mortar blasts.

One of the more recent patients was Sgt. Daniel O. Ranis, a soldier with Company C, 193rd Aviation Regiment of the Hawai'i Army National Guard based out of Wheeler Army Airfield. Ranis grew up in 'Aiea, class of 1982, and now lives in Nanakuli, where his wife, Kaaukai, awaits his return.

Ranis is to be treated and returned to Iraq soon, where he will finish up the remainder of his more than yearlong tour in Iraq.

On average, I see about 25 patients a day in clinic and then do in-patient medicine, taking calls at night for emergency room admissions about five to 10 days a month.

The intensive-care unit and surgical floors are full of young soldiers. Seeing a newly amputated teenager or blind-for-life youngster is very sobering.

Many of the patients are here for a variety of conditions, and I only see a fraction of them. Most of my patients are our soldiers here in Germany and Europe, some from Kosovo and Afghanistan, and their family members. Fortunately, many are OK.

Disposition of the troops is decided in two weeks and many do return to Iraq, although some who need additional medical work go back to the states.

I have met a few Hawai'i soldiers here and it's nice to see them and talk to them. The good thing is I do have most weekends off and am able to travel. There are worse places to be.

The whole Iraq thing has certainly polarized our nation, but the news you hear every day doesn't even come close to scratching the surface on how rough things are in Iraq from what the soldiers tell me and from what I see.

Despite all this, morale is good, and I have made some good friends here. One guy is a classmate from medical school at the University of Hawai'i who I convinced to join the reserves for a little money he needed. At the time, I assured him the reserves would never come calling. Now we are stationed here in the same place at the same time. He has long since forgiven me, even though his tour here was recently extended by three months, as were the tours of many others.

Hegelian Dialectic

Bush's Agenda on Slow Track
With Democrats united and the GOP divided, the White House faces a congressional logjam. Election-year politics are a key factor, experts say.

By Janet Hook, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — After three years of getting most of the major legislation he wanted through a cooperative Congress, President Bush is coming up almost empty-handed this year as he heads into the homestretch of his reelection campaign.

Capitol Hill has turned into a sinkhole for the unfinished business on Bush's agenda, which includes bills to spur domestic energy production, crack down on lawsuits, extend his 2001 tax cuts and liberalize immigration rules.

Bush and his GOP allies blame the Democrats for the stalemate, as the minority party has become more united and stubborn in its opposition to White House initiatives.

But many issues, such as highway funding and additional tax cuts, have languished not just because of Democratic obstruction but also because of divisions among Republicans — between the House and Senate, moderates and conservatives, and Bush and congressional leaders.

Last week's Senate debate on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage was symptomatic of the many forces conspiring to turn this year into a legislative bust for the White House. Despite Bush's strong push for the amendment — a crowd pleaser for his party's conservative wing — it met with resounding defeat in the face of solid Democratic opposition and a divided Republican Party.

Even in the House, where Republicans are generally more disciplined in following Bush, his agenda is facing challenges. The House this month nearly passed a measure to scale back Bush's signature anti-terrorism law, the Patriot Act. Only an intensive, 11th-hour round of arm-twisting by GOP leaders spared Bush an embarrassing defeat.

Some Republicans argue that the legislative stalemate will not hurt Bush politically, because Congress already has produced a broad array of major legislation since 2000: big tax cuts, a Medicare prescription drug subsidy, and tools for waging war and combating terrorism.

"Congress has already accomplished so much in three years," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman. "The president came to Washington wanting to do some big things, and he's accomplished some big things. That doesn't mean he wants to let his foot off the gas."

But some Republicans worry that an anemic record this year will be a political problem, because one of their prime arguments for reelecting Bush and GOP majorities in Congress is that a government dominated by one party can get more done than a divided government.

"You can't just point your finger and call Democrats obstructionist," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). "If you have a job to do, you have to do it. People aren't interested in how many storms you encounter at sea. They want to know when you pull into port."

Stage 1 of the GOP crackup. The pendulum is swinging back. It would be a good thing if we were ready for it, but the DNC seems clueless, as always.

The Whole World is Watching

Proposal to Have U.N. Monitor Elections Ends In Partisan Clash

By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 19, 2004; Page A15

House Republicans view a recent move by 11 Democrats to have United Nations observers monitor U.S. elections as a politically motivated stunt, and last week they moved to nip the idea in the bud.

But after an unusually rancorous skirmish that brought proceedings on the House floor to a standstill late Thursday, the issue may have received more publicity than even Democrats hoped for.

It pitted Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), author of an amendment to the 2005 foreign aid bill aimed at blocking U.N. involvement in U.S. elections, against Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), who had harsh words for Buyer.

Buyer had been describing a July 1 letter from Democrats to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, requesting that he send observers to "monitor" this fall's elections, as "rather foolish, nonsense and silly."

"Imagine on Election Day you get up, you have your breakfast, you grab your coffee and your Danish, and you are going to go to the voting booth," Buyer said. "When you show up, you are curious because you see a white van out there that says the U.N. beside it and little blue helmets. The United Nations has arrived; we are going to ensure the integrity of the American electoral process. . . . I don't think so."

When Brown's turn came, she tore into Buyer.

"I come from Florida where you and others participated in what I call the United States coup d'état," she said. "We need to make sure that it does not happen again. Over and over again, after the election, when you stole the election, you came back here and said get over it."

An irate Buyer then halted the debate and demanded that Brown's words be "taken down," a step that can lead to a formal House reprimand.

After a 20-minute conference with the House parliamentarian, Acting Speaker Doug Ose (R-Calif.) issued a ruling: "Members should not accuse other members of committing a crime, such as stealing an election. By accusing an identifiable member of stealing an election, the gentlewoman's words are not in order."

Brown appealed the ruling, Buyer attempted to table the appeal and Brown then demanded a recorded vote. Proceedings continued on hold for more than a half-hour, as members returned to the chamber from functions around town.

Your tax dollars at work. Try to block a little graft...

Faith and Holy Doubt

Tiny Agency's Iraq Analysis Is Better Than Big Rivals'
By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: July 19, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 18 — On Iraq and illicit weapons, the intelligence agency that got it least wrong, it now turns out, was one of the smallest — a State Department bureau with no spies, no satellites and a reputation for contrariness.

Almost alone among intelligence agencies, this one, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or I.N.R., does not report to either the White House or the Pentagon. Its approach is purely analytical, so that it owes no allegiance to particular agents, imagery or intercepts. It shuns the worst-case plans sometimes sought by military commanders.

"They are willing to take on the accepted analysis and take a second, harder look," said Alfred Cumming, a former staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee who is now an intelligence and national security specialist at the Congressional Research Service, a branch of the Library of Congress.

With just 165 analysts, the bureau is about one-tenth the size of the Central Intelligence Agency's analytical arm. But its analysts tend to be older (most are in their 40's and 50's), more experienced and more likely to come from academic backgrounds than those at other agencies, and they are more often encouraged to devote their careers to the study of a particular issue or region.

"They have a reputation for having personnel who have skills in one specific area, as opposed to being utility infielders," said Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

That panel's otherwise scathing report on prewar intelligence on Iraq not only spared the Bureau of Intelligence and Research from most of its harsh criticisms, but also explicitly endorsed the dissent it had inserted into the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, challenging as unsubstantiated the view of other agencies that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

In addition, where the 2002 assessment included a prediction by other agencies that Iraq could develop a nuclear weapon within a decade, the State Department bureau said pointedly that it was unwilling to "project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening."

The bureau was apparently still wrong, along with other intelligence agencies, in asserting that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons. But Congressional officials say that over all, its recent record on Iraq has been better than that of its larger rivals, including the C.I.A., with more than 1,500 analysts, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, with more than 3,000.

The example of the State Department bureau, Congressional officials say, is being closely studied as the White House and Congress debate what changes may help intelligence agencies avoid additional failures.

Among other recent successes, the bureau's admirers say, was a classified report in 2003 that criticized the Bush administration view that a victory in Iraq would help spread democracy across the Arab world. It also predicted correctly that Turkey might not permit American troops to cross its territory en route to Iraq and dismissed as "highly dubious" a British contention, now discredited, that Iraq was trying to procure uranium from Niger.

Not surprisingly, the praise that has been directed at the bureau, including a widely noticed column in May by David Ignatius in The Washington Post, has prompted some backbiting at other intelligence agencies from officials who argue that its successes are being exaggerated.

"Everyone has to get it right once in a while," a senior Defense Department official said with some sarcasm.

"It's not in my interest to trash a fellow member of the intelligence community," another senior intelligence official said of the bureau. "But those who think they get it completely right are not completely familiar with the record."

Not even the State Department bureau's admirers say that it alone represents the answer to the kinds of shortcomings discussed in the Senate report, which criticized as unreasonable and unfounded most of the conclusions reached by intelligence agencies on issues related to Iraq and its illicit weapons.

Both foreign policy and personal discernment need a place where doubts can seep in. Here is where it happens at the policy level.

Saucy

Back from my day with the bro and SIL. This might be one of the great birthdays of my life, but the bro did make me do a lot of the cooking. He taught me a new hollandaise recipe, the one the pros use because it will hold for hours in a production kitchen without turning into something that can make you sick, and I have rather a lot of it in me right now. Leigh teaches by making me do it, and I've learned a lot in the last year. If you learned your hollandaise from Joy of Cooking, as I did, this will be a bit of a surprise, but the product gets acid balance without the bite of lemon juice. And I learned the tricks the pros use to keep the sauce from breaking. This is an Escoffier style sauce, rather than the one favored by the New Orleans restaurants.

Serves 4 over Eggs Benedict

In a small frying pan, combine
2 tbs white vinegar
2 tbs balsamic vinegar
1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce

On low heat, reduce by half.

Let cool.

Start the double boiler to bring just above a simmer.

In another sauce pan over very slow heat,
melt 3/4 lb of butter
Do not let it bubble, do not shake the pan. When the butter is melted, remove the foam, all of it. Hint: when you've spooned off the easy stuff, gently rotate the sauce pan at a 45 degree angle, the remaining foam will stick to the walls of the pan making it easy to spoon away. This rids the butter of the remaining milk solids which can break the sauce, as well as any salt, if you use salted butter. This may be way more butter than you will actually need, but if you have unusually large egg yolks or difficulty getting the sauce to emulsify, you may need all of it, and if you've ever made hollandaise, you know that once the whipping starts, you don't have time to stop and melt more. The rest of the butter can go back in the fridge and be used as you need it, at table or for cooking. Butter with the froth removed is an excellent fry medium that doesn't burn at fairly high temperatures.

Prepare the egg yolks. In the cold top pan of the double boiler, place the yolks of two eggs, make sure there is none of the whites. Add about a teaspoon of water--this is critical to keep the sauce from cooking the eggs and breaking. Whip the yolks and water in the cold bowl with a wire whisk. Use your wrist, make sure you are lifting the whites to incorporate lots of air with fast strokes, you aren't stirring, you are whipping. The yolks will first darken as they begin to oxidize, and then lighten to a lemon yellow and double in volume. This will take some elbow grease, think souffle, not cookie dough. When you achieve the doubling of volume, the next step will take you to a process in which you cannot stop until the sauce is finished. Trust me from personal experience, you cannot take a phone call. Let the machine pick up. I understood from Leigh's lesson today why my sauces have broken down so many times over the years--the water with the yolks is critical, as is not stopping FOR ANYTHING once you take the next step.

Pour the cooled vinegar/Worcestershire reduction into the whipped yolks now placed over the bubbling but not boiling water in the double boiler. And stir with the wire wisk constantly. The heat in the bottom should be enough to heat the yolks but not cook them and you have to keep them constantly in motion to keep them from beginning to cook against the surface of the top of the boiler bowl. Here comes the hard part and I had help today with another person, and a pro, in the kitchen. It's time to begin incorporating all that melted and de-foamed butter in little dabs. We're talking emulsify here, people, which means making two fundamentally different things into a smooth sauce. And we are dealing with eggs, which are fragile folks in the presence of heat.

Pour in a drib of melted butter, whip, not stir, like mad. Repeat. and repeat, incorporating little bits of the butter into the egg mixture. It is a judgement call when the eggs have taken all the butter they can hold, but from experience, stop just before the sauce starts to acquire an oily sheen. I really do think this is a sauce you have to ruin a couple of times before you can appreciate what a well-balanced result looks like: too much butter and it is greasy, too little and it tastes like tart cooked eggs. When the sauce is on the verge of developing a sheen, it is time to take it off the heat.

Sauce hollandaise is a base sauce, which means that there are a lot of variations on it, once you've learned it, that can be used for a variety of dishes. As I've stated earlier, Eggs Benedict is the second best way to get the sauce from the plate to the lips, the first being a spoon. It works with shellfish, chicken dishes and a wide variety of ovo-lacto vegetarian dishes. Experiment.

If you've never encountered Eggs Benedict, the classic dish begins with a foundation of a lightly toasted english muffin halves (toast lightly, the muffin will absorb more sauce, believe me, you want it to do this) each covered over by a piece of Canadian bacon, sauteed very lightly (just heat it, it is already cooked so you don't need to fry it) topped with a poached egg. The bro and I compared our poaching theories, and I'll treat eggs at a separate time.

Once you've assembled the little circles of muffin, bacon, egg, it is time to pour on the sauce. Make pretty plates. Add a sprig of parsley or some fruit. Your guests will praise you for months. This recipe adds a note of sweetness from the balsamic vinegar that you won't find in the Joy recipe. I find it charming.

You cannot eat this every day. It is a heart attack on a plate. But once a year or so, I indulge. The bro had to cook me extra muffin halves to sop up the plate.

And we watched the dog be stupid, the utterly amazing bugs in the SIL's remarkable garden and the light move across the water of the creek at the foot of their yard. We laughed a lot. We started my next half-century with style. I love these people and they love me. I find that remarkable.

You can easily alter this recipe to make a classic sauce Bernaise, which makes eating beef truly revolutionary. It should always be served with filet mignon of beef.

Alter the recipe above: for the vinegar/Worcestershire reduction, substitute red wine and red wine vinegar for the white/balsamic combination. Use red wine vinegar alone if the presentation is for recovering alcoholics, with a little water. Add two tablespoons of chopped fresh tarragon leaves when you incorporate the vinegar reduction into the eggs. Serve on the side with filet mignon. The grateful recipient can dip her slices of steak into the pot as she consumes it, or she can pour it over her steak and let the juices mix with the sauce as she slices. She will thank you forever. It is the way to a beef-eater's heart.

cheers,

Melanie

Like, This is News

Hourly Pay in U.S. Not Keeping Pace With Price Rises
By EDUARDO PORTER

Published: July 18, 2004

The amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation. Though wages should recover if businesses continue to hire, three years of job losses have left a large worker surplus.

"There's too much slack in the labor market to generate any pressure on wage growth,'' said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research institution based in Washington. "We are going to need a much lower unemployment rate.'' He noted that at 5.6 percent, the national unemployment rate is still back at the same level as at the end of the recession in November 2001.

Even though the economy has been adding hundreds of thousands of jobs almost every month this year, stagnant wages could put a dent in the prospects for economic growth, some economists say. If incomes continue to lag behind the increase in prices, it may hinder the ability of ordinary workers to spend money at a healthy clip, undermining one of the pillars of the expansion so far.

Declining wages are likely to play a prominent role in the current presidential campaign. Growing employment has lifted President Bush's job approval ratings on the economy of late. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, in mid-July, 42 percent of those polled approved of the president's handling of the economy, up from 38 percent in mid-March.

Yet Senator John Kerry, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, is pointing to lackluster wages as a telling weakness in the administration's economic track record. ``Americans feel squeezed between prices that are rising and incomes that are not,'' Mark Mellman, a pollster for the campaign, said in a memorandum last month.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that hourly earnings of production workers - nonmanagement workers ranging from nurses and teachers to hamburger flippers and assembly-line workers - fell 1.1 percent in June, after accounting for inflation. The June drop, the steepest decline since the depths of recession in mid-1991, came after a 0.8 percent fall in real hourly earnings in May.

Coming on top of a 12-minute drop in the average workweek, the decline in the hourly rate last month cut deeply into workers' pay. In June, production workers took home $525.84 a week, on average. After accounting for inflation, this is about $8 less than they were pocketing last January, and is the lowest level of weekly pay since October 2001.

Which terrific Bush economy is it that we are supposed to be voting for in November? We've still got 8 million unemployed, another 9 million underemployed and Bush is going to cheerlead the economy? And we are going to let him?

Lost in Translation

'Here you go. Here's Iraq. Take it'
`We threw' power at them: U.S. official

But much work got lost in transition

MITCHPOTTER

BAGHDAD—Leaning in close, the mid-level American administrator speaks more in a hiss than a whisper. His tone is confessional, drenched in frustration.

"We didn't hand over power to the Iraqis. We threw it at them," he confides, casting a guilty glance toward the many eyes filling the chandelier-lit room. Nobody else heard him. Good. This kind of talk could cost him his job.

"There was no orderly transition. Nothing gradual. Just, `Here you go. Here's Iraq. Take it'."

"None of us had any idea sovereignty was going to switch two days early," he continues, speaking on the promise of anonymity. "So we didn't even get the last contracts finished. It was chaos. More than a billion dollars in plans never went through. Huge appropriations were just left on the table, undone."

It is dinner hour at the Great Hall of Saddam Hussein's presidential palace, deep within Baghdad's hermetically sealed Green Zone. Barely two weeks earlier, America's presence here was downsized, on paper, from occupational power to invited guest, by decree of the United Nations and the interim Iraqi regime taking its place.

On the surface, little appears to have changed since that surprise ceremony of June 28, a low-key series of handshakes marking the jumped-up transfer of sovereignty. Suicide bombs and assassinations continue as before. The same 160,000 coalition troops remain spread across Iraq, as before.

Even here, in the U.S.-led coalition's most sumptuous improvised dining hall, the same several hundred faces — diplomats, Pentagon administrators, military — mingle and munch through another contract-catered meal. As before.

But the truth of the matter is Baghdad is no longer theirs. Led by Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, the emerging Iraqi regime has been busy turning the paper transfer into something quite substantial. Ministry by ministry, they are taking back the country in a concerted effort to move forward the Iraqi way.

Whether that way, the Iraqi way, leads anywhere near the promise of freedom and democracy upon which last year's war was fought now stands as the paramount question.

If it appears the U.S.-led coalition is easing up on the ambitious, if naïve, theoretical underpinnings of Operation Iraqi Freedom in order to find an exit strategy, the long-term results remain unclear.

"As a new government, we must gain strength by showing strength," is how Adnan Hadi al-Assadi, Iraq's interim deputy interior minister, explains the regime's race to absorb all available power.

"In the months leading up to the handover, there were a lot of frustrations. We stood by without much say, objecting as bad decisions were made," Assadi said in an interview. "At one point, (then U.S. envoy Paul) Bremer committed more than a billion Iraqi dollars to Jordan in a project to train Iraqi troops. Jordan! A country whose forces only fought one war in their history (1967's Six Day War). And they fought it badly. They are supposed to show Iraqis how to fight?

"Now, we are beginning to make our own decisions. Now that we have some authority, we want our ministries to handle everything."

The soft-spoken fear among those letting go is that the new Baghdad may well emerge as every bit the omnipotent, power-wielding monolith it was before the war. However clumsy the effort, the U.S.-led coalition clearly had hoped all these months of idea-farming might gently nudge Iraq toward an almost Canadian model of decentralized democracy.

But the new government's first instinct, clearly, has been to revert to the tried-and-true formula of the larger Arab world — aggressively corralling power toward a strong (and strong-armed) central government, with the powers of Baghdad second to none.

(Allawi himself executed as many as six suspected insurgents just days before the handover, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, citing two alleged witnesses.)

One coalition source recalls a deputy minister appearing at his desk in the Green Zone the morning after the handover.

"Our team spent six months building an infrastructure in the regions to implement our program. But he just stood there and said: `We want everything back in the ministry. In Baghdad. Now.'

"I realized I had no choice but to say, `Okay.' Everything we worked toward was over in one word."

If this doesn't piss you off, you haven't been paying attention. This is "postwar planning." This is what is or isn't going to get us out of the quagmire in Iraq.

These are not competent people. They are our representatives to the world. No wonder they hate us.

The Problem from Hell

PM admits graves claim 'untrue'

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday July 18, 2004
The Observer

Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.

The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.

In that publication - Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: 'We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.'

On 14 December Blair repeated the claim in a statement issued by Downing Street in response to the arrest of Saddam Hussein and posted on the Labour party website that: 'The remains of 400,000 human beings [have] already [been] found in mass graves.'

The admission that the figure has been hugely inflated follows a week in which Blair accepted responsibility for charges in the Butler report over the way in which Downing Street pushed intelligence reports 'to the outer limits' in the case for the threat posed by Iraq.

Downing Street's admission comes amid growing questions over precisely how many perished under Saddam's three decades of terror, and the location of the bodies of the dead.

The Baathist regime was responsible for massive human rights abuses and murder on a large scale - not least in well-documented campaigns including the gassing of Halabja, the al-Anfal campaign against Kurdish villages and the brutal repression of the Shia uprising - but serious questions are now emerging about the scale of Saddam Hussein's murders.

It comes amid inflation from an estimate by Human Rights Watch in May 2003 of 290,000 'missing' to the latest claims by the Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, that one million are missing.

At the heart of the questions are the numbers so far identified in Iraq's graves. Of 270 suspected grave sites identified in the last year, 55 have now been examined, revealing, according to the best estimates that The Observer has been able to obtain, around 5,000 bodies. Forensic examination of grave sites has been hampered by lack of security in Iraq, amid widespread complaints by human rights organisations that until recently the graves have not been secured and protected.

While some sites have contained hundreds of bodies - including a series around the town of Hilla and another near the Saudi border - others have contained no more than a dozen.

And while few have any doubts that Saddam's regime was responsible for serious crimes against humanity, the exact scale of those crimes has become increasingly politicised in both Washington and London as it has become clearer that the case against Iraq for retention of weapons of mass destruction has faded.

The USAID website, which quotes Blair's 400,000 assertion, states: 'If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.'

It is an issue that Human Rights Watch was acutely aware of when it compiled its own pre-invasion research - admitting that it had to reduce estimates for the al-Anfal campaign produced by Kurds by over a third, as they believed the numbers they had been given were inflated.

Hania Mufti, one of the researchers that produced that estimate, said: 'Our estimates were based on estimates. The eventual figure was based in part on circumstantial information gathered over the years.'

A further difficulty, according to Inforce, a group of British forensic experts in mass grave sites based at Bournemouth University who visited Iraq last year, was in the constant over-estimation of site sizes by Iraqis they met. 'Witnesses were often likely to have unrealistic ideas of the numbers of people in grave areas that they knew about,' said Jonathan Forrest.

'Local people would tell us of 10,000s of people buried at single grave sites and when we would get there they would be in multiple hundreds.'

A Downing Street spokesman said: 'While experts may disagree on the exact figures, human rights groups, governments and politicians across the world have no doubt that Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and their remains are buried in sites throughout Iraq.'

While Bushco would have us fixated on Saddam, the real genocide artists were going unchallenged. We will have Rwanda and Camodia on our consciences forever, and we will have learned nothing.

The Future

President Is Still Mum on Agenda For Second Term

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 18, 2004; Page A01

As he campaigned around the country last week, President Bush asked voters to give him another four years to make the nation "safer and stronger and better." But with the election less than four months away, one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the president's campaign is what he would actually do if he wins a second term.

Bush's failure to detail a second-term agenda -- beyond his pledge to keep waging an aggressive war on terrorism -- represents a stark contrast to his previous campaigns, in which he set out a handful of priorities almost from the opening day and rarely deviated from them.

Throughout the year, Bush has focused on Iraq and terrorism and on drawing attention to improved economic statistics, but has barely begun to make the case about second-term priorities. Whether there is room for a bold domestic agenda, given the fiscal strains his first term has created, and whether Bush has fresh ideas on issues such as health care, education and the economy are questions yet to be answered.

Bush's advisers, in a series of interviews in recent days, were quick to rebut those questions. They asserted that there will be a vigorous new agenda and challenged those who have suggested that a second-term blueprint could be little more than a warmed-over version of what Bush ran on in 2000 but has failed to enact.

They said Bush plans to use the period around the time of the Republican National Convention in late August to put forward the main elements of a new agenda in an effort to draw a clear contrast with Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and seize control of the debate during the final two months of the campaign.

"After their [the Democrats] convention is over and we're into the August phase and into our convention, we will begin aggressively talking about the president's vision for the next four years," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said.

Said another adviser: "We are going to have a window after the Democratic convention and at our convention where people are going to say, what are you going to do the next four years? We will robustly seize that opportunity."

The details remain closely held. Presidential advisers said elements of the plan have been agreed to, with debate still underway on others. Fighting terrorism remains paramount to the president, and on domestic issues there is a consensus outside the administration that Bush likely will renew his call for changes in Social Security.

Outside analysts are in far less agreement on whether, beyond calling for making his tax cuts permanent, Bush will push for significant tax law revisions or simplification. Bush's education focus may shift to higher education, while his health care agenda is likely to focus on some combination of medical liability reform, efforts to curb rising costs with the help of information technology and programs to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance.

Bush began this campaign year sketching out several new initiatives, including manned exploration of the moon and eventually Mars and immigration reform. Neither, however, captured sustained attention or support. Another major proposal, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, was soundly defeated in the Senate last week.

Waiting until his convention to offer a campaign agenda represents a major strategic shift for Bush. Some administration allies worry that the time is late to introduce a new agenda and expect voters to digest it and give the president a mandate to implement it. And Bush's political team will not say whether they will use their advertising dollars this fall to push that agenda, or continue to attack Kerry.

But former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said he agrees with the White House decision to wait, and predicted an ambitious package when it is unveiled. "I am told by people who have heard him talk privately that it is very powerful, that he's deeply, passionately committed and in many ways wants to stake his place in history in achieving substantial change in the country, not just as the president who led the war on terror," Gingrich said.

One Bush adviser said, "The general feeling is we've got to have the same ambition and clarity we're bringing to the international agenda to some important domestic policy issues. . . . I don't think it's accurate to say we're making a turn. It's accurate to say we're filling out a message."

Great. Deepening the deficit. Star Wars. Mars. These folks really have a vision for the next four years. Let's hope that Diebold doesn't give it to them.

Safer, stronger and bigger...how? What's that going to cost? This is like a child's Christmas list.

Lies and the Popular Press

It's about time the press got angry.

Demanding Accountability for the Distortions

By Colbert I. King
Saturday, July 17, 2004; Page A19

Naomi Lewis, if convicted, faces up to five years behind bars for possession of a weapon on school property. Not that she intentionally brought the rifle and ammunition to Bull Run Middle School in Prince William County, where she's a cafeteria worker. But she realized her son had brought them to school when she heard something rattling around in the back of her van as they arrived at the building. Instead of taking the weapons home, she locked the van and went into the school. Her son later used a key she didn't know he had to open the van, retrieve several weapons and then barge into a school office with a loaded gun, ordering everyone onto the floor. He was arrested and, thank goodness, no one was injured. But Lewis's case is going before a grand jury next month because authorities believe she should be held accountable for her actions or inaction.

Theodore J. Gordon has worked in the D.C. health department for 31 years, and he says there's nothing negative in his personnel file. But he was placed on administrative leave last week and given a termination letter effective Aug. 6. The city won't say why Gordon was fired, but officials say the agency has serious problems and that changes needed to be made. Gordon, who was in charge of the environmental health division, apparently was being held accountable for something that he did or failed to do.

That's the way the system works. When something that could affect the public interest goes astray, someone, we are told, should be held accountable.

Which begs the question, where is the accountability for Iraq?

I raised this question on the "Inside Washington" show last weekend, and one of my colleagues responded: "It's called the presidential election. You can vote him out."

But does that do the trick? Losing, of course, is no fun. But it's not as if a defeated George W. Bush -- if it should come to that -- won't be in rather exclusive company, not the least of which includes his own father. And the younger Bush will still have his family, his health and his millions, not to speak of throngs of friends and well-wishers. There are worse fates in life.

Such is also the case with the other architects of Iraq war policy. 'Tis true, if Bush loses in November, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney will be out of a job. But who thinks they won't land comfortably on their feet, making more money and living higher on the hog than they do now? They will be the toast of the lecture and talk show circuit, in great demand in the academy and in policy circles, when not attending corporate board meetings on private jets. No red jump suits or unemployment lines for them.

And yet, consider the consequences of their collective actions: nearly 900 Americans killed, thousands maimed, billions spent, and 140, 000 U.S. troops still on the ground and in harm's way. That's not even counting the daily Iraqi casualties caused by insurgents opposed to the U.S. occupation.

The toll on America is all the more galling because of how the country went to war. We now know we were told a great many things that turned out to be untrue. Bush administration officials, relying on unfounded, distorted and exaggerated intelligence concerning weapons threats, took the country down a path that has led to a catastrophic waste of human lives as well as billions of dollars.

Let's consider just a few of the things that were conveyed as the gospel truth:

• "The Iraq regime is a threat of unique urgency. . . . [I]t has developed weapons of mass destruction." President Bush, Oct. 2, 2002.

• "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." Vice President Cheney, Aug. 26, 2002.

• "We said they had a nuclear program. That was never any debate." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, July 13, 2003.

• "We do know that there have been shipments going into . . . Iraq . . . of aluminum tubes that . . . are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Sept. 8, 2002.

• "There is no doubt that he has chemical weapons stocks. . . . With respect to biological weapons, we are confident that he has some stocks of those weapons and he is probably continuing to try to develop more." Secretary of State Colin Powell, Sept. 8, 2002.

• "The more we wait, the more chance there is for this dictator with clear ties to terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, more time for him to pass a weapon, share a technology, or use these weapons again." Secretary Powell, Jan. 26, 2003.

A year ago we were told by a senior administration official that Iraq could "really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." We now shell out more than $4 billion a month from the U.S. Treasury.

Good questions, Colby. When are we going to hear some answers? When are you going to use your bully pulpit in the WaPo to demand them?

Friends

Had a great day with Sharon. It's nice to hang with really old friends, you don't have to keep explaining yourself, they know the backstory. I met Sharon in 1977 when she was eleven and I was a young bassoon teacher just starting out. She was my first student. She is now the age her mother was on the day we met. You can work out my age at the time. Sharon is now a lawyer working in non-profit public interest law here in Washington, and I couldn't be prouder of the way she turned out. Hi, Sharon! I know she's working on Sunday and uses Bump as her home page to keep track of the news during the day.

As old friends do, we talked about everything and it was a very healing kind of day, the wonderful wander through the Conservatory of the US Botanic Garden, a trip through one of the quirkiest bookshops on Capital Hill, (hint: when you visit the nation's capital, make time for this one, pure gold for political junkies) and a great Turkish dinner at a hole in the wall on Pennsylvania Avenue, where we received special treatment WITHOUT Sharon telling the proprietors that it was my birthday.

I haven't had a "hang out with an old friend" day in I don't know how long and didn't realize how much I've missed it: no schedule, rudimentary plan, no deadlines. The day ended when both of us started to fade.

I don't do personal stuff here very often (other than my analysis and opinion, of which there is a great deal) but we walked miles today and I'm too tired to do a takedown of Kevin Drum's analysis of the Independent article on his front page today.

Tomorrow will also be light posting. I've got to blow out of here around nine to take my brother up on his offer of brunch. I'll get a couple of things up before I leave. My brother is a chef, and he can do with one eye closed the things the rest of us have to exercise some care cooking. I've requested eggs benedict for brunch (which is not in his diet plan, so this is a sacrifice) because it is the second most efficient way of conveying hollandaise sauce into your mouth. The first most efficient way is to use a spoon, but that would be declasse. I expect to be home mid-afternoon with a review of the op-ed sections of the major papers, unless hard news intrudes.

Thanks to all of you for the many good wishes by comments and email. It may be a day or so before I can get to all the email, but I will respond.

The point of this post is that friends take a crappy situation and turn it into something else. You and Sharon have transformed my weekend. Thank you. When I woke up this morning, turning 50 was just another piece of bad news in a week which was full of it (I won't bore you with the hours spent on customer disservice numbers trying to liberate enough money to make the mortgage on Friday.) Tonight it is a different thing, a woman claiming her maturity in community. We talk, we argue, we agree sometimes, but we do it well here. I'm very impressed with the Bump community which has gathered here since we went live on November 15, 2003. Even when the conversations are heated (nothing wrong with that) they are respectful, and I've never felt the need to delete a comment (other than the porn and pharma spam.) There are some of you with whom I disagree profoundly and regularly, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it, as long as you make an argument rather than a slander, and so far slander has been avoided. It is you, the readers, commentors and community builders which make the Bump the high-class Bump it is. I can provide only the framework, you are the meat on the bones. You've isolated the ocassional troll. You have taste.

Traffic is building right now, I'm not sure why. My sitemeter is open if you want to take a look. Summer is usually a time when blog traffic craters. But if growth like this continues for another few weeks, it will be worth looking into ads. The income would allow me to get a cable-broadband connection which will make Bump faster and more nimble. Dialup is SLOW by comparison and imposes some limits on how much I can do here. Many of you are geeky enough to get the difference. I can reclaim my land line and find a better cell plan, but one thing at a time.

On Sunday, I'll grab a couple of things out of the morning papers, next I'm going to survive some serious calories and cholesterol in the company of family. Then, I'm going to go buy my first pair of shoes in eight years. Finally, I'm coming home to Bump and my homies, to give you the best work I can possibly put up. You are worth it. You make me want to constantly improve. I like that about you. Your suggestions are welcome here. Tell me what you want. I'll do what plays to my gut.

Oh, and I'm geeky enough to set up Sharon's new broadband connection when she moves into her new house next month. Several of you have schooled me in wise ways on the Internet, you know who you are. Your education is being paid forward.

peace and grace,
Melanie

Now let me wish you good night as I set up the task bar for the morning, the major dailies are already up. If you are not starting your day with Juan Cole, over there on the blogroll as an aggregator, you are seriously screwing up your day. All you have to do is left-click on the link.

Thank you, Bumpers,
A day well spent.

Melanie

Between God and W

via Suburban Guerrilla:

Bush quietly meets with Amish here; they offer their prayers
By Jack Brubaker
Lancaster New Era

Published: Jul 16, 2004 12:53 PM EST

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - President Bush met privately with a group of Old Order Amish during his visit to Lancaster County last Friday. He discussed their farms and their hats and his religion.
He asked them to vote for him in November.

The Amish told the president that not all members of the church vote but they would pray for him.

Bush had tears in his eyes when he replied. He said the president needs their prayers. He also said that having a strong belief in God is the only way he can do his job.
....
At the end of the session, Bush reportedly told the group, “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.’’

Astonishing, isn't it? The man is obviously a complete lunatic.

Allright, now I AM outta here. See you later today.

Open Thread

The public continues to grow more critical of the war in Iraq, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll. For the first time, a majority of Americans (51 percent) say the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq. Another 45 percent say going to war was the right thing to do. In other findings, 56 percent of Americans say the war is going badly for the U.S., up from 36 percent a year ago. And nearly two-third of Americans (62 percent) say the war has not been worth the cost.

I'm going to leave all of that for a few hours to do this and dinner and drinks with a friend. Use this as an open thread.

The New Center

Rumblings Are Felt at Base of Bush's Support
As his campaign makes an effort to attract more moderates, some social conservatives protest.

By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Since President Bush took office, the White House has meticulously courted the nation's social conservatives, viewing members of antiabortion, evangelical and self-described pro-family groups as crucial to winning reelection.

But now, as election day comes into view, Bush and his aides are learning a hard lesson: It is a delicate balancing act to rally the GOP's conservative base while reaching out to moderate, undecided voters, who could prove equally important this November.

For all the attention from the White House, some social conservative leaders are complaining that Bush and others in his administration were too measured in their support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, a proposal that collapsed Wednesday when Republicans who control the Senate fell far short of the votes needed to even bring it up for a vote.

Some conservative activists also are protesting that their most prominent allies have not been given prime speaking spots at next month's Republican National Convention, while premier roles have gone to moderates such as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York.

"I think the president's advisors are gambling that his conservative Christian base already supports him, so that if he projects a more moderate image, he might pick up votes from the middle," said Robert Knight, who leads an affiliate of Concerned Women for America, a conservative advocacy group. "But I think this is a dangerous and wrong calculation."

Polls show that the president remains enormously popular among social conservatives and other elements of the Republican Party base, and can expect overwhelming backing from them. And many leading conservatives stressed this week that despite the failure of the same-sex marriage ban, they continue to see Bush, an evangelical Christian, as one of their own.

But the grumbling among some leaders is noteworthy because of the extraordinary effort the White House has made to promote issues important to social conservatives.

Bush's political strategists believe that victory in November requires unprecedented turnout by millions of evangelicals and other conservatives, combined with support from undecided voters, who tend to be less ideological. They have said that as many as 4 million evangelicals — largely white churchgoers — failed to turn out in 2000, contributing to razor-thin finishes that year in states such as Florida and West Virginia (which Bush carried) and Wisconsin and Iowa (which he lost).

Among other actions that could bring social conservatives to the polls, Bush has signed into law a ban on one type of late-term abortion procedure. On Friday, the administration announced that for the third year in a row, it would not pay dues to the United Nations Population Fund because U.S. officials said the fund indirectly supported Chinese government programs that force abortions.

Bush has changed federal rules to allow faith-based groups to compete for federal contracts. He has also used special powers, available only when Congress is in recess, to place some conservatives on the federal bench after they were blocked by lawmakers.

At least one key advocacy group, Focus on the Family, remained fiercely loyal to the president. A spokeswoman said the group appreciated the statements of support Bush had made for the gay marriage amendment, calling him "our biggest advocate."

Nevertheless, the thwarting of the amendment has exposed frustration of varying intensity toward the White House among some leaders in a movement that had been viewed as an unwavering administration ally.

You'll pick up the things I miss, but here are a couple of thoughts.

This country has never been governable from an extreme corner. I think of our worst moments and they were brought on by some nut who got creamed by either the government or the press. W is a wingnut, and I don't think the electorate will support that.

This is probably the most Hegelian country in the history of democracies, and we swing toward the center. It is about time for that again.

We Are The Champions

If the upcoming election is NOT a referendum on the war, I worry about us as a people.

Poll Finds Dwindling War Support

July 16, 2004

((CBS/AP) The public continues to grow more critical of the war in Iraq, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll. For the first time, a majority of Americans (51 percent) say the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq. Another 45 percent say going to war was the right thing to do.

Prior to the handover, only 16 percent of Americans expected Iraqis to be safer with the transfer of power.

We might want to ask the Iraqis how they feel about that, rather than polling here at home. Good grief, how racist can you get.

Hiding in plain sight

Blair faces quit call in backbench backlash
No 10 admits Hutton cover-up
By Colin Brown, Kim Sengupta and Andrew Grice

17 July 2004

Downing Street admitted yesterday that MI6 embarked on an unprecedented cover-up after it withdrew intelligence supporting the Government's dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction because it was unreliable.

In an astonishing admission after the disclosure of the cover-up in yesterday's Independent, Tony Blair's official spokesman said MI6 decided not to tell the Hutton inquiry - set up to investigate the death of the government scientist David Kelly - that crucial intelligence on Saddam's chemical and biological weapons was unsound. The security services, he said, felt it was "too sensitive'' to be made public. The head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, also decided not to tell Mr Blair. The Prime Minister's spokesman said Mr Blair only became aware of the withdrawal of the intelligence as a result of the inquiry by Lord Butler of Brockwell, which was delivered three days ago.

Senior sources close to last year's Hutton inquiry said they were unaware that crucial intelligence had been withdrawn, and had this been known, a number of government witnesses would have faced questions about the matter. The sources insisted that the fact that intelligence had been withdrawn by MI6 was not revealed to Lord Hutton either orally or in written evidence.

After the death of Dr Kelly, Mr Blair asked Lord Hutton to conduct an inquiry. Mr Blair's official spokesman said on 21 July last year: "The important point is that we have said that he will have whatever papers and people he needs."

The inquiry began on 11 August. Giving evidence, the Prime Minister, Sir Richard Dearlove and John Scarlett, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, all failed to mention the withdrawal of intelligence. All three insisted that intelligence from agents in Iraq was believed to be reliable.

Downing Street insisted yesterday that the first time Mr Blair knew about the discredited intelligence was in the Butler report. And the reason Mr Scarlett had not mentioned it, when giving evidence two months after MI6 had withdrawn the intelligence, was that "the validation process was still ongoing".

Senior MPs said Downing Street's comments had all the hallmarks of a damage limitation exercise. Had Mr Blair known, he would face fresh allegations of misleading Parliament on Tuesday when he opens a debate on the Butler report.

Downing Street gave three reasons for not telling the Hutton inquiry: it was not relevant to the investigation into Dr Kelly's death; it was only one element in the chemical and biological weapons "picture"; and, because validation of the intelligence and its source was continuing, it was too sensitive to make public. "Lord Hutton was not misled. He saw everything that was relevant to his picture," said Mr Blair's spokesman.

Two parliamentary committees were also kept in the dark and last night there was a backlash as MPs claimed they had been misled. The Prime Minister's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) will meet next week to decide whether to hold a fresh inquiry into the disclosures in the Butler report.

A senior member of the ISC said: "We were not told about this. We were shown some of the evidence. I think it is a real issue of concern that the SIS [Intelligence and Security Committee] have done this without telling us." Lord King, a former chairman of the ISC, said: "It was for Lord Hutton to decide whether it was not relevant. "

The intelligence services also failed to tell the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which investigated the death of DrKelly, that it had "withdrawn'' the crucial intelligence.

The decision to withdraw the intelligence was taken in July, last year, the same month that Mr Blair was forced to call the Hutton inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly, who was named as the source for reports that the dossier had been "sexed up'' by Downing Street.

Oh, dear. Cousin Tony is really in deep yoghurt. I doubt this will have any resonance on this side of the pond--we're too narcissistic to really even notice news elsewhere, but electoral complicatons for the one Bushfriend might buy some time on American airwaves.

Across the Pond

UN nuclear watchdog challenges Britain to reveal Niger intelligence
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor

16 July 2004

The United Nations nuclear watchdog yesterday challenged the Government to share intelligence which it used to accuse Saddam Hussein of trying to buy uranium from two African countries for a nuclear bomb.

Lord Butler of Brockwell said the Government's claims were "well-founded," after admitting "significant controversy" surrounded the reliability of government statements about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium ore.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) determined in March 2003 that documents which allegedly "proved" an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger were forgeries. But the British government, the first to put the claims into the public domain in the September 2002 dossier, continued to insist it had separate sources which confirmed its statement.

Lord Butler's report revealed the accusations against Iraq concerned not only Niger, but the war-ravaged, mineral-rich country of the Democratic Republic of Congo. An IAEA spokesman said that the Vienna-based body responsible for monitoring Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions on nuclear issues, had not been informed of the specific intelligence on the two countries. A spokesman, Mark Gwozdecky, said: "We did not see any indication of any violation, but we remain open to reopening the investigation if the information is made available to us."

Governments are bound by UN resolutions to submit to the IAEA any information concerning illegal Iraqi weapons. Lord Butler said Britain had "further intelligence from additional sources" in 2002 that Iraqi officials visited Niger in early 1999 to buy uranium ore. "There was disagreement as to whether a sale had been agreed and uranium shipped," he added.

So far as Democratic Republic of Congo is concerned, "there was further and separate intelligence that in 1999 the Iraqi regime had also made inquiries about the purchase of uranium ore in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this case, there was some evidence that by 2002 an agreement for a sale had been reached," Lord Butler said. "We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded."

He said the forged documents were not available to the British government at the time, and they did not undermine the Government's case.

IAEA officials have expressed frustration that Lord Butler's team appeared more willing to share information with the press than with the UN body charged with investigating Iraq's nuclear programme.

Wackamole. Tony's a playa. Wotashock. And Lord Butler is being played.

The Weekend Ahead

Light Blogging this weekend.

On Sunday, I celebrate completing my fifth decade. Celebration-type activities will consume much of Saturday and Sunday. Stepping away from the computer is always to be celebrated. The Paypal link is located up on the right if you want to join the party, the Amazon wishlist is below. Still unemployed and recently dumped. This is a very depressing birthday. Thank God for friends and family.

I'm proposing to Sharon (my oldest friend, newly back in town) that we tour the Botanical Garden and have dinner on Saturday. The bro, author of this computer and a chef in a past life, is cooking up eggs benny on Sunday morning. I'm well taken care of locally. And my cholesterol will briefly go through the roof.

I'll give you the perfect hollandaise sauce recipe at some point over the weekend, but now I'm for bed. I've been up reading since 5:30 AM and I'm fried.

Thanks to all of you who have commented this week, taking this site above a thousand hits a day. I believe we can now approach Blogads. And turn this place into one of the blogs that defeats W come fall.

Evil if True

Bloomberg has picked it up so I'll run with it.

Iraqi Witnesses Say Allawi Killed Suspects, Sydney Paper Says

July 17 (Bloomberg) -- Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi shot dead as many as six suspected insurgents at a jail before the U.S.-led occupation coalition transferred political control to his government, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on its Web site, citing two, unidentified witnesses.

Allawi's office, in a letter to the newspaper, denied the witnesses' accounts, saying Allawi had never visited the prison and he did not carry a gun. The allegations are rumors instigated by enemies of Allawi's government, the letter said.

Let's see if the Repugs are going to try to bury this the way they are trying to bury Abu Ghraib.

Internet Threats

Al-Qaeda Threatens Bloodbath If Italy Keeps Berlusconi As PM
AFP: 7/16/2004

DUBAI, July 16 (AFP) - A statement posted on an Islamist website purporting to be from Osama bin Laden`s Al-Qaeda network threatened Italy with a 9/11-style bloodbath if it kept Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in power.

"Either you junk the incompetent Berlusconi or we will really burn Italy," the statement warned.

"We are in Italy. None of you is safe. As long as you refuse the offer put forward by our sheikh (bin Laden), we are going to make good our threats. A bloodbath like that of September 11 (2001) awaits you."

The statement was referring to a July 15 deadline the Al-Qaeda leader gave European governments to pull their troops out of Muslim countries. Italy still maintains troops in Iraq, where it has been a staunch supporter of the US-led invasion.

The three-month ultimatum was issued in an April 15 audiotape that was later authenticated by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

"This message is no mere threat," the latest statement warned.

"We are capable of hitting the targets we choose with non-conventional weapons that will spark an enormous catastrophe ... Our next message will be what you see in you country, not an Internet message."

The statement was posted at http://www.ansarnet.ws/vb but its authenticity could not be verified.

It was signed in the name of the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which also claimed responsibility for the March 11 attacks in Madrid and the November 2003 bombings in Istanbul.

THIS is terrorism. I have no idea what to do, but this is terrorism without lifting a finger or creating a bomb. It is roughly analogous to some of the stunts John Ashcroft has been pulling lately, for roughly the same reasons.

More Trouble for Tony

The Damning Evidence
Revealed: Government witnesses knew September dossier was unsafe - but did not tell Hutton
By Kim Sengupta and Andrew Grice

16 July 2004

Crucial doubts about Iraq's ability to produce chemical weapons were withheld from two inquiries which examined the Government's case for war.

Lord Hutton's investigation into the death of David Kelly and Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, which monitors the intelligence services, were not told that information which helped Tony Blair claim that Saddam Hussein posed a "serious and current" threat had already been discredited and withdrawn by MI6.
....
The withdrawals fatally undermine the case for war and would undoubtedly have had a significant bearing on the Hutton report. But they were not revealed to Lord Hutton by any of the government witnesses, who included Mr Blair, Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, Mr Scarlett, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the outgoing head of MI6. All stood by the claims in the dossier, although it is not clear how many were aware that the intelligence had been withdrawn.

Dr Brian Jones, a leading expert on chemical and biological weapons at the Defence Intelligence Staff who was not allowed to see the new intelligence, said last night: "This is very significant. Either the Prime Minister knew, when he gave his evidence to the Hutton inquiry, that the information from this source had been withdrawn in July 2003, in which case the question must be asked why didn't he mention it? Or, he was not told. In that case, surely, he must ask why he wasn't told, and whose decision was it not to tell him."

Oh. My. God. If this doesn't eat Tony alive, nothing is going to. There is no way he's explaining this away. Tony knew. Which does not mean that President Dimson knew.

Juan Cole also made the point this morning that Tony had to haul W into Afghanistan kicking and screaming. Feeling safer? Me, neither.

Mea Maxima Culpa

A Pause for Hindsight

Published: July 16, 2004

Over the last few months, this page has repeatedly demanded that President Bush acknowledge the mistakes his administration made when it came to the war in Iraq, particularly its role in misleading the American people about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and links with Al Qaeda. If we want Mr. Bush to be candid about his mistakes, we should be equally open about our own.

During the run-up to the war, The Times ran dozens of editorials on Iraq, and our insistence that any invasion be backed by "broad international support" became a kind of mantra. It was the administration's failure to get that kind of consensus that ultimately led us to oppose the war.

But we agreed with the president on one critical point: that Saddam Hussein was concealing a large weapons program that could pose a threat to the United States or its allies. We repeatedly urged the United Nations Security Council to join with Mr. Bush and force Iraq to disarm.

As we've noted in several editorials since the fall of Baghdad, we were wrong about the weapons. And we should have been more aggressive in helping our readers understand that there was always a possibility that no large stockpiles existed.

Now let's see if they can be a little more sceptical about the rest of the Bush agenda

Disappearing Act

Congress's Inquiry Into Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners Bogs Down
By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: July 16, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 15 - The Congressional investigation into the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison has virtually ground to halt, as a senior Senate Republican said Thursday that no new hearings would be held on the matter until this fall at the earliest.

The Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee made it clear weeks ago that it believed that the several current military investigations of the scandal were sufficient, and that summoning commanders to Washington would only hinder American operations in Iraq.

That left the issue to the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose chairman, Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican, has held a series of hearings, but none since May 19. On Thursday, Mr. Warner said he would hold off calling any more witnesses until several criminal prosecutions and seven pending Pentagon inquiries were completed.

But some of those inquiries are running weeks behind. The pivotal investigation of the role that American military intelligence officials played in the abuses, which officials once expected to wrap up in June, now is not likely to be completed and reviewed by senior Pentagon officials until mid-August. Congress will soon recess until September.

"We're not in a position to try to have an independent investigation at this point," Mr. Warner told reporters after senators received a classified briefing on Thursday on Red Cross reports about detention operations at American-run prisons in Iraq. "There are so many ongoing investigations going on, we cannot in any way jeopardize the right of individuals being investigated."

Other factors also are behind the delay: the calendar, the preferences of some of Mr. Warner's Republican colleagues and the pace of the military investigations, many of which are behind schedule. All seem to be conspiring to thwart his desire to hold hearings on the matter.

Many Democrats and some Republicans, like Susan Collins of Maine and John McCain of Arizona, have pressed to push ahead to get to the bottom of the abuses. Senator Collins supported further hearings, saying, "I think there are some serious unanswered questions."

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said the Pentagon approach seemed to have "slowed things down rather than speed things up." He said the Senate found itself in the awkward position of having to wait for reports that it needed as the basis for hearings.

But House Republicans and, privately, some Senate Republicans say Mr. Warner, by holding more hearings, would only hand Democrats an explosive campaign issue.

Senate Republicans are trying real hard to give W a gift here and make all of this go away. They are missing one salient detail: Sy Hersch isn't going away.

Losing the Base

Arab-Americans turn against the president
By Alex Barker
Published: July 15 2004 20:20 | Last Updated: July 15 2004 20:20

A growing number of Arab-American voters in four battleground states oppose the re-election of President George W. Bush, according to a poll released on Thursday.

The survey underscores the difficulties the president faces with a community that broadly supported his election campaign in 2000.

In a three-way race, 51 per cent of those surveyed by the Arab American Institute (AAI) said they would vote for John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, and 13 per cent for Ralph Nader, the independent aspirant of Arab-American heritage. Only 24 per cent planned to vote for Mr Bush in November.

Five hundred voters were surveyed in the swing states of Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where an estimated 1.1m Arab-Americans live.

A sharp drop in support for Mr Bush is evident when Thursday's survey is compared with polling conducted four years ago.

Exit polls from 2000 indicated that 45 per cent of all Arab-Americans - about two-thirds of whom are Christian - voted for Mr Bush, as did 58.5 per cent of Muslim voters.

James Zogby, president of the AAI, calculates these figures indicate a shift of 225,000 likely Arab-American Bush voters to the Democrats in the four battleground states.

Only 6 per cent of Muslim Arab-Americans in the latest poll said they wanted to see the president re-elected.

During the 2000 election, Republican campaigners courted aggressively this long overlooked, socially conservative constituency, along with other non-Arab Muslims.

"[Bush] met three times with Muslim leaders before [Al] Gore was even returning our calls," says Salam al-Marayati, the director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group that supported Bush in 2000.

This is a big turn around. Add these voters to African Americans and Hispanics and you have the wedge which turns the election.

Orwell's Roads

Roadless Rules Write-Off

Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A20

"VENEMAN ACTS to Conserve Roadless Areas in National Forests." So read the Orwellian headline on the Agriculture Department's announcement Monday about Secretary Ann M. Veneman's move to junk a Clinton administration rule that protected nearly 60 million acres of national forest from road-building, logging and other development. But no one should buy the Bush administration's effort to give this anti-environmental action a green spin: It had pledged to uphold the roadless measure, but its proposal would instead eviscerate protections for some of the country's last unspoiled wilderness.

Adopted in the final week of the Clinton administration, the rule represents "one of the largest land preservation efforts in American history," as President Bill Clinton said at the time. It would permanently -- or, as it turns out, perhaps not -- protect one-third of national forest land, conserving critical habitat for threatened species and safeguarding the land for future generations. While this put large swaths of forest -- concentrated in 12 Western states -- off-limits, it represented a reasonable balance of use. More than half of national forest lands remain open for road-building, logging, mining and other activities.

Under the new rules, rather than being granted automatic protection, the areas would once again be subject to development. Governors would be allowed to request that their state's roadless status be maintained -- or they could petition the U.S. Forest Service to permit even more development than would have occurred without the roadless rule. In other words, rather than having national forests governed by a national standard, decisions would be influenced by local politicians subject to local pressures and special interests, specifically timber companies that enjoy a fat subsidy in the form of government-supported roads and timber sales. In defense of this plan, Ms. Veneman and others cite as an excuse the existence of lawsuits challenging the current roadless regulation, though the Bush administration has balked at defending it.

U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale N. Bosworth argues earnestly that the rule change will, in practice, have little effect and that it's a good move to enlist local support for national forests. "It's not like we have this intention or desire to go out and build roads out in these areas," he told us, noting that, before the roadless rule took effect, the Forest Service had plans for roads in only two-tenths of 1 percent of the protected acreage. Yes, but under those preexisting plans, some 34 million acres would be eligible for development.

I love it when I scoop the Post. It's even better when I beat them to the punch of their own vocabulary.

Faith and the Race

Kerry Keeps His Faith in Reserve
Candidate Usually Talks About Religion Before Black Audiences Only

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A01

John F. Kerry, a lifelong Roman Catholic, carries in his briefcase an unmarked manila folder stuffed full of religion articles, scriptures, personal reflections -- and a sermon the Democrat has been fine-tuning since the early 1980s.

In the latest iteration Kerry borrows the words of James, reputed brother of Jesus, to condemn President Bush's leadership. "It is not enough, my brother, to say that you have faith, when there are no deeds," Kerry told thousands of African American Christians gathered in Indianapolis earlier this month for the annual convention of the AME Church. "We look at what's happening in America today, and if you have a conscience and if your eyes are open, you have to say, 'Where are the deeds?' For the last four years, all we have heard is empty words."

The speech, based in part on James's New Testament teachings on Christian social responsibility of nearly 2,000 years ago, was revealing, overtly religious in tone -- and one of the rare times Kerry has expounded at any length about his views on faith during this campaign.

Outside of black churches or meetings with African Americans such as those at the NAACP convention yesterday, Kerry has been largely silent about the personal Catholicism that once inspired a flirtation with the priesthood and the Christian beliefs friends and family say guide his life and political thinking.

Kerry has on occasion touched on the complications of running as the first Catholic since John F. Kennedy in 1960 to win the party's nomination. While Kennedy found himself vowing that he would not be controlled by the pope, Kerry has had to explain his differences with the church on the issues of abortion and gay rights.

"There are many things that are of concern and taught by the church with respect to war, with respect to the environment, with respect to poor people, our responsibilities to each other, and I am very comfortable with where I am with respect to those," Kerry told reporters one month ago in Kentucky. "But I am not a spokesperson for the church, and the church is not a spokesperson for the United States of America."

Kerry's reticence on his faith offers a stark contrast to President Bush, who openly talks about being a born-again Christian, and could prove troublesome for the Democratic nominee in the front-and-center political fight over values, according to several Democrats and political analysts.

This has been making me nuts for a while and I'm glad to have a chance to address it. John Kerry is a "cradle" Catholic. For folks outside the Roman church, there are some things about us taught at our mother's knees that you don't know about us. One of the most important is that you don't talk about your faith. In Catholic circles, humility is a virtue, one notably lacking at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. One doesn't make either claims or assumptions about one's own faith or the faith of others. God will sort it all out.

Kerry has the additional burden of having the experience of a pre Vatican II America, which was still (and is slightly to this day) anti-Catholic in the popular culture. No wonder he is reticent to talk about his faith.

And then their is the secular press, which trumpets John Edward's sit-in-the-front-pew Methodism while not knowing what to make of Kerry's Eucharist every week Catholicism. Hey, secular journos: they aren't different things. Lord, you guys cover religion badly.

Wingnuttery

Financial Controls in Iraq Are Criticized by Overseers
By ERIK ECKHOLM

Ministries of the Iraqi government who are now able to spend billions in oil revenues lack proper auditing and financial controls, opening the door to widespread corruption, an international oversight body warned yesterday.

The oversight body, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board on Iraq, also criticized American occupation authorities for lax accounting of their own as they spent nearly $20 billion in Iraqi funds through late June this year, when sovereignty was formally transferred to the interim government.

The overseers said they had seen no evidence of fraud in the spending of Iraqi money by American authorities after the invasion in March 2003. But they complained that the Pentagon, despite repeated requests, had not provided details about a noncompetitive contract awarded to the Halliburton Company last year, which provided $1.4 billion in Iraqi funds for the importing of fuels.

The monitoring board is scrutinizing the use of the Development Fund for Iraq, which includes leftover billions from the prewar Oil for Food Program, postwar oil revenues and Iraqi assets seized abroad.

The funds are separate from the $18.4 billion appropriated by Congress to aid Iraqi reconstruction, little of which has been spent.

Under rules approved by the United Nations, the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority used Iraqi funds for repairs of oil facilities, construction and other good-will projects requested by military commanders, fuel imports and other purposes. The international board was set up to monitor spending of the development fund - initially by the coalition authority and, since June 28, by the interim Iraqi government.

Critics have long complained about secrecy and a lack of accountability in the authority's use of Iraqi funds. "We don't even know who's getting the contracts," said Svetlana Tsalik of Iraq Revenue Watch, a project of the Open Society Institute in New York.

Ms. Tsalik and others also criticized the Pentagon for rushing to allocate most of Iraq's accumulated oil profits before June 28, rather than leaving decisions to the new Iraqi government.

U.S. Won't Turn Over Data for Iraq Audits

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A16

UNITED NATIONS, July 15 -- The Bush administration is withholding information from U.N.-sanctioned auditors examining more than $1 billion in contracts awarded to Halliburton Co. and other companies in Iraq without competitive bidding, the head of the international auditing board said Thursday.

Jean-Pierre Halbwachs, the U.N. representative to the International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), said that the United States has repeatedly rebuffed his requests since March to turn over internal audits, including one that covered three contracts valued at $1.4 billion that were awarded to Halliburton, a Texas-based oil services firm. It has also failed to produced a list of other companies that have obtained contracts without having to compete.

The Security Council established the IAMB, which includes representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in May 2003 to ensure that Iraq's oil revenue would be managed responsibly during the U.S. occupation. The council extended its mandate in July so it could continue to monitor the use of Iraq's oil revenue after the United States transferred political authority to the Iraqis in June.

The dispute comes as the board released an initial audit by the accounting firm KPMG on Thursday that sharply criticized the U.S.-led coalition's management of billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue. The audit also raised concerns about lax financial controls in some Iraqi ministries, citing poor bookkeeping and duplicate payments of salaries to government employees.

The Pentagon did not specifically answer questions about withholding information to auditors, but released a statement saying the Coalition Provisional Authority worked hard to manage Iraq's oil resources.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it does seem like someone(s) is/are making out like bandits here.

Given the benighted nature of this whole endeavor, viewing it as a vast corporate boondoggle for the Bushfriends doesn't seem too tin-hatted.

Bush Has a Tent?

Bush's Not-So-Big Tent
By BOB HERBERT

Published: July 16, 2004

ust as George W. Bush is on track to be the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs, he is now the first president since Hoover to fail to meet with the N.A.A.C.P. during his entire term in office.

Mr. Bush and the leadership of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization get along about as well as the Hatfields and the McCoys. The president was invited to the group's convention in Philadelphia this week, but he declined.

That Mr. Bush thumbed his nose at N.A.A.C.P. officials is not the significant part of this story. The Julian Bonds and Kweisi Mfumes of the world can take care of themselves at least as well as Mr. Bush in the legalized gang fight called politics.

What is troubling is Mr. Bush's relationship with black Americans in general. He's very good at using blacks as political props. And the props are too often part of an exceedingly cynical production.

Four years ago, on the first night of the Republican convention, a parade of blacks was hauled before the television cameras (and the nearly all-white audience in the convention hall) to sing, to dance, to preach and to praise a party that has been relentlessly hostile to the interests of blacks for half a century.

I wrote at the time that "you couldn't tell whether you were at the Republican National Convention or the Motown Review."

That exercise in modern-day minstrelsy was supposed to show that Mr. Bush was a new kind of Republican, a big-tent guy who would welcome a more diverse crowd into the G.O.P. That was fiction. It wasn't long before black voters would find themselves mugged in Florida, and soon after that Mr. Bush was steering the presidency into a hard-right turn.

Among the most important props of that 2000 campaign were black children. Mr. Bush could be seen hugging them at endless photo-ops. He said a Bush administration would do great things for them. He promised to transform public education in America. He hijacked the trademarked slogan of the Children's Defense Fund, "Leave No Child Behind," and refashioned it for his own purposes. He pasted the new version, "No Child Left Behind," onto one of the signature initiatives of his presidency, a supposedly historic education reform act.

The only problem is that, to date, the act has been underfunded by $26 billion. A lot of those kids the president hugged have been left behind.

And why not? They can't do much for him. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" captured a telling presidential witticism. Mr. Bush, appearing before a well-heeled gathering in New York, says: "This is an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."

It wasn't really his base. But the comment spoke volumes.

Mr. Bush said he was a different kind of Republican, but what black voters see are tax cuts for the very wealthy and underfunded public schools. What they see is an economy that sizzles for the haves and the have-mores, but a harrowing employment crisis for struggling blacks, especially black men. (When the Community Service Society looked at the proportion of the working-age population with jobs in New York City it found that nearly half of all black men between the ages of 16 and 64 were not working last year. That's a Depression-era statistic.)

In Florida, where the president's brother is governor, and Texas, where the president once was the governor, state officials have been pulling the plug on health coverage for low-income children. The president could use his considerable clout to put a stop to that sort of thing, but he hasn't.

And now we know that Florida was gearing up for a reprise of the election shenanigans of 2000. It took a court order to get the state to release a list of 48,000 suspected felons that was to be used to purge people from the voting rolls. It turned out that the list contained thousands of names of black people, who tend to vote Democratic, and hardly any names of Hispanics, who in Florida tend to vote Republican.

Once their "mistake" was caught, the officials scrapped the list.

Mr. Bush plans to address the Urban League convention in Detroit next week. That would be an excellent time for him to explain to an understandably skeptical audience why he campaigned one way — as a big-tent compassionate conservative — and governed another.

Bob, as much as I love you, and I do, that's a silly question. He's a Republican. What else do you need to know?

Unfiltered

Lehrer did a piece on the "meta-narratives" behind the political coverage on the late night shows, which I found disengenuous.

Tom Rosensteil, Project for Excellence in Media, shows Letterman clip, in the effort to be "fair and balanced." Rosensteil says

"old ideas never die- bush is still a dimwit here."

That's because it is not an old idea, Tom. Bush is still a dimwit.

Media Matters

Let me let you in to a little bit of the process that goes into the daily production of Bump. Obviously, you can tell from my posting times that the day usually starts early, that's how my biorhythm works. The taskbar of my Mozilla is always loaded with the current NYT, WaPo and LAT. I use the news aggregators located over on the blogroll to fill another browser window. At 5:30 or 6 AM, I sit down at the terminal with my coffee and start reading, including what the Big Blogs are covering. Look, I know you read them. I'm not interested in being a part of the echo chamber so I read to see what they aren't covering, the back story. Then I hit the American, Brit, Canadian, and, if I have time, Oceanian papers and start setting up the stories I'm going to follow for the day. I'm listening to NPR in the morning and, depending what's on Diane Rehm, switch over to TV at 9 or 10, toggling between CNN and C-Span, particularly if there are hearings going on in Congress. I read ABC's The Note (gag) to check the schedule for the on-camera gaggle and catch it if it is being televised. I make sure to catch Lou Dobbs on CNN every night. It is the single best constructed and reported news program on TV right now, and watching Lou's conversion to the Democratic agenda has a theological cast. It's quite amazing and I recommend you watch if you have cable. Then I switch to the News Hour on PBS (not nearly as well reported, particularly since Gwen Ifill, frequent guest anchor and regular correspondent, became a friend of Condi's) and then leave the news, and the blog, for some recreational TV, reading or time with friends or spiritual directees. I'm a fish in the sea of meme.

How much time it is going to take to read and set up the first stories each day varies, but I try to have four posts up by 10 Eastern, two more by noon, two more by 2 PM and a few more later if I have any energy left. I shoot for 8-10 posts a day, sometimes more if the stories present themselves and I have time. Yes, this is my job right now. The Paypal link is up on the right sidebar if you want to consider yourself a supporter and not just a reader. I will add Blogads when the traffic reaches the point where I can make some decent money with it, so I'm marketing like a fiend right now.

But the real point of all that set up is really to tell you that if you have limited time to follow the news each day, watch Lou Dobbs on CNN. He does not have ADD and the program follows, coherently and articulately, long stories over a long period of time, and it is fascinating to watch Dobbs change from being a Republican, which is what he was when I first started watching him nearly 20 years ago, into a subtle but severe critic of Bush. This is going to matter in November: Dobbs has gravitas and is believable. He's the best financial reporter on the tube (that's not saying much) and has become a credible straight news journo. I'm impressed, even when I don't agree with him.

Here is a slice of last night's transcript, an interview with paleo-con Pete Peterson on his new book.

July 14

DOBBS: My next guest is among other things chairman of the Blackstone Group, former secretary of commerce and in his new book Pete Peterson, who was commerce secretary under President Nixon, says the Republicans and Democrats alike have mortgaged this country's future through reckless tax cuts, out of control spending and Enron- style accounting in Congress.

DOBBS: I couldn't agree with you more. One of the reasons we focus on trade, outsourcing, not the dependency not only foreign oil but the dependency on foreign capital. Billion and a half a day just to buy those goods while our own manufacturing base erodes. Pete Peterson, you ought to be congratulated for a terrific book highlighting crucial issues.

You probably aren't going to hear Pete Peterson on Dianne Rehm, just as you probably aren't going to hear Michael Moore on Dobbs, but Dobbs has been booking the conservative voices most critical of Bush for the last couple of months. To revive a hoary old title, this is "The Conscience of a Conservative," being worked out in public. That takes guts and I applaud Dobbs for it. (Jim C., in spite of what he did to you. The man's an idiot for that, I know what kind of talents you have.)

It is an age, and one which includes the most important election of our lives, where finding media outlets which are more or less reliable matters. Watch Dobbs critically, he's human, but watch him. He catches trends before they break in the rest of the media.

UPDATE: Oh, and any of these three crash once a day: Windows, my PC or Mozilla. Or possibly all three. That's how today started.

Paying Attention

A good piece from an unlikely source. Well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Perception Gap in Iraq

By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, July 15, 2004; Page A21

To the relief of the White House, the American public and media seem to be slowly trying to tune out Iraq's continuing violence. Accounts of all but spectacular assaults slide deeper into network news broadcasts and the inside pages of newspapers as the summer and the U.S. presidential campaign progress.

Allawi -- and therefore Bush -- also benefits from the honeymoon effect granted to a new Baghdad administration, and from the genuine confusion over who is actually running what is partly sovereign Iraq. The visible failures of the occupation led by Paul Bremer now take place behind a more nebulous smoke screen.

Administration officials privately acknowledge that alarm bells went off this spring over sudden, sharp declines in public support for the war in Iraq. "If we lose the critical mass of American public support, we lose everything we are trying to do in Iraq," said one official, avoiding the obvious thought that Bush could lose his reelection bid as well.

"We have now built a floor," the official continued, with "an Iraqi leader who publicly thanks the United States for the past, takes political responsibility for the future and has a strategy."

Political viability -- to use Bill Clinton's term -- is every politician's top priority. John Kerry's criticisms of Bush's Iraq policy are as driven by the electoral demands of Nov. 2 as Bush's defenses are.

But the shift to a policy that depends on declarations -- and targets perception in the United States -- more than on change on the ground in Iraq poses greater risks and challenges for the incumbent.

Bush has to win both politically and in policy terms if Iraq is not to become a disaster that will haunt him and America. But he faces this dilemma: Facts and judgments from the field that are inconvenient to the perception-management priorities of Washington get ignored or suppressed in this situation. Moreover, commanders and troops become confused by sudden switches in strategy and tactics driven by the politicians, as occurred recently in the siege at Fallujah and perhaps at Karbala.

Iraq and the world will benefit if Allawi can deliver on his promises to establish stability and democracy. Wish him well. But a dangerous gap is opening up between the determinedly upbeat pronouncements in Washington and from Allawi, and more disinterested reports from the field.

Last Friday, Jim Krane of the Associated Press quoted unnamed U.S. military officers saying that Iraq's insurgency is led by well-armed Sunnis angry about losing power, not by foreign fighters. They number up to 20,000, not 5,000 as Washington briefers maintain, Krane added in his well-reported but generally overlooked dispatch.

The point is not 5,000 vs. 20,000. The insurgency's exact size is unknowable. The point is that enough officers in the field sense that what they see happening to their troops in Iraq is so out of sync with Washington's version that they must rely on the press to get out a realistic message. That is usually how defeat begins for expeditionary forces fighting distant insurgencies.

A Way Out?

Joe Galloway is one of the most honored and experienced war reporters in the business. Knight Riddger's coverage of Bushco has been among the best, the most insightful and honest. I don't know if Joe's proposal is the right thing, but it sure the hell is better than anything Rummy has come up with so far.

A modest proposal for getting out of the Iraq mess
By Joseph L. Galloway
Knight Ridder Newspapers

This administration cannot admit that mistakes have been made. Not even one mistake. If they do the whole house of cards might tumble. But if you won't admit a mistake, how do you go about correcting it? When you find you're in a hole, stop digging.

So here is a modest proposal to begin improving our situation in Iraq: We will withdraw our forces to desert enclaves along the Iraqi borders with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Since the Iraqis don't want us patrolling their streets, we won't. We will hand that duty over to the newly sovereign Iraq government and its police, militia and army.

By building our camps in the vicinity of borders with friendly nations we will greatly shorten our supply lines and remove them from Iraq's roads. There will be no American trucks on the highways to be blown up, burned and looted.

We will guarantee Iraq's security from external threat. It will be up to the Iraqis whether they now build for themselves a new, peaceful country.

Our military camps should have a 20-mile clear field of fire all around and signs in eight languages warning that all who trespass face imminent death. This should allow us to begin reducing the 140,000 soldiers and Marines now tied down securing and policing Iraq and its cities and towns and highways.

A division each -15,000 troops - in three enclaves, north, south and central, should be enough to maintain the presence. Two Army divisions, one Marine, all of them active duty. That will free the National Guard and Reserves, who now make up nearly half the force, to go home and resume their normal lives.

All matters of contracting for rebuilding and rehabilitating basic services in Iraq would then be handled by the Iraqi government, using their oil revenues. No American contract employees would remain in Iraq, except for those working for the American military inside the three American enclaves.

That would mean no Americans available for kidnapping or brutal televised execution.

There would then be two standard answers for almost any question about a problem in Iraq:

- It's not our problem.

-It's not our business.

How's that for a way out of the mess?

Dreyfuss Report

Intelligent Intelligence

First, it seems that the White House is intent on appointing a new director of central intelligence. It’s a dumb idea, since the current, acting director is perfectly capable of keeping things going until after the election. Democrats seem eager for Bush to appoint a new spy chief, figuring that it will give them a platform in confirmation hearings to jaw about the CIA’s failings. But given the Democrats' shocking (so far) readiness to go along with the whitewash of the president’s lies-for-war strategy by blaming the CIA, it’s not too likely that the Democrats will be very effective in the context of a round of confirmation hearings. And, unless Bush picks some neocon hardliner as CIA chief—the egomaniacal Paul Wolfowitz? Jim Woolsey redux?—the hearings will be pro forma anyway.

Third, it’s time for the Democrats to make this whole fiasco into a political football—and kick the president through the goalposts. The issue isn’t that the CIA was too eager by half to confirm the politicians’ claims that Iraq had WMD (and, by the way, let’s hear it for the CIA’s courageous conclusion that Iraq had no truck with Al Qaeda). The issue is that the Bush administration—from the White House to the vice president’s office to the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans—took that intelligence and puffed it up. Yes, they put pressure on the CIA. And yes, the CIA’s slam-dunk chief went along. But the Senate’s gentlemen’s agreement not to investigate White House puffery or the OSP means that the issue has to be raised during the campaign, by politicians and investigative reporters.

I think Dreyfuss gets this pretty much right. His second point is a place where the Dems are really falling down on the job. It's pretty clear that Bush was going to war regardless, and Tenet gave him cover.

In the final analysis, it's up to the voters to determine if Bush gets a pass on this miserable war, and the one we should be fighting but aren't in Afghanistan.

Still the Economy

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending July 10, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 349,000, an increase of 40,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 309,000. The 4-week moving average was 339,000, an increase of 3,250 from the previous week's revised average of 335,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.4 percent for the week ending July 3, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate of 2.3 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 3 was 2,971,000, an increase of 112,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,859,000. The 4-week moving average was 2,934,750, an increase of 19,750 from the preceding week's revised average of 2,915,000.

Let's see; add this to yesterday's drop in consumer spending and some news for those of you who still have jobs:

New Reports Attack Administration's Overtime Rules

By Martin Crutsinger The Associated Press
Published: Jul 14, 2004

WASHINGTON (AP) - Disputing Bush administration estimates, a liberal think tank said Wednesday that new federal rules will remove overtime protections for at least 6 million U.S. workers.

The study by the Economic Policy Institute was released a day after three former Labor Department officials said in a report requested by the AFL-CIO that "large numbers" of employees entitled to overtime would no longer get it when the new rules take effect Aug. 23.

Morning again in America? Bush optimism?

Read without Moving Your Lips

Learn the code
The Senate's report is very revealing about Bush and his apostles - but the clues are buried deep

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday July 15, 2004
The Guardian

By virtue of a deal struck before the committee investigated, the belligerent Republican majority got timorous Democrats to separate the inquiry into halves, leaving the question of the Bush administration's culpability for a second report, almost certainly to be filed after the election, if at all. This unholy arrangement enabled the report to put the burden of blame on the CIA. For months, Bush and his national security team escalated its rhetoric about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But there was no national intelligence estimate (NIE) until demands by Democratic senators on the intelligence committee forced its writing.

Most take months to assemble, but this one was slapped together in about three weeks. "Most of the major key judgments in the intelligence community's October 2002 NIE, Iraq's Continuing Programmes for Weapons of Mass Destruction, were either overstated, or were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting," the report states.

The freakish cognitive dissonance at the NIE's core should have been detected at the start. It broke down its judgments into levels of confidence from high to moder ate to low. Utter absence of proof, however, did not deter the conclusion from being stamped "high confidence".

What the report does not note is the name or background of the NIE's director: Robert Walpole, a former national intelligence officer on nuclear weapons, a factotum of the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld. Walpole had demonstrated his bona fides in an incident that prefigures the WMD debacle, the writing of the alarmist report of the Rumsfeld commission in 1998, which asserted the ballistic missile threat from "rogue states" was imminent. That claim, used to bolster the case for a Star Wars programme, had been rejected by a similar commission two years earlier.

The report also does not deal with the creation of an alternative intelligence operation inside the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans, which bypassed regular channels to send fabricated material originating mostly in Ahmed Chalabi's disinformation factory.

But buried in the appendix, Senator John D Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, included an account of an internal operation against the CIA conducted by the under-secretary of defence, Douglas Feith, an entrenched neo-conservative.

While the CIA composed a report on the Iraq-al-Qaida connection, which the administration still trumpets, and for which the intelligence community could never find proof, Feith held briefings trashing the CIA on its impending report. Then, without informing the CIA, Feith's version was presented to the deputy national security adviser and vice-president.

Colin Powell put himself in the hands of people he hoped would protect him. Predictably, he was betrayed. Before his February 5 2002 speech to the United Nations, making the case for WMD, Powell spent days at the CIA. He was given disinformation about mobile biological weapons laboratories, which came from Iraqi exile sources that the CIA didn't trust. The day before Powell's speech, one CIA official wanted to warn him. Another replied, "As I said last night, let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what [the source] said or didn't say, and the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether [the source] knows what he's talking about." Powell was sent before the world to speak the falsehoods with CIA director George Tenet sitting behind him. Never before has a secretary of state, the highest ranking cabinet officer, been treated with such contemptuous manipulation by his own administration.

The NIE was condensed to a one-page document and sent to the White House, which still refuses to release it to the committee. The full classified version contains dissenting caveats in its footnotes. But were those included in the one-page summary? And did Bush read the NIE in any form? On July 18 2003, in an overlooked briefing to the White House press corps, "a senior administration official" explained: "I don't think he sat down over a long weekend and read every word of it. But he's familiar, intimately familiar with the case."

In the bestselling thriller The Da Vinci Code, paintings and signs contain the keys to the code. The Senate report, despite missing crucial information, still helps crack the code about Bush and his apostles. Bush is revealed as having a blithe disregard for anything that might interfere with his articles of absolute belief - a man of faith.

Excuse me, Sidney. "A long weekend" to read 90 pages? President Slow Leak must be even dimmer than we thought if a "senior administration official" knows that W needs a long weekend for 90 pages.

Fig Leaves

U.S. Works to Sustain Iraq Coalition
4 Nations Have Left, 4 More Are Getting Ready to Leave International Force

By Robin Wright and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 15, 2004; Page A01

The Bush administration faces growing challenges in holding together the 32-nation coalition deployed in Iraq, with four countries already gone, another four due to leave by September and others now making known their intention to wind down or depart before the political transition is complete next year, according to officials from 28 participating countries.

The drama over the Filipino hostage in Iraq, which led the Philippines government to say this week that it will pull out before its August mandate expires, is only the latest problem -- and one of the smaller issues -- in U.S. efforts to sustain the 22,000-strong force that, with 140,000 U.S. troops, forms the multinational force trying to stabilize postwar Iraq.

Norway quietly pulled out its 155 military engineers this month, leaving behind only about 15 personnel to assist a new NATO-coordinated effort to help train and equip Iraqi security forces. New Zealand intends to pull out its 60 engineers by September, while Thailand plans to withdraw its more than 450 troops that same month, barring a last-minute political reversal that Thai officials consider unlikely, say envoys from both countries. "It's 90 percent definite that we're going," a Thai diplomat said.

The Netherlands is likely to pull out next spring after the first of three Iraqi elections, while Polish military officials told the Pentagon that Poland's large contingent will probably leave in mid-2005, other diplomats say.

Any dwindling of the coalition -- by choice or after hostage seizures and other violence -- further complicates the already difficult job of sustaining the multinational force, which is critical to Washington's assertion that it has international support for the Iraq mission. It could also encourage further abductions or attacks to heighten the psychological pressure and undermine the U.S.-led mission, coalition diplomats say.

It seems silly to have to remind people, but this war was seen as unnecessary, foolish and a personal project of W's by the rest of the world. Friends who have travelled abroad recently tell me that anti-Americanism is worse now than at any time in their decades of experience. The governments who participated in this campaign have been roundly spanked at the polls. "Multi-national" forces have never been more than a fig-leaf, a rhetorical tic for Richard Boucher at State to pretend that this mess was sanctioned broadly by the international community. This is W's war, and we are going to pay for it.

Lost Ink

Here's the link to the NYT ed on bloggers at the conventions. Read it if you want, I'm not going to put up such light-weight sneering in my space. What a waste of dead trees.

The Mayor of Kabul

The Times ed board is extraordinarily conservative. The fact of the matter is that the tribal war lords are in control of the Afghanistan and nothing very much has changed since Bush sent an inadequate force in back in October of 2001. If this is making us safer, I am unaware how this might be so.

A Threatened Afghanistan

Published: July 15, 2004

Afghanistan's coming elections are in jeopardy, and not just because of a revived Taliban. The warlord armies that Washington used to oust the Taliban in 2001 now pose an even greater danger, as Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, made plain this week to Carlotta Gall and David Rohde of The Times. President Bush is largely responsible for this situation, having first decided to fight the war against the Taliban on the cheap and then leaving the job of nation-building undone while he diverted American forces to Iraq. Now the administration must heed Mr. Karzai's warning and do much more to help him curb these private armies and the exploding opium business that finances them.

Mr. Bush's blunders in Afghanistan followed decades of shortsighted American policies that built up the power of these warlords. Many of them got their start in the American-financed guerrilla movement that forced Soviet occupation troops out of Afghanistan a decade and a half ago. Soon after, they began fighting one another, terrorizing civilians and opening the way for the Taliban.

The warlords got an unexpected chance to rebuild their power when the Bush administration chose to rely mainly on their private armies to eject the Taliban from Kabul in late 2001. After the war, with the Pentagon already intent on sending troops to Iraq, the United States kept only a limited combat force to battle Taliban fighters and their local allies in southeastern Afghanistan, leaving Mr. Karzai largely at the mercy of the warlords.

Moving effectively against the warlords will be difficult now that the United States has allowed the situation to deteriorate so far. Together they have far more troops than Mr. Karzai's nascent national army, and he has been forced to cut dangerous short-term deals with them. The first step should be to mobilize international pressure against one or two of the most notorious warlords, in the hope that others will get the message and fall in line.

A prime target should be Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a militant Islamist, long backed by Saudi Arabia, whose fighters have been responsible for multiple human rights abuses and war crimes over the years, including a 1993 massacre of civilians in Kabul. At this year's constitutional assembly, he was prominent among those trying to intimidate delegates, particularly women. The constitution that ultimately emerged struck an uneasy balance between secular liberties and harsh Islamic strictures. Now Mr. Sayyaf and his armed followers are trying to make sure that Afghanistan's highest court interprets the constitution in accordance with their fiercely fundamentalist views. Mr. Sayyaf's private army gives him the power to impose his nominees for security and judicial positions. Disarming his followers should be an international priority.

Another dangerous warlord is Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, who, in addition to being the government's defense minister, commands a private army of at least 50,000 fighters. Mr. Fahim hopes to be Mr. Karzai's vice-presidential running mate in the election now scheduled for October. He should not be allowed to do so unless he disarms his private militia, a step he has repeatedly resisted.

I'm listening to Bush's stump speach on NPR. We aren't safer, the world is more dangerous for his crappy job in Afghanistan and his attack on Iraq. I'm angry.

The Day Ahead

Because my former annuity company is completely incompetent, I have to spend a bunch of time today running errands. Hint: if you can avoid MetLife, do so. My Gawd, these people are incompetent. I have it on good sourcing that Vanguard is the place to put your bets. Just sayin'.

As DC Heads to the Beach...

Hear the Rumor on Cheney? Capital Buzzes, Denials Aside
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: July 15, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 14 - In the annals of Washington conspiracy theories, the latest one, about Vice President Dick Cheney's future on the Republican ticket, is as ingenious as it is far-fetched. But that has not stopped it from racing through Republican and Democratic circles like the latest low-carb diet.

The newest theory - advanced privately by prominent Democrats, including members of Congress - holds that Mr. Cheney recently dismissed his personal doctor so that he could see a new one, who will conveniently tell him in August that his heart problems make him unfit to run with Mr. Bush. The dismissed physician, Dr. Gary Malakoff, who four years ago declared that Mr. Cheney was "up to the task of the most sensitive public office" despite a history of heart disease, was dropped from Mr. Cheney's medical team because of an addiction to prescription drugs.

"I don't know where they get all these conspiracy theories," said Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist, who has heard them all. "It's inside-the-Beltway coffee talk, is all it is."

It may be inside the Beltway, but in recent days the Washington summer clamor about dropping Mr. Cheney has so greatly intensified that Mr. Cheney himself was forced to address it on Wednesday. Asked in a C-Span interview if he could envision any circumstances under which he would step aside, Mr. Cheney replied: "Well, no, I can't. If I thought that were appropriate, I certainly would."

In the interview, to be broadcast Sunday, Mr. Cheney also said that Mr. Bush "has made very clear he doesn't want to break up the team," but that chatter of his stepping down was to be expected.

"I suppose right now, because we're in the run-up to the convention, people don't have much to talk about so you get speculation on that," he said. "It's normal. When we get to the convention, I think that'll put an end to that." Who would replace Mr. Cheney has nonetheless became a favorite Washington guessing game, with the names of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Senator John McCain of Arizona whispered about the most. Never mind that neither has a particularly cordial relationship with Mr. Bush, and that neither has expressed interest in the job. Other names that keep popping up include Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader.

It's summer in Washington. If you think the rumor mill is ginned up now, wait another couple of weeks.

That said, the powers that be in the GOPBorg are not happy with Cheney and would like to take a harder look at a change, something the WH is pushing back hard. Cheney's poll numbers are in the tank. TeamGop can't be taken seriously if they think either Rice or Frist would be good stand-ins: both are inept managers with political skills that are nascent at best. This is flailing from a campaign in trouble.

They'd have a shot with Giuliani, but he doesn't play to the base. Pity. They are shooting themselves in the limbs right now, but by October the gun will be aimed at the corpus.

Our Town

Hersh described the folks in charge of US policy as neoconservative cultists" who have taken the government over, and show "how fragile our democracy is."

And that would be my point. We've allowed ourselves to be taken over by extremists who are way outside the American mainstream. Will we allow them to take over our means of repair, come November?

"Some call you the haves and the have mores. I call you my base."

The president of the top 1% who doesn' t even try to hide it. We haven't had a president for the poor in this country for more than 30 years. Even JFK sold us out in the welfare reform act of 1996.

America still defines herself pretty narrowly against the poor and for the Calvinist theology of the secular culture. This is the theology of self-celebration.

Top Ten

I don't hang with the libertarians, I'm a classic socialist, but brother blogger Jesse Walker speaks good sense now and then:

Ten Reasons to Fire George W. Bush
And nine reasons why Kerry won't be much better
Jesse Walker

The administration has been quick to enforce its code of silence, regularly retaliating against those within its ranks who try to offer an independent perspective on its policies. While the most infamous examples of this involve international affairs, the purest episode may be the case of chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster, who apparently was threatened with dismissal if he told Congress the real projected cost of Bush's Medicare bill. Even if the White House didn't know about the threat—and I strongly suspect that it did—it created the organizational culture that allows such bullying to thrive.

You can read the rest from the link up top. What I'm finding fascinating this year is that libertarians have more motivation to make common cause with Dems this year. That has never been true before. Have the neocons driven the libs into our lap? I think so and welcome them.

I don't read Reason regularly and just stumbled onto this one. I'll read it more often.

Resuscitating the Fourth Estate

Why the Press Failed
By Orville Schell

Karl Rove, the president's chief political advisor, bluntly declared to New Yorker writer Ken Auletta that members of the press "don't represent the public any more than other people do. I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function." Auletta concluded that, in the eyes of the Bush Administration, the press corps had become little more than another special-interest lobbying group. Indeed, the territory the traditional media once occupied has increasingly been deluged by administration lobbying, publicity, and advertising -- cleverly staged "photo ops," carefully produced propaganda rallies, preplanned "events," tidal waves of campaign ads, and the like. Afraid of losing further "influence," access, and the lucrative ad revenues that come from such political image-making, major media outlets have found it in their financial interest to quietly yield.

As the war in Iraq descended into a desert quagmire, the press belatedly appeared to awaken and adopt a more skeptical stance toward an already crumbling set of Bush administration policies. But if a bloody, expensive, catastrophic episode like the war in Iraq is necessary to remind us of the important role that the press plays in our democracy, something is gravely amiss in the way our political system has come to function.

Schell is the Dean of the J School at UC Berkeley.

There are a number of things "gravely amiss" in our system. Part of it is the increasing apathy of the electorate over the last 20 years, with a concommitant disinterest in holding the politicians accountable. It has taken a pair of disasterous wars to regain their attention, and, even then, with the press still functioning badly, half of them still intend to vote for the screw up in the White House. Part of it is the post-modernism which has crept into the culture of the J schools themselves over the last 20 years, and the way it has effected the culture of the media itself. This particular strand of po-mo denies the existence of objective truth; rather, there is only point of view. This allows for the "he said, she said" quality of so much of what passes for journalism. It is also lazy: just do a couple of interviews rather than any original research. And some of it is the increasingly propagandist nature of politics itself, wielded at its most cynical by the executive branch of the incumbent.

Riling the Gray Panthers

Medicare Law Is Seen Leading to Cuts in Drug Benefits for Retirees
By ROBERT PEAR

Published: July 14, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 13 - New government estimates suggest that employers will reduce or eliminate prescription drug benefits for 3.8 million retirees when Medicare offers such coverage in 2006.

That represents one-third of all the retirees with employer-sponsored drug coverage, according to documents from the Department of Health and Human Services.

No aspect of the new Medicare law causes more concern among retirees than the possibility that they might lose benefits they already have.

Democrats are likely to cite the new estimates as evidence to support their contention that the new law will prompt some employers to curtail drug coverage for retirees, forcing them, in some cases, to rely on Medicare's leaner benefits. Republicans do not want to see the government supplant employers in providing drug benefits to retirees.

Senior officials at the department have been saying for weeks that they believe federal subsidies will induce more employers to continue providing drug benefits to retirees. Under the new Medicare law, the government expects to spend $71 billion on subsidies to employers from 2006 to 2013. To qualify for assistance, an employer must certify that its retiree drug benefits are worth at least as much as the standard Medicare drug benefit.

Federal officials have substantial discretion in deciding how to measure the value of drug benefits. They said they would use that discretion to encourage employers to continue providing drug coverage - a goal ardently favored by retirees, labor unions and members of Congress from both parties.

When Medicare officials held an open-door forum on June 9, they were deluged with complaints from Medicare beneficiaries alarmed at the prospect of cuts in retiree drug coverage.

Gale P. Arden, director of the private health insurance group at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said: "This is a new line of business for us. We have never been engaged in paying subsidies to employers or unions before.''

In last year's debates, Republicans repeatedly said the new drug benefits would be completely voluntary. "Seniors happy with the current Medicare system should be able to keep their coverage just the way it is,'' Mr. Bush said in his State of the Union Message in 2003.

But Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said it now appeared that the new law would "force millions of retirees out of comprehensive retiree drug coverage and into a flawed, inadequate program.''

Shafting seniors in an election year--smart move, Karl. And this after the bloated Medicare bill forbids negotiation for reduced drug prices, so seniors will lose their employer benefit and have to pay more.

Soft Economy

Retail Sales See Biggest Drop in 16 Months

By JEANNINE AVERSA
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; 11:27 AM

America's shoppers had a tight grip on their pocketbooks and wallets in June, dropping sales at the nation's retailers by 1.1 percent. It was the largest decline in 16 months.

The buying retreat, reported Wednesday by the Commerce Department, came after shoppers had splurged in May. In that month, they pushed merchants' sales up by a strong 1.4 percent, a showing that was even better than first estimated a month ago.

Bad weather and the lingering effects of high energy prices were blamed for the pullback, economists said. Another possible factor: a slowdown in the growth of the nation's payrolls in June. The economy added a net 112,000 jobs last month, less than half of the amount that economists had forecast.

The 1.1 percent drop in retail sales was the largest since February 2003, when sales fell by the same amount. June's decline was shaper than the 0.7 percent drop that some economists were predicting.

"Soft but certainly not a disaster," summed up Steve Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital.

Soft and potentially a disaster for Bush. Some of the investment newsletters I scan are talking about a flat stock market for the rest of the year. The market effects the way people feel about the economy even if they don't participate.

Couple this with June's lousy jobs report and expect a drop in consumer confidence.

Amateur Hour

Powell Flies in the Face of Tradition
The Secretary of State Is Least Traveled in 30 Years

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A01

Powell is on track to become the least traveled secretary of state in more than three decades, since Henry A. Kissinger embodied the concept of the globe-trotting foreign policy guru, according to records maintained by the State Department's historian. Powell's three immediate predecessors, the records show, traveled an average of more than 45 percent more than he has.

In Powell's view, he is bringing the job of secretary of state back to its core purpose of managing foreign policy from Washington. He travels when necessary, as briefly as possible, and reaches out to foreign leaders by telephone and to foreign audiences with repeated television interviews. "His first duty is to advise the president on his foreign policy and to manage the department to execute the foreign policy," State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said. "That's the job. It's mostly done in Washington."

Powell speed-dials around the globe, following time zones as his counterparts wake up. By the State Department's count, he made more than 1,500 calls to foreign officials in the two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In addition to granting interviews to media overseas, he meets regularly with foreign officials here -- in both cases, according to Boucher, more than any other secretary in recent memory.

Meanwhile, Powell has sharply cut back on travel, especially compared with his immediate predecessors. Including his recent trip to Sudan and Indonesia, Powell traveled 180 days in his first 42 months as secretary. Madeleine K. Albright, Warren M. Christopher and James A. Baker III averaged 46 percent more days at similar points in their tenures.

Indeed, Powell's schedule puts him just slightly ahead of William P. Rogers, secretary of state from 1969 to 1973, who was largely overshadowed by Kissinger, then the national security adviser to President Richard M. Nixon. Powell is significantly behind George P. Shultz, Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, and would need to travel 45 more days in the next six months to catch up with Shultz's 225 days of travel over four years.

Some leading foreign policy specialists -- and even some State Department officials -- have wondered whether Powell's travel schedule has in some ways contributed to the United States' falling image abroad. They argue that behind-the-scenes actions, such as telephone calls, carry much less impact overseas in an era when public diplomacy is increasingly important in advancing foreign policy goals.

"Telephoning is necessary but not sufficient," said former U.N. ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, a leading prospect for secretary of state in a John F. Kerry administration. "In the modern age, like it or not, secretaries have to travel. There is no alternative."

And here we wanted to think that Powell was the competent one. Turns out that he thinks his job is sitting in McLean and handing out advice. That's a very interesting interpretation of a job which is basically sales. I don't know how you can even hand out worthwhile advice if you haven't been on the ground, sniffing out the ground currents in foreign countries. Feh! All of these people are amateurs, and not particularly gifted ones.

When the Revolution Comes

Tuesday in November

Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A18

PERHAPS WITHOUT meaning to, Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, opened an unexpected can of worms last week when he warned of a terrorist attack designed to disrupt November's presidential election. His comments -- maddeningly lacking in detail, as always -- immediately suggested a number of nightmare electoral scenarios. What if a debilitating attack takes place the day before a presidential election? Should the election be postponed? What if the attack only hits an electorally sensitive city -- Miami, say, or Cleveland? Can elections be canceled in one place alone? And if so, do local officials decide, just as local officials decided to postpone New York City's municipal elections after Sept. 11?

Those who want to prepare for any of these scenarios are limited by the Constitution, which states that the presidential election must take place on a single day across the country and that Congress is responsible for setting the date. Yet on Election Day, Congress will not be in session. State and local officials will be in charge. And the time for disputes is limited: According to the 20th Amendment, the new president must be sworn in by Jan. 20, 2005. If not, the speaker of the House becomes president.

If the law is tricky, the politics is trickier. In recent days, Mr. Ridge informally asked the Justice Department to look at what might happen if an election had to be postponed, leading to a few suspicious, even hysterical reactions, and talk of stolen elections. While it is appropriate for the administration to think out loud about how it should react, it must bend over backward to do so in a bipartisan, premeditated fashion, with no hint of politicization. The legislature, not the executive, is clearly the body that should deal with this issue.

If, that is, it is to be dealt with at all. Some conversation about this subject is useful, if only to help prepare Congress and the White House for an emergency. Some have discussed the possibility of appointing a commission with distinguished, broadly respected members such as former senators Bob Dole and George J. Mitchell to look into this question, an eminently reasonable idea. At the same time, powerful emotional and even political arguments exist for holding a presidential election on the day it was meant to be held, regardless of what happens and who is unable to vote, just as it was held during the Civil War and just as it would be held in case of a hurricane, flood, fire or other natural catastrophe. This is not merely because talking about it in advance encourages those who might carry out a disruption. It's also because a postponed election would not necessarily have any greater legitimacy than an election disrupted by a terrorist attack. Congress should think through the consequences of a disrupted election, but it should remain extremely wary of any scheme to hold a presidential election at any time other than the first Tuesday of November.

Frankly, I don't put anything past the Bushies. Remember this?

Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

Warbucks

Advocates of War Now Profit From Iraq's Reconstruction
Lobbyists, aides to senior officials and others encouraged invasion and now help firms pursue contracts. They see no conflict.

By Walter F. Roche Jr. and Ken Silverstein, Times Staff Writers

....

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey is a prominent example of the phenomenon, mixing his business interests with what he contends are the country's strategic interests. He left the CIA in 1995, but he remains a senior government advisor on intelligence and national security issues, including Iraq. Meanwhile, he works for two private companies that do business in Iraq and is a partner in a company that invests in firms that provide security and anti-terrorism services.

Woolsey said in an interview that he was not directly involved with the companies' Iraq-related ventures. But as a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm, he was a featured speaker in May 2003 at a conference co-sponsored by the company at which about 80 corporate executives and others paid up to $1,100 to hear about the economic outlook and business opportunities in Iraq.

Before the war, Woolsey was a founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization set up in 2002 at the request of the White House to help build public backing for war in Iraq. He also wrote about a need for regime change and sat on the CIA advisory board and the Defense Policy Board, whose unpaid members have provided advice on Iraq and other matters to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Woolsey is part of a small group that shows with unusual clarity the interlocking nature of the way the insider system can work. Moving in the same social circles, often sitting together on government panels and working with like-minded think tanks and advocacy groups, they wrote letters to the White House urging military action in Iraq, formed organizations that pressed for invasion and pushed legislation that authorized aid to exile groups.

Since the start of the war, despite the violence and instability in Iraq, they have turned to private enterprise.

The group, in addition to Woolsey, includes:

• Neil Livingstone, a former Senate aide who has served as a Pentagon and State Department advisor and issued repeated public calls for Hussein's overthrow. He heads a Washington-based firm, GlobalOptions, that provides contacts and consulting services to companies doing business in Iraq.

• Randy Scheunemann, a former Rumsfeld advisor who helped draft the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 authorizing $98 million in U.S. aid to Iraqi exile groups. He was the founding president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Now he's helping former Soviet Bloc states win business there.

• Margaret Bartel, who managed federal money channeled to Chalabi's exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, including funds for its prewar intelligence program on Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. She now heads a Washington-area consulting firm helping would-be investors find Iraqi partners.

• K. Riva Levinson, a Washington lobbyist and public relations specialist who received federal funds to drum up prewar support for the Iraqi National Congress. She has close ties to Bartel and now helps companies open doors in Iraq, in part through her contacts with the Iraqi National Congress.

Other advocates of military action against Hussein are pursuing business opportunities in Iraq. Two ardent supporters of military action, Joe Allbaugh, who managed President Bush's 2000 campaign for the White House and later headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Edward Rogers Jr., an aide to the first President Bush, recently helped set up two companies to promote business in postwar Iraq. Rogers' law firm has a $262,500 contract to represent Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Neither Rogers nor Allbaugh has Woolsey's high profile, however.

Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, he wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal saying a foreign state had aided Al Qaeda in preparing the strikes. He named Iraq as the leading suspect. In October 2001, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz sent Woolsey to London, where he hunted for evidence linking Hussein to the attacks.

At the May 2003 Washington conference, titled "Companies on the Ground: The Challenge for Business in Rebuilding Iraq," Woolsey spoke on political and diplomatic issues that might affect economic progress. He also spoke favorably about the Bush administration's decision to tilt reconstruction contracts toward U.S. firms.

In an interview, Woolsey said he saw no conflict between advocating for the war and subsequently advising companies on business in Iraq.

Booz Allen is a subcontractor on a $75-million telecommunications contract in Iraq and also has provided assistance on the administration of federal grants. Woolsey said he had had no involvement in that work.

Woolsey was interviewed at the Washington office of the Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm where he is a partner. Paladin invests in companies involved in homeland security and infrastructure protection, Woolsey said.

Woolsey also is a paid advisor to Livingstone's GlobalOptions. He said his own work at the firm did not involve Iraq.

Under Livingstone, Global- Options "offers a wide range of security and risk management services," according to its website.

In a 1993 opinion piece for Newsday, Livingstone wrote that the United States "should launch a massive covert program designed to remove Hussein."

In a recent interview, Livingstone said he had second thoughts about the war, primarily because of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. But he has been a regular speaker at Iraq investment seminars.

While Livingstone has focused on opportunities for Americans, Scheunemann has concentrated on helping former Soviet Bloc states.

Scheunemann runs a Washington lobbying firm called Orion Strategies, which shares the same address as that of the Iraqi National Congress' Washington spokesman and the now-defunct Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

Orion's clients include Romania, which signed a nine-month, $175,000 deal earlier this year. Among other things, the contract calls for Orion to promote Romania's "interests in the reconstruction of Iraq."

Scheunemann has also traveled to Latvia, which is a former Orion client, and met with a business group to discuss prospects in Iraq.

Few people advocated for the war as vigorously as Scheunemann. Just a week after Sept. 11, he joined with other conservatives who sent a letter to Bush calling for Hussein's overthrow.

In 2002, Scheunemann became the first president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which scored its biggest success last year when 10 Eastern European countries endorsed the U.S. invasion. Known as the "Vilnius 10," they showed that "Europe is united by a commitment to end Saddam's bloody regime," Scheunemann said at the time.

He declined to discuss his Iraq-related business activities, saying, "I can't help you out there."

UPDATE:

Remember this when you see Jim Woolsey on CNN.

When the Left Fscks Up

Editorial lite; nary an argument to be had in this one:

A Welcome Vacancy
By STANSFIELD TURNER

WASHINGTON — The worst way out of the crisis now facing the American intelligence services is to appoint a new director of central intelligence as soon as possible. With George Tenet's resignation, which became effective Sunday, some people argue that the times are too perilous for the C.I.A. to have only an acting director. In fact, there is no way to have anything but an acting director until after the election.

Members of the intelligence community are not going to change at the behest of a director of central intelligence whose tenure may be only three months. They will simply stall if they do not agree with the course the director sets. I speak from experience: they did it to me in the last several months of my tenure as director while they waited to see if President Jimmy Carter would be re-elected.

Even if a new appointee were able to win the support of the agency, it would be very disruptive to the C.I.A. to undergo a change of leadership now and another in the fall if John Kerry wins the election. This is especially true if Mr. Kerry carries out his plan to reorganize the intelligence community by creating a new position, director of national intelligence. (I serve the campaign as an adviser on intelligence issues.)

Of course, Mr. Kerry would be free to keep the new director in the position, as President Bush did with Mr. Tenet. But it is unlikely that any of the rumored candidates — with a few exceptions, like the former Senator Sam Nunn, they are Republicans — would be acceptable to Mr. Kerry. I became director of central intelligence in part because my predecessor, George H. W. Bush, was considered too partisan.

There is more than politics at stake. If the Senate Intelligence Committee's report is to be believed, major changes in personnel at the C.I.A. are urgent and necessary from a purely professional standpoint.

For instance, the report tells of the supervisor of an analyst who warned that the only source of the report that the Iraqis had mobile biological weapons labs was unreliable. This manager dismissed this information on the grounds that it did not make any difference; the decision had already been made to go to war.

This attitude is corrosive to the most basic principle of intelligence — telling it like it is — and this manager must be told that there is no place for him or her in the C.I.A. The committee's report has enough other similar accusations that a thorough house cleaning is in order.

The director of central intelligence is the only officer of the executive branch who can dismiss employees secure in the knowledge that they have no recourse to appeal their firing. John McLaughlin, George Tenet's former deputy and the acting director as of this week, should exercise that authority. He knows the people and the system. Beyond that, the new director should not be burdened with such unpleasant disciplinary decisions immediately upon taking office. Mr. McLaughlin, a veteran C.I.A. officer, is well qualified both to act as director until after the election and to deal with whatever cleanup is needed.

Some of the president's advisers may believe that there is a political advantage to appointing a new director of central intelligence quickly. But such considerations should not determine how we solve our nation's intelligence crisis.

My Gawd, this was the empty-headedness we had when this guy was in town and he wants to do it again? Allow me to squack alarmingly.

You're Fired

Bush Document on War Data Is Held Back
By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: July 14, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 13 - The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency have refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee a one-page summary of prewar intelligence in Iraq prepared for President Bush that contains few of the qualifiers and none of the dissents spelled out in longer intelligence reviews, according to Congressional officials.

Senate Democrats claim that the document could help clear up exactly what intelligence agencies told Mr. Bush about Iraq's illicit weapons. The administration and the C.I.A. say the White House is protected by executive privilege, and Republicans on the committee dismissed the Democrats' argument that the summary was significant.

The review, prepared for President Bush in October 2002, summarized the findings of a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's illicit weapons. Congressional officials said that notes taken by Senate staffers who were permitted to review the document show that it eliminated references to dissent within the government about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusions.

"In determining what the president was told about the contents of the N.I.E. dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, qualifiers and all, there is nothing clearer than this single page," Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in a 10-page "additional view" that was published as an addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on Friday.

A separate white paper summarizing the National Intelligence Estimate was made public in October 2002. The Senate report criticized the white paper as having "misrepresented'' what the Senate committee described as a "more carefully worded assessment" in the classified intelligence estimate. For example, the white paper excluded information found in the National Intelligence Estimate, like the names of intelligence agencies that had dissented from some of the findings, most importantly on Iraq's nuclear weapons program. That approach, the Senate committee said, "provided readers with an incomplete picture of the nature and extent of the debate within the intelligence community regarding these issues."

Among the specific dissents excluded from the public white paper on Iraq's weapons was the view of the State Department's intelligence branch, spelled out in the classified version of the document, that Iraq's importation of aluminum tubes could not be conclusively tied to a continuing nuclear weapons program, as other intelligence agencies asserted. Also left out of the white paper was the view of Air Force intelligence that pilotless aerial vehicles being built by Iraq, seen by other intelligence agencies as designed to deliver chemical or biological weapons, were not suited for that purpose.

The fact that there were significant differences between the white paper and the classified versions of the intelligence estimate on Iraq's weapons first became apparent last summer, when the Bush administration made public more of the classified document.

The full National Intelligence Estimate asserted that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program, but included some caveats and summarized dissents made by the State Department's intelligence branch, among other agencies.

At a background briefing on Friday that coincided with the release of the Senate report, a Senate Republican official noted that intelligence agencies routinely prepared such abbreviated summaries of National Intelligence Estimates for presidents, and that those summaries were routinely covered by the doctrine of executive privilege.

Mr. Bush and his advisers had full access to the classified 90-page intelligence estimate, "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction," which provided a more detailed and qualified account of the intelligence agencies' views, the Senate Republican official noted.

The main body of the 511-page report that was approved unanimously by the Senate Intelligence Committee made no mention of the summary sent to Mr. Bush. In interviews, Democratic officials said that Republicans on the panel, which meets in closed session, had blocked their efforts to formally request the document from the White House. They also said that Democrats on the panel had tried and failed to persuade Republicans to include in the committee report a description of the one-page summary as having been an inadequate reflection of the full intelligence estimate.

You have the link. I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. It looks to me like King Boyo can't read anything longer than a one page "executive summary" (gawd, how I hate writing these things) and took us to war on a set of bullet points.

Explain to me again why we hired this guy. We didn't? Oh.

I Want My Religion Back

via Philocrites:

Recovering a hijacked faith

By Jim Wallis | July 13, 2004

MANY OF US feel that our faith has been stolen, and it's time to take it back. A misrepresentation of Christianity has taken place. Many people around the world now 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 pro-American? What has happened? How do we get back to a historic, biblical, and genuinely evangelical faith rescued from its contemporary distortions?

That rescue operation is crucial today in the face of a social crisis that cries out for prophetic religion. The problem is clear in the political arena, where strident voices claim to represent Christians when they clearly don't speak for most of us. We hear politicians who love to say how religious they are but fail to apply the values of faith to their leadership and policies.

When we take back our faith, we will discover that faith challenges the powers that be to do justice for the poor instead of preaching a "prosperity gospel" and supporting politicians who further enrich the wealthy. We will remember that faith hates violence and tries to reduce it and exerts a fundamental presumption against war instead of justifying it in God's name. We will see that faith creates community from racial, class, and gender divisions, prefers international community over nationalist religion and that "God bless America" is found nowhere in the Bible. And we will be reminded that faith regards matters such as the sacredness of life and family bonds as so important that they should never be used as ideological symbols or mere political pawns in partisan warfare.

The media like to say, "Oh, then you must be the religious left." No, and the very question is the problem. Just because a religious right has fashioned itself for political power in one predictable ideological guise does not mean those who question this political seduction must be their opposite political counterpart.

The best public contribution of religion is precisely not to be ideologically predictable or a loyal partisan. To always raise the moral issues of human rights, for example, will challenge both left- and right-wing governments who put power above principles. Religious action is rooted in a much deeper place than "rights"-- that being the image of God in every human being.

Similarly, when the poor are defended on moral or religious grounds, it is not "class warfare," as the rich will always charge, but rather a direct response to the overwhelming focus in the Scriptures, which claims they are regularly neglected, exploited, and oppressed by wealthy elites, political rulers, and indifferent affluent populations. Those Scriptures don't simply endorse the social programs of liberals or conservatives but make clear that poverty is indeed a religious issue, and the failure of political leaders to help uplift those in poverty will be judged a moral failing.

It is because religion takes the problem of evil so seriously that it must always be suspicious of too much concentrated power -- politically and economically -- either in totalitarian regimes or in huge multinational corporations that now have more wealth and power than many governments. It is indeed our theology of evil that makes us strong proponents of both political and economic democracy -- not because people are so good but because they often are not and need clear safeguards and strong systems of checks and balances to avoid the dangerous accumulations of power and wealth.

It's why we doubt the goodness of all superpowers and the righteousness of empires in any era, especially when their claims of inspiration and success invoke theology and the name of God. Given human tendencies for self-delusion and deception, is it any wonder that hardly a religious body in the world regards the ethics of unilateral and preemptive war as "just"? Religious wisdom suggests that the more overwhelming the military might, the more dangerous its capacity for self and public deception. Powerful nations dangerously claim to "rid the world of evil" but often do enormous harm in their self-appointed vocation to do so.

I love this man. This is the voice of prophecy, speaking truth to power. He is the religious Howard Dean ("I want my country back.")

Wallis's critique is not just of Bush, but of a specific kind of evangelicalism he represents, which is found most easily in the mega-church movement, which have frequently abandoned the "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" theology which is religion's most useful function in society (no, I'm not utilitarian, we are hard-wired for transcendence, it's what we do with it that counts.) I've offered my own critique of the Gospel of Prosperity earlier on this site.

Oh, by the way, have you ever seen a picture of Bush going into or coming out of a church? You haven't? Bush doesn't go to church. To join a community is to accept a certain amount of responsibility and accountability, and Bush couldn't have that, could he? If anyone can point me to the "charitable contributions" section of his most recent financial statement, I'd be grateful.

Nutbar Conspiracy Theories

Lawmaker Doubts U.S. Warnings of Possible Attack to Stop Elections

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 13, 2004; Page A13

A Democratic congressman who receives classified briefings on the threat of terrorist attacks said yesterday that top U.S. government officials' repeated statements that international terrorists want to disrupt the American electoral process this year "appear to have no basis."

Rep. Jim Turner (Tex.), ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, said that after several recent briefings by U.S. intelligence officials about perceived terrorist threats this summer and fall, "I don't have any information that al Qaeda" plans to attack the election process. "Nobody knows anything about timing" or the exact nature of any possible attack, although U.S. officials say al Qaeda wants to mount an attack this year, Turner said.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse declined to respond to Turner's remarks. Roehrkasse said the agency stands by comments by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge at a news conference last week.

Ridge and a senior intelligence official who appeared at the news conference repeated statements they have made for months that al Qaeda wants to undermine U.S. elections. The terrorist network has been emboldened by its belief that it enjoyed a massive victory when, days after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people, Spanish voters ousted the government, they said.

Although Ridge and the intelligence official said they have no "specific" details on time or place of any attack, the intelligence official said, "Recent and credible information indicates that al Qaeda is determined to carry out these attacks to disrupt our democratic processes."

Turner's comments came yesterday as he and the panel's chairman, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), spoke to reporters about their proposed legislation to improve the department's use of intelligence. Cox said in an interview that, based on his reading of the classified briefings he has received, Ridge is accurately reflecting U.S. intelligence conclusions.

Some Democrats have suggested lately that top U.S. officials, by raising fears of a terrorist attack to derail the elections, are trying to get President Bush reelected. But they have not cited evidence.

An example of such statements was one by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) after Ridge's news conference: "This administration has a long track record of using deceptive tactics for political gain. One cannot help but question whether their aim was to deflect attention from the Kerry-Edwards ticket during their inaugural week."

I think this one story rounds up all the memes that have been generated since this story was broken by the AP on June 25. Kevin Drum thinks that those of us who are worried about this are unnecessarily paranoid. Me, I'm with Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.

Pissing off the World

France Accuses U.S. of AIDS Blackmail

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer

BANKOK, Thailand — Tempers flared here today as France accused the United States of trying to blackmail small countries like Thailand into upholding patents on anti-AIDS drugs.

Protesters shouted down speakers and drug company representatives as the few U.S. representatives here tried to defend the president's proposed $15-billion program against the disease.

The large exhibition center that normally bustles with the 17,000 attendees at the 15th International AIDS Conference was more subdued than usual as five major drug companies — GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Merck & Co., Abbott Laboratories and Roche Group, by far the largest exhibitors at the meeting — closed their booths in the face of hecklers protesting the high prices of brand-name drugs.

Meanwhile, the scientific results that have been the cornerstone of the 14 previous conferences were largely absent as attendees turned their attention to getting available drugs to larger numbers of people.

Since the last conference in Barcelona two years ago, the number of people in the Third World receiving treatment for HIV infections has doubled, but the total is still only 440,000, a far cry from UNAIDS's goal of 3 million in treatment by the end of 2005. UNAIDS estimates that 6 million people are in urgent need of antiretroviral therapy.

"By these measures of human life, the ones that really matter, we have failed. And we have failed miserably to do enough in the precious time that has passed since Barcelona," said Dr. Jim Yong Kim, WHO's director of HIV and AIDS programs.

Doctors Say Pact Threatens AIDS Progress
A charity group urges Thailand to reject a U.S. trade deal that could end an affordable-drugs program, which is seen as a model for Asia.

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer

BANGKOK, Thailand — A potential trade agreement between Thailand and the United States could derail this country's production of inexpensive AIDS drugs and imperil the future of an anti-HIV program that is widely considered a model for countries throughout Asia, the group Doctors Without Borders said Monday.

"If the Thais sign such an agreement, they will have to close down their generic drug production," Paul Cawthorne of the Belgium-based group told a news conference. "Trade rules are the biggest threat" to the fight against AIDS, he said.

Thailand is one of the few countries — others include India and Brazil — that manufacture generic versions of anti-HIV drugs developed by U.S. manufacturers.

The country began researching manufacturing techniques for the drugs in the early 1990s and was preparing to market a generic version of the drug didanosine when Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., the drug's manufacturer, served notice that it held a valid patent on the drug. The Thai government was ready to accede, but Doctors Without Borders urged it to fight the claim.

Bushwa talks a good game on fighting AIDS, while crafting trade deals which are going to make it tougher to fight. This is an amazing consistency: every topic addressed by Bushco, they say one thing and do the exact opposite. Even Orwell's imagination wasn't that consistent.

Stubborn Things

Robert Scheer:
Fact of the Matter Is That Facts Didn't Matter
Senate panel's report is a damning indictment of the Bush Doctrine.

That Bin Laden and Hussein were the unlikeliest of allies was long known by the CIA, as noted in the Senate report, and no facts unearthed have effectively challenged that. CIA analysts concluded, according to the Senate committee report, that Hussein "generally viewed Islamic extremism, including the [Saudi-based] school of Islam known as Wahhabism, as a threat to his regime, noting that he had executed extremists from both the Sunni and Shiite sects to disrupt their organizations" and "sought to prevent Iraqi youth from joining Al Qaeda."

Meanwhile, Bush has consistently ignored the fact that Al Qaeda had been largely funded and supported by powerful extremists in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two "allies" his administration coddled both before and after 9/11. Pakistan was even exporting nuclear weapons technology to "axis of evil" countries Iran and North Korea, as well as Libya — but not to Iraq.

Does any of this make sense? Where is the common-sense consistency, the respect for truth and the logical hierarchy of priorities in our foreign policy? Why can't the president explain — without lying — why we are in Iraq? Why are Americans dying in a country that had no weapons of mass destruction, had no role in 9/11 and posed no immediate threat to the U.S.?

The 511-page Senate Intelligence Committee report makes it clear that despite the haughty posturing of national security heavyweights, we do not have adults watching the store. The report's epic series of embarrassing conclusions about how the intelligence on Iraq became distorted is a testament to how political ideology and ambitions consistently trumped logic and integrity. The Senate report is a thoroughly damning indictment of the Bush administration's doctrine of "preemptive" war based on intelligence. In the case of Iraq, the intelligence that was false was adopted by the administration, while the intelligence that was true was ignored as inconvenient. And it is telling that the CIA, try as it did to accommodate the White House, couldn't find any evidence that Al Qaeda and Iraq were collaborators.

Not that the CIA didn't try, though. "This intelligence assessment responds to senior policymaker interest in a comprehensive assessment of Iraqi regime links to Al Qaeda. Our approach is purposefully aggressive in seeking to draw connections," said one report. "I was asking the people who were writing [the report on Iraq-Al Qaeda links] to lean far forward and do a speculative piece. If you were going to stretch to the maximum the evidence you had, what could you come up with?" the deputy director for intelligence at the CIA told the Senate committee.

With this approach, we might as well base our foreign policy on reruns of "The X-Files." Maybe this is why the president wants us to go to Mars: It's a preemptive strike.

You won't hear it out of any of the administration bobbleheads or Daryn Kagin, but there actually are such things as facts. And because you definitely won't hear it on Faux News, half of the electorate is still unaware of the facts.

Re-Enlistment Trouble

Guardsmen choose not to re-enlist

Associated Press
July 13, 2004

JASPER, Ind. -- Almost two-thirds of Indiana National Guardsmen in a battalion that spent a year in Iraq chose not to re-enlist when their service time expired.

Over the past 21 months, the service contracts of 102 soldiers in the 1st Battalion of the 152nd Regiment expired. Of those, 32, or less than one-third, chose to re-enlist.

The unit typically keeps 85 percent of its members, a sergeant in charge of retaining members said.

Before the war, the unit had 650 members. Now the regiment headquartered about 40 miles northeast of Evansville has about 530 soldiers left, The Herald reported in a story today.

In early 2003, 610 of the members were deployed to Iraq.

"That one big word, 'deployment,' has done more damage than anything," said Sgt. 1st Class Gary Love, who is in charge of convincing soldiers to stay.

"What killed us was the stop-loss," Love said. "There wasn't a whole lot we could do."

The Defense Department has been taking numerous steps to keep enlistment up during the Iraq conflict, included issuing a "stop-loss" order that prevents soldiers from leaving the military when their obligations end and multiple deployments of guard and reserve units.

Typically, retention is tracked in one-year cycles, broken down by quarters.

But the stop-loss order, which lasted 18 months, meant some battalions, instead of spreading manpower losses over a manageable period, have dropped members all at once.

Eighty percent of the unit's soldiers affected by the order -- 59 of 74 Guard members -- did not re-enlist, Love said. The goal was to keep at least half of those troops, he said.

This is hardly a big surprise. We've been predicting the same for over half a year.

The Law for Thee and Me

Americans deserve look at U.S. emergency defense plans

July 9, 2004

BY ANDREW GREELEY

The decisions of the Supreme Court last week regarding detainees in Guantanamo and American citizens held without access to counsel or courts is an authentic, if modest, victory for freedom. It halts -- please, God, not temporarily -- the creeping fascism that has threatened this country since the World Trade Center attack.

''Fascism'' is not an exaggeration. It is, among other things, a political philosophy that says that the leader is above the law, that a commander in chief in a time of war has unlimited power in the name of national security. This is a claim that has been made seriously by lawyers in the White House, the Pentagon and the Justice Department in recent years.

Some documents have been released, some have been leaked, some are still hidden lest Congress find them in an election year. They argue more or less explicitly that in time of war the president as commander in chief can suspend the Bill of Rights, hold men it has designated as enemy aliens indefinitely without trial or legal counsel, imprison American citizens in the same circumstances, authorize moderate or even intense torture for intelligence purposes, and suspend the treaty-authorized Geneva Conventions. Indeed, one memo seems to suggest that there is no limit to the power of what the president can order in wartime. Commander in chief has morphed into generalissimo, caudillo, el jefe.

Anyone who does not think that such a philosophy is incipient fascism doesn't know what fascism is.

It is argued in the president's defense that he has not authorized most of these violations of human rights. Doubtless he hasn't read the long and ponderous legal memos. Yet he has authorized detention without trial or counsel. So he must have relied on some of these memos. Moreover, the stone wall the White House has built to hide more documents about torture seems to hint that efforts to rewrite the Constitution may have been more extensive than we now know.

Many Americans (such as Rush Limbaugh) defend these theories, but recent surveys show that most Americans reject them. Although there is powerful residual support for a "strong" president in wartime and profound ignorance of the Bill of Rights, there seems to be a gut instinct among Americans that these abridgements of freedom are wrong.

Some liberals suggest that the administration is capable of canceling the November election on the grounds of national security if it looks like Bush would lose. I doubt this. Yet I don't doubt that somewhere in the bowels of Justice or the Pentagon or Defense, one might find a note or two hinting at the possibility of such behavior. The election will go ahead regardless of the polls -- though perhaps another terror attack might put it in jeopardy.

It is known that some time ago (before the World Trade Center attack), Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had drafted proposals for what should happen if most of the members of Congress were killed in an attack. Surely there should be plans for such an eventuality. Yet given the contempt for the Constitution that seems to exist among some administration lawyers, those plans should be made public and discussed to make sure that a surviving president -- any surviving president -- cannot suspend the Constitution and impose a new form of government on the country.

Under any circumstances, the disaster blueprint should be made public. However, the lack of regard for the Bill of Rights in the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft and the suggestion by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales that the Geneva Convention is "quaint" make it imperative that Americans know before this election what plans the administration has to reconstitute the country after a disaster.

Fr. Greeley is hardly a wild-eyed liberal, so hearing the word "fascism" from his keyboard tells me that we are, indeed, in perilous times. I'm going to go take some vitamins and hope that I can find the strength to go on.

Necromancer

Machine at Work
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: July 13, 2004

A little background: at the Republican convention, most featured speakers will be social moderates like Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A moderate facade is necessary to win elections in a generally tolerant nation. But real power in the party rests with hard-line social conservatives like Mr. DeLay, who, in the debate over gun control after the Columbine shootings, insisted that juvenile violence is the result of day care, birth control and the teaching of evolution.

Here's the puzzle: if Mr. DeLay's brand of conservatism is so unpopular that it must be kept in the closet during the convention, how can people like him really run the party?

In Mr. DeLay's case, a large part of the answer is his control over corporate cash. As far back as 1996, one analyst described Mr. DeLay as the "chief enforcer of company contributions to Republicans." Some of that cash has flowed through Americans for a Republican Majority, called Armpac, a political action committee Mr. DeLay founded in 1994. By dispensing that money to other legislators, he gains their allegiance; this, in turn, allows him to deliver favors to his corporate contributors. Four of the five Republicans on the House ethics committee, where a complaint has been filed against Mr. DeLay, are past recipients of Armpac money.

The complaint, filed by Representative Chris Bell of Texas, contends, among other things, that Mr. DeLay laundered illegal corporate contributions for use in Texas elections. And that's where Enron enters the picture.

In May 2001, according to yesterday's Washington Post, Enron lobbyists in Washington informed Ken Lay via e-mail that Mr. DeLay was seeking $100,000 in additional donations to his political action committee, with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas." The Post says it has "at least a dozen" documents showing that Mr. DeLay and his associates directed money from corporate donors and lobbyists to an effort to win control of the Texas Legislature so the Republican Party could redraw the state's political districts.

Enron, which helped launch Armpac, was happy to oblige, especially because Mr. DeLay was helping the firm's effort to secure energy deregulation legislation, even as its traders boasted to one another about how they were rigging California's deregulated market and stealing millions each day from "Grandma Millie."

The Texas redistricting, like many of Mr. DeLay's actions, broke all the usual rules of political fair play. But when you believe, as Mr. DeLay does, that God is using you to promote a "biblical worldview" in politics, the usual rules don't apply. And the redistricting worked — it is a major reason why anything short of a Democratic tidal wave in November is likely to leave the House in Republican hands.

There is, however, one problem: a 100-year-old Texas law bars corporate financing of State Legislature campaigns. An inquiry is under way, and Mr. DeLay has hired two criminal defense lawyers. Stay tuned.

But you shouldn't conclude that the system is working. Mr. DeLay's current predicament is an accident. The party machine that he has done so much to create has eliminated most of the checks and balances in our government. Again and again, Republicans in Congress have closed ranks to block or emasculate politically inconvenient investigations. If Enron hadn't collapsed, and if Texas didn't still have a campaign finance law that is a relic of its populist past, Mr. DeLay would be in no danger at all.

The larger picture is this: Mr. DeLay and his fellow hard-liners, whose values are far from the American mainstream, have forged an immensely effective alliance with corporate interests. And they may be just one election away from achieving a long-term lock on power.

This is the piece being missed by your ordinary Republican voter, my mom, your minister, our next door neighbor: the party is in the grip of corporate hegemonists who have figured out how to hijack the language of democracy and populism to turn the government into a spigot for corporate bottom lines. And with hard-line deregulation, it isn't just your tax dollars being funnelled to them, it is your discretionary dollars which are being turned into a corporate tax as your earnings are degraded and the prices you have to pay for goods are jacked up. We are being gamed by a Republican party which has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Forbes 100.

Secrets Out of Control

Credible Classifications

Tuesday, July 13, 2004; Page A14

FLIP THROUGH the Senate intelligence committee's report on prewar intelligence and you'll find instance after instance in which lines, paragraphs, even entire pages are blacked out. It could have been worse, though: If intelligence officials had their way, nearly half of the 511-page report would have been redacted, rather than the 15 percent or so that was excised in the final version. Said one outraged senator: "The initial thing that came back was absolutely an insult, and it would be laughable if it wasn't so insulting, because they redacted half of what we had. A lot of it was to redact a word that revealed nothing." The speaker? Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), hardly a wild-eyed foe of the intelligence community.

With congressional inquiries and commissions proliferating in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq, so, too, are tensions over how much of their findings can be released to the public -- and whether the intelligence community is abusing its power to decide what should remain classified in order to shield itself from embarrassment rather than safeguard national security secrets.

Indeed, Mr. Lott isn't alone in his frustration with the system. It took more than six months of wrangling for the congressional joint committee investigating the Sept. 11 attacks to extract approval to publish its report -- and even then it had to black out an entire section involving Saudi Arabia. "I've reviewed the 28 pages twice, and my judgment is that 90 to 95 percent could be released and not compromise our intelligence in any way," Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) said at the time.

No one wants to insist on the release of information that could aid terrorists or other enemies of the United States. Clearly, some information reviewed by lawmakers or other investigators must remain secret. But the way the system is structured, no one can have confidence that the judgments to keep information classified are being made on the basis of national security alone -- and there is ample evidence to the contrary. The reports already produced have offered a powerful, even chastening demonstration of the importance of outside oversight and review; it's hard to see what the arguments for classifying parts of those documents would have been. Among other effects, this undermines the credibility of the classifiers when it comes to protecting real secrets.

It's time to consider an alternative mechanism that could balance the legitimate competing needs for secrecy and openness without suffering from the conflict of interest inherent in the existing system. One solution is on the front end: to reduce the rampant overclassification of information in the first place. "Three-quarters of what I read that was classified shouldn't have been," said Thomas H. Kean, the chairman of the Sept. 11 commission. On the back end, the trick is to find a decision maker with enough expertise to make judgment calls on classification but without a built-in bias for hoarding information. One solution might be a souped-up version of an existing entity, the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, created in 1995 to rule on declassification requests and composed of representatives from the CIA, the State, Defense and Justice departments, the national security adviser, and the National Archives. Another, suggested by Mr. Lott, is to convene an independent review group, perhaps composed of retired intelligence officials, to make such determinations. The current system isn't serving the intelligence community, those examining its activities or the public.

The classification system has now become so politicized that it makes no sense. Time to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new system. Of course, that's not possible with the Bushies in charge.

The Little Falloujas

Resentment Is Festering in `Little Falloujas'

By Patrick J. McDonnell and Suhail Ahmed, Special to The Times

BUHRIZ, Iraq — His Charlie Battery was dug in against as many as 50 insurgents, Capt. Matt Davenport remembers, and the volleys of rocket-propelled grenades and bursts of machine-gun fire were nonstop. At one point in the two-day firefight, he recalls, "there was an explosion every five seconds."

The battle was fierce enough that it could have occurred at the height of this spring's siege of Fallouja, a city that has become notorious worldwide as a hub of resistance to U.S. and allied forces. But the firefight came just a few weeks ago, in this agricultural town northeast of Baghdad.

There is only one Fallouja, but, unfortunately for U.S. forces and their allies, seething towns such as Buhriz dot Iraq's vast "Sunni Triangle." They are home to traditional tribal populations embittered by the U.S.-led forces in their country — and suspicious of an Iraqi government installed by foreigners.

Harnessing these "little Falloujas" back into the fold of civil Iraqi society is one of the great challenges facing the new government and its U.S. allies. A cycle of violence, distrust and radicalization has festered for a year in Sunni Iraq and will not go away easily.

The U.S. strategy has followed a variant of the carrot-and-stick approach — crushing armed opposition but also offering millions in development funds to cooperative local governments.

"There's an inverse relationship between successful projects and American casualties," said Col. Dana Pittard, who heads the 1st Infantry Division brigade that patrols Buhriz and the rest of Diyala province. "We're going to be fighting our way out of here if that money dries up."

In the case of Buhriz and other troubled Sunni towns, town leaders call U.S. troops a provocation and demand that they stay away.

Writ small, this is the entire story of the whole American project in Iraq. We shouldn't be there in the first place.

The Cost, the Bloody Cost

Big Media Matt, writing over at Tapped, obliquely raises the question that I used on the liberal hawks I know in the run up to the war. Matt says:

ONE MORE TRY. I heard Walter Russell Mead speak earlier this afternoon and he was saying, like many people nowadays, that the Iraq War was a good idea, but Bush had misstated the case. In Mead's view, it's just that the costs of the containment and sanctions strategy were too high to be sustainable. Others, noteably Senator Pat Roberts, have been picking up the banner of humanitarianism. One question hanging over these arguments, though, is if the president didn't use them because he and his advisors knew that they wouldn't work. The American people seem disinclined to support wars unless they can be convinced that the enemy in some way poses a security threat.

Again, did Saddam have the "capability" of passing the weapons he couldn't build on to terrorists "bent on acquiring them?" Sure. But everything in Saddam's history -- including the period of time when he really had WMD -- suggests he had no inclination to do so. Meanwhile, the list of nations that have this capacity is rather large -- Pakistan, for example -- and we're not invading all of them. Indeed, thanks to the administration's bungling, it's a list that's grown to include North Korea. There's all these people out there offering better theories, though, if the White House wants to try and find something more plausible.

The public wouldn't have bought the "humanitarian" theory, not on this scale. In the run up, I asked my liberal hawk friends, "What's it worth to you, in blood and treasure, to remake this country? At what point is it not worth it anymore?" The liberal humanitarian hawks I know bought into the cakewalk theory and assumed this was going to be, well, a piece of cake, which flies in the face of history.

What about you? What did you hear from family and friends in the run up? I didn't talk to family, as that would have been hopeless. We joke that I was found under a cabbage leaf, rather than birthed into my family, all of whom are to the right of Attilla the Hun. Also they are all giants, and I'm this bit of a thing who grew up with huge brothers and huge parents. I'm a throwback to FDR, or something.

PS, sorry about that. Preview is your friend, preview is your friend, preview is your friend....

Bulwer-Lytton Award

Kevin Drum at Political Animal has been tracking some really desperately bad conservative writing for the last couple of days. Today's offering:

BOX TURTLES?....I thought that David Gelernter's comparison of John Edwards to an under-ripe bunch of bananas yesterday was a serious nominee for awkward simile of the year honors, but I guess I was wrong. Via Andrew Sullivan, here is Texas Senator John Cornyn:

First bananas, now box turtles. There must be a name for this syndrome....

To which a commentor responds with a classic:

Keep this up, and Mary Cheney may join Ron Reagan in addressing the Democratic convention.

Visit with Orwell

Administration Confirming Plans to Open More Forests to Logging

By Matthew Daly Associated Press Writer
Published: Jul 12, 2004

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration will propose a new plan to open up national forests to more logging, confirming a draft plan published two weeks ago, The Associated Press learned.

Under the plan, to be announced by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman on Monday, governors would have to petition the federal government to block road-building in remote areas of national forests, replacing a national rule against such projects adopted by the Clinton administration.

The Bush administration for nearly two years has been weighing changes to the so-called roadless rule, which blocks road construction in nearly one-third of national forests as a way to prevent logging and other commercial activity.

Officials call the new roadless policy a commonsense plan that protects backcountry woods while advancing a partnership with the nations governors, particularly in the West.

Veneman, whose department includes the Forest Service, was to announce the policy at the Idaho Capitol in Boise with Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and Sen. Larry Craig, both Republicans.

"Our actions today advance President Bush's commitment to cooperatively conserving roadless areas on national forests," Veneman said in remarks prepared for the event. "The prospect of endless lawsuits represents neither progress, nor certainty for communities.

"Our announcements today illustrate our commitment to working closely with the nation's governors to meet the needs of local communities, and to maintaining the undeveloped character of the most pristine areas of the National Forest System," she added.

This is the kind of stuff that makes my head explode: conserving forests by opening them up to more logging. Up is down, black is white....

Update your Browser

Security prompts users to flee IE for Mozilla
July 12 2004
by Jo Best
Internet Explorer loses out to open-source efforts...

Recent warnings about the security of Internet Explorer and advice by US authorities to ditch it appear to have been heeded by the browser-using public – with Mozilla in particular feeling the benefit of the swap.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said that the company is "aggressively working" on sorting out the security issues with the browser and the Redmond giant doesn't feel giving up on IE "is warranted".

Go here and download the 1.7 release. If you have broad band it will only take seconds, on 56K dialup, it's a little over an hour, so do it before you go to sleep tonight--which is what I'm going to do. My Canadian blog compatriot pogge told me that the 1.6 release I'm using has the same vulnerability as IE. Trust me, you'll be glad you did it, Mozilla is simply a superior browser.

Fire Sale

Trade Agreement May Undercut Importing of Inexpensive Drugs
By ELIZABETH BECKER and ROBERT PEAR

Published: July 12, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 11 — Congress is poised to approve an international trade agreement that could have the effect of thwarting a goal pursued by many lawmakers of both parties: the import of inexpensive prescription drugs to help millions of Americans without health insurance.

The agreement, negotiated with Australia by the Bush administration, would allow pharmaceutical companies to prevent imports of drugs to the United States and also to challenge decisions by Australia about what drugs should be covered by the country's health plan, the prices paid for them and how they can be used.

It represents the administration's model for strengthening the protection of expensive brand-name drugs in wealthy countries, where the biggest profits can be made.

In negotiating the pact, the United States, for the first time, challenged how a foreign industrialized country operates its national health program to provide inexpensive drugs to its own citizens. Americans without insurance pay some of the world's highest prices for brand-name prescription drugs, in part because the United States does not have such a plan.

Only in the last few weeks have lawmakers realized that the proposed Australia trade agreement — the Bush administration's first free trade agreement with a developed country — could have major implications for health policy and programs in the United States.

The debate over drug imports, an issue with immense political appeal, has been raging for four years, with little reference to the arcane details of trade policy. Most trade agreements are so complex that lawmakers rarely investigate all the provisions, which typically cover such diverse areas as manufacturing, tourism, insurance, agriculture and, increasingly, pharmaceuticals.

Bush administration officials oppose legalizing imports of inexpensive prescription drugs, citing safety concerns. Instead, with strong backing from the pharmaceutical industry, they have said they want to raise the price of drugs overseas to spread the burden of research and development that is borne disproportionately by the United States.

This is a big, sloppy wet kiss for Big Pharma at the expense of the American consumer. It almost looks as if the run up to the election is being treated as a fire sale by Bushco to see how much they can give away to their corporate friends before the election.

Unanswered Questions

We're Not Ready for A New 9/11

By Stanley I. Greenspan
Monday, July 12, 2004; Page A17

The rationalization that's bandied about is that the government doesn't want to scare anyone by making specific recommendations -- for example, designating schools as places to obtain medical care and issuing instructions on whether to stay put or to exit cities via selected routes. If there's too much open preparation for a nuclear, biological or chemical event, the reasoning goes, panic will ensue. Another rationalization is that too much explicit focus on contingency plans would sap the economic recovery: People would be too worried to shop.

But even if these rationalizations were true, would that be a reason to expose the public to risk? Shouldn't government's first concern be the safety of its citizens?

In all likelihood, a policy of collective ignorance will actually fuel a major economic catastrophe if a terrorist attack occurs, as happened after Sept. 11. In Israel, where there's a hardened acceptance of the reality of terrorist attacks, life goes on. Economic progress continues, and there's very little panic. Panic and economic disruption occur when there is a lack of preparation and a patronizing government policy.

Is there a deeper reason (other than simply the government's desire to pretend the sky isn't falling and the public's wish to hide its head in the sand) for the current policy? Americans may have a very low tolerance for feeling helpless. To our credit, we've been able to use our distaste for helplessness to mobilize through two world wars, a long Cold War and numerous other challenges. But the nature of the terrorist threat is different: Some degree of tolerance for feeling helpless is a part of the new reality. Unless this reality is dealt with, it leads to denial. Denial, in turn, undermines preparation and effective action.

The current denial is broad-based. Most Americans are not clamoring for more guidance on what to do if . . . . The media are more focused on what we are doing than what we are not doing. But when the issue is survival, the news is in what's not being done. Our government is working hard to prevent terrorist attacks, but it has not yet organized a multifaceted, comprehensive plan to protect its citizens.

In order to deal with our denial, the public, the media and the government need to ask tough questions every day, not just periodically. A TV special or news report or this or that government commission won't solve the problem. What's needed is an ongoing focus on the questions raised above. We need to ask the very toughest questions, even at the risk of alarming us all.

Recall that the Sept. 11 commission reported that the original terrorist plan was for 10 airplanes, not just four. Could the next attack involve multiple weapons of mass destruction, for example, nuclear and biological in multiple cities at the same time? Do we have contingency plans for this type of emergency?

We monitor the stock market and weather daily. So far, however, we haven't been monitoring our readiness to survive. It's time to ask why not.

Given all of the things that haven't been done to prevent further terrorism (our ports, chem/nuclear plants, etc.) this is a serious issue. Dr. Greenspan raises questions I haven't seen treated anywhere else. Given that both Iraq and Afghanistan have been allowed to fester into recruiting grounds for terrorists, these are questions we should be demanding answers for, rather than allowing our public conversation to be distracted by the gay marriage debate.

Bush Alienates the Base

Some Key Conservatives Uneasy About Bush

SCOTT LINDLAW

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - When an influential group of conservatives gathers in downtown Washington each week, they often get a political pep talk from a senior Bush administration official or campaign aide. They don't expect a fellow Republican to deliver a blistering critique of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

But nearly 150 conservatives listened in silence recently as a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations ticked off a litany of missteps in Iraq by the Bush White House.

"This war is not going well," said Stefan Halper, a deputy assistant secretary of state under President Reagan.

"It's costing us a lot of money, isolating us from our allies and friends," said Halper, who gave $1,000 to George W. Bush's campaign and more than $83,000 to other GOP causes in 2000. "This is not the cakewalk the neoconservatives predicted. We were not greeted with flowers in the streets."

Conservatives, the backbone of Bush's political base, are increasingly uneasy about the Iraq conflict and the steady drumbeat of violence in postwar Iraq, Halper and some of his fellow Republicans say. The conservatives' anxiety was fueled by the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal and has not abated with the transfer of political power to the interim Iraqi government.

Some Republicans fear angry conservatives will stay home in November, undercutting Bush's re-election bid.

"I don't think there's any question that there is growing restiveness in the Republican base about this war," said Halper, the co-author of a new book, "America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order."

Some Republicans dismiss the rift as little more than an inside-the-Beltway spat among rival factions of the GOP intelligentsia. Indeed, conservatives nationwide are still firmly behind Bush. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 97 percent of conservative Republicans favored Bush over Kerry.

But anger is simmering among some conservatives.

"I am bitterly disappointed in his actions with this war. It is a total travesty," said Tom Hutchinson, 69, a self-described conservative from Sturgeon, Mo., who posted yard signs and staffed campaign phone banks for the Republican in 2000. Hutchinson said he did not believe the administration's stated rationales for the war, in particular the argument that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Hutchinson, a retired businessman and former college professor, said his unease with Iraq may lead him to do something he has not done since 1956: avoid the voting booth in a presidential election.

Jack Walters, 59, a self-described "classical conservative" from Columbia, Mo., said he hadn't decided which candidate to vote for.

"Having been through Vietnam, I thought no, never again," Walters said. "But here comes the same thing again, and I'm old enough to recognize the lame reasons given for going into Iraq, and they made me ill."

The tension has been building in official Washington, where conservative members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees have pressed the administration for answers on combat operations; disagreed with the Pentagon on troop levels; and expressed frustration with an administration they feel has shown them disdain by withholding information.

Amazing to find the SCLM covering this. Bush isn't a conservative, he's a radical who abandoned nearly every campaign pledge he made in 2000, and the paleo-cons are not happy. Good, I'm glad they've noticed that they supported a lunatic.

World-Wide Struggle

Asia on precipice of disaster
With smoldering epidemics in China and India, region at 'critical juncture'

Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
Sunday, July 11, 2004

Bangkok -- At least 12,000 delegates from around the globe are converging on this Southeast Asian capital city for today's opening of the 15th International AIDS Conference, a six-day event that organizers hope will strengthen world resolve to combat a disease that has already claimed at least 20 million lives.

A blend of political theater, medical research and social science, these AIDS conferences focus world attention on the gravity and scope of the epidemic and help to set the course of future efforts to contain it.

"This is the biggest epidemic in human history, by any standard,'' said Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS in Geneva. He said it will take $12 billion a year to fight the epidemic in 2005. This year's six-day meeting is likely to be dominated by discussions -- and protests -- surrounding the question of how to bring the costly combinations of antiretroviral drugs to millions of AIDS patients in poor countries.

The theme of the Bangkok conference is "Access for All," posing a direct challenge to wealthy nations to come up with strategies to provide AIDS drugs to the poor. There are 38 million people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and nearly all of them eventually will need antiretroviral drugs to survive.

Because of its setting in Bangkok, the conference also will highlight the problem of AIDS in Asia. An estimated 7.4 million people across the giant continent are living with HIV. There were 1.1 million new infections last year in Asia alone, according to UNAIDS.

India and China, home to 2.2 billion people, are both coping with smoldering epidemics that represent less than 1 percent of their populations but add up to millions of infected people.
....
Fauci will be leading a sharply curtailed U.S. government presence at this year's conference. Citing budget constraints, the Bush administration decided that only 50 scientists from the Department of Health and Human Services could travel to the Bangkok session. That compares with 236 who were sent to the last AIDS conference in Barcelona.

During the Barcelona conference, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson was famously booed off the stage by rowdy AIDS activists, and critics of the Bush administration see the cutbacks as retaliation.

"It's outrageous that they would limit access to their scientific experts at such an important meeting,'' said Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance in Washington, D.C. "They are undermining the whole global response to the epidemic.''

Bill Pierce, a spokesman for Thompson, acknowledged that many government researchers were displeased with the decision. However, he said the administration was in fact being flexible with a new policy that limits delegations to 40 government scientists at international conferences.

I've been following this story for a while. The alarm should be over the second half: Bushco is limiting the number of experts who can go to these conferences. There were 236 American scientists ready to go to this conference, many of them to give presentations in their specialties, and they were told NO by HHS.

Bringing in the Sheaves

Nations Slow to Deliver Iraq Aid
Little of the $13 billion promised for rebuilding has been donated and countries are slow to forgive debt, frustrating the new government.
By Paul Richter, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Amid continuing efforts by the Bush administration to build international support for its mission in Iraq, countries have provided only a small fraction of the reconstruction aid they promised at a conference nine months ago.

Of the $13 billion in non-American aid pledged, only about $1 billion has been turned over to the U.N. and World Bank funds set up to take in most of the donations, U.S. and international aid officials said. Almost half the money, $490 million, is from a single source: Japan.

The shortfall is a source of growing frustration for officials of Iraq's new interim government, who had hoped that the U.S. handover of sovereignty two weeks ago would have resulted in a flow of cash from European nations that opposed the U.S. occupation and wealthy Arab neighbors — two groups that have long been generous donors.

Officials with the new government have begun to complain about the tardiness of the financial aid, as well as the reluctance of Iraq's creditors to follow through on promises to forgive some of the country's $120 billion debt. Iraqi officials fear that their frail economy will not be able to recover unless the debt burden is eased.

Rend Rahim, Iraq's ambassador to the United States, said the aid "is much, much lower than what Iraq was promised.... We shouldn't be set adrift, on our own."

Rahim also told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington on June 29 that "so far, we do not have any serious pledges for the reduction of Iraqi debt." She criticized countries that have been unwilling to forgive more than a small portion of the debt, saying they "really want their pound of flesh."

Some foreign policy analysts said they believe the slow pace of donations and debt forgiveness partly reflects the hesitancy of European and other allies to be seen as agreeing with the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, particularly when it might give a pre-election boost to President Bush.

"The reluctance to turn over the cash dovetails with the way the whole war has played out," said Steven A. Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "Even though this is for a humanitarian cause, they feel like they would be, in a way, legitimizing the Bush administration's invasion."

U.S. officials have been seeking to emphasize international support as a way of blunting Democrats' charges that the administration has damaged relations with traditional U.S. allies, some analysts maintain.

Here is the Iraq Casualty list for the month of July. Maybe it tells you something about why other countries are not in a rush to get involved.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

The Real Enemy Staring Us in the Face
By BOB HERBERT

Published: July 12, 2004

Justin Hunt, a young man from Wildomar, Calif., about 75 miles east of Los Angeles, was determined to join the Marines. When recruiters pointed out that he was grossly overweight, he spent a year losing more than 150 pounds. Then he signed up and was promptly sent to Iraq, where he was killed last Tuesday in an explosion. He was 22.

Three American soldiers, not yet publicly identified, were killed yesterday in two separate attacks on military patrols north of Baghdad. On Saturday four marines were killed in a vehicle accident near Falluja. And five more American soldiers were killed Thursday in a mortar attack on a base in the Sunni-dominated city of Samarra.

For what?

Even as these brave troops were dying in the cruel and bloody environs of Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington was unfurling its damning unanimous report about the incredibly incompetent intelligence that the Bush administration used to justify this awful war.

The bipartisan committee, headed by Republican Senator Pat Roberts, declared that the key intelligence assessments trumpeted by President Bush as the main reasons for invading Iraq were unfounded.

Nearly 900 G.I.'s and more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have already perished, and there is no end to the war in sight. The situation is both sorrowful and disorienting. The colossal intelligence failures and the willful madness of the administration, which presented war as the first and only policy option, can leave you with the terrible feeling that you're standing at the graveside of common sense and reasonable behavior.

A government with even a nodding acquaintance with competence and good sense would have launched an all-out war against Al Qaeda, not Iraq, in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. After all, it was Al Qaeda, not Iraq, that carried out the sneak attack on American soil that destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon and killed 3,000 people. You might think that would have been enough to provoke an all-out response from the U.S. Instead we saved our best shot for the demented and already checkmated dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

Bin Laden and Al Qaeda must have gotten a good laugh out of that. Now they're planning to come at us again. On Thursday, the same day Iraqi insurgents killed the five G.I.'s in Samarra, the Bush administration disclosed that bin Laden and his lieutenants, believed to be operating from hideouts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, were directing an effort by Al Qaeda to unleash an encore attack against the United States.

According to Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, the latest effort may well be timed to disrupt the fall elections.

If that happens, I wonder if we'll finally get serious about the war we should be fighting against bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Maybe not. Based on the impenetrable logic of the president and his advisers, a new strike by Al Qaeda might lead us to start a war with, say, Iran, or Syria.

If we know that bin Laden and his top leadership are somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and that they're plotting an attack against the United States, why are we not zeroing in on them with overwhelming force? Why is there not a sense of emergency in the land, with the entire country pulling together to stop another Sept. 11 from occurring?

Why are we not more serious about this?

I don't know what the administration was thinking when it invaded Iraq even as the direct threat from bin Laden and Al Qaeda continued to stare us in the face. That threat has only intensified. The war in Iraq consumed personnel and resources badly needed in the campaign against bin Laden and his allies. And it has fanned the hatred of the U.S. among Muslims around the world. Instead of destroying Al Qaeda, we have played right into its hands and contributed immeasurably to its support.

Most current intelligence analysts agree with Secretary Ridge that Al Qaeda will try before long to strike the U.S. mainland once again.

We've trained most of our guns on the wrong foe. The real enemy is sneaking up behind us. Again. The price to be paid for not recognizing this could be devastating.

This is the Unserious Administration, where lives are lost for no reason and the president won't go to Dover. It isn't about us. It is about him. Don't forget. As long as W is happy, it's about him. And another four years of "about him" will wreck the country. We've had about as much of his narcissism as we can stand.

Irony is the playground of the Holy Spirit

via Susie Madrak:

Ron Reagan, Jr., to give prime time address on stem cell research to the Democratic National Convention.

I may have to re-subscribe to "The Note." I can't stand Mark Helprin's rightwing snark, I used to work for his dad, Mort, the arms control expert, and I can't imagine the tensions in that family. But then I can't imagine how Carville and Matalin stay married, either.

The Broadband House

Is Broadband Out of a Wall Socket the Next Big Thing?
By JAMES FALLOWS

Published: July 11, 2004

I WANT to finish this column before a familiar mood has passed. That is the sense of wonder at seeing that a new form of technology actually works. Based on previous episodes, the mood will soon give way to jadedness. (The first time I used a digital camera, I was amazed that I could see the pictures immediately after I shot them. Within a few days, I had a list of ways the camera should be improved.) So, in this fleeting upbeat moment, here is a word of appreciation for an advance that already has me wondering how I lived without it.

It is known variously as B.P.L, for broadband over power lines, or as HomePlug. As a concept, it has been around for a long time. What is new in the last two years is a series of technical breakthroughs, mainly in chips designed by Intellon, a tiny company in Ocala, Fla. These chips have made power-line transmission fast enough, cheap enough and reliable enough to merit serious attention. A standards-setting group called the HomePlug alliance has also played an important role.

The idea behind this approach is that plain old electric wires can do double duty in carrying high-speed digital data, much the same way that cable, fiber-optic and D.S.L. networks do. The advantage is that the needed electric wires are already there, bringing power to nearly every house in the nation and almost every room in each house. So for a tiny fraction of the cost of building new connections, this approach could help solve the familiar "last mile" problem: how to bring Internet service from trunk lines to each school and household. It can immediately deal with the increasingly vexing "last hundred feet" problem: how to bring broadband service to every nook and cranny of a building.

Here's how it can work inside your house: First, you need a high-speed connection. For me, that's a Starpower cable modem. Then you need a router so your computers can share the connection. Routers have become cheap and very easy to set up. I have a model from Linksys that creates a WiFi zone for my house and costs $60; similar models go for less than $50 on eBay.

If I have a wireless network, why do I want anything else? Because my house has walls, and the walls (and floors) get in the way of the wireless signal, which is coming from the attic, where the cable happens to enter the house. So in half the rooms of the house - to say nothing of the back porch - I suffer the indignity of a weak or unusable WiFi signal. Until recently, my options were to endure this hardship stoically, to pay the cable company to drill new holes and move the cable modem to a central location, or to drape unsightly Ethernet cable down the staircase and through the house to hook up more computers. I toyed with the Ethernet cable option, but one glance from my wife at the garish neon-yellow coils convinced me that stoicism was the wiser course.

Now there is another option: a HomePlug network. I needed a "power-line bridge" to make the network available over the electrical lines in my house - mine was the Netgear XE102 and cost about $50; similar models come from Siemens, Asoka Belkin and other companies that meet the HomePlug standard. I connected it to the router and plugged it into an ordinary wall socket. Instantly, every other socket in the house, and on the porch, became a high-speed-connection site. If I plug another bridge into any other socket, I have the equivalent of an Ethernet port. If I plug in a device called a wireless access point, like a $60 model I got from Siemens, I have a new WiFi hot spot wherever I want it - until I decide to move it someplace else.

Those of you who hang with slashdot, Dave Winer or Joi Ito might have already known about this but it is news to me. And I'm fairly geeky. This might be broadband I can actually afford. Cool.

It Won't Go Away

Finally got around to reading this:

U.S. News obtains all classified annexes to the Taguba report on Abu Ghraib

The most comprehensive view yet of what went wrong at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, based on a review of all 106 classified annexes to the report of Major General Antonio Taguba, shows abuses were facilitated--and likely encouraged--by a chaotic and dangerous environment made worse by constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence from detainees.

Daily life at Abu Ghraib, the documents show, included riots, prisoner escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards, filthy conditions, sexual misbehavior, bug-infested food, prisoner beatings and humiliations, and almost-daily mortar shellings from Iraqi insurgents. Troubles inside the prison were made worse still by a military command structure that was hopelessly broken.

Taguba focused mostly on the MPs assigned to guard inmates at Abu Ghraib, but the 5,000 pages of classified files in the annexes to his report show that military intelligence officers-�-dispatched to Abu Ghraib by the top commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez-�-were intimately involved in some of the interrogation tactics widely viewed as abusive.

Col. Henry Nelson, an Air Force psychiatrist who prepared a report for Taguba on Abu Ghraib, described it as a "new psychological battlefield," and detailed the nature of the challenge faced by the Americans working in the overcrowded prison. "These detainees are male and female, young and old," Nelson wrote; "they may be innocent, may have high intelligence value, or may be terrorists or criminals. No matter who they are, if they are at Abu Ghraib, they are remanded in deplorable, dangerous living conditions, as are soldiers."

The documents provide new insights, as well as additional compelling details on how Abu Ghraib was spiraling out of control, and how top military commanders battled behind closed doors. General Sanchez and Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, a reservist who commanded the 800th MP Brigade, did not see eye-to-eye. Her brigade was given the assignment to run the prison, but last November Sanchez put military intelligence in charge of the facility.

In her secret testimony, Karpinski, who was criticized for leadership failures in the Taguba report, said Sanchez refused to provide her with the necessary resources to run Abu Ghraib and other prisons. She said that he didn�t "give a flip" about soldiers, and she added this biting criticism: "I think that his ego will not allow him to accept a Reserve Brigade, a Reserve General Officer and certainly not a female succeeding in a combat environment. And I think he looked at the 800th Brigade as the opportunity to find a scapegoat..."

There is something very wrong and very sick in the culture of our current Army that something like this could happen. From the low ratings at the bottom of the heap who had no qualms about carrying out the torture all the way up the chain of command to those who gave the orders. It also speaks to a racist culture, one which reduces Iraqis to sub-human. You have to dehumanize people in order to victimize them in this way.

Compliant Spook

CIA Skewed Iraq Reporting, Senate Says

By Dafna Linzer and Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 11, 2004; Page A19

Last August, a small team of Senate investigators trying to determine how U.S. intelligence assessments of Iraq had failed went looking for answers in a place where the Bush administration believed there were not any: the offices of U.N. nuclear inspectors in Vienna. The inspectors had determined, before the war, that Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program.

During the secret, day-long meeting at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the congressional sleuths focused on aluminum tubes the CIA had said Iraq was seeking to develop a nuclear weapon. It was that claim that led the CIA to conclude that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program.

The U.N. teams had investigated and rejected that claim, much to the anger of the White House. But others, it turned out, had rejected it, too. When the Senate investigators left Vienna that day, they took back to Washington the names of U.S. intelligence community analysts who never agreed with the CIA's claims and, in many cases, refuted them.

The information, some of which is included in the extraordinary critique of U.S. prewar intelligence efforts released Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, reveals the extent of the CIA's determination to keep alive the Iraqi nuclear issue long after it had been thoroughly rebutted both inside and outside the agency. The report also exposed the true nature of the CIA's relationship with U.N. inspectors whose determinations about Iraq's nuclear programs ultimately prevailed.

Contrary to public statements from outgoing CIA Director George J. Tenet and other senior officials, the CIA had not provided U.N. weapons inspectors with all of the best information it had on possible weapons locations in the run-up to war, according to the report.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice told Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), a member of the intelligence committee, two weeks before the U.S. attacked Iraq in March 2003, that "United Nations inspectors have been briefed on every high- or medium-priority weapons of mass destruction, missile, and UAV-related site the U.S. Intelligence Community has identified."

The committee report characterized that statement and others as "factually incorrect." Of the 148 suspect sites identified by the CIA before the war, 67 were shared with the United Nations.

Not only was the CIA keeping information from the inspectors -- whose reports on Iraq's weapons would greatly influence international support for the war -- its rationale for deciding what information to share with them was "subjective, inconsistently applied and not well-documented," according to the Senate report.

I had not heard of this little detail before now. What this points to is a CIA that was highly politicized at the top level, assissting the President in obfuscating the existence of WMD on the ground in Iraq.

The more I learn about how we were lied to, the angrier I get. This was clearly a highly orchestrated campaign to deceive the American people. The contempt with which we are viewed by this administration cannot be overestimated.

Up until the last couple of months, I had held a relatively sympathetic view of George Tenet as more sinned against than sinning. With the discovery of this little detail, it now appears that he was part of the scam. What is it about this job that corrupts whoever is in it? Too much power? Too much secrecy? The combination of the two has produced the most corrupt administration in history.

Tony's Tsuris

Defiant Blair faces censure from Butler over Iraq war
By Andy McSmith, Francis Elliorr and Raymond Whitaker

11 July 2004

Tony Blair defiantly dismissed all talk of resignation yesterday amid growing signs that his political management in the run-up to the Iraq war is to be censured in this week's report by Lord Butler.

The former cabinet secretary told colleagues he believes the Prime Minister failed to take sufficient responsibility in the months before the invasion of Iraq, The Independent on Sunday has learnt. Lord Butler is understood to have withheld the key conclusions of his report from Downing Street to limit its ability to manipulate media coverage.

The political tension has increased with reports emerging that MI6 has now retracted the the key intelligence behind Tony Blair's claim that Iraq posed a "current and serious" threat ­ the justification for war.

A senior intelligence source is said to have told BBC1's Panorama programme that the evidence of Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons was fundamentally unreliable.

This evening's Panorama also hears from Dr Brian Jones, a retired official with the Defence Intelligence Service who says that he "couldn't relate" to Mr Blair's evidence to the Hutton inquiry.

John Morrison, former Deputy Chief of DIS, says he could "almost hear the collective raspberry going up around Whitehall" when Mr Blair told Parliament that the threat from Iraq was "serious and current".

The Prime Minister's cabinet allies are out in force this weekend, trying to crush any suggestion that he is on the point of quitting. According to today's Mail on Sunday, Mr Blair even ordered his civil servants to draw up a framework document setting out how he would handle his resignation.

It is now known that at least six cabinet ministers recently approached the Prime Minister on an individual basis, appealing to him not to step down. Charles Clarke, Secretary of State for Education, told the IoS he had a face-to-face conversation with Mr Blair after MPs returned from the Easter break. He said he had intended to appeal to Mr Blair not to quit, but realised "within 20 seconds" that he was determined to carry on.

Feith Based Intelligence

Fury over Pentagon cell that briefed White House on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-Qaeda links
By Julian Coman in Washington
(Filed: 11/07/2004)

A Senior Pentagon policy maker created an unofficial "Iraqi intelligence cell" in the summer of 2002 to circumvent the CIA and secretly brief the White House on links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'eda, according to the Senate intelligence committee.

The allegations about Douglas Feith, the number three at the Department of Defence, are made in a supplementary annexe of the committee's review of the intelligence leading to war in Iraq, released on Friday.

According to dramatic testimony contained in the annexe, Mr Feith's cell undermined the credibility of CIA judgments on Iraq's alleged al-Qa'eda links within the highest levels of the Bush administration.

The cell appears to have been set up by Mr Feith as an adjunct to the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon intelligence-gathering operation established in the wake of 9/11 with the authority of Paul Wolfowitz. Its focus quickly became the al-Qa'eda-Saddam link.

On occasion, without informing the then head of the CIA, George Tenet, the group gave counter-briefings in the White House. Sen Jay Rockefeller, the most senior Democrat on the committee, said that Mr Feith's cell may even have undertaken "unlawful" intelligence-gathering initiatives.

The claims will lead to calls by Democrats for the resignation of Mr Feith, the third-ranking civilian at the Department of Defence and a leading "neo-con" hawk. "Tenet fell on his sword," said one Democrat official, "even though it's clear that he was placed under tremendous pressure to come up with the 'right' intelligence product for the administration on Iraq.

"The testimony to the committee on Feith and other Pentagon officials shows just what kind of pressure was being exerted. And when that didn't work, the Pentagon was just coming up with its own answers and feeding them to the White House. And on al-Qa'eda they got it all wrong."

Last night a senior Pentagon adviser confirmed that Mr Feith was being targeted by senators unhappy that the administration has so far escaped censure for its use of intelligence.

"There are senators who are clearly gunning for Douglas Feith now. This is turning into a classic conspiracy investigation. They want to get Feith and see if, through Feith, they can go up the ladder to even bigger fish."

Mr Feith's role is to be examined further in the second phase of the Senate committee's investigations, which will deal with the Bush administration's use of the intelligence it received. The report by the Republican-dominated committee lambasted the CIA for intelligence failures while concluding that there was no evidence that the Bush administration tried to coerce officials to adapt their findings.

Yet the annexe - written by three leading Democratic senators - contains the strongest evidence yet that Pentagon hardliners sought to sideline the CIA during a drive to talk up a connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden.

Count on the Brit press to dig out the Office of Special Plans from the Senate Intel Report.

Lousy Jobs

Nathan Newman:

Morgan Stanley's Roach on Job Quality

This "recovery" is like no other in post-WWII history. Job growth is anemic and the jobs created generally stink. Profits are soaring, wages are stagnant, and benefits are being slashed.

Nathan neglects some commentary from Steve Roach at the end of the Morgan Stanley letter:

We hear repeatedly that the disconnect is all about lags or productivity. I don’t buy it. Instead, I believe that a new force has come into play that is now altering the fundamental relationship between domestic demand and domestic employment in the United States. I call it the global labor arbitrage — the IT-enabled efficiency tactics that allow US companies to substitute high-wage domestic workers with like-quality low-wage foreign workers in goods producing and services-providing functions, alike. The lack of pricing leverage in today’s climate makes this arbitrage an increasingly urgent competitive imperative. In my view, the global labor arbitrage is likely to be an enduring feature of the macro climate — raising the distinct possibility that subpar job creation in the US could well be here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Hiring cycles will always come and go. But as we can see full well in the experiences of Europe and Japan, new structural forces can come into play that have a lasting and profound impact on job creation. Globalization remains the most powerful economic force of the modern era. It was only a matter of time, in my view, before the IT-enabled globalization of work had a major impact on the US labor market. That time is now. The character and quality of American job creation is changing before our very eyes. Which poses the most important question of all: What are we going to do about it?

On the strength of Nathan's recommendation, I've bookmarked Roach's newsletter page.

Consider the Ladies

Worldview | Women's rights are essential as Iraq sets its course

By Trudy Rubin

When people ask me what can be done on an individual basis to help Iraqis, I respond, "Help the women." A key measure of progress in Iraq will be whether women keep or lose their rights.

Iraqi women are among the most advanced in the Arab world, with a long tradition of higher education and professional jobs, even in the Saddam Hussein era.

But during my recent trip to Iraq, middle-class women spoke to me about their fears of moving backward after the U.S. invasion. A temporary code of law drafted by American lawyers guarantees women's rights in coming months. But an elected Iraqi government could cave to growing religious pressures to curb those rights.

"I think women are left naked after July 1" when sovereignty reverted to Iraqis, said Manal Omar of Women for Women International. Her group, based in Washington, helps women in post-conflict societies. "In Afghanistan, you saw a bit of easing [on women's rights], but in Iraq we're going backward. We are fighting for the status quo."

Yet what is fascinating in Baghdad is that educated women are organizing to hold their ground. I visited Omar in the Mansour Women's Center, one of nine such centers set up with funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development. In one room, female leaders of fledgling nongovernmental organizations talked about how to organize on issues such as violence against women.

Omar also teaches job skills to women in a Baghdad slum, who at first told her it was forbidden to encourage women to work or study. The gutsy Omar went to the office of the leading Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and asked for his opinion.

"He said verbally that it was correct, even required," for women to study and work, Omar recounted. Her job-training seminar went on.

But new Iraqi government ministries are jealous that women's groups get foreign funds; they want job training money to go to men. They may try to commandeer buildings used as women's centers. A bomb was found in the Mansour center's yard before it exploded, and Omar expects more such attacks.

The fate of women's rights will rest heavily on the outcome of Iraqi elections. Even under occupation, the former Iraqi interim governing council nearly pushed through Resolution 137. It would have rescinded a 1959 law that banned arbitrary divorce and polygamy and protected women's interests in child custody and inheritance. "Family status" matters would have been put under restrictive Muslim sharia codes.

Public protests by women's groups and pressure from U.S. occupation czar Paul Bremer canceled Resolution 137. But the issue of "family status" is sure to reemerge during elections for a constitutional assembly early next year, especially because the strongest political parties are based on religion.

It's an old truism in the human rights arena that you can know a great deal about a society's approach to human rights by looking at the status of its women. Saddam may have been a monster, but Iraqi women were the best educated and employed in the Arab world. To fall backward from that would be yet another in the series of failures which have been the US "liberation" of Iraq.

Plame Update

via Liberal Oasis:

On the Plame investigation: "What did Ashcroft know and when did he know it?"

Attorney General John Ashcroft received numerous detailed briefings last year regarding the criminal investigation of the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA agent's identity, during which he was told specific information relating to the potential culpability of several close political associates in the Bush administration, according to senior federal law-enforcement sources.

The briefings raise questions about the appropriateness of Ashcroft's involvement in the investigation, especially given his longstanding ties to Rove. Senior federal law-enforcement officials have expressed serious concerns among themselves that Ashcroft spent months overseeing the probe and receiving regular briefings regarding a criminal investigation in which the stakes were so high for the Attorney General's personal friends, political allies, and political party. One told me, "Attorneys General and U.S. Attorneys in the past traditionally recused for far less than this."

It's a long piece and raises far more questions than it answers, but I thought it would be of interest to you since we are expecting word out of Special Prosecuter Fitzgerald's office within weeks.

All Religion is Narrative

Churches Go Commercial To Spread Their Message
TV Campaigns Bring Denominations to Homes

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 11, 2004; Page A01

Inspiration came to Ron Buford at 3 a.m. The way he remembers it, he sat bolt upright in bed with the thought that God was speaking.

What burst into the Cleveland marketing executive's head that night in January 2002, however, was not a message from the Almighty. It was a slogan for a television advertising campaign. Beginning this fall, the United Church of Christ plans to spend $30 million to promote itself using the line that came to Buford in his sleep -- "God is still speaking" -- to reflect its willingness to reinterpret the Bible and embrace such innovations as same-sex marriage and openly gay ministers.

The 1.4 million-member UCC is far from the only church seeking to publicize its positions at a time of deepening conflict and reawakening interest in American religion. In a swelling choir of self-promotion, half a dozen major Protestant denominations are either in the middle of, or are about to launch, national ad campaigns that collectively could cost $150 million over several years.

Moreover, this unprecedented boom in religious advertising is being led by mainline denominations -- such as the UCC, Methodists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians -- that used to consider TV advertising below their dignity or beyond their means. Faced with declining memberships, they are making a beeline from their tall-steeple churches to Madison Avenue.
....
Not all UCC members are happy with this message. The Rev. Richard A. Weisenbach, pastor of the First Parish Congregational Church in Wakefield, Mass., said he fears the UCC "is committing suicide" by promoting itself as a church without fixed principles. "You don't grow a church by telling people you're going to do whatever they want you to do," he said.

Some evangelical Christians are also dismissive of self-promotion. They contend that mainline churches are losing members because they no longer hew to a traditional understanding of the Bible.

"I am extremely doubtful that advertising is going to have any significant impact on their membership rolls," said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. "Churches are not a product, they're about the Gospel. And the Gospel cannot be helpfully reduced to a 30-second message or a jingle."

That skepticism, however, has not kept evangelicals from running their own TV ads. The 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, which opposes gay marriage and has urged wives to "submit" to their husbands, is laying plans for an ad blitz starting in late 2005. Baptist leaders said it probably would be much larger than any of the campaigns they have run every five years since 1985.
....
Perhaps the most important cause of the boom, church officials said, is the success of an ad campaign launched in 2000 by the United Methodist Church. Its slogan -- "Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors." -- portrays Methodists as warm and welcoming. And, according to research commissioned by the church, first-time attendance has risen 14 percent and overall worship attendance is up 6 percent at a nationwide sample of 149 Methodist churches since the ads began appearing.

At the Methodists' quadrennial convention in May, some internal critics called the "Open Minds" slogan hypocritical because of the church's ban on gay clergy. But Methodist leaders said the campaign's results surpassed expectations, and the convention overwhelmingly approved $25 million to keep it going for another four years, on top of the $18 million that was spent from 2000 to 2004.

Other denominations have taken notice. "I've always called advertising fertilizer -- it only can fertilize a larger effort to evangelize," the Lutherans' Shafer said. "Now I think it's Miracle-Gro."

The United Church of Christ's God is Still Speaking initiative, including the flash ad, are on the link.

I agree with the critic in the Cooperman article that "church is not a product," but in this still largely unchurched nation, the way to get your message out is by advertising and think the UCC campaign is a pretty good one. I'm waiting to see how the other Main Line denominations tell their stories

Wait Until Later

Despite Terror Risk, Washington Is Unlikely to Press Reform of C.I.A. This Year
By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: July 11, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Despite a scorching Senate report that describes a profound breakdown of the American intelligence system at a time of increasing terror threats, both White House officials and Congressional leaders say the political calendar will prevent any serious action until after the November elections.

President Bush's staff is already sorting through a series of proposals that he is likely to endorse but not spell out in detail when he appoints a new director of central intelligence, probably in the next two weeks. Mr. Bush, senior officials said, will probably wait until after the release of a second report, expected to be equally searing in its criticism, about the intelligence failures surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks.

One senior administration official characterized the two reports as almost mirror-image descriptions of a deeply dysfunctional intelligence apparatus, with Friday's report describing, in this official's words, "a system that assumed the presence of threats that didn't exist," and next week's report detailing "a system that failed to see threats that that were coming at us."

Yet any major changes would require far-reaching legislation. And some of the proposals now being considered inside the White House do not directly address what the Senate Intelligence Committee described on Friday as a system marked by the "lack of information sharing, poor management and inadequate intelligence collection." One such proposal is the creation of an intelligence czar who could have control over the $40-billion intelligence budget now dominated by the Pentagon.

Senate leaders like John D. Rockefeller IV, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, and intelligence experts said the need for action was urgent given the list of imminent threats facing the country — from reports that Al Qaeda may be planning attacks on the nation before the election to a race by North Korea and Iran to speed their nuclear programs.

But even if the reform proposals now being debated at the White House and in Congress were enacted immediately, the Senators and experts said, it would take years to change a culture that the Senate committee report said failed to put much emphasis in penetrating Iraq with human spies, that relied too much on foreign intelligence systems and that made claims about Iraq's weapons capability that were "not supported by the intelligence."

At first glance I found this headline alarming: we've clearly got serious problems and should be addressing them immediately. But then I thought about for a minute and realized, no, we should wait for the Kerry administration to undertaking a systematic review of intelligence because Bushco would invariably screw it up completely.

Intelligence Breakdown

Panel Describes Long Weakening of Hussein Army
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

Published: July 11, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 10 — The Senate's report on prewar intelligence about Iraq, which asserts that warnings about its illicit weapons were largely unfounded and that its ties to Al Qaeda were tenuous, also undermines another justification for the war: that Saddam Hussein's military posed a grave threat to regional stability and American interests.

In a detailed discussion of Iraq's prewar military posture, the report cites a long series of intelligence reports in the decade before the war that described a formerly potent army's spiral of decay under the pressures of economic sanctions and American military pressure.

The main risks, these reports indicated, was the unpredictable nature of Mr. Hussein's government, especially in the face of possible American-led attacks. But the Senate Intelligence Committee called this analysis relatively weak.

The committee's report implies that opponents of the war were essentially correct when they argued that Iraq posed little immediate threat to the United States. Before the war, those who held this view, both in Congress and at the United Nations, argued that continued containment was a course preferable to invading Iraq.

Although the report described a profound breakdown in the American intelligence system, both White House and Congressional officials say the political calendar will prevent any serious action until after the November elections.

This is silly. Without seeing any of the intelligence, I, and a lot of other people, were very much aware of the fact that Iraq was no threat to us or anybody else. The fact that 75 senators couldn't see what was a clear as the nose on their faces speaks very poorly of another kind of intelligence.

Fallout

Analyst Questioned Sources' Reliability
Warning Came Before Powell Report to U.N.

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09

A few days before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell gave his 2003 presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction -- with its startling allegation that four individuals had confirmed that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories -- a government analyst who had read a draft of the speech sent an urgent e-mail to his boss.

All those sources are suspect or unreliable, especially the key one nicknamed "Curve Ball," warned the analyst, the only U.S. intelligence official who had met Curve Ball.

The analyst received a dismissive reply. "This war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say, and . . . the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about," replied the deputy chief of the CIA's Iraq task force. The warning was never passed on to Powell or his top aides.

The incident, detailed in the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence, underscores a central theme in the committee's investigation: Although there is little evidence that intelligence analysts were pressured to change their findings, the agency ignored or belittled inconvenient or contradictory facts in its rush to present the most dramatic case against the Iraqi government.

This left the administration relying on shaky or dubious accounts from Iraqi defectors, such as the four sources who provided what Powell has called the "most dramatic" part of his 90-minute U.N. speech.

Although Powell had told the United Nations that "every statement I make today is backed by sources, solid sources," the report concluded that much of the information the CIA provided for Powell's speech was "overstated, misleading or incorrect."

Whether unusual pressure on intelligence analysts resulted in faulty reports has been one of the big questions hanging over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Officially, the committee will examine how the administration used the intelligence it received in a second report, to be completed after the presidential election.

The 440-page report released yesterday concluded that key officials, including Vice President Cheney, did not unduly pressure analysts to change their conclusions. The committee said it could find no evidence that administration officials "attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgment," and added there was no evidence that Cheney's repeated visits to the CIA were attempts to pressure analysts or even were perceived as such.

No further comment needed.

Rummy Broke the Army, Pt. 411

MILITARY DEVELOPMENTS BODE ILL FOR OUR FUTURE SECURITY

Sat Jul 10,12:41 AM ET

By Georgie Anne Geyer

Our military establishment, belatedly beginning to free itself from the neocons' and White House's idea of perpetual war, is finally speaking the truth.

Gen. Richard A. Cody, the new Army vice chief of staff, testified recently in Congress: "Are we stretched too thin with our active and reserve component forces right now? Absolutely."

"The war in Iraq is wrecking the Army and the Marine Corps," retired Navy Capt. John Byron writes in the July issue of Proceedings, the professional journal of naval officers. "Troop rotations are in shambles, and the all-volunteer force is starting to crumble as we extend combat tours and struggle to get enough boots on the ground."

Even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose love of warfare was instrumental in fueling this war, stated in a speech at an international security conference in Singapore that the United States and its coalition may be winning some battles, but may be losing the war against the source of the problem, Islamic terrorism.

"It's quite clear to me," he was quoted by The Associated Press at the conference, "that we do not have a coherent approach to this."

The Washington Post recently reported that the Army has added 8,000 slots to the 25,000 infantrymen it trains annually at Fort Benning, Georgia -- and to replace drill sergeants deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites) to train locals, it has mobilized about 100 reservists to drill the new soldiers. You do not have to be a West Point scholar of military strategy to realize how reckless this scenario is becoming.

But when we hear these comments and reconnoiter this administration's warfare landscape, we find some deeply disturbing responses.

What would an even relatively responsible family or institution do in the face of such unnecessary overstretching of one's capacities? The responsible father or American official would reassess his or her obligations, make sober judgments based upon the level of true needs, and recalculate his responses.

But -- and this is the interesting part -- that is not what the administration is doing.

Watch the television talk shows. Men (and a few women) from the conservative think tanks and the Republican administration argue, as though they never made a mistake in Iraq: We must plow ahead in exactly the same field.

The Rumsfeldian civilian Pentagon (news - web sites) (not the uniformed military, who abhor the neocon, imperialist and Israeli Likud Party civilians) talks about a "broad transformation" of the U.S. military -- particularly in terms of rebasing American troops away from Europe and South Korea (news - web sites) and toward new zones of trouble. But after Iraq and failures in Afghanistan, what they are essentially talking about is "restructuring" against enemies they can't even vaguely know or define.

Curiously enough, some of the Bush administration's war party mention restoring a draft so that all American boys -- and girls -- can partake of the joy of serving in their abstract wars of personal agenda and ambition.

Think for just a moment how crazy this really makes them out to be! A draft would bring to the fore all the corrective elements in American society whose absence from the play during the last four years has allowed these neocon adventurers to do what they have done. A draft would connect average American citizens to their government and force them to become voices in the irresponsible deployment young Americans.

Don't the administration's hawks know this? It is a kind of perverse tribute to their fanaticism that they do not. They are so focused on the horizon -- where they imagine an imperialist America in league with a "reconfigured" Middle East in which Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s Israel is the major player -- that they cannot see that a draft would doom their adventures.

All of this discussion is not about how we can dredge up every college boy, young father and budding woman professional to be sent to all the corners of the globe for the military adventures of a few in Washington. Rather, we should be considering how to reinstate an American government that can make rational policy choices that will truly serve American interests.

This is a core issue and I'd like to hear Kerry-Edwards play it up: Red Staters don't understand that Bushco has made us immeasurably less safe because the Army is broken. It is not possible to overemphasize this point. In a world of real threats, which Saddam never was, this should be a peasants with pitchforks in the streets kind of issue, but I notice that you won't hear it from CNN. Georgie Ann is telling a truth so fundamental and so obvious to anyone with a rudimentary grasp of Army force structure that it is hard for me to understand how the old media can miss it.

I hear that the uniforms are in open revolt from the civilian leadership in the five sided building. Expect lots more leaks.

Do-Over

Ashcroft's magic act

Retroactively classifying public documents is bureaucracy gone nuts

Jul. 9, 2004 12:00 AM

Even the phrase suggests a sort of cognitive dissonance: retroactive classification. Come again?

How does one render government documents that have been in the public realm, in some cases for years - some posted on Web sites, for all the world to see - retroactively classified? How does one put an information genie back into its dark, federal bottle?

The Bush administration, led by Attorney General John Ashcroft, is attempting to show us how it is done. Spare us the magic act.

As a long-time, staunch defender of the administration's efforts to improve the nation's defenses against terrorism, as well as an ardent defender of the First Amendment, we at The Republic find ourselves uniquely positioned to say, emphatically and without qualification, that Mr. Ashcroft, this time you truly have gone too far.

Invoking a seldom-used "state secrets" privilege, the nation's chief legal officer has ordered that information provided by a former FBI translator about events leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, should be made classified.

That includes material the translator, Sibel Edmonds, provided to members of Congress two years ago, as well as information that has been posted on Web sites for at least that long.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Edmonds - who is fluent in Turkish and Farsi - learned that a number of intercepted documents that had been poorly translated into English would have given solid clues to the imminent attacks had they been properly translated. The information even included references to skyscrapers.

After uncovering still more of what she contends were security lapses within the FBI, Edmonds was fired some months later. She has since sued the government in federal court over what she discovered, but her suit was thrown out earlier this week by a judge who said Edmonds' testimony could expose the now-reclassified government "secrets."

Ashcroft's heavy-handedness strongly smells of a bureaucrat attempting to cover up deficiencies in his own agency.

Sometimes I think that future generations are going to open their dictionaries and thesaurii to find a picture of W next to the definition of "cover your ass."

Rationale or Excuse?

As Rationales for War Erode, Issue of Blame Looms Large

By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A01

Yesterday's report by the Senate intelligence committee left in shreds two of the Bush administration's main rationales for the war in Iraq: that Iraq had illicit weapons and that it cooperated with al Qaeda.

The conclusions are not earthshaking by themselves. Although President Bush and Vice President Cheney have not abandoned either rationale, both were already tattered after similar doubts were voiced over many months by U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq, the commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, CIA officials and others.

The larger question is whether voters will blame the White House for these two massive mistakes. Though officially agnostic on the White House role in using Iraq intelligence (that will come in a later report), the committee gives ammunition both to Bush and Democratic opponent John F. Kerry.

On the question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the bipartisan committee report absolved administration officials of pressuring CIA analysts to inflate the case against Saddam Hussein. And while making no judgment on whether the administration distorted the intelligence it was given, the committee made plain that the CIA's case against Iraq was plenty exaggerated on its own. Without "any evidence" of administration coercion, the committee found, the intelligence community's judgments on Iraq's weapons were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."

On the issue of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, however, the committee's findings imply that the White House, not the CIA, is to blame for making dubious claims that there were working ties between Osama bin Laden's organization and Hussein's Iraq. "The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship," the committee found, echoing the Sept. 11 commission staff's finding of no "collaborative relationship" between the two.

"The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaeda attack was reasonable and objective," the committee found. "No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise." Likewise, the report concluded: "No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ al-Qaeda in conducting terrorist attacks."

The undermining of the administration's case for war is potentially a grave threat to Bush, whose reelection prospects are closely tied to Americans' view of the merits of the Iraq war and whether it advances the fight against terrorism. For that reason, Bush has delayed a final reckoning on Iraq's forbidden weapons by naming a commission that will not report its findings until after the election. In the meantime, he continues to assert ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, and to place blame for any weapons miscalculation squarely on the CIA.

In that vein, Bush blessed the committee's work yesterday. "The idea that the Senate has taken a hard look to find out where the intelligence-gathering services went short is good and positive," he said in Pennsylvania, acknowledging "some failures" in the intelligence. "We thought there was going to be stockpiles of weapons," he said. "I thought so; the Congress thought so; the U.N. thought so. I'll tell you what we do know. Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons."

Bush's distancing of himself from the flawed allegations may well be aided by the departure this week of CIA director George J. Tenet, who was criticized in the Senate report for not always being informed about dissenting views when he met almost daily with Bush.

Democrats, in turn, are determined not to let Bush avoid blame. Even before the report came out, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) sent out a press release saying the administration asserted Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration that the CIA doubted. Yesterday, the Kerry campaign issued a statement saying: "Nothing in this report absolves the White House of its responsibility for mishandling of the country's intelligence. The fact is that when it comes to national security, the buck stops at the White House, not anywhere else."

A senior intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity agreed with that logic yesterday, saying the CIA's assertions, whatever their accuracy, did not in themselves justify going to war; the agency made no recommendation on this. "Policymakers should not be immune from the decision on what to do," the official said.

In an early indication of political debates to come, the Senate panel's Republican chairman yesterday emphasized the findings that left the White House blameless, while the Democratic vice chairman emphasized that the CIA was right to dismiss the notion of al Qaeda ties to Iraq.

"Before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade," Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said in summarizing the report. "Well, today we know these assessments were wrong, and as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence."

Vice Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) found a different point of emphasis. "Our report found that the intelligence community's judgments were right on Iraq's ties to terrorists, which is another way of saying that the administration's conclusions were wrong, and that is, of the relationship, the formal relationship, however you want to describe it, between Iraq and al Qaeda," he said.

Rockefeller continued to assert yesterday there was administration "pressure" on the CIA, although he endorsed the bipartisan committee report stating otherwise. The report, while stating that no intelligence analysts said they felt pressured to change their conclusions, found "tremendous pressure" to avoid missing a potential threat. That made the CIA "purposefully aggressive," as the agency described it, in drawing potential links between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Whatever the source of that pressure, the committee's finding yesterday casting more doubt on an al Qaeda-Iraq link make it likely the controversy will continue through the presidential campaign. The committee labeled as "accurate" the CIA's prediction that Hussein would rely on his own operatives to conduct attacks.

Developing....

Blogkeeping

Here is where we are, Bumpers. You sent me enough money to keep me in groceries for another couple of weeks, and one of you paid my whole electrical bill. I''m in awe of you. And this cheap keyboard is already starting to screw up.

The weekend is going to be sparse. I found some jobs to apply for, but I'm going to have to re-write my resume for several of them. I've learned that this is something which cannot be glibbly done and I have respect for the amount of time it will take. Expect light posting over the weekend, which is when traffic is so low that it hardly warrants merit, anyway. The rest of you have lives. I'm still searching for one.

Breaking News

U.S. News obtains all classified annexes to the Taguba report on Abu Ghraib

No, I haven't had a chance to read and digest it yet, but here's the breaking link. Tell me what you think.

Paying the Price

This essay, all in one place, sums up everything which is wrong with Bush's foreign policy. I don't know that I've ever seen it stated so succinctly.

Iraq, a living wound for Muslims, still presages disaster
Salim Lone, Electronic Iraq, 7 July 2004

There is no graver challenge the world faces than stemming the growth of terrorism practiced by aggrieved Muslims. The rise of such militancy is driven by specific US policies and cannot be glossed over with incendiary, self-righteous assertions that "they" hate western freedoms and are inherently barbaric and uncivilized. Beheading the innocent is indeed so, but so is the killing of over 600 innocent Fallujans in a week of aerial bombing and the death of 500,000 children through sanctions.

All of us will pay the price.

Lone was communications director for the UN mission to Iraq. His writing is found in publications ranging from The Guardian to the New York Review of Books. A Google search turned up over 5,000 citations. This is an author and thinker who has a reliable voice.

Poaching from the Others

Other Services Eyed by Army for Recruiting
By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: July 9, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 8 - The Army is looking for a few good sailors and airmen. Actually, more than just a few.

In what some military experts see as another sign of how the Army's commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan have strained it, the service for the first time will soon begin aggressively recruiting thousands of sailors and airmen who are otherwise scheduled to leave the Navy and Air Force because of cutbacks.

Under a new program called Operation Blue to Green, the Army plans to offer bonuses of up to $10,000, in some cases, and four weeks of extra training to airmen and sailors willing to trade in their dress-blue uniforms for Army green fatigues. The Army is especially interested in men and women who have jobs that are readily transferable to Army positions, like mechanics and logisticians.

Many details must still be worked out and final Pentagon approval is still pending, but Army officials say the new program is a marriage of convenience. The Army is temporarily increasing its ranks by 30,000 soldiers by 2006, and will need to recruit at least 77,000 soldiers this year and 80,000 next year to meet that goal.

Meantime, the Navy and Air Force are shrinking. The Air Force intends to cut its forces by 22,500 next year, the Navy by 7,900.

"This is an opportunity for all the services to work together," said an Army officer who is working on the new program. "It's a way to make sure those men and women who want to serve can continue to serve."

If all goes according to plan, the program will begin around Oct. 1, Army officials said Thursday. While the program has not been formally announced, the Army two weeks ago posted details about the program on its Web Site, www.goarmy.com. So far, officials said, more than 100 people have already expressed interest in switching services.

First of all, who knew that the Navy and Air Force were downsizing? This is actually a fairly forward looking plan, but it wouldn't be necessary if the Army weren't so overstretched

Bring. It. On.

Writing in Mother Jones, Jeff Fleischer says the oppo research on John Edwards is "Scraping the Barrel."

Besides pointing out obvious disagreements over policy, the "research" includes a scattershot list of unrelated and often bizarre criticisms, many taking small portions of news reports grossly out of context. Take this example, designed to paint Edwards as a dabbling latecomer to politics:

Considering the GOP had ample time to look into Edwards’ past and compile a range of frivolous criticism, his selection probably bodes well for the Kerry camp. If this is the best Republicans can come up with, Edwards is already proving a formidable opponent.

Pretty weak, eh?

Beyond the CW

I don't usually spend much time on the "horse race" aspects of electoral politics, but this is an interesting poll.

New poll reveals Americans strongly interested in presidential race

By Ron Hutcheson

Knight Ridder Newspapers

"The presidential election is capturing the interest and attention of the American public at pretty high levels," said Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, which conducted the survey. "People think this election is more important than past elections."

About 63 percent of Americans said the election outcome this year "really matters," compared with 45 percent four years ago. About 58 percent said they're giving "quite a lot" of thought to the election, up from 46 percent in 2000.

The increased interest extends to young voters, who typically pay little attention to politics. About 53 percent of voters ages 18-29 said they're giving quite a lot of thought to the election, up from 35 percent in 2000.

The last election that generated comparable voter interest was the three-way 1992 election pitting then-President George H.W. Bush against Democrat Bill Clinton and Independent candidate Ross Perot. The 1992 election came on the heels of an economic recession that fueled voters' desire for political change.

Kohut said the driving force this year seems to be the traditional desire for peace and prosperity. He said voters are focused on the war on terrorism, the conflict in Iraq and the economy.

Although polls consistently show voters almost evenly split between President Bush and Kerry, Kohut questioned the conventional wisdom that this year's election will be an extremely close contest. He estimated that about 15 percent of voters could go either way on Election Day.

"There are still enough of those swing voters for one of these two presidential candidates to win big," he said.

Both candidates have work to do. Kohut said Kerry has failed to excite liberal Democrats, while Bush's support is soft among moderate Republicans.

About 63 percent of liberal Democrats said they're satisfied with the candidates, compared with 70 percent who felt that way four years ago. About 57 percent of moderate-to-liberal Republicans expressed satisfaction with the candidates, compared with 70 percent in 2000.

And, despite their interest in the election, voters in both parties are unimpressed by the campaign so far. Nearly 58 percent consider the campaign dull, while 33 percent find it interesting.

I think the single most salient detail in this survey is that turnout is liable to be huge this year and that the possibility of a landslide exists.

Abusing Intelligence

Senate Report Blasts Intelligence Agencies' Flaws

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 9, 2004; 11:16 AM

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee's vice chairman, called the assessments of Iraq before the 2003 war "one of the most devastating intelligence failures in the history of the nation."

He said in the same news conference, "We in Congress would not have authorized that war with 75 votes if we knew what we know now." While the government "didn't connect the dots" in analyzing clues before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said, "in Iraq we were even more culpable, because the dots themselves never existed."

As a result of the intelligence failures, he said, "our credibility is diminished, our standing in the world has never been lower" and "we have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world." Rockefeller added, "As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."

The 511-page Senate report represents the first phase of a two-part review of intelligence on Iraq. Left for the second phase -- in a second report likely to be released well after the November elections -- is the question of how the Bush administration used the intelligence that was provided to it.

Of course the second part of the investigation, Bush's use of the intelligence, will wait until after the elections. However, there is still the Joint Commission report, due out later this month.

Butt Out of Aus

Butt out, Latham tells America
By Mark Forbes, Michelle Grattan
July 9, 2004

Opposition Leader Mark Latham has urged Americans from the right and the left to butt out of Australian politics.

Responding to the latest comments on Iraq policy from the Bush Administration, Mr Latham said there was "too much overseas commentary and interventions in Australian politics" in the lead-up to an election.

He joined a chorus of condemnation yesterday of United States Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's claim that Labor was "rent down the middle" over its Iraq policy.

Former prime minister Paul Keating released a statement describing the Bush Administration's attacks as thuggish, dumb and counter-productive.

And New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, in Sydney yesterday, warned the US that "Australians have to have the debate themselves about who is best to lead them" adding that "other people should stand back".

In Washington for talks with top Administration officials, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer seized on Mr Armitage's comments as proof that Labor said one thing in public and another in private in an "extraordinary display of division and incoherence".

Mr Armitage told Australian reporters this week that he had based his view on private talks with Australian "colleagues" during the Australian-US dialogue in Washington recently. His comments followed President George Bush describing Labor's plans to withdraw troops from Iraq as disastrous.

In repudiating Mr Armitage's intervention, Mr Latham was careful not to appear to be attacking simply the Bush Administration.

He noted that left-wing US filmmaker Michael Moore had also stepped into Australian politics. Moore said this week that Prime Minister John Howard "appears to have half a brain" in supporting Mr Bush on Iraq.

Mr Latham, campaigning on the NSW central coast, said: "I'd ask these commentators overseas to respect Australia's democratic processes just as we respect theirs, and basically stick to their own election campaign and arrangements just as we're going to stick to ours".

"Thuggish, dumb and counterproductive" across the board. I had thought Armitage was one of the brighter lights in the House of W. I was wrong.

Remember the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Pentagon Reportedly Aimed to Hold Detainees in Secret
Proposal to keep some prisoners 'off the books' went against promises for yearly case reviews.

By John Hendren and Mark Mazzetti, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — Despite pledging yearly reviews for all prisoners held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Pentagon officials tentatively agreed during a high-level meeting last month to deny that process to some detainees and to keep their existence secret "for intelligence reasons," senior defense officials said Thursday.

Under the proposal, some prisoners would in effect be kept off public records and away from the scrutiny of lawyers and judges.

The meeting on the Guantanamo reviews occurred months after U.S. officials came under harsh criticism by investigators and human rights observers for practices involving "ghost" detainees in Iraq who were kept hidden from inspectors for intelligence purposes.

It was unclear Thursday whether the Pentagon had followed through with the proposal, or how it would be affected by last month's Supreme Court ruling that granted detainees access to American courts. It also was not clear how many detainees the proposal would apply to. The Pentagon said there currently were 594 detainees at the camp, nicknamed "Gitmo." A Swedish detainee was released Thursday.

But at the Pentagon meeting called to discuss the annual detainee reviews — which are to be overseen by Navy Secretary Gordon R. England — senior officials said they wanted to keep a small number of prisoners' names out of public records to allow intelligence officials to continue interrogations, a senior defense official said on condition of anonymity.

Such a move would create an exception to the Pentagon promise to review the case of every detainee annually to determine whether he continued to pose a threat to the United States. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld first disclosed plans to provide annual reviews to detainees in February, in response to human rights concerns expressed over open-ended imprisonment.

Two senior defense officials said they believed that the prisoners who would be denied the reviews might be held by the CIA, rather than the Defense Department.

A U.S. intelligence official said Thursday that the CIA was not holding any detainees at Guantanamo, but added that the annual reviews would not apply to CIA prisoners elsewhere.

But another source, a former senior defense official with knowledge of detainee issues, said the Pentagon did not control the interrogations of all Guantanamo detainees. "There are some individuals down there where DOD doesn't have the lead on their interrogation and intelligence exploitation," the former senior defense official said on condition of anonymity.

Another senior defense official said that the wording in a June 23 statement on the promised annual reviews led him to believe that the detainees exempted from the review were being held by the CIA.

In that memo, England described mandatory annual reviews of "Department of Defense" detainees — a designation that would exclude any detainee held by the CIA. One of the senior defense officials said Wednesday that that designation had been inserted deliberately.

"People very, very carefully crafted those words," the official said. "When the draft language was sent around, they were very adamant about keeping the words 'under DOD control' in. It led me to believe that there were non-DOD detainees down there."

Talk about your complete disregard for international law! The news this morning, from the torture of children to "ghost prisoners" speaks of the complete illegitimacy of the Bush foreign policy. This administration is beyond the pale in human rights. And if they'll do it to others, they'll do it to you.

Clueless LAT?

Why Snub the NAACP?

As a candidate in 2000, Bush did go to the NAACP convention and made quite a point of it. "Our nation is harmed when we let our differences separate and divide us," Bush declared. "So, while some in my party have avoided the NAACP, and while some in the NAACP have avoided my party, I am proud to be here today."

Relations with the NAACP have not been terribly warm since Bush became president. Many African Americans feel that he has not followed through on his bring-us-together campaign rhetoric. At 10.1% in June, black unemployment is twice the rate among whites. And the Bush people may feel that their loving gestures of 2000 were unrequited. Bush got just 9% of the black vote in 2000 — the worst showing by a Republican nominee since Barry Goldwater (another not-since that is rarely flattering).

Bush may well fear an unfriendly reception, like the jeers he got when laying a wreath at the grave of Martin Luther King Jr. earlier this year. But even an unfriendly reception, although unpleasant, would have its political pluses — George W. in the lion's den, and all that.

By contrast, there is no visible political plus to snubbing the nation's leading African American organization. And — looking for a moment beyond narrow politics — honoring the NAACP with a visit is the right thing for the president, any president, to do.

When low politics and high principle both dictate the same result, there is a certain perverse grandeur in a politician choosing to do the opposite. But perverse grandeur has never seemed to be Bush's thing. Not since Richard Nixon have a president's motives been so hard to fathom.

This is pretty simple. They aren't going to vote for him or give him money, so they aren't on W's radar screen, not even for PR. The motives aren't hard to fathom at all, and I'm wondering why the LAT op-ed page wants to paint them so. What part of "playing to the base" do they not get?

That Was Then, This is Now

Bush: Edwards Lacks Experience to Be President
By PETE YOST , Associated Press Writer
July 08, 2004
Bush curtly dismisses Edwards as a challenger to Cheney

RALEIGH, North Carolina - President George W. Bush on Wednesday curtly dismissed Democratic Sen. John Edwards' political skills and experience as a rival to his vice president, telling reporters, "Dick Cheney can be president."

Bush, campaigning in Edwards' home state of North Carolina, said he was unconcerned about the potential of Edwards to help carry states in the South - the backbone of Bush's political support.

"When they go to the polls to vote for president, they'll understand the senator from Massachusetts doesn't share their values," Bush said. "I'm going to carry the South because the people understand that they share - we share values."

When a reporter noted that Edwards was being described as "charming, engaging, a nimble campaigner, a populist and even sexy" and then asked "How does he stack up against Dick Cheney?" the president immediately responded, "Dick Cheney can be president. Next?"

After Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry selected Edwards as his running mate Tuesday, the Bush campaign and the Republican Party immediately began criticizing Edwards' level of experience. He was elected to the Senate in 1998 after a 20-year career as a trial lawyer.

Bush became president after six years as governor of Texas.

Remember this?

Bush fails reporter's pop quiz on international leaders

November 5, 1999
Web posted at: 3:29 p.m. EST (2029 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush is enduring sharp criticism for being unable to name the leaders of four current world hot spots, but President Bill Clinton says Bush "should, and probably will, pick up" those names.

The front-runner for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination faltered Thursday in an international affairs pop quiz posed by Andy Hiller, a political reporter for WHDH-TV in Boston.

Hiller asked Bush to name the leaders of Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan. Bush was only able to give a partial response to the query on the leader of Taiwan, referring to Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui simply as "Lee." He could not name the others.

"Can you name the general who is in charge of Pakistan?" Hiller asked, inquiring about Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf, who seized control of the country October 12.

"Wait, wait, is this 50 questions?" asked Bush.

Hiller replied: "No, it's four questions of four leaders in four hot spots."

Bush turned the tables on Hiller, though, asking him if he could name the foreign minister of Mexico. Hiller said he could not, but also added he wasn't running for president.

Bush replied: "What I'm suggesting to you is that (because) you can't name the foreign minister of Mexico, therefore you're not capable of what you do. But the truth of the matter is you are, whether you can or not."

My, how our standards have slipped.

UPDATE:

Juan Cole remembers:

Not only did Bush not know who General Pervez Musharraf was, he seems to have confused coup-making with "taking office," and moreover went on to suggest that the overthrow of an elected prime minister and the installation in power of the Pakistan military, then the world's strongest supporter of the Taliban, would bring "stability!" Musharraf made his coup in part because of the military's anger over Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's willingness to back down from confronting India over Kashmir, so that he explicitly came to power as a warmonger.

I don't see Bush doing any of this.

More From Abu Ghraib

Der Spiegel: More Than 100 Children Imprisoned; Report Of Abuse By U.S. Soldiers

BUZZFLASH NOTE: A BuzzFlash Reader translated this article from the respected German publication, "Der Spiegel."

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Original Article in German Here: (Translated by SAB, NY)

MORE THAN 100 CHILDREN IMPRISONED; REPORT OF ABUSE BY U.S. SOLDIERS.

According to information from the International Red Cross, more than a 100 children are imprisoned in Iraq, including in the infamous prison Abu Ghraib.

The German TV magazine "Report" revealed that there has been abuse of children and youth by the coalition forces.

Mainz - "Between January and May of this year we've registered 107 children, during 19 visits in 6 different detention locations" the representative of the International Red Cross, Florian Westphal, told the TV station SWR's Magazine "Report Mainz". He noted that these were places of detention controlled by coalition troops. According to Westphal the number of children held captive could be even higher.

The TV Magazine also reported of evidence and eye witness reports according to which U.S. soldiers also abused children and youthful detainees. Samuel Provance, a staff sergeant stationed in the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison said that interrogating officers had pressured a 15 or 16 year old girl. Military police had only intervened when the girl was already half undressed. On another occasion, a 16 year old was soaked with water, driven through the cold, and then smeared with mud.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, confirmed the detention of Iraqi children by foreign military according to "Report" which cited an interim memorandum by the organization, The as yet unreleased report, which is dated June 2004, is quoted as follows: "Children who were detained in the cities of Kerbala and Basra because of alleged activities against the occupying forces were reportedly routinely sent to a detention camp at Umm Kasr. The classification of these children as detainees is worrisome because it includes unspecified length of detention without contact to their families pending further proceedings or legal actions".

The German section of the human rights organization Amnesty International is demanding a clarification of the allegations and a response from the US government.

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

For German speakers, here is the original:US-Soldaten sollen inhaftierte Kinder misshandelt haben

Mehr als hundert Kinder sind nach Informationen des Internationalen Roten Kreuzes in irakischen Gefängnissen inhaftiert, darunter auch in dem berüchtigten Gefängnis Abu Ghureib. Wie das TV-Magazin "Report" berichtet, soll es auch zu Misshandlungen von Kindern und Jugendlichen durch Koalitionstruppen gekommen sein.

Irakische Kinder (bei Nassirija): Rountinemäßige Internierung
Mainz - "Wir haben zwischen Januar und Mai dieses Jahres insgesamt 107 Kinder registriert, und zwar während 19 Besuchen an sechs verschiedenen Haftorten", sagte der Sprecher des Internationalen Roten Kreuzes (IKRK), Florian Westphal, in Genf gegenüber dem SWR-Magazin "Report Mainz". Er verwies darauf, dass dies Haftorte waren, die von Koalitionstruppen kontrolliert werden. Die Zahl der gefangen gehaltenen Kinder könnte auch höher sein, so Westphal.

Das TV-Magazin berichtete außerdem von Hinweisen und Zeugenaussagen, denen zufolge US-Soldaten in irakischen Gefängnissen auch Kinder und Jugendliche misshandelt haben. Samuel Provance, ein im berüchtigten Foltergefängnis Abu Ghureib stationierter Unteroffizier, sagte, Verhörspezialisten hätten ein 15 bis 16 Jahre altes Mädchen in ihrer Zelle bedrängt. Die Militärpolizei sei erst eingeschritten, als es bereits halb entkleidet gewesen sei. Ein anderes Mal sei ein 16-Jähriger mit Wasser überschüttet, durch die Kälte gefahren und anschließend mit Schlamm beschmiert worden.

Das Kinderhilfswerk der Vereinten Nationen (Unicef) bestätige die Gefangennahme irakischer Kinder durch ausländisches Militär, berichtete "Report" unter Berufung auf einen internen Bericht der Organisation. Wörtlich heiße es in dem bislang unveröffentlichten Dokument vom Juni 2004: "Kinder, die in Basra und Kerbela wegen angeblich gegen die Besatzungsmächte gerichteter Aktivitäten festgenommen worden waren, wurden Berichten zufolge routinemäßig in eine Internierungseinrichtung in Umm Kasr überstellt. Die Einstufung dieser Kinder als Internierte ist Besorgnis erregend, da sie unbestimmten Gewahrsam ohne Kontakt mit der Familie, Erwartung eines Verfahrens oder Prozesses beinhaltet."

Die deutsche Sektion der Menschenrechtsorganisation Amnesty International (AI) forderte die Aufklärung der Vorwürfe und eine Stellungnahme der US-Regierung.

UPDATE: More from Arabic News--our domestic outlets still don't seem interested:

International organization calls for releasing children detainees in Iraq
Iraq, Politics, 7/8/2004

The International organization "Save The Children" called on the Danish government to mediate immediately with the coalition forces in Iraq in order to release children detained in the Iraqi jails.

The chairman of the organization's branch in Denmark ( Red Barnette ) Neals Hurdal said that some of those children were exposed to bad treatment and their basic rights were violated.

The call of the organization was made after a German TV station on Monday screened a documentary film talking about more than 100 Iraqi children detained in Iraq.

Hurdal said that his organization heard rumors about this matter since May this year some of it were stated by employees working in its branch in al- Basra to the south of Iraq but without evidences. He said that " the filmed report which was broadcast by the German station proved our doubts." The organization called on the Danish minister of defense Surin Ghad to interfere at the coalition forces in order to prepare the report over the situation of children in the Iraqi jails.

Negotiating the Future

Deeply thoughtful piece in USC-Annenberg School's Online Journalism Review about Chris Allbritton's current experiment in blogging from Iraq while stringing from Time and New York Daily News, and the tensions therein. It's a long and fascinating article and I'm not going to excerpt it here, you should just go read it, and think some about this new medium and how we relate to each other and the "old media."

I had a long conversation last night with friends, well-informed friends, about morality and technology. We came to no conclusions, but raised a lot of issues needing a lot more thought and discussion about how we learn to treat each other in our new community space, what are the responsibilities, what are the accountabilities, how should we do this? What communications are appropriate for email, IM, telephone and what should be done face to face? I got fired once by email, and someone just broke up with me by IM. Is that right?

One of my friends suggested that workplace personnel issues should never be handled other than in person, and I think that's correct. The boss who fired me by email was obviously a coward, we shared a physical office suite. He sent it to my home email while I was out of the office on vacation. Vile. But what about teleworkers who are physically remote from each other? Personal issues optimally should be handled face to face, you should have to deal with your own discomfort when you raise issues, but what about when the relationship is long distance? Long ago, I had a local boyfriend break up with me by phone, and the word "coward" again came to me. This most recent disappointment was with someone more than 500 miles away, but to do it by IM seemed particularly cold. That should at least have been a phone call, I think.

What do you think? Have you run into difficult personal or personnel relationships that have been helped or hindered by our techology? My readers are on the cutting edge of these issues, so it seems wise to ask you.

The False Tie-In

All you are going to hear on CNN (and the broadcast news outfits) are the Bushco talking points, but the AP here is accurately reporting the facts on the ground in Iraq:

AP: Iraq Insurgency Larger Than Thought

1 hour, 29 minutes ago

By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer

Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the figure of 5,000 insurgents "was never more than a wag and is now clearly ridiculous."

"Part-timers are difficult to count, but almost all insurgent movements depend on cadres that are part-time and that can blend back into the population," he said.

U.S. military analysts disagree over the size of the insurgency, with estimates running as high as 20,000 fighters when part-timers are added.

Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, said the higher numbers squared with his findings in a study of the insurgency completed in Iraq.

One hint that the number is larger is the sheer volume of suspected insurgents — 22,000 — who have cycled through U.S.-run prisons. Most have been released. And in April alone, U.S. forces killed as many as 4,000 people, the military official said, including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen fighting under the banner of a radical cleric.

There has been no letup in attacks. On Thursday, insurgents detonated a car bomb and then attacked a military headquarters in Samarra, a center of resistance 60 miles north of the capital, killing five U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi guardsman.

Guerrilla leaders come from various corners of Saddam's Baath Party, including lawyers' groups, prominent families and especially from his Military Bureau, an internal security arm used to purge enemies. They've formed dozens of cells.

U.S. military documents obtained by AP show a guerrilla band mounting attacks in Baghdad that consists of two leaders, four sub-leaders and 30 members, broken down by activity. There is a pair of financiers, two cells of car bomb-builders, an assassin, separate teams launching mortar and rocket attacks, and others handling roadside bombs and ambushes.

Most of the insurgents are fighting for a bigger role in a secular society, not a Taliban-like Islamic state, the military official said. Almost all the guerrillas are Iraqis, even those launching some of the devastating car bombings normally blamed on foreigners — usually al-Zarqawi.

The official said many car bombings bore the "tradecraft" of Saddam's former secret police and were aimed at intimidating Iraq's new security services.

Many in the U.S. intelligence community have been making similar points, but have encountered political opposition from the Bush administration, a State Department official in Washington said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

Civilian analysts generally agreed, saying U.S. and Iraqi officials have long overemphasized the roles of foreign fighters and Muslim extremists.

Such positions support the Bush administration's view that the insurgency is linked to the war on terror. A closer examination paints most insurgents as secular Iraqis angry at the presence of U.S. and other foreign troops.

"Too much U.S. analysis is fixated on terms like 'jihadist,' just as it almost mindlessly tries to tie everything to (Osama) bin Laden," Cordesman said. "Every public opinion poll in Iraq ... supports the nationalist character of what is happening."

Judgement of History

via Jerome Doolittle at Bad Attitudes:

Historians vs. George W. Bush
By Robert S. McElvaine

Although his approval ratings have slipped somewhat in recent weeks, President George W. Bush still enjoys the overall support of nearly half of the American people. He does not, however, fare nearly so well among professional historians.

BUCHANAN: “Buchanan can be said to have made the Civil War inevitable or to have made the war last longer by his pusillanimity or, possibly, treason.” “Buchanan allowed a war to evolve, but that war addressed a real set of national issues. Mr. Bush started a war . . . for what reason?”

Take a look at the whole thing. While the article is more descriptive than analytical, it's interesting to see the points made by professional historians. I wish they had included the survey data; it would have useful to see how the instrument was constructed and to see if there is a way to glean more analytical data from it.

Hostage Story???

This is one strange story. My bet: the guy is trying to cover up an attempted AWOL.

Missing Marine at U.S. Embassy in Lebanon

Thursday, July 8, 2004 Posted: 2:45 PM EDT (1845 GMT)

(CNN) -- U.S. Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun is at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, U.S. officials told CNN on Thursday.

The official added, "This guy is a Marine. He has a unit that he is assigned to. Generally, Marines come back into our custody, under military control. We want to bring him back to where he is supposed to be. "

Don't Need No Stinkin' Bill of Rights

Guest posting at Eschaton, Holden has a troubling story about the arrest and removal of a FEMA worker and her husband at Bush's July 4 rally in West Virginia. They were roughed up for wearing anti-Bush Tshirts, and she has apparently been transferred out of her job.

I read further into the Charleston Gazette story and discovered a further troubling nugget:

Those who attended Bush’s speech were required to have tickets that were distributed by various employers in the area and by the office of Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.

Those who applied for tickets were required to supply their names, addresses, birth dates, birthplaces and Social Security numbers.

I have attended political rallies all over the country. Some of them needed tickets, some didn't (most didn't.) I don't recall ever seeing this kind of violation of the right of free assembly, however. This is scary.

What's Changed?

Shades of the Old Iraq

Published: July 8, 2004

It is less than two weeks since Iyad Allawi took office as Iraq's interim prime minister, yet his governing methods already carry a whiff of the old-style Arab authoritarianism the Bush administration once dreamed of overturning throughout the Middle East. One chilling example is the decree Dr. Allawi had drawn up this week to give him the authority to exercise martial law powers anywhere he sees fit. As the interim prime minister, Dr. Allawi heads an unelected caretaker government whose main responsibility is guiding Iraq toward free elections in January. Preparing to impose martial law is not an encouraging way to start.

Multiple violent insurgencies are now raging in Iraq, but the fledging Iraqi forces Dr. Allawi controls are currently too weak and unreliable to bring them under control. Iraqi forces will also be too weak to ensure enough security for meaningful elections to take place as scheduled next January — that job will be largely up to the more than 135,000 American troops now in Iraq.

But the Iraqi security forces, armed with martial law powers and reinforced by the former Baathist army officers Dr. Allawi wants to restore to duty, could easily stifle Iraqi democracy before it is even born. Dr. Allawi desperately needs Washington's continued security support, so it should urge him to proceed more carefully. Restoring law and order should not require wholesale suspensions of legal rights.

Dr. Allawi's authoritarian tendencies can be no surprise to the Bush administration. During the past decade, Dr. Allawi, who lived in exile on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency, became better known to Washington than he was to most Iraqis. After falling violently afoul of Saddam Hussein in the late 1970's, Dr. Allawi severed his Baathist Party ties and later began working with disgruntled Baathist generals to organize a military coup in Iraq. He has never made a secret of any of this. When Washington strongly backed Dr. Allawi's bid to become the interim prime minister, it knew well enough what to expect.

In the short term, Dr. Allawi's repressive reflexes may resonate among Iraqis who grew up under Mr. Hussein and equate authentic Iraqi leadership with strong-arm rule. But martial law decrees cannot resolve the ethnic and religious differences that threaten to tear Iraq apart even before American troops depart. That will take delicate political bargaining in an atmosphere free of governmental intimidation. Assuming emergency powers is no way to nurture a democratic Iraq, which has been the administration's main rationale for the war since its earlier allegations about active unconventional weapons programs fell apart.

As I've been following this story over the last couple of weeks, the thought that has opped into my head is, "How Saddam-esque." This has a real "here comes the new CIA-propped-up strong man" feel about it. So much for "peace, freedom and democracy in the Middle East."

Not This Surprise

The blogosphere is buzzing over the
July Surprise?
by John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari, in TNR. Forget it people. It ain't gonna happen.

Missing the Point

Senate Iraq Report Said to Skirt White House Use of Intelligence
By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: July 8, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 7 - A bipartisan Senate report to be issued Friday that is highly critical of prewar intelligence on Iraq will sidestep the question of how the Bush administration used that information to make the case for war, Congressional officials said Wednesday.

But Democrats are maneuvering to raise the issue in separate statements. Under a deal reached this year between Republicans and Democrats, the Bush administration's role will not be addressed until the Senate Intelligence Committee completes a further stage of its inquiry, but probably not until after the November election. As a result, said the officials, both Democratic and Republican, the committee's initial, unanimous report will focus solely on misjudgments by intelligence agencies, not the White House, in the assessments about Iraq, illicit weapons and Al Qaeda that the administration used as a rationale for the war.

The effect may be to provide an opening for President Bush and his allies to deflect responsibility for what now appear to be exaggerated prewar assessments about the threat posed by Iraq, by portraying them as the fault of the Central Intelligence Agency and its departing chief, George J. Tenet, rather than Mr. Bush and his top aides.

Still, Democrats will try to focus attention on the issue by releasing as many as a half-dozen "additional views" to supplement the bipartisan report. "How the administration used the intelligence was very troubling," Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said in an interview this week. "They took a flawed set of intelligence reports and converted it into a rationale for going to war."

The unanimous report by the panel will say there is no evidence that intelligence officials were subjected to pressure to reach particular conclusions about Iraq. That issue had been an early focus of Democrats, but none of the more than 200 intelligence officials interviewed by the panel made such a claim, and the Democrats have recently focused criticism on the question of whether the intelligence was misused.

The plan to release the "Report on Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq" on Friday was announced Wednesday by the committee. Congressional officials said the Central Intelligence Agency had agreed that most of the report could be made public.

The public version of the report will include more than 80 percent of a classified, 410-page version approved unanimously by the committee, the officials said. A review by the C.I.A. that was completed last month recommended that nearly half of the report be classified. But the panel's Republican and Democratic leaders objected strongly, and they won concessions during negotiations that were completed over the weekend.

The February agreement to divide the inquiry into two parts reflected what both Republicans and Democrats on the committee portrayed as a grudging compromise. Until then, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the top Republican on the panel, had insisted that the question of how the administration used the intelligence exceeded the committee's scope. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat, had insisted that the initial inquiry, focusing on the intelligence agencies, be expanded to include the question of whether public statements by government officials had been substantiated by intelligence information.

Both sides say they are committed to completing the second stage of the inquiry as soon as possible. But the committee also plans to begin work on recommendations for broader changes in intelligence agencies to address the shortcomings detailed in the report, leaving little time in an election year to complete an inquiry that would focus on the Bush administration and would almost certainly splinter along party lines.

The Senate report, the result of more than a year's work by the panel's staff, is the first of three to be issued this summer that are expected to be damning of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies. The presidential commission on the Sept. 11 attacks is expected to release its final report this month, while Charles A. Duelfer, who is heading what has been an unsuccessful effort to find illicit weapons in Iraq, is expected to report in August or September.

This is the "Blame Tenet" strategy, which was signaled a few weeks back. Contrast it with this from the other day. It's now behind the pay firewall, but even Joe Klein at Time is talking about how Intel, State, 1600 Penn and the professional Foreign Service are in shooting wars over the blame game. Don't mess with the spooks. Ever.

UPDATE: This morning's LA Times has more.

Blame and Hope in Iraq

When the Bush administration entered office, it epitomized buttoned-down, tight-lipped managerial efficiency, with few leaks and a united front. But the size of the mess in Iraq seems to have triggered a rash of finger-pointing. For months, officials in the CIA and the State and Defense departments have been accusing each other of mishandling the occupation. A new entrant in the blame game emerged this week when "a senior official" of the dissolved Coalition Provisional Authority accused the Pentagon of failing even now to devise a coherent strategy.

"U.S. Response to Insurgency Called a Failure," trumpeted The Times' headline Tuesday, agreeing with a spate of other media reports. The critics may have spoken too soon. The Pentagon's original bungled planning for the war's aftermath gave the insurgents a free hand, but the U.S. military and the provisional Iraqi government may be starting to get it right, even if the definition of success has been seriously scaled back.

The administration hopes that Prime Minister Iyad Allawi will become a benevolent authoritarian leader who will impose order in Iraq, just as Lee Kuan Yew turned Singapore into a flourishing city-state. Like Lee, who faced potential ethnic strife, Allawi must unite and modernize his country. Allawi is moving forcefully to create security, with free elections definitely in second place. He rightly pushed for martial law powers that allow him to impose curfews, outlaw terrorist groups and detain anyone considered a security risk. This is no return to the bad old days of Saddam Hussein: Allawi can impose martial law in specific areas only for up to 60 days, and numerous other checks on his powers exist. The alternative? Chaos and the rise of even more militias.

Take With Salt

Israeli interrogators in Iraq - An exclusive report

At least one aspect of the occupation of Iraq was well planned by Washington. The USA needed help conducting mass interrogations of Arabic-speaking detainees. Foreign Report can now reveal that, to make up for this shortfall, the USA employed Israeli security service (Shin Bet) experts to help their US counterparts 'break' their captives.

The USA could have approached other friendly regimes in the Middle East, such as Egypt or Jordan, which have vast experience interrogating Muslim fundamentalists. The Israelis may be brilliant linguists, but they cannot match Arabs speaking their own language. But there is a significant difference between the Egyptian and Jordanian interrogation techniques and those of the Israelis. For the Egyptian and Jordanian secret services, physical torture is an essential part of interrogation and a key element in breaking the prisoner's will and making them co-operative.

In the past, Shin Bet would use torture when it interrogated prisoners. But 20 years ago, an Israeli government committee investigated the security service's practices and the use of torture was subsequently banned, forcing Shin Bet to adopt a variety of techniques that did not cause physical damage. These new methods are much more palatable to US sensibilities. They also brought faster and more convincing results.

Foreign Report has learnt that top Shin Bet interrogation experts were sent to Iraq to help with the most difficult interrogations, such as the captured heads of the Iraqi intelligence - and perhaps with former president Saddam Hussein. US sources say that in spite of the incidences of abuse in Abu Ghraib prison, such events are not representative of the sophisticated methods that Shin Bet used in Iraq.

Most of the Shin Bet interrogators are of Ashkenazim (European) origin who study the Arabic language only when they are in their twenties after joining the security service. Before each interrogation a psychologist who has studied in depth the mental profile of the prisoner is consulted. The interrogator will also read intelligence reports about their charge.

Several reports since the weekend had this coming out of the mouth of Gen. Janice Karpinski. To find it in a Jane's publication adds heft to the charge. If true, it is quite the scandal, both for Bush and for Sharon.

The Process

'We Never Got to a Short List'
By JODI WILGOREN

Several people pointed to the secretive and exclusive Bilderberg conference of some 120 people that this year drew the likes of Henry A. Kissinger, Melinda Gates and Richard A. Perle to Stresa, Italy, in early June, as helping win Mr. Kerry's heart. Mr. Edwards spoke so well in a debate on American politics with the Republican Ralph Reed that participants broke Bilderberg rules to clap before the end of the session. Beforehand, Mr. Edwards traveled to Brussels to meet with NATO officials, brandishing his foreign-policy credentials.

"His performance at Bilderberg was important," said a friend of Mr. Kerry who was there. "He reported back directly to Kerry. There were other reports on his performance. Whether they reported directly or indirectly, I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry about how well he did."

If Edwards ate Ralph Reed's lunch (the man is a genius polemicist), Big Time isn't going to be much more than an hors d'ouevre.

The rest of the article is worth reading for a third-party take on how John Kerry's mind works. I'll admit that the writer is Jodi Wilgoren, so take with enough salt to go down easily. The man is complex and seems to keep all of the variables in play until a decision emerges. Hell, I can't do that.

via Lead Balloons at Bad Attitudes. You should bookmark these guys; they make some amazing catches.

Florida Starts Early This Year

Lawsuit Challenges Florida Ballot Recount Rules
By REUTERS

Published: July 7, 2004

Filed at 2:49 p.m. ET

MIAMI (Reuters) - Voting rights groups sued Florida election administrators on Wednesday to overturn a rule that prohibits manual recounting of ballots cast with touch-screen machines, a lawsuit with echoes of the state's disputed 2000 presidential election voting.

The lawsuit said the rule was ``illogical'' and rested on the questionable assumption that electronic voting machines perform flawlessly 100 percent of the time. It also said the rule violated a Florida law that expressly requires manual recounts of certain ballots if the margin in an election is less than 0.25 percent of the votes cast.

Court disputes over how to conduct manual recounts of punch card and absentee ballots delayed Florida's results in the 2000 presidential election, which George W. Bush won after taking the state by 537 votes.

The lawsuit was filed against the Florida Department of State, which oversees elections and which issued the rule in April.

Plaintiffs included the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the nonpartisan political group Common Cause and other voter education and civil rights groups. The suit will be heard by the Division of Administrative Hearings in Tallahassee, the state capital.

The plaintiffs said in their suit the electronic voting machines were ``known to malfunction and to be subject to malicious tampering.''

Fifteen Florida counties containing about half the state's population use electronic touch-screen voting machines. They include the three most populous counties -- Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach -- that were at the heart of the 2000 punch card ballot recount battle.

Florida banned punch card ballots after 2000, but there have already been glitches with the electronic machines that replaced them in some counties.

Audit tests using the new touch-screen machines last year showed some of the data recorded on the Miami-Dade machines were not transferred to electronic logs that would need to be reviewed in a recount.

Good lord, the Florida recount is starting already. This suit is probably too late to acheive much in the way of improvement before November's election. This is a scary scenario, the intersection of Jeb, unauditable black box machines, and screwed up voter lists.

Fairness and Truth, Not Fair and Balanced

Moore's Ax Falls on a Derelict Media Too
'Fahrenheit 9/11' exposes 'balance' as a cop-out.

by Neal Gabler

And then into this staid and carefully counterpoised media culture came Moore, who chortled on "The Daily Show" recently that he was unfair and unbalanced. But he was only half right. Obviously "Fahrenheit 9/11" is not balanced in its approach to Bush. There are no Bush spokesmen giving the Bush spin. But by the same token, virtually every factual statement in the film, as distinguished from Moore's interpretation of those facts, is accurate. In short, the film isn't balanced, but it may be fair.

Even before Fox appropriated them, the words "fair and balanced" had been yoked as if they were somehow synonymous, but if by "fair" one means objective and unbiased, then more often than not "fair" and "balanced" may be mutually exclusive. To cite one glaring example of just how balance can transmogrify into unfairness, there is the story of a television host who once invited Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt on his program and then had a Holocaust denier as a counterweight, implying that the two sides were equally credible.

It should come as no surprise that conservatives have increasingly relied on this little journalistic loophole. They have come to realize that they can do all sorts of things, the more egregious the better, and the press will not call them out because balance, if not fairness, requires that the press not seem to be piling on. So the Bush administration can fashion a prescription drug program that is a shameless giveaway to the industry or continue to insist that the war in Iraq is the front line in the war on terror, knowing full well that the press will not report a giveaway as a giveaway or a trumped-up link to terror as a trumped-up link without also giving at least equal measure to the administration's own spin, even if it is demonstrably false.

At the same time, the adherence to balance that has so clearly aided conservatives has made liberals seem like the hapless fellow in a science fiction movie who keeps trying to convince everyone that the kindly new neighbors are actually aliens, only to be dismissed as a paranoid. Take Bill Clinton. However one felt about Clinton, it was perfectly obvious that the right had conspired to gang up on him just as he and Hillary said, though the press shrugged off the charge. After all, to privilege it wouldn't have been balanced.

In noisily forswearing balance for genuine fairness, Moore has shamed an American press corps that, for fear of offending conservatives, refused to report what Moore was now reporting — everything from the cursory interviews the FBI conducted with members of Osama bin Laden's family in America before letting them leave to the eagerness of big business in exploiting Iraq to the astonishing fact that only one of the 535 members of Congress has a child serving in the military in Iraq. And that shame, added to the film's success, may be the reason why Moore has not been summarily dismissed by the mainstream media as a left-wing shill.

The media know that whatever "Fahrenheit 9/11" exposes about Bush, it also has exposed something arguably even more important about them: that balance is itself bias and that under its cover they have protected a president whose administration, if examined fairly, may very well be indefensible.

This is one of the many, many things that makes me nuts about CNN. Facts actually have meaning in and of themselves and there are whole swaths of life in which it is possible to make a relatively objective judgement about what constitutes truth. Michael Moore is attempting to uncover the truth, which is the job of the creative artist, which is ironic. It used to also be the job of the journalist.

Legitimacy

Iraq Approves Law Allowing Martial Rule
Amnesty Offer to Insurgents Is Seen Near

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 7, 2004; Page A15

BAGHDAD, July 6 -- Iraq's interim government has approved a national security law that will give Prime Minister Ayad Allawi broad powers of martial rule in troubled areas, including direct command of army, police and intelligence units, a senior Iraqi government official said Tuesday.

Although the law will give Allawi new latitude to combat insurgents, the prime minister had sought even tougher measures, some of which were stripped out of early drafts because of objections from other members of the interim government and from foreign governments, said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The law will restrict the prime minister's power by requiring any declaration of emergency rule to have the consent of the country's president and its two vice presidents, as well as a majority of the 32-member cabinet. Iraq's highest court also will be able to overturn Allawi's martial law declarations.

Even so, the new law will allow Allawi to deploy Iraq's army to fight insurgents. When the country's old army was disbanded and a new army created, L. Paul Bremer, then the U.S. administrator of Iraq, issued a decree preventing the army from being used for domestic security. But Bremer lifted that restriction in a final order issued before he departed Iraq on June 28, the day political authority was transferred to the interim government.

The interim government is also preparing an amnesty offer to insurgents that it hopes to announce Wednesday, but terms of the deal have not been finalized, the senior official said. Preliminary drafts, which would have allowed Iraqis who attacked U.S. troops to claim amnesty, have been revised to exclude anybody who was directly involved in serious acts of violence, the senior official said.

Problem is, as noted by The New Republic's Spencer Ackerman, the country's Transitional Administrative Law document has no provision for martial law and abridgement of civil rights. So, we have an illegitmate government which has already overturned the temporary Constitution written last month.

Remembrence of Time Past

Born Under a Cloud of Irony
The new, free Iraq may officially be in the hands of a former terrorist.

by Robert Scheer

According to one of the New York Times' sources, Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, was the only exile group the CIA trusted to unleash violence inside Iraq under the agency's direction. In those days, car bombings in Baghdad were thought to be a good thing, according to one U.S. intelligence officer who worked with Allawi. "No one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then," he said, adding, "I don't think anyone could have known how things could turn out today." Now, Allawi has made control over his old rival Hussein a loud demand of his appointed government, which sits in uneasy reliance on 135,000 U.S. troops and must answer to the world's largest American embassy in all important matters.

Such a plan must be tempting for the United States. A show trial under Allawi would be designed to get Hussein out of the way as quickly and quietly as possible, which might save the U.S. some embarrassment. After all, in an open, unbiased trial the old dictator, if he still has his wits about him, could talk about his cooperation with the Reagan and Bush administrations during the 1980s, when he committed many of the alleged crimes — including the use of poison gas — for which he will be brought to trial. He might even discuss his two visits back then with Donald H. Rumsfeld. But even though a fair public trial might prove uncomfortable for our government, Hussein is a prisoner of war captured by the United States, and Washington is responsible for his treatment under international standards. We have no right to turn him over to the tender mercies of a former CIA-financed archrival. That is simply an abdication of responsibility that violates international law.

There is no good argument for not trying Hussein under international law, as has been done with former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. A fair public trial would reveal the crimes of Hussein as well as the machinations of those U.S. officials and agencies that aided him.

No way anything happens before the election. No way.

Nation Building

In Iraq, Daunting Tasks Await
Phase 2 of Transition May Be as Difficult as Occupation

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 7, 2004; Page A14

"If the new government is unable to contain the insurgents and terrorists, and if it is unable to win the support of the diverse ethnic and sectarian communities in Iraq, then a weak and discredited central government will be no match for local warlordism and the growth of terrorist infrastructures," said Judith Yaphe, a former CIA expert now at the National Defense University. "If this happens, the outcome will not be the hoped-for democratic Iraq of 2005 and beyond, but a country more like Lebanon in the 1980s or Afghanistan in the 1990s -- only in this case a country replete with oil wealth and a great capacity to wreak havoc beyond its borders."

The tone of the second phase will be heavily influenced by the outcome of the national conference, progress in reconstruction and security.

The conference is designed to launch "a national dialogue of the new who's who in Iraq," said a U.N. official, and expand participation beyond the handful of largely exiles handpicked by the outside world. It will select about 100 Iraqis to serve on an interim national council, which will not legislate but will create the first check on government by being able to question its ministers on policy and actions.

"A national gathering that legitimizes the selection of the new leadership and captures the attention of the Iraqi people with a major Iraqi-run political event, tied directly to the phased, scheduled withdrawal of the coalition security forces into cantonments, would set the conditions for successful elections," wrote Keith W. Mines, a former CPA official, in an article for the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Jump-starting the economy through reconstruction must be a parallel process, with the interim government trying to win Iraqi participation by feeding "their wallets and their bellies," Francke said.

The United States estimates that foreign aid could create a million jobs over the next two years -- with concern about whether the pace will be fast enough. Iraqis also want a new aid strategy, switching from large, high-tech infrastructure projects, which went largely to U.S. and foreign corporations, to more labor-intensive projects to generate more jobs for Iraqis.

But the biggest factor will be ending the violence, U.S., U.N. and Iraqi officials agree. "Unless you get security under control, everything else will be held hostage," the senior State Department official said.

A two-pronged strategy is evolving that centers, first, on Iraq's attempt to co-opt its own, largely Sunni Muslim, insurgents -- estimated at around 5,000 -- by bringing more former Baathists, Sunnis and critics into the system, Iraqi and U.S. officials say. "Some of them may not be perfect democrats, and some may be Baathists," Francke said. "But I would rather err on the side of inclusion than exclusion at this point."

While training Iraqis as eventual replacements, troops from the U.S.-led multinational force will focus largely on pursuing extremists loyal to Abu Musab Zarqawi, estimated to number about 200, and Arab foreign fighters, also in the low hundreds, U.S. officials said.

Despite a relatively hopeful first week for the new Iraqi government, analysts cautioned that expectations should be modest.

"It took Britain nearly 900 years and a civil war to evolve into a truly representative government. It has taken the U.S. more than 225 years and a civil war to achieve its current state of democracy," Yaphe said. "How can the Iraqis be expected to achieve this in one year?"

Yaphe's question is only one of the questions this article summons. The front half of the piece is largely a fable. Three things have to happen before Iraq has a ghost of a chance of escaping "failed state" status: the insurgency has to be quelled; the electricity has to be fixed; the oil has to flow. Obviously, these three things are interrelated. The chance of Bushco fixing any of it before the election? Greater than zero, but not much.

Take Me Back to the Simple Days of Whitewater

Inquiry Confirms Top Medicare Official Threatened Actuary Over Cost of Drug Benefits
By ROBERT PEAR

Published: July 7, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 6 - An internal investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services confirms that the top Medicare official threatened to fire the program's chief actuary if he told Congress that drug benefits would probably cost much more than the White House acknowledged.

A report on the investigation, issued Tuesday, says the administrator of Medicare, Thomas A. Scully, issued the threat to Richard S. Foster while lawmakers were considering huge changes in the program last year. As a result, Mr. Foster's cost estimate did not become known until after the legislation was enacted.

But neither the threat nor the withholding of information violated any criminal law, the report said.

Mr. Scully, who resigned in December, in part to become a lobbyist for health care companies, had denied threatening Mr. Foster but had acknowledged having told him to withhold the information from Congress.

The report, by Dara Corrigan, the department's acting principal deputy inspector general, said, "Our investigation revealed that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not provide information requested by Congressional members and staff, and that Scully threatened to sanction Foster if he disclosed unauthorized information.''

While Ms. Corrigan discovered "no criminal violations,'' she sent her findings to the General Accounting Office, a Congressional investigative arm, to determine if Medicare officials had violated an appropriations law that protects the right of federal employees to communicate with Congress. In May, the Congressional Research Service said Mr. Scully's order to Mr. Foster apparently violated that law, which has been on the books in various forms since 1912.

William A. Pierce, a spokesman for the department, said Tuesday that the threat was not illegal because the actuary was supposed to report to the head of the Medicare program, who, Mr. Pierce said, had a right to dismiss him in case of insubordination. "No laws were broken,'' Mr. Pierce said.

But Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said, "It sounds as though the Bush administration examined itself and found it did nothing wrong.''

The senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus of Montana, said that given a limited scope of the investigation, "we cannot know about the involvement or knowledge of White House officials'' in the suppression of information.

When President Bush signed the Medicare bill on Dec. 8, he hailed it as "the greatest advance in health care coverage for America's seniors since the founding of Medicare'' in 1965. Republicans were counting on the measure to help them win votes from the elderly in this year's elections. But Democrats, including Senator John Kerry, the party's expected presidential nominee, have waged a campaign to discredit the law, which they say is more helpful to drug companies and insurers than to elderly and disabled people.

The internal investigation was ordered by Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, on March 16, four days after House Democrats requested such an inquiry, and nearly four months after Congress approved the Medicare overhaul.

Excuse me. We spent $70 million dollars investigating Whitewater and Paula Jones and the Bushies have spent how much on this one, which looks like real corruption. Oh, right. That was the Clenis. Font et origo of all corruption.

Do It Our Way

Judgment at Baghdad

By TOM PARKER

Published: July 7, 2004

NEW HAVEN — I spent six months in Baghdad in 2003 working with Iraqis to devise a strategy for bringing Saddam Hussein and his cronies to account. Mr. Hussein's appearance before an Iraqi judge last week was the culmination of a remarkable collaboration between the American-led coalition and Iraqi jurists. It also marked an important new stage in the evolution of international justice.

For probably the first time in history a country will put its former leaders on trial under international criminal law in a locally constituted court. Unlike its United Nations-sponsored cousins in The Hague and Sierra Leone, the Iraqi Special Tribunal empowers local officials to bring the perpetrators of atrocity crimes to trial. International financing will go where it will do the most good — toward rebuilding Iraq's judiciary and ensuring that the victims of Mr. Hussein's regime are finally heard.

The coalition authority spent almost six months formulating tribunal plans with Iraqis. It organized working groups and conferences on subjects as diverse as truth and reconciliation commissions and forensic anthropology. Throughout these sessions, which were open to the public, one message came across loud and clear: Iraqis wanted to see Mr. Hussein tried by Iraqis.

Coalition advisers worked closely with Iraqi lawyers to ensure that the tribunal statute we created was in harmony with the latest developments in international criminal law. Much thought was also given to developing an investigative strategy that would help Iraqis make sense of a seemingly endless catalog of crimes — approximately 300,000 dead, and thousands more tortured, raped and otherwise abused over a period of more than 30 years.

We suggested that the tribunal impose a strict upper limit on the number of cases brought before it. Why was this important? Because investigating and prosecuting these sorts of crimes is complex and time-consuming. Without some limitations, trials could drag on for decades at great expense. What's more, with each passing year the meaning of the trials could become increasingly diluted.

Our conclusions were based, in some measure, on the experience of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which did not pick its early cases well and took on a greater caseload than it could easily handle. As a result, the tribunal is expected to take almost 18 years to try a mixed bag of approximately 100 cases at a cost of more than $1.5 billion. To many in the Balkans, it has been a costly disappointment.

Coalition advisers recommended that in Iraq — as in Nuremberg almost 60 years ago — the initial investigative effort be limited to no more than 20 to 25 high-profile perpetrators. Defendants will be immediately recognizable to the Iraqi public, and the tribunal's initial list of indictees was chosen with this in mind.

It is vital that the cases heard by the tribunal address the full spectrum of the regime's atrocities. People all across Iraq experienced human rights abuses under Saddam Hussein. In a fragmented country, this is a rare unifying factor. The tribunal's defendants have been selected with an eye toward providing a thorough and representative accounting of these crimes.

Equally significant: defendants will face penalties under Iraqi law — not penalties deemed appropriate by the international community. There is little likelihood, then, that Mr. Hussein will live out his days in a comfortable Dutch prison. Nor will Iraqis have to suffer the absurdity of the so-called Rwandan paradox, where the worst that can befall mass murderers brought before the United Nations tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, is life imprisonment while low-level offenders, brought before local courts in Rwanda, face the death penalty.

International law places great emphasis on the principle that cases should, where possible, be resolved at a local level — an aspiration recognized in Article 17 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The creation of Iraq's tribunal honors this commitment.

Restoring respect for the judiciary and the rule of law will be a key step in the stabilization and recovery of Iraq. It's difficult to imagine a more effective or symbolic manner in which this could be achieved than by Iraqi judges presiding over Mr. Hussein's trial.

In addition, by giving Iraqis the power to tackle this task themselves, we will be creating an experienced cadre of judges, lawyers and investigators steeped in international notions of due process. When their tribunal work is finished, many will return to Iraq's still-fragile legal system, where they will be able to pass their skills on to their compatriots.

A televised judicial process conducted according to internationally accepted standards will become a civics class for the whole country. Mr. Hussein's victims will at last have a chance to be heard in front of their own people. And best of all, Iraqis will have the satisfaction of punishing their tormentors for themselves.

Erm, Tom, this is gross racism on your part. By what electoral process did the Iraqis come up with this solution. You are imposing your biases on them and are as much a part of the problem anything the Mylroie-Feith-Wolfowitz axis comes up with.

This article is almost astonishing in its racism, exceptionalism and nationalism. The Grey Lady has truly lost her way.

Summing Up

Yikes, this has to be the shortest press release in the history of Washington.

Hmm, maybe they aren't going to cave, after all (my working hypothesis all afternoon.)

9/11 panel stands by finding on al Qaeda, Iraq
Commission: We have same information as Cheney

Tuesday, July 6, 2004 Posted: 8:31 PM EDT (0031 GMT)

Vice President Dick Cheney said he 'probably' had access to information that the 9/11 panel lacked.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Disputing anew an assertion by the Bush administration, the independent commission investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, released a statement Tuesday indicating that it stands by its conclusion that al Qaeda and Iraq had only limited connections.

The commission has said it has seen no evidence to suggest that then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's government was involved in the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

My first and very superficial read: Rove knows his man is in trouble. Cheney will be increasingly used as a surrogate until they realize that his negative numbers poll so badly that they can't. We'll see if McCain is willing to play second man and I suspect he won't. Bushco in trouble is not a busy, pretty thing. When a basically friendly, if highly political, 9-11 commission pushes back, you are in deep yoghurt. They've already put their wet finger into the wind, and Hamilton and Kean are looking for ways out.

Sen. John Warner has made it known he's not going to be easy on them. From the LATimes piece:

Lull in Iraq Prison Probe Won't Last, Senator Says
Republican Warner has plans for a series of hearings on the abuse scandal. He promises politics won't stop him, even in an election year.

By John Hendren, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Just a few weeks ago, Congress was pushing hard to get to the bottom of the prison abuse scandal in Iraq. Top military officials and witnesses were being hauled up to Capitol Hill, where senators took the rare step of swearing them in amid a lineup that a senior Pentagon official said "made them look like criminals."

Now, with a delayed military investigation eating into the calendar, momentum has distinctly slowed at a time when the political calendar — with two major party conventions and a fall election — is growing more complicated.

The prospect of bombshells and damaging investigative reports coming out during the height of the political campaign or around the conventions is a concern for both the Bush administration and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress. But complicating it all is the contentious case of documents allegedly missing from an investigative report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba on abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

If one Republican senator has his way, the lull in the prison investigation won't last.

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been holding off on further grilling of Pentagon managers and field generals until his committee gets a report overseen by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay on the abuse of Iraqi detainees by American troops.

But Capitol Hill sources say Warner doesn't plan to wait much longer. Over the next three weeks, he is expected to hold a series of hearings — just before the Democratic and Republican conventions kick off the political season and the usual August congressional recess.

If the Fay report — delayed perhaps until August while a higher-ranking general appointed to finish it has a chance to complete his work — comes out in the heat of a political campaign, the hearings will go on despite the potential impact on the presidential election campaign, Warner said in a brief interview.

"I will not let politics deter me," he said.

It remains uncertain whether Warner's will alone can keep the detainee abuse scandal in the spotlight during the height of a close presidential election. But with the scandal marking a defining issue of his tenure as chairman and with the backing of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Warner has expressed his determination to forge ahead.

Democrats want to go beyond committee hearings, creating either an independent commission to investigate detainee abuse or a special board of inquiry with subpoena powers, the latter of which could act during the fall campaign season.

Warner warned Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in a letter last month that he planned to call as many as a dozen administration and military officials to testify, in what Senate sources said then would be as many as seven hearings. Among those on alert for a possible appearance, Warner wrote: L. Paul Bremer III, until recently the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith; Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes Jr.; Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, director of intelligence for U.S. operations in Iraq; and Fay.

Among the other topics considered likely to come up is a Sept. 14 memo signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the top ground commander in Iraq, authorizing as many as 30 interrogation tactics for detainees at Abu Ghraib — some later rescinded — that included the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners.

Feith, a conservative lightning rod, is likely to face scrutiny about his role as a result of a recently released memo on interrogation techniques by Rumsfeld. In the memo, Rumsfeld wrote to Haynes that he had discussed the techniques with Feith.

Before the release of the memo, senators were unsure they had cause to call Feith to testify.

"Now we do have a reason, because he was involved in the policy," a Senate source said on condition of anonymity.

Pentagon officials insisted that they had not delayed the investigations. Asked about a timetable for the Fay report, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told reporters last week that it depended on the scope of work.

I'm going to be digging into this in coming weeks. Warner is way off the reservation and I want to know what is up with that. Larry Di Rita is a major tool and I expect I'll have more for you on him in a couple of days. He has dirty hands. Let me go play with google and karto, currently my favorite search engine. Elegant is the word.

Now, I have to take out the trash and the recycling and then I'm for bed. Meet you back here in the morning with the headlines.

And thanks. The readers are what makes blogs worth reading, not my blathering here. Your generous community is what makes a blog.

Boston and Blogs, Bumped Up

What a dumb headline. We didn't exist four years ago.
Parties to Allow Bloggers to Cover Conventions for First Time

By Brian Faler
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, July 6, 2004; Page A04

More than 15,000 people will converge on Boston later this month to cover the Democratic National Convention -- including, for the first time, bloggers.

The Democratic Party plans to give media credentials to a select group of bloggers who want to cover the event, where Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) is expected to accept his party's presidential nomination. The group has not announced which bloggers might get the passes, but that information will come in the "next few weeks," an event spokeswoman said. The convention begins July 26.

But officials said whoever gets credentials will have the same opportunities to cover the four-day event that journalists enjoy. "We want to treat them just the same as other reporters," said Mike Liddell, the convention's director of online communications. "We're even planning to do a breakfast for them the first day of the convention."

The Republican Party recently decided that it will also give bloggers credentials for its convention later this summer. A spokesman for the event said it is still working out details.

The Web sites, which are essentially online journals, have become a prominent campaign tool this election season -- ever since former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's official blog caught on. Since then, scores of other candidates have developed similar sites. Some candidates have begun advertising on other independent blogs -- especially sites that feature commentaries, usually partisan, on the political news of the day.

But neither party has ever allowed bloggers to cover one of its presidential conventions firsthand -- and the decision seems to promise a clash of two very different cultures. The conventions have become carefully staged productions intended, primarily, to reintroduce the parties' nominees to the general public. Independent blogs -- especially those focusing on politics -- are far more freewheeling, their authors mixing fact with opinion and under no obligation to be either fair or accurate.

Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Dean's campaign, said he supports the decision but that it presents some risk to the Democrats. He said many bloggers are more liberal than Kerry -- and may feel free to vent their frustration with the candidate if, for example, he presents himself at the convention as a centrist.

"They're much tougher, I think, from an ideological bent than mainstream press," Trippi said. "You're not going to take any flak from the mainstream press for tacking to the center on a given issue."

But he and other Democrats said the plan also gives the party a chance to reach a larger audience. Although television networks have cut back on their coverage of the conventions -- saying they yield little news -- some bloggers have attracted sizable audiences. Lina Garcia, a spokeswoman for the convention, said she hopes the bloggers will help the party reach young people. "A lot of young people blog now, and they're important to us," she said.

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a Berkeley, Calif.-based lawyer who runs one of the most popular liberal blogs -- Dailykos.com -- predicted that many bloggers will beam a reliably pro-Democratic message back to their readers. "We're all partisan. We don't pretend to be otherwise and would not be constrained by bounds of having to balance out what we write with the other side," he said. "So it's a much more direct way to get out the party's message to its constituents and potential constituents."

It is not clear how the Democratic Party will decide among the more than 60 bloggers who have applied for credentials. Convention officials said they are considering three criteria: the size of the blogger's audience, the "professionalism" of the site and the amount of original material it includes. It is subjective and a little vague. But then again, Liddell said, no one has tried this before. "We don't have a guide to go by," he said.

No, I'm not one of the 60. I can't afford to go to Boston. In fact, without your help this blog will go silent because my power will be turned off this week unless I can come up with a payment. I need about $300, if you can spare some cash, the Paypal link is up on the top right. It takes credit cards and checks. Otherwise, I go dark.

Bombshell

Portland Archdiocese Filing Chapter 11
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 6, 2004

Filed at 2:25 p.m. ET

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- The Portland Archdiocese said Tuesday that it will file for bankruptcy because it can't afford to pay the potential cost of sex abuse lawsuits, becoming the first Roman Catholic diocese in the nation to seek such court relief.

The Chapter 11 bankruptcy action, planned for Tuesday afternoon, freezes the start of a priest abuse civil trial involving the late Rev. Maurice Grammond, who was accused of molesting more than 50 boys in the 1980s. Grammond died in 2002.

Plaintiffs in two lawsuits involving Grammond have sought a total of more than $160 million. The archdiocese and its insurers already have paid more than $53 million to settle more than 130 claims by people who say they were abused by priests.

Dozens of other claims are pending, and at Tuesday's news conference, church officials said they could not afford what the plaintiffs are asking.

``The pot of gold is pretty much empty right now,'' Archbishop John Vlazny said, who warned parishioners last year in a letter that the archdiocese might go bankrupt.

James Devereaux, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that had been scheduled to go to trial Tuesday, vowed that in spite of the announcement, ``We will continue our fight to finally get the archdiocese to accept the sin of its crimes.''

David Slader, a plaintiffs' attorney, said the church was simply trying to avoid the details of the lawsuit coming out in court. ``The bishop hasn't begun to touch his pot. He is lying,'' Slader told reporters.

No other U.S. diocese has ever declared bankruptcy, according to Fred J. Naffziger, a business law professor at Indiana University.

Tom Stilley, the attorney handling the archdiocese's bankruptcy filing, also said it was the first such case, but added other dioceses are considering the same step.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy frees an organization from the threat of creditors' lawsuits while it reorganizes. However, it could also open church records to public scrutiny, and could require church leaders to cede some control to the courts.

The Archdiocese of Boston, which was flooded with civil lawsuits after the clergy sex abuse crisis erupted there, considered bankruptcy, but opted to sell church real estate worth millions to settle the claims. The Diocese of Tucson, Ariz., last month said it was considering filing for bankruptcy to resolve pending lawsuits.

In the 1990s, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, N.M., was brought to the brink of bankruptcy, and had to borrow from parish savings accounts to pay millions of dollars in abuse cases.

This will be the first of a wave of bankruptcies.

We Broke It and We Own It

Ill-Serving Those Who Serve

Published: July 6, 2004

Although it has long been obvious that American ground forces would be overstretched by commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and elsewhere, the administration has resisted Congressional efforts to enlarge the Army permanently to cover projected needs — by most estimates, that means 20,000 to 40,000 more people. Such an expansion would cost as much as $10 billion and would need to be accounted for in the more than $400 billion military budget. To date, most of the cost of the Iraq war has not been paid from the military budget, but from nearly $100 billion in so-called supplemental funds. An additional "supplemental" of at least $25 billion is expected for fiscal year 2005. This type of accounting ensures that politicians' pet weapons projects do not have to compete for funds with the cost of more soldiers. Just slowing down the deployment of the Rube Goldberg ballistic-missile defense system would pay for a lot of soldiers.

In the meantime, overworked soldiers get orders for extended and multiple tours, even as new evidence shows that one in six soldiers who returned home from earlier tours in Iraq is showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or other severe emotional difficulties. If the Army persists in these extended tours and rapid-fire redeployments, the cost could be a drop in morale and in recruitment and re-enlistment rates. In general, Americans are made more vulnerable as soldiers are pulled out of the nuclear-armed Korean peninsula to serve in Iraq and are diverted from a real war against terrorism in Afghanistan.

The military argues that while the need for more soldiers is immediate, staffing and equipping new permanent divisions would take nearly two years — and that by then, they might not be needed. That is the same type of hope-for-the-best planning that caused this disaster.

U.S. Army Changed by Iraq, but for Better or Worse?
Some Military Experts See Value in Lessons Learned; Others Cite Toll on Personnel, Equipment

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 6, 2004; Page A10

The strain on Army troops, families and equipment has been extensively reported and is likely to intensify as some units head back to Iraq for a second tour. "The war in Iraq is wrecking the Army and the Marine Corps," retired Navy Capt. John Byron asserts in the July issue of Proceedings, the professional journal of Navy officers. "Troop rotations are in shambles and the all-volunteer force is starting to crumble as we extend combat tours and struggle to get enough boots on the ground."

The latest indication of the psychic toll was a recent study by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research that found that about 16 percent of soldiers who have served in Iraq are showing signs of combat trauma.

Overall, "this kind of stress causes change -- some of it good, some of it not so good," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a former Army officer who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Indeed, other, less visible changes also are occurring -- and some of them are for the better. A generation of younger Army officers has been seasoned by a year of combat in a harsh and unpredictable environment, for example. And as the Army seeks to adjust to waging a counterinsurgency campaign 7,000 miles away, innovation in how it trains new recruits and structures forces for deployment is now rippling through the service.

"Iraq is accelerating the pace of change in the military -- the Army particularly," said retired Army Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano, a defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "It is forcing them to look at a lot of things they had pushed off because they were hard to do."

In the other services, the changes seem to be mainly financial. At the Navy's big East Coast base in Norfolk, fewer tugboats will be on call this summer to help steer warships to their berths, a result of a decision to tighten base budgets to free up $300 million to help pay for Navy and Marine operations in Iraq. The sea service also is deferring purchases of some spare parts until the new federal fiscal year begins, in October.

"There may be some degradation of readiness as a result," said Vice Adm. Cutler Dawson, deputy chief of naval operations for resources. He also said he thought the effect would be short-term.

At the Air Force, trims are being made in the budgets for travel, transfers, and some purchases of parts and supplies. "We're attempting to minimize any of the readiness impacts," said Maj. Gen. Steve Lorenz, the Air Force's budget director. "We won't know until the end of the year how it all shakes out."

There is no question that the Army personnel system is stressed. "I think the Army is in terrible shape," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, who served last year as the Bush administration's first administrator in postwar Iraq. "I think people are worn out, equipment is run down and we've overstressed the reserves. We're drastically short [of] infantry and MPs because the Army is too small."

Other experts worry about the hidden costs of using up equipment in the extreme heat and abrasive dust of Iraq. Helicopters, armored vehicles and Humvees will have shorter service lives than the Army planned. "Equipment's taking a beating. Aircraft and high-cost tank engines are accumulating lots of hours," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Leonard Holder.

In the Army, the biggest long-term changes may be in how it trains -- if the lessons learned in counterinsurgency stick. After the Vietnam War, noted retired Army Lt. Col. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., who wrote a book on the Army and Vietnam, "we got out of the counterinsurgency business."

Global Pandemic

AIDS Epidemic Grows at Record Rate, Report Says
Increase in Cases Is Largest Since Global Outbreak Began

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 7, 2004; 7:22 AM

The AIDS epidemic is continuing to grow at a record rate with roughly 4.8 million people becoming infected last year with the virus that causes AIDS, according to a United Nations report released today.

That is the largest increase in any year since the global outbreak began, the report said.

Thirty-eight million people are living with HIV, as the epidemic continues to deepen in sub-Saharan Africa, by far the hardest hit region, and new epidemics seem to be swelling unchecked in Asia and Eastern Europe.

Life-prolonging drugs are not getting to those who need them most, according to the report. Some 400,000 people in the developing world have access to the drugs out of 6 million who need it, UN experts here said.

According to the report, the most global epidemic in history is also becoming increasingly feminine. Now, nearly half of all people infected between the ages of 15 and 49 are women. In Africa, the proportion is almost 60 percent.

The report comes at a time when the world has significantly boosted its commitment and resources to HIV/AIDS, but the need is still far greater, according to the fourth global report by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS released in advance of Sunday's 15th International AIDS Conference here.

"Over 20 years of AIDS provides us with compelling evidence that unless we act now we will be paying later -- a trenchant message for the countries of Asia and the Pacific," said Peter Piot, the program's executive director, in the report.

In Asia, with 60 percent of the world's population, 7.4 million people are living with HIV. One of every four newly-infected people is Asian.

The epidemic is fueled by drug use, sex work and sex between men, but it is fast moving into the general population, UN experts said.

Actually, the problem is that we didn't act 20 years ago. Remember Ronald Reagan?

UPDATE: Oh, yes, and then there is the Bush response to AIDS--

The new CDC regulations, published in the Federal Register, are mandatory for any AIDS-fighting organization that receives federal money for HIV prevention, and they finish the job of gutting effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education that has been a goal of the Bush Administration since it took office. Far from trying to "learn" from the Ugandans, the regs demand that any sex-ed "content" include information on the "lack of effectiveness of condom use." In other words, the Bush Administration wants AIDS-fighting organizations to tell people: Condoms don't work. At the same time, the regs mandate the teaching of the failed policy of abstinence from sex until (heterosexual) marriage.

UPDATE: The NYT covers the story from the angle of Asia--

H.I.V. Infection Rate in Asia Increases Sharply, U.N. Finds
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

Published: July 6, 2004

BANGKOK, July 6 — The proportion of the world's new H.I.V. infections occurring in Asia has risen sharply over the last two years as the global epidemic has outstripped efforts to stop it, the United Nations said in a report released here today.

The size of the increase surprised United Nations health officials, who said that 1 in 4 -- nearly 1.2 million of the estimated 4.8 million new infections in 2003 -- occurred in Asia. That figure rose from one in five - or about 910,000 of the 4.4 million new infections in 2001.

Burying the Lede

U.S. Response to Insurgency Called a Failure
Some top Bush officials and military experts say the Pentagon has no coherent strategy. Little change is expected with Iraq's new sovereignty.

By Mark Mazzetti, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Almost a year after acknowledging they were facing a well-armed guerrilla war in Iraq, the Pentagon and commanders in the Middle East are being criticized by some top Bush administration officials, military officers and defense experts who accuse the military of failing to develop a coherent, winning strategy against the insurgency.

Inadequate intelligence, poor assessments of enemy strength, testy relations with U.S. civilian authorities in Baghdad and an inconsistent application of force remain key problems many observers say the military must address before U.S. and Iraqi forces can quell the insurgents.

"It's disappointing that we haven't been able to have better insight into the command and control of the insurgents," said one senior official of the now-dissolved Coalition Provisional Authority, recently returned from Baghdad and speaking on condition of anonymity. "And you've got to have that if you're going to have effective military operations."

It was July 16, 2003, when Army Gen. John Abizaid stood at a Pentagon podium during his first news conference as head of U.S. Central Command and declared — after weeks of Pentagon denials — that U.S. troops were fighting a "classic guerrilla-type war" in Iraq.

Now, after a year of violence and hundreds of U.S. combat deaths, some officials and experts are frustrated that a more effective counterinsurgency plan has not materialized and that the hand-over of power to an interim Iraqi government last week was unlikely to significantly improve the security situation.

"We're going to have the same cast of characters in Washington and the same commander [Abizaid] in the field," said Andrew Krepinevich of the Center of Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, an expert on counterinsurgency warfare. "What gives you a sense of confidence we're going to become a lot more competent at something we haven't shown a great deal of competence at doing for a year?"

Some top American officials bristle at the criticism and say the U.S.-led coalition's plan has been consistent from the beginning: to bring security to Iraq in preparation for an eventual hand-over to Iraqi forces.

This article is a mess. It reads like the reporter needed to file.

Optimism for Dummies

Bye-Bye, Bush Boom
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: July 6, 2004

When does optimism — the Bush campaign's favorite word these days — become an inability to face facts? On Friday, President Bush insisted that a seriously disappointing jobs report, which fell far short of the pre-announcement hype, was good news: "We're witnessing steady growth, steady growth. And that's important. We don't need boom-or-bust-type growth."

But Mr. Bush has already presided over a bust. For the first time since 1932, employment is lower in the summer of a presidential election year than it was on the previous Inauguration Day. Americans badly need a boom to make up the lost ground. And we're not getting it.

When March's numbers came in much better than expected, I cautioned readers not to make too much of one good month. Similarly, we shouldn't make too much of June's disappointment. The question is whether, taking a longer perspective, the economy is performing well. And the answer is no.

If you want a single number that tells the story, it's the percentage of adults who have jobs. When Mr. Bush took office, that number stood at 64.4. By last August it had fallen to 62.2 percent. In June, the number was 62.3. That is, during Mr. Bush's first 30 months, the job situation deteriorated drastically. Last summer it stabilized, and since then it may have improved slightly. But jobs are still very scarce, with little relief in sight.

Bush campaign ads boast that 1.5 million jobs were added in the last 10 months, as if that were a remarkable achievement. It isn't. During the Clinton years, the economy added 236,000 jobs in an average month. Those 1.5 million jobs were barely enough to keep up with a growing working-age population.

In the spring, it seemed as if the pace of job growth was accelerating: in March and April, the economy added almost 700,000 jobs. But that now looks like a blip — a one-time thing, not a break in the trend. May growth was slightly below the Clinton-era average, and June's numbers — only 112,000 new jobs, and a decline in working hours — were pretty poor.

What about overall growth? After two and a half years of slow growth, real G.D.P. surged in the third quarter of 2003, growing at an annual rate of more than 8 percent. But that surge appears to have been another blip. In the first quarter of 2004, growth was down to 3.9 percent, only slightly above the Clinton-era average. Scattered signs of weakness — rising new claims for unemployment insurance, sales warnings at Target and Wal-Mart, falling numbers for new durable goods orders — have led many analysts to suspect that growth slowed further in the second quarter.

And economic growth is passing working Americans by. The average weekly earnings of nonsupervisory workers rose only 1.7 percent over the past year, lagging behind inflation. The president of Aetna, one of the biggest health insurers, recently told investors, "It's fair to say that a lot of the jobs being created may not be the jobs that come with benefits." Where is the growth going? No mystery: after-tax corporate profits as a share of G.D.P. have reached a level not seen since 1929.

What should we be doing differently? For three years many economists have argued that the most effective job-creating policies would be increased aid to state and local governments, extended unemployment insurance and tax rebates for lower- and middle-income families. The Bush administration paid no attention — it never even gave New York all the aid Mr. Bush promised after 9/11, and it allowed extended unemployment insurance to lapse. Instead, it focused on tax cuts for the affluent, ignoring warnings that these would do little to create jobs.

After good job growth in March and April, the administration declared its approach vindicated. That was premature, to say the least. Whatever boost the economy got from the tax cuts is now behind us, and given the size of the budget deficit, another big tax cut is out of the question. It's time to change the policy mix — to rescind some of those upper-income cuts and pursue the policies we should have been following all along.

One last point: government policies could do a lot about the failure of new jobs to come with health benefits, a huge source of anxiety for many American families. John Kerry is right to make health care a central plank of his platform. I'll analyze his proposals in a future column.

I'd love to be optimistic, but I don't have a job and having sent out hundreds of resumes, I don't know when I'm going to find one. I'd love to be optimistic, but my health insurance expires in a month and I don't have the grand it will take to extend it. I'd love to be optimistic, but if the check I'm waiting for from cleaning out my last annuity doesn't arrive this week, I don't know how I'll pay my mortgage.

Optimistic, Mr. Bush? What weed are you smoking? The rest of us have to learn to live with less.

Boston and Blogs

What a dumb headline. We didn't exist four years ago.

The Wrong Target

C.I.A. Held Back Iraqi Arms Data, U.S. Officials Say
By JAMES RISEN

Published: July 6, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 5 — The Central Intelligence Agency was told by relatives of Iraqi scientists before the war that Baghdad's programs to develop unconventional weapons had been abandoned, but the C.I.A. failed to give that information to President Bush, even as he publicly warned of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons, according to government officials.

The existence of a secret prewar C.I.A. operation to debrief relatives of Iraqi scientists — and the agency's failure to give their statements to the president and other policymakers — has been uncovered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The panel has been investigating the government's handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq's unconventional weapons and plans to release a wide-ranging report this week on the first phase of its inquiry. The report is expected to contain a scathing indictment of the C.I.A. and its leaders for failing to recognize that the evidence they had collected did not justify their assessment that Mr. Hussein had illicit weapons.

C.I.A. officials, saying that only a handful of relatives made claims that the weapons programs were dead, play down the significance of the information collected in the secret debriefing operation. That operation is one of a number of significant disclosures by the Senate investigation. The Senate report, intelligence officials say, concludes that the agency and the rest of the intelligence community did a poor job of collecting information about the status of Iraq's weapons programs, and that analysts at the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies did an even worse job of writing reports that accurately reflected the information they had.

Among the many problems that contributed to the committee's harsh assessment of the C.I.A.'s prewar performance were instances in which analysts may have misrepresented information, writing reports that distorted evidence in order to bolster their case that Iraq did have chemical, biological and nuclear programs, according to government officials. The Senate found, for example, that an Iraqi defector who supposedly provided evidence of the existence of a biological weapons program had actually said he did not know of any such program.

In another case concerning whether a shipment of aluminum tubes seized on its way to Iraq was evidence that Baghdad was trying to build a nuclear bomb, the Senate panel raised questions about whether the C.I.A. had become an advocate, rather than an objective observer, and selectively sought to prove that the tubes were for a nuclear weapons program.

While the Senate panel has concluded that C.I.A. analysts and other intelligence officials overstated the case that Iraq had illicit weapons, the committee has not found any evidence that the analysts changed their reports as a result of political pressure from the White House, according to officials familiar with the report.

The Senate report is expected to criticize both the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, and his deputy, John McLaughlin, and other senior C.I.A. officials, for the way they managed the agency before the war. Mr. Tenet has announced his resignation, effective July 11, and Mr. McLaughlin will serve as acting director until a permanent director is appointed. The C.I.A. has scheduled a farewell ceremony for Mr. Tenet on Thursday, just as the reverberations from the Senate report are likely to be hitting the agency.

The possibility that Mr. Tenet personally overstated the evidence has been investigated by the Senate panel, officials said. He was interviewed privately by the panel recently, and was asked whether he told President Bush that the case for the existence of Iraq's unconventional weapons was a "slam dunk."

In his book about the Bush administration's planning for the war in Iraq, "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward reported that Mr. Tenet reassured Mr. Bush about the evidence of the existence of Iraq's illicit weapons after Mr. Bush had made clear he was unimpressed by the evidence presented to him in a December 2002 briefing by Mr. McLaughlin. "It's a slam-dunk case!" Mr. Tenet is quoted as telling the president.

In his private interview with the Senate panel, Mr. Tenet refused to say whether he had used the "slam-dunk" phrase, arguing that his conversations with the president were privileged, officials said.

I don't know how much wronger the pros could have got it. We went to war for no reason other than the Bush blood lust, and Tenet helped them out. His name will be scarred forever for that. I hope it helps him sleep well at night. None of these crooks seem to have a problem with that.

The Missing

This material has been available for a while, but I'm glad to see the Boston Globe give it another run in public.
Translator in eye of storm on retroactive classification

By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff | July 5, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Sifting through old classified materials in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds said, she made an alarming discovery: Intercepts relevant to the terrorist plot, including references to skyscrapers, had been overlooked because they were badly translated into English.

Edmonds, 34, who is fluent in Turkish and Farsi, said she quickly reported the mistake to an FBI superior. Five months later, after flagging what she said were several other security lapses in her division, she was fired. Now, after more than two years of investigations and congressional inquiries, Edmonds is at the center of an extraordinary storm over US classification rules that sheds new light on the secrecy imperative supported by members of the Bush administration.

In a rare maneuver, Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered that information about the Edmonds case be retroactively classified, even basic facts that have been posted on websites and discussed openly in meetings with members of Congress for two years. The Department of Justice also invoked the seldom-used ''state secrets" privilege to silence Edmonds in court. She has been blocked from testifying in a lawsuit brought by victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and was allowed to speak to the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks only behind closed doors.

Meanwhile, the FBI has yet to release its internal investigation into her charges. And the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the bureau, has been stymied in its attempt to get to the bottom of her allegations. Now that the case has been retroactively classified, lawmakers are wary of discussing the details, for fear of overstepping legal bounds.

''I'm alarmed that the FBI is reaching back in time and classifying information it provided two years ago," Senator Charles E. Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and a leading advocate for Edmonds, said last Friday. ''Frankly, it looks like an attempt to impede legitimate oversight of a serious problem at the FBI."

Edmonds, a naturalized US citizen who grew up in Turkey and Iran, said in an interview last week that the ordeal has made her grow disillusioned with the ''magical system of checks and balances and separation of powers" that had made her so drawn to the United States. ''What I came to see is that it exists only in name," Edmonds said. ''Where is the oversight? Who is there to stop him [Ashcroft]?"

In a development that legal analysts say is disturbing, a pattern of retroactive classifications has begun to emerge in recent years, all of them pertaining to -- but not limited to -- national security. For example, Representative John F. Tierney, Democrat of Massachusetts, is locked in an ongoing battle with the Defense Department over testing requirements for a national missile defense system that were made public in 2000 but have since been declared classified.

Bush administration officials argue that the three-year campaign against terrorism has required unprecedented levels of confidentiality, especially inside intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Critics do not dispute the need for heightened secrecy in the current environment. Edmonds is careful not to discuss standard classified information, such as methods the FBI used to obtain the material she translated.

But she and a growing number of her defenders -- who include a government watchdog group, some Sept. 11 families, and Grassley, a Bush administration ally -- maintain that the secrecy imposed on her case has jeopardized national security. One of Edmonds's assertions to her superiors included suspicions of espionage within the FBI, which she said the bureau has not addressed.

''Their [the administration's] mantra seems to be that secrecy promotes safety, and I don't think that's true," said David Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor who is representing the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight in a lawsuit challenging the retroactive classification. ''At times, I think secrecy breeds suspicion."

Edmonds's native skills drew her to languages. Born in Istanbul, raised for seven years in Tehran, with Azerbaijani relatives on her father's side, she speaks three languages crucial to intelligence-gathering in the Middle East. She does not speak Arabic. But her specialty languages were no less important after Sept. 11, 2001, when investigators began tracking Al Qaeda and other terrorist connections in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Iran.

She had a job application at the FBI before Sept. 11, and it was accelerated after the attacks so she could start work Sept. 20. One of her main assignments, she said, was to expedite requested translations from field agents, including material that a field agent in Arizona submitted for retranslation on a suspicion that it had not been examined thoroughly before Sept. 11.

''After I retranslated it verbatim, I went to my supervisor to say, 'I need to talk to this agent over a secure line because what we came across in this retranslating is gigantic, it has specific information about certain specific activity related to 9/11,' " Edmonds recalled. ''The supervisor blocked this retranslation from being sent to the same agent. The reasoning this [supervisor] gave me was, 'How would you like it if another translator did this same thing to you? The original translator is going to be held responsible.' "

In the end, Edmonds said, the field agent who requested a reinterpretation of the intelligence material ''knew there were things that were missing, and yet he was reassured by the Washington field office that the original translation was fine."

Edmonds said the intercept jumped out at her because it contained references to skyscrapers and the US visa application process. Such references might have triggered suspicions at Immigration and Naturalization Services before Sept. 11 if they had been correctly translated, she said, but they seemed unrelated before the attacks, in part because they were gathered during the course of a criminal investigation.

[A Phoenix FBI agent was the source of a memo before the attacks warning about Middle Easterners taking flying lessons. Edmonds does not know whether the same agent is related to her case.]

Edmonds said she made another troubling discovery: One of her colleagues admitted being a member of an organization with ties to the Middle East that was a target of an FBI investigation. The colleague, also a Turkish translator, invited Edmonds to join the group, assuring her that her FBI credentials would guarantee admission. Edmonds declined to name the organization, because she said it has been under surveillance.

Two months later, Edmonds said, one of the agents she worked with found hundreds of pages of translation that her Turkish-speaking colleague had stamped ''not pertinent" and had therefore gone untranslated.

The agent asked Edmonds to retranslate her colleague's work. ''We came across 17 pieces of extremely specific and important information that was blocked, and at that point, this agent and I went to the FBI security department in the Washington field office, and found out my supervisor had not reported my original complaints," she said.

Edmonds said she was repeatedly warned that she would be opening a ''can of worms" if she kept filing security complaints, but she continued reporting lapses to ever-higher levels of management until, in March 2002, she wrote a letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, she said. She also contacted the Senate Judiciary Committee. In response, the FBI confiscated her home computer, challenged her to take a polygraph test, which she said she passed, and terminated her contract.

This is not warmed-over conspiricy theory, this is gross incompentence papered over in the highest offices in the land. If you aren't outraged, I think you are broken.

A Justice Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Previously, officials have said Edmonds was fired for disruptive behavior on the job.

I rest my case

Reading

If you aren't reading Jack Whelan you are missing one of the most powerful voices in the culture war. By the way, it is real and you have a stake in the outcome.

Whether you think it's a good thing or a bad thing, the force that more than any other that is destroying "traditional" America is consumer captialism. The free market may or may not be a good way to run an economy, but there is no other force unleashed in the history of the world that has had a more devastating effect on traditional cultures.The conservatives want to have their cake [traditional values]and eat it too [consumer capitalism], but they are deluding themsleves if they really believe that in the long run the latter will not completely destroy the former.

But the cat's out of the bag, and there's no getting it back in. So don't blame the liberal elite. Their values are simply the inevitable product of the affluence that comes to those who are the winners in the free-market system. They are not the cause; they are simply the effect. I'm interested in a politics that focuses on causes not effects.

Are you a liberal, interested in trade, but also cultural diverstity, tolerance and a fair market? Or areare you a free market hegemonist? The cause, as Jack says, will determine the effects. This is powerful thinking.

To Hold the Universe in your Hands

This is a delightful appreciation of poet Pablo Neruda, a personal favorite of yer bloghostess, who has been known to practice the dark art herself. Even published a few in the "little journals." You may have learned about Neruda from the movie "Il Postino" a few years back. He was one of the top handful of 20th. C. poets and I'm fond of the best of his work. As a practitioner, I know that you have to write a lot of garbage in order to get to your few really top notch poems, but this reviewer excoriates Neruda for having written C-plus work. The man clearly doesn't know how the process works. If you write, or aspire to write, I recommend Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird, particularly the chapter named "Shitty First Drafts." It rescued me as a writer and may one day do the same for you.

Here is Ilan Stevens in the Chronicle of Higher Education on Neruda's best and worst. It is a decent appreciation, even if the carping is unwarranted.

Neruda, like Jorge Luis Borges, attempted to capture the universe -- or at least a universe -- in a single book. Poetry today appears to have lost that ambition, supplanting it with an endless emphasis on the autobiographical. In accepting the Nobel Prize, Neruda said: "I did not learn from books any recipe for writing a poem, and I, in my turn, will avoid giving any advice on mode or style which might give the new poets even a drop of supposed insight." Nevertheless, his own oeuvre displays a clear pedagogy: uniting poetry and history.

Neruda's Buddhist-like concentration on the mundane, insignificant objects surrounding us also speaks to us today: a stamp album, an artichoke, a watermelon, a bee, a village movie theater. My personal favorite is his "Ode to the Dictionary": "you are not a/tomb, sepulcher, grave/tumulus, mausoleum,/but guard and keeper,/hidden fire."

Neruda is worth putting into conversation with Czeslaw Milosz, another poet I love who confronted the conflict between solitude and relationship, and is still doing it at 90. At 90, I aspire to still be breathing. The idea that he is still making art beggars me.

The House of Intel

Bush said to be close to naming CIA chief
Roberts: 'What we had was a worldwide intelligence failure'

Monday, July 5, 2004 Posted: 2:48 PM EDT (1848 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House is getting close to naming a CIA director as counterterror officials warn of a heightened risk of attack leading up to the election four months away.

Washington insiders have speculated for a month about who else may be: Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage; former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Georgia; Rep. Christopher Cox, R-California; former National Security Agency director, retired Adm. William O. Studeman; and perhaps McLaughlin.

Porter Goss is considered the frontrunner, and he would almost be guaranteed a relatively trouble-free confirmation. However, he would be a lousy choice as agency head. He's been chairing the House oversight committee for years, and it has done virtually nothing to encourage the reforms which are now (obviously) needed. This job is going to require someone who is both familiar with what has gone wrong in the past and with a vision of how the place should optimally run. Sam Nunn chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when the Dems were still in the majority in the Senate, but I have a hard time even imagining W nominating a Dem.

Money Matters

Jack Barnes's Monday investment column is up at The Agonist:

Great care should be taken in this market at this time. We are in the middle of the dog days of summer and the market is showing every sign of not paying attention to details. August is just around the corner when the Hampton crowds hedge their risks and go on vacation. The continued Middle East issues do not appear to be abating at this time. With US elections only a few months away now, and two conventions and the Olympics all coming up, consider raising your cash levels and lowering your over all risk capital at this time.

This is the same advice that I've been dishing to friends and relations for the last few months. With employment remaining soft and interest rates (and inflation) beginning to rise, the fundamentals under the current economic expansion remain very soft and unstable. Had I any money to invest right now, I'd be moving aggressively into a "safe harbor" strategy and lowering my exposure to equities, at least into Q4 of this year.

Back to the Fifties

Expendable Women

Published: July 5, 2004

One of the uglier aspects of the Bush administration's assault on women's reproductive rights is its concerted undermining of the United Nations Population Fund based on the false accusation that it supports coerced abortions in China.

The fund supports programs in some 141 countries to advance poor women's reproductive health, reduce infant mortality, end the sexual trafficking of women and prevent the spread of H.I.V. and AIDS. Yet under pressure from conservative religious groups, the administration is expected to withhold the $34 million that Congress appropriated this year for these vital efforts, much as President Bush blocked the $34 million Congress approved in 2002 and last year's $25 million allocation.

The damage does not end there. The administration has lately stepped up its effort to isolate the Population Fund by quietly threatening the financing of other leading groups, including Unicef and the World Health Organization, if they continue to work with the fund. Take the chilling example of Marie Stopes International. Last year the State Department discontinued support for a small but well-regarded private AIDS program for African and Asian refugees run by Marie Stopes and other groups, citing Marie Stopes's cooperating in China with the Population Fund.

Just last month, three federal agencies — the United States Agency for International Development, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — pulled their support from a major international conference on health issues, apparently owing to the inclusion of speakers from the Population Fund and the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

To justify these destructive machinations, the Bush administration has perpetuated a bogus accusation that the Population Fund has either stood by or helped with coerced abortions in China. This disregards America's own relationship with China, never mind that none of the money approved by Congress would go to China, or that the State Department's investigating team found no evidence that the Population Fund has supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization. It also disregards the Population Fund's crucial role in helping to drive down China's abortion rate below the level of the United States and in encouraging China to devote new attention to combating H.I.V. and AIDS.

In truth, the administration's targeting of the Population Fund is not really about abortion. It is an attack on comprehensive family planning and women's sexual and reproductive autonomy, driven largely by right-wing ideologues unswervingly opposed to all forms of family planning and contraceptive use. As a result, the United States is helping to deny vulnerable women living in isolated rural areas essential information and services needed to avoid pregnancy and disease.

This is off the radar screen, but the neocons have a social agenda that wants to roll women's rights back by a couple of decades. While we are contemplating the cost per family of the war in Iraq, we are simultaneously rolling back women's ability to provide for their families economically.

The Burdens of Nationhood

A Draft for Some

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, July 5, 2004; Page A17

....
As Rep. Charles Rangel of New York pointed out last week, "A draft already exists for those currently serving and subject to stop-loss orders and involuntary extensions."

The possibility of getting caught up in one of those stop-loss orders -- where tours of duty are extended -- is written into the fine print when volunteers enlist, so they are not illegal. But in the current circumstances, they are outrageous. Back home, those being held on duty have neighbors and friends who never thought to serve and could thus enjoy a lovely July Fourth weekend at the beach or in the mountains with their families. But God help those already serving.

Volunteers are told suddenly that they are not free to go after their period of duty is up. They are in this position because our political leaders ignored the counsel of military leaders who knew the occupation of Iraq would require more troops than the politicians were willing to commit. When they were selling the war, those politicians did not want to admit how hard things might get. Nor were they willing to be candid about how their expansive foreign policy requires more troops than the administration is willing to pay for.

God forbid that Americans earning, say, more than $1 million a year be asked to pony up a little more in taxes to support a larger military at a time when, we are told over and over, the country is in the middle of a war on terrorism. Millionaires can't be asked to sacrifice even a little bit. No, they deserve to have their taxes cut while others fight and die. And anyone who speaks up in opposition to this injustice risks being called unpatriotic by those who give up absolutely nothing themselves. Patriotism is defined as a solicitude for tidy incomes, a belief in anything Rush Limbaugh says on the radio and a demand that those in charge of the country never be held accountable for their mistakes.

Oh, yes, and the Individual Ready Reserve is also being called up. As Rangel noted, these are Americans who "have already served their complete active duty commitment of four to six years. They have proved their allegiance to this country in a way few others have." Yet the administration "is yanking thousands of these heroes from their homes, jobs, communities and families and placing them in harm's way yet again."

It's said over and over that "9/11 changed us," that we live in "the new normal." But for most of us, there is nothing new about the normal, except perhaps a fear of some new terrorist attack. Could it possibly be that all our praise for our "heroes" who gave of themselves was just hot air? Are we playing our heroes for suckers?

If we mean what we've said in the 34 months since Sept. 11, 2001, you would think that national service would be a central theme in our politics. At the least, you'd think that we would pass a large new GI Bill providing real benefits -- college educations, job ladders, help with homeownership -- for those who give of themselves to the country. Our men and women in the armed forces and police, firefighters and highly skilled teachers who try to lift up poor kids in inner cities and rural America all deserve honor and appreciation.

If our current leaders are unwilling to ask themselves and other privileged Americans to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, they at least owe us some candor about the costs of their grand enterprises and greater justice in how those burdens are apportioned.

Those who elect to serve are entitled to some certainty in their terms of service. That certainty has been yanked away by a dodgy foreign policy.

When You've Pissed on Them, Don't Expect Much Back

Talk about "burying the lede. " Jack Deihl's piece this morning tries to apolgize for it.

The threat lies not in Iraq -- where continued transatlantic discord in fact makes a full-blown NATO operation impossible -- but in Afghanistan, which NATO long ago adopted as a major ongoing mission. Last year the allies resolved to expand a modest peacekeeping force in Kabul to provincial centers around the country, an operation critical to bolstering the authority of the weak pro-Western government and making possible the national elections planned for this year.

Yet, after months and months of haggling, European governments were only barely able to commit at Istanbul to staffing three new provincial centers, each with a couple of hundred troops. The cup-rattling forced on Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was humiliating: With 26 nations and 5 million men in arms to draw on, Scheffer struggled to obtain just three helicopters for the Afghan operation.

A desperate appeal for more help by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to the Istanbul summit essentially went unanswered. A promise was made to supply a couple of thousand more troops at the time of the elections, but no one knows where they will come from. At best, NATO will have 8,400 troops under its command in Afghanistan by the fall, or about a fifth of the number it dispatched to tiny Kosovo in 1999. The United States has some 14,000 troops in the country, but none are under NATO's command.

It now looks possible that the Afghan elections will be postponed because of lack of security. If so, NATO will get much of the blame -- and the consequences for the alliance's cohesion may be dire. "Afghanistan is the litmus test for NATO's new mission," says a European ambassador in Washington. "If we fail in Afghanistan we might as well fold up and go home, because no one will take us seriously after that."

The mess points to the realities behind the happy talk from Istanbul. Though it now extols NATO rhetorically, the Pentagon's practical approach to it hasn't changed: No American troops have been pledged to the NATO Afghan mission, and proposals to bring the U.S. forces already there under NATO's umbrella have gone nowhere. European governments, for their part, doubt that Bush's conversion to multilateralism is real -- and consequently have little appetite for an operation that appears thankless as well as dangerous and expensive.

"The allies need more reassurance," the European ambassador told me. "We want to be assured that what we're now seeing is not multilateralism growing out of desperation -- because desperate multilateralism is not effective multilateralism."

Yet, even if the Europeans were more enthusiastic, they might have little to contribute. Germany, the largest country in the European Union, has 270,000 soldiers in its army -- yet its commanders maintain that no more than about 10,000 can be deployed at any one time. No matter the politics, the German Parliament is unlikely to authorize an increase in the current ceiling of 2,300 troops for Afghanistan. And Germany is the largest contributor to the NATO operation -- France, which has never liked the idea of NATO operations outside of Europe, has only 800 soldiers there.

For now, Bush's interest lies in glossing over this trouble. Kerry's pitch is that he can make it go away with a new, alliance-centered foreign policy. Both are, in effect, counting on the myth's staying alive -- at least until November.

Erm, Jack, your point would be? Getting us into this mess was George W. Bush. The fact that he doesn't have an exit strategy might be one of the reasons for booting his ass. He doesn't know shit about NATO and you do. How nice, but that doesn't change the facts on the ground. President Uncurious peed on NATO. If he needs them now, the stink is still on the table.

Crummy Reporting

Interest Increasing In Government Jobs
Federal Applicant Pool Boasts Top Talent

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 5, 2004; Page A15

Nearly two-thirds of job seekers surveyed at a recent New York job fair said they had grown more interested in working for the federal government in the past few years, and many would prefer working in government to the private sector.

Those were two of the findings reported last week by the Office of Personnel Management, which commissioned the survey of people at an April 20 recruitment fair at Madison Square Garden. The event attracted more than 80 government and private employers and more than 5,000 attendees, of whom 932 voluntarily completed OPM questionnaires.

OPM Director Kay Coles James and other top officials said the agency wanted to gain a better understanding of the pool of potential applicants for the thousands of job openings in the federal government. (Job postings are listed on the federal employment Web site, www.usajobs.opm.gov.)

Identifying who is interested in working for the government, and why, involves flexing muscles that federal officials had little reason to use during a decade of government downsizing, said Doris Hausser, OPM's chief human capital officer and senior policy adviser.

"Government recruitment pretty much atrophied in the '90s," Hausser said Thursday at a news conference at which she discussed the survey results.

Geeze, who hires these reporters? The private job market is still in the crapper, so, of course, people are going to be looking at government work. Government recruitment atrophied in the '90's when the private employment market was hot and paying about twice what the Feds did. This isn't rocket science, children. Do I need to give you another tutorial on what the jobless numbers from last Friday mean? The job market still stinks and the Feds are going to feast on that. I've applied for government work and the statistics are still Darwinian. There isn't a lot of work out there, no matter how canny, crafty and well connected you are.

The Cost

A Daily Look at U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq
The Associated Press
Published: Jul 4, 2004

As of Friday, July 2, 858 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq last year, according to the Defense Department. Of those, 636 died as a result of hostile action and 222 died of non-hostile causes. The military did not provide an update over the weekend.

The British military has reported 59 deaths; Italy, 18; Spain, eight; Bulgaria and Poland, six each; Ukraine, four; Slovakia, three; Thailand, two; Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and the Netherlands have reported one each.

Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 720 U.S. soldiers have died - 527 as a result of hostile action and 193 of non-hostile causes, according to the military as of Friday.

Let's keep track of what we are spending, shall we?

The security disaster in Iraq, which was created by the ineptitude and overweening ambition of the United States, is extremely worrying to other countries in the region. Fallujah and other Iraqi centers of radical Islamism and radical Arab nationalism could easily spill over into Jordan and Palestine. In short, you could have a Fallujah axis that stretched from Iraq's Sunni heartland to Zarqa, Irbid and Maan in Jordan, and thence to the West Bank and Gaza. Jordan's King Abdullah II sits on a shakey throne allied with the United States and Israel. Over half his population is Palestinian as opposed to East Bank Arabs (often of Bedouin ancestry). If the Fallujan insurgents managed to set up cells in predominantly Palestinian cities like Irbid or in Salafi centers like Maan in Jordan and coordinate, it could destabilize the kingdom. Jordan's most vigorous dissident politics wells up from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis, the same kind of ideology predominating in Fallujah.

So it is not at all surprising that the countries in Iraq's neighborhood opposed rash US action in that country to begin with, and now fear that the chaos in Iraq will reach out in a wave of destabilization that will bring not democracy by religious radicalism and terrorism. For secular Sunni Arab regimes facing this threat, an obvious response is to commit their own troops in Iraq to shore up the caretaker government and disrupt terrorist networks.

This war is going to cost us pretty in coin, too, by the way.

Iraq War 'Will Cost
Each US Family $3,415'
By Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian - UK
6-25-4

The United States has spent more than $126bn on the war in Iraq, which will ultimately cost every American family an estimated $3,415, according to a new report by two thinktanks.

The report, published yesterday by the leftwing Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus also counts the human costs.

As of June 16, before yesterday's nationwide attacks, up to 11,317 Iraqi civilians and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers or insurgents had been killed, according to the report, which is titled Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War.

The death toll among coalition troops was 952 by the same date, of which 853 were American. Some 694, were killed after George Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1 last year. Between 50 and 90 civilian contractors and missionaries and 30 journalists have also been killed, the report says.

In a separate USA Today/ CNN/Gallup Poll released last night, for the first time a majority of Americans said the US-led invasion of Iraq was a mistake. In all, 54% of those polled said the move was a mistake, compared to 41% three weeks ago.

"We are paying this enormously high price for failure," Phyllis Bennis, the report's lead author, said yesterday. "It's not as if we are becoming more safe. It's not as if we are bringing peace to Iraq or democracy to the Middle East."

There was no immediate re sponse to the report from the White House yesterday, but the administration has insisted it will stay in Iraq until it has brought peace and stability in the country.

It was reported yesterday that the US central command had put 25,000 more troops on standby in anticipation of an upsurge in attacks after the formal transfer of sovereignty to a caretaker administration next Wednesday.

Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, said he could not confirm the figures in volved, but the US military "definitely has plans to deal with whatever may confront us". He denied US forces were facing an insurgency in Iraq. "An insurgency implies something that rose up afterwards ... It is a continuation of the war by people who never quit," he told NBC television.

"We know the enemy, which is a mixture of al-Qaida-type terrorists like [Abu Musab al] Zarqawi and the killers of Saddam's regime, who have basically made an alliance with each other, are going to target this next six-month period to create as much chaos ... as they can." However, he added: "The longer-term goal is to get Iraqis in the frontlines."

On top of the $126.1bn war spending approved by US Congress to date, another $25bn is likely to be spent by the end of this year.

The report predicted the war will ultimately cost each US household $3,415; its annual costs would be enough to provide healthcare for more than half of the 43 million US citizens who lack medical insur ance. Danielle Pletka, an analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, rejected such budget comparisons as intellectually dishonest. "That's not the way budgets work," she said. "I don't think healthcare has been robbed to pay for Iraq."

Paying the Price quotes a University of Texas economist, James Galbraith, as predicting that although the expenditure would initially boost the economy, long-term problems were likely, including an expanded trade deficit and high infla tion, with the spike in oil prices adding to the downward drag on the US economy. "

Born on the Fourth of July

Swiped from the relief crew at Atrios, because this belongs to all of us:

Progressives show their patriotism today by looking for a union label in their American-made clothes, or they can look for a “fair trade” label on various consumer goods made overseas. (Help is available from several nonprofit groups: www.fair
tradefederation.com; www.transfairusa.org; www.nosweat
apparel.com; and www.unionlabel.org.) The American activists who’ve protested at World Trade Organization and World Bank meetings to demand better living standards for Third World workers aren’t simply do-gooders. When workers in China or Mexico get paid a living wage, American companies have less incentive to move jobs from U.S. soil, and those workers have more money to buy U.S.-made products.

In the midst of a controversial and increasingly unpopular war, and with a presidential election under way that will shape the nation’s direction, there is no better way to celebrate America than to listen to Van Zandt’s patriotic anthem. And while doing so, maybe waving a flag and remembering it’s also yours.

For Your Pleasure

Independence Day Viewing

The Talk Shows

Sunday, July 4, 2004; Page A05

Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC), 8 a.m.: Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG), 9 a.m.: Former U.S. administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer, Republican pollster Ed Goeas and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA), 10:30 a.m.: Bush campaign Chairman Marc Racicot and Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe.

THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA), 11:30 a.m.: Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Matthew Dowd of the Bush campaign and Tad Devine, adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry.

LATE EDITION (CNN), noon: Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.), Reps. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and David Dreier (R-Calif.), Vanessa Kerry, the Democratic candidate's younger daughter, Republican pollster Michael Cohen, Democratic pollster Geoffrey D. Garin, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister for National Security Barham Salih and Ziad Khasawneh, attorney for Saddam Hussein.

The Mystery Continues

Preparing Quick Prayers As the Fallen Come Home
Chaplain Blesses Coffins Arriving in U.S.

By Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 4, 2004; Page A01

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Air Force Chaplain Robert Cannon plans to begin the July 4 holiday the way he starts most mornings: showing up for work around 7:30 a.m., about a half-hour before anyone else arrives, when the mortuary is quiet and still and he can use the time to write the words he'll speak to God.

On most days, the prayers he pens are for the country's fallen warriors who arrive here from the front lines in flag-draped coffins. If he's lucky, Cannon will have a few hours' notice before the dead arrive. And sometimes there will even be a few details available beyond name, rank and religious background that will help shape his compositions.

But most often he knows little of the dead for whom he says words of blessing, other than that their bodies have traveled a long way, from Iraq or Afghanistan, crossing Europe and the Atlantic to this base where since 1955 the remains of more than 50,000 of the country's war dead have been processed, identified and prepared for burial. And so Cannon says a short, simple prayer, hoping he's chosen words they'd like, words that honor them.

Since the war in Iraq began last year, there has been a constant stream of military cargo planes carrying dead soldiers home. More than 850 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, and Cannon has been there to meet many of them, day and night. But whether it's 3 in the morning or 3 in the afternoon, the military's solemn and choreographed ritual of welcoming the dead home is the same.

Cannon, one of two chaplains assigned to the mortuary, boards the plane with a small party that usually consists of high-ranking officers from different branches of the service. As part of the time-honored ritual, he says his encomium over a cluster of coffins. The honor guard -- similar to the kind used in former president Ronald Reagan's recent funeral -- then takes the remains into the mortuary. Soldiers salute. Flags flap in the wind, and the only other sounds are footsteps on the tarmac. Even the honor guard's orders are issued in a hushed tone.

"The silence itself is profound," Cannon said.

Since May, when the Department of Defense changed its policy that barred families from viewing the event, only one family has chosen to come to witness the coffin being brought off the plane and put into a hearse. Gregg White, whose 19-year-old son, Marine Lance Cpl. Russell P. White, was killed in Afghanistan, said in an interview that the family "wanted to welcome our son back to American soil." The transfer took no longer than 10 minutes, but the family, from Delaware, was glad it went, he said.

"I just felt total peace and silence," he said. "It was powerful, and it was comforting."

The media have not been allowed to cover the arrivals of coffins here for 13 years, which has stirred controversy since war began. But to Cannon it matters little whether the rite is public.

"Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking," he said. "It's not political. It's what we do for someone who has given their life."

The moment, he said, is for him and the dead and God. Although it may be a solemn, even beautiful, occasion, it is no spectacle, he said. It is the military's way of welcoming fallen warriors home from the battlefield and honoring them, as well. No matter how many prayers Cannon writes, he continues to be awed and humbled by the sacrifice.

"Lord God, we stand humbly before these valiant Marines," he said in a recent service aboard the plane. "It is our deep and sacred honor to welcome them home once again. . . . Bless their fellow Marines with whom they served. Protect and guard them. May the bravery of these Marines strengthen our resolve in the difficult work of laying the foundation for peace in our time."

Fr. Cannon is a Catholic priest. There are other chaplains for those not of the Christian faith. The mystery of life and death is the same for all. God of many names, bless these brothers and sisters as they continue their life with You.

Lies and Containmaint

Iraqi, Not U.S., Cash Spent on Rebuilding

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 4, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, July 3 -- The U.S. government has spent 2 percent of an $18.4 billion aid package that Congress approved last year after the Bush administration called for a quick infusion of cash into Iraq to finance reconstruction, according to figures released Friday by the White House.

The U.S.-led occupation authorities were much quicker to channel Iraq's own money, expending or earmarking nearly all of $20 billion in a special development fund fed by the country's oil sales, a congressional investigator said.

Only $366 million of the $18.4 billion U.S. aid package had been spent as of June 22, the White House budget office told Congress in a report that offers the first detailed accounting of the massive reconstruction package.

Thus far, according to the report, nothing from the package has been spent on construction, health care, sanitation and water projects. More money has been spent on administration than all projects related to education, human rights, democracy and governance.

Of $3.2 billion earmarked for security and law enforcement, a key U.S. goal in Iraq, only $194 million has been spent. Another central objective of the aid program was to reduce the 30 percent unemployment rate, but money has been spent to hire only about 15,000 Iraqis, despite U.S. promises that 250,000 jobs would be created by now, U.S. officials familiar with the aid program said.

U.S. officials involved in the reconstruction blame security concerns and bureaucratic infighting between the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House for delays in the allocation of funds. By the time the Pentagon's contracting office in Baghdad began awarding contracts, the risk of kidnapping and other attacks aimed at foreign workers was so dire that many projects never began. Several Western firms that won contacts have summarily withdrawn their employees from Iraq.

Fewer than 140 of the 2,300 reconstruction projects that were to be funded with the U.S. aid package are underway, the officials said.

Officials with the contracting office contend the amount of money actually spent does not reflect the full scope of work being performed. A more accurate figure, they said, is the amount of money allocated for reconstruction work. Just over $5.2 billion had been allocated as of June 22, according to the White House budget report.

"The money that is disbursed is typically not disbursed until the work is completed, so it doesn't give the best picture of what's going on," said John Proctor, a spokesman for the contracting office. "Some of our projects take months, or even years, to complete."

Proctor said actual spending had increased to $400 million since the figures were provided to the White House on June 22.

As you know, I like to give longer quotes from news sources and less commentary from me. That may change now, as the news sources, like Rajiv, are slowly waking up to the fact that they have been fed bald lies, lies at the level of policy, lies at the level of procurement, for nearly four years. As I watch the commentariat turn, I'll turn, too.

Salute the Flag, Rediscover real patriotism

As is obvious, light blogging this weekend. I need a day or so off, and this is my favorite holiday so I need time for the grill and the fireworks. The burger and the corn on the cob are liturgical for the weekend. is the work of the people, in the ancient Greek, and I'll be doing my work at the grill. Corn on the cob, properly soaked in the husk and grilled is a marvelous thing. A simple burger dressed with the best French mustard, pickles and the sharpest Canadian cheese counts for contemplation. The sesame bun must be toasted. Add potato salad if you need more carbs. I use my mother's recipe, it includes olives, which is an astonishing innovation for a daughter of the Mesabi Iron Range.

Enjoy your holiday. I'll be back here on Monday.

More than a Typist

As it so often does, the line of the day belongs to Jimmy Breslin.

Bush has the imagination of a stuffed chair. If you put all the things in which he has an interest into a book, it would be as thin as a slice of white bread.

Gawd, I wish I'd written that.

Shoes

Former head of Iraqi prisons says Rumsfeld OK'd coercive tactics
Saturday, July 3, 2004

From The Associated Press

SANTA CLARITA -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the use of coercive interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq, the former head of U.S. prisons in Iraq told a newspaper this week.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was the head of detention operations at Abu Ghraib, told the Santa Clarita Signal that there are memos showing Rumsfeld approved tactics at the prison that were similar to those used at Guantanamo Bay -- including the use of military dogs, stripping and sensory deprivation.

"I did not see it personally (at the time), but since all of this has come out, I have not only seen, but I've been asked about some of those documents, that he signed and agreed to," Karpinski told the newspaper, which published the article Friday.

The Pentagon has denied Karpinski's assertions. Last week, officials released documents that showed Rumsfeld had approved the use of such techniques in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, where the administration has said the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners do not apply.

Karpinski also said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former head of U.S. forces in Iraq, had to personally sign off on any requests to interrogate prisoners using methods outside of the usual scope of prison operations.

Sanchez has denied approving or knowing about the use of such interrogation tactics. On Wednesday, he told NBC's Tom Brokaw, "there was absolutely no command directive that would even give anybody the idea that that was acceptable in this command."

The Army has launched two inquiries into the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib.

A previous investigative report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found "a poor leadership climate" at Karpinski's 800th Military Police Brigade, which handled prison operations, and recommended Karpinski be stripped of command.

Karpinski was suspended and she received an official letter of admonishment but has not been charged with any offense.

Karpinski said she believes Sanchez wanted to blame her for the prisoner abuse, and claimed he instructed Taguba to pin responsibility on her in his report.

It ain't over, not by a long shot.

The Jobs Report

U.S. Job Growth for June Shows Steep Slowdown
By EDUARDO PORTER

Published: July 3, 2004

Job growth slowed sharply in June, the government reported yesterday, pulling back from a recent period of strong employment gains and casting doubt on the vigor of the nation's economic expansion.

The Labor Department reported that employers added only 112,000 jobs in June, less than half the average monthly increase of the first five months of the year.

The reported increase, which includes adjustments intended to account for normal seasonal variations, was under the 150,000 threshold of jobs needed for employment to keep pace with natural labor force growth. It was also well below the 250,000 forecast on average by Wall Street economists, who have been consistently wrong about jobs for the better part of the last year.

The unemployment rate, which essentially has not budged all year, remained unchanged from May at 5.6 percent.

"It's pretty clear the economy downshifted in June," said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist of Wells Fargo & Company in Minneapolis.

The renewed weakness in employment provided unwelcome news to President Bush's re-election campaign, which has been counting on drawing attention to an improving job market to make the case for its economic policies. And it offered fresh ammunition for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic challenger, whose criticism of Mr. Bush's economic track record has been undermined since hiring began setting a fast pace earlier this year.

Several economists, however, suggested that the sluggish June data may have been a fluke, noting that the payroll report can be highly volatile from month to month, and they predicted that it would rebound in July.

"It will take more than one weak month to convince us that the economy is struggling," said Henry Willmore, chief United States economist at Barclays Capital.

At the White House, where President Bush spoke before a group of small-business owners, Mr. Bush sought to cast the new job figures in a positive light. "The jobs increased by 112,000 in June, which means we've had a total of 1.5 million new jobs since last August," the president said. "To me, that shows the steady growth."

N. Gregory Mankiw, the White House's chief economic adviser, dismissed the job report as an aberration. He noted that other economic indicators — including consumer confidence and the monthly survey of purchasing managers — still point to a robust economic recovery.

But, wait! Consumer confidence, industrial production and orders all slipped in June. What on earth is Mankiw talking about?

BRAD DELONG'S TALKING POINTS: EMPLOYMENT: JULY 2, 2004

* We do have bad employment news this morning: only an addition of 112,000 payroll jobs comparing the June payroll survey to the May survey--we were expecting 250,000, and hoping for even more.

* The lousy employment situation has consequences for working and middle-class incomes as well: wages and salaries have been nearly stagnant since 2000--a very disappointing thing to see, especially as rapid productivity growth means there is lots of headroom for broad-based real wage and income gains.

Spectacular Failure

This is the Army's first in-depth after-action report on the Iraq War, phase one. I'm going to give you a fairly lengthy excerpt so you can draw your own conclusions. I'll post mine at the end.

Army Takes Its War Effort to Task
Report says U.S. forces prevailed in Iraq despite deep supply shortages and bad intelligence.

By David Zucchino, Times Staff Writer

The 542-page study, declassified last month, praises commanders and soldiers for displaying resourcefulness and resiliency under trying conditions, and for taking advantage of superior firepower, training and technology.

But the report also describes a broken supply system that left crucial spare parts and lubricants on warehouse shelves in Kuwait while tankers outside Baghdad ripped parts from broken-down tanks and raided Iraqi supplies of oil and lubricants.

"No one had anything good to say about parts delivery, from the privates at the front to the generals" at the U.S. command center in Kuwait, the study's authors concluded after conducting 2,300 interviews and studying 119,000 documents.

Among other highlights, the report revealed that the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad before cheering Iraqis was the brainchild of a U.S. Marine colonel, with help from a psychological operations unit. The report also credited a U.S. Army colonel with shortening the war by "weeks, if not months" with his dramatic "thunder run" into Baghdad.

Portions of an early draft of the report were described by the New York Times in an article in February. The study has since been revised and refined, but the overall conclusions in the final, unclassified report have not changed significantly.

Within the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized), which spearheaded the U.S. assault on Baghdad, "literally every maneuver battalion commander asserted that he could not have continued offensive operations for another two weeks without some spare parts," the study said.

The study, titled "On Point" and aimed at "lessons learned," is at odds with the public perception of a technologically superior invasion force that easily drove Hussein from power. In fact, as the authors point out in their battle-by-battle narrative, there were many precarious moments when U.S. units were critically short of fuel and ammunition, with little understanding of the forces arrayed against them.

The report, by the Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group at Ft. Leavenworth, called ammunition resupply "problematic" and said the medical supply system "failed to work." Engineers desperate for explosives foraged for Iraqi explosives and tore apart mine-clearing charges to use the explosives to blow up captured Iraqi equipment.

Many soldiers plunged into combat not knowing whether they had enough food or water to sustain themselves in punishing heat and blinding sandstorms. "Stocks of food barely met demand," the study said. "There were times when the supply system was incapable of providing sufficient MREs for the soldiers fighting Iraqi forces."

Military intelligence provided little useful information about the deployment or intentions of Iraqi forces, the study concluded. A Third Infantry tank commander whose company was attacked by Iraqi fighters hidden in an elaborate bunker and trench system in Baghdad on April 8 told The Times that he later learned from a French journalist that newspapers had reported details of the bunker network. Yet his own intelligence officers had told him nothing.

Most significantly, military planners did not anticipate the effectiveness or ferocity of paramilitary forces that disrupted supply columns and mounted suicide charges against 70-ton Abrams tanks. Some of those same forces, using tactics refined during the invasion, are part of the current insurgency.

The study, which covers events in Kuwait and Iraq until President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1, 2003, does not address the insurgency, which has killed far more Americans than were killed during the so-called combat phase. Nor does the study discuss the Pentagon's failure to anticipate or control the looting and chaos following the collapse of the Iraqi regime in April 2003.

But the report does say that the military's "running start" — the strategy of launching the invasion before all support units had arrived — made it difficult for commanders to quickly adjust from major combat to postwar challenges. Because combat units outraced supply and support units, combat commanders were caught unprepared when Hussein's regime collapsed after three weeks.

"Local commanders were torn between their fights and providing resources — soldiers, time and logistics — to meet the civilian needs," the report said. "Partially due to the scarce resources as a result of the running start, there simply was not enough to do both missions."

The report does not address the Bush administration's stated reasons for the invasion — Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, purported operational links between Baghdad and Al Qaeda, and atrocities committed under Hussein's dictatorship. Instead, the study critiques the Army's combat performance with an eye toward future wars.

The principal authors — retired Col. Gregory Fontenot, Lt. Col. E.J. Degen and Lt. Col. David Tohn — warned that Iraqi forces could have created significant problems if they had attacked relatively undefended U.S. units staging in Kuwait in the winter of 2002-03. Those units arrived without significant firepower or reinforcements and were vulnerable to a surprise attack.

The authors also said Iraqis could have extended the battle for Baghdad for weeks if they had destroyed or blocked approaches to the capital, or had forced American troops to fight a drawn-out battle in dense urban areas. (Former Republican Guard commanders interviewed by The Times in Baghdad said Hussein left the highways to Baghdad open because he thought his own forces would need them once they blocked the American invasion south of the capital.)

In an interview Friday, Fontenot said the Army excelled at "joint operations," integrating infantry, armor, artillery and air power to great effect during the war. "Arguably, the integration of joint warfare reached a level we had not seen at least since the Korean War," he said.

He also praised the effective use of Special Forces, the successful "pre-positioning" of vast quantities of materiel in the Middle East, and the quality of Army training. Fontenot, a tank battalion commander during the first Gulf War, said officers and men at the tactical level were better prepared last year than 13 years ago.

"I thought I was a pretty good tank commander, but the quality of these battalions is far better than we were," he said. "I was really impressed by the quality of the tactical leadership."

Fontenot said the narrative study, ordered by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, was not intended as the "seminal work" on the war. Rather, he said, "it's a first look."

The study credits a relatively junior commander — Col. David Perkins of the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division — with shortening the war with a bold armored strike into the heart of Baghdad on April 7. Perkins' "thunder run" surprised Baghdad's defenders with its speed and firepower, collapsing the regime from within before Iraqi forces could draw the Americans into a protracted urban war.

The authors said Perkins "made the single decision that arguably shortened the siege by weeks, if not months."

The Pentagon's plan for Baghdad had envisioned a series of attacks to slowly chip away at the regime. But the authors said Perkins' decision to suddenly revise the plan under fire and stay in downtown Baghdad was a prime example of flexibility and innovation by both the Pentagon brass and commanders in the field.

They "rapidly adapted and fought the enemy they found rather than the one they planned on," the study said.

U.S. forces prevailed despite seriously underestimating paramilitary forces, especially Saddam Fedayeen, Baath Party militiamen, al Quds local militiamen and Muslim jihadists from Syria, Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries, the study said. Those fighters harassed U.S. supply columns and nearly overran Col. Perkins' forces along Highway 8 south of Baghdad on April 7.

"The intelligence and operations communities had never anticipated how ferocious, tenacious and fanatical they would be," the authors said. By dressing in civilian clothes and firing from civilian neighborhoods, paramilitaries were able to "hide with some success from the incredible array of technical intelligence" available to U.S. forces.

My read: we were incredibly lucky. I've read elsewhere that the ample distribution of cash by the CIA bought much of the Iraqi Army and Republican Guard and took them home, but in any regard, had we met with stiffer resistence, we might have lost this in the early weeks as we weren't really ready.

The LATimes reporter doesn't really understand what he is seeing. This report is a stinging indictment of Rumsfeld and his management of the conflict. It demonstrates that everything about this conflict was mismanaged from the first days. Rummy is a dilletante who plays at war without understanding what a huge logistical challenge it is, much less the human cost. The Joint Staff, including the Chiefs, should also be resigning. This is a failure of a magnitude I can barely imagine.

Assuring the Vote

US lawmakers request UN observers for November 2 presidential election

Fri Jul 2, 2:22 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Several members of the House of Representatives have requested the United Nations (news - web sites) to send observers to monitor the November 2 US presidential election to avoid a contentious vote like in 2000, when the outcome was decided by Florida.

Recalling the long, drawn out process in the southern state, nine lawmakers, including four blacks and one Hispanic, sent a letter Thursday to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) asking that the international body "ensure free and fair elections in America," according to a statement issued by Florida representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who spearheaded the effort.

"As lawmakers, we must assure the people of America that our nation will not experience the nightmare of the 2000 presidential election," she said in the letter.

"This is the first step in making sure that history does not repeat itself," she added after requesting that the UN "deploy election observers across the United States" to monitor the November, 2004 election.

The lawmakers said in the letter that in a report released in June 2001, the US Commission on Civil Rights "found that the electoral process in Florida resulted in the denial of the right to vote for countless persons."

The bipartisan commission, they stressed, determined "that the 'disenfranchisement of Florida's voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of black voters' and in poor counties." Both groups vote predominantly Democratic in US elections.

The commission also concluded, the lawmakers added, that "despite promised nationwide reforms (of the voting system) ... adequate steps have not been taken to ensure that a similar situation will not arise in 2004 that arose in 2000."

Over at Kos, we see:

My name, exactly as it is spelled with my exact middle initial is on the Florida Felon list for Lake County, which you can find here.

While that is not me and I have never lived in Lake County, or Florida for that matter, it goes to show the problem with such lists. I have just completed a national job search, and one of the locations I had applied to was in Orlando, which is adjacent to Lake County. Had I moved there I may not have been able to vote in this important swing state.

Good Question

Room Left to Govern?

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, July 2, 2004; Page A15

Will either George W. Bush or John Kerry be able to govern after this election is over?

Rep. Jim Leach, a moderate Republican from Iowa, is not optimistic. "If there is a certitude about this election," says Leach, "it is that both presidential candidates are going to be attacked personally. That's going to undercut the presidential deference that should be given to anyone who wins the next presidential election."

The intense polarization of politics, aggravated under the Bush presidency, should require Bush and Kerry to explain not only what they will do for the next four years but also how, in the current climate, they propose to get it done.

The Bush approach is already clear enough: Use very narrow congressional majorities to push through an ideological program, especially on taxes and budgets. On only one issue -- his No Child Left Behind Act -- did Bush choose to deal with the mainstream of his opposition. Even there he has reneged on the spending commitments he made to get his bill passed.

Kerry, says a top aide to a Republican senator who often votes with his party's moderates, would have a "tremendous opportunity" to govern differently -- and he would be required to, given GOP gains in Congress since 1994. True, the bottom could fall out from under Bush, and Kerry could enter the White House with Democratic majorities in both houses. Seen as more likely now are the other scenarios: Kerry wins a close election that leaves both the House and Senate under Republican control, or that only one chamber, probably the Senate, tips Democratic.

A Republican House as currently configured could make Kerry's life hell in a way that Tip O'Neill's 1981 Democratic-controlled House did not for Ronald Reagan. "Reagan dealt with a Democratic majority in the House, but there wasn't the same dynamic we have today," said the Senate Republican aide. "This House is far more partisan, far more polarized, far more bitter and far more disciplined." In addition, there were many more conservative Democrats in the 1981 Congress than there will be moderate, let alone liberal, Republicans in the new House.

In fact, says Leach, because congressional districts are increasingly drawn to guarantee victory for one party or the other, incumbents worry mostly about primary challenges from ideological hard-liners. "There is no more underrepresented group in America today than moderates in both parties," Leach says. As for the tone of politics, Leach understates the case: "People to the right and people to the left personally don't like the other side."

One effect of a Kerry victory might be to bring out into the open Republican divisions that are already beginning to surface. Former representative Steve Gunderson, a Wisconsin Republican, speaks of "a coming civil war in the party" spurred by the efforts of conservatives to purge moderates from its ranks. This civil war over social issues is compounded by new divisions over deficits and the use of tax cuts not only to "promote growth" -- there is, says Gunderson, "nothing wrong with that" -- but also to "shut down the legitimate role of government."

The Republicans have discovered the circular firing squad. There is a war in the works between the ideologues and the pragmatists. Methinks that it is about time for the Hegelian dialectic to kick in and the Republicans are going to find themselves in the kind of shape the Democrats were in during the Reagan years, with purity tests being applied. The Repubs have pulled to the right so far in the last 20 years that they have abandoned some of the old-line moderates and Rockerfeller Republicans. The next four years are going to be interesting, even without threats of terrorism.

Dismal Report from Dismal Science

One year later, Bush Administration's tax cuts not fulfilling job creation promises

The Bush Administration called the tax cut package, which was passed in May 2003 and took effect in July 2003, its "Jobs and Growth Plan." The president's economics staff, the Council of Economic Advisers (see background documents), projected that the plan would result in the creation of 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004—306,000 new jobs each month, starting in July 2003. The CEA projected that, starting in July 2003, the economy would generate 228,000 jobs a month without a tax cut and 306,000 jobs a month with the tax cut. Thus, it projected that 3,672,000 would be created over these last 12 months, the first year after the tax cuts took effect. In fact, since the tax cuts took effect, there are 2,230,000 fewer jobs than the administration projected would be created by enactment of its tax cuts. As can be seen in the chart below, job creation failed to meet the administration's projections in 10 of the past 12 months.

The search bots that I use at several sites coughed up exactly four openings for me to apply for in the last month. Four.

American Exceptionalism

Seeing Islam Through a Lens of U.S. Hubris
Our national mind-set may be leading us toward defeat, a CIA expert says.

By Anonymous

To say the least, Americans are getting mixed and confusing messages from their leaders. Are we headed toward a victory parade, Cold War bomb shelters or simply straight to the graveyard? Do repeated warnings of an Al Qaeda-produced disaster mark a genuine threat, or have federal bureaucrats learned to cover their butts so they will not have another "failed-to-warn" à la 9/11? Are Bin Laden-related dangers downplayed to nurse the on-again, off-again economic recovery and the presidential prospects of both U.S. political parties? Are we to reach for champagne or a rosary?

I believe the answer lies in the way we see and interpret people and events outside North America, which is heavily clouded by arrogance and self-centeredness amounting to what I called "imperial hubris." This is not a genetic flaw in Americans that has been present since the Pilgrims splashed ashore at Plymouth Rock, but rather a way of thinking that America's elites acquired after the end of World War II. It is a process of interpreting the world so it makes sense to us, a process yielding a world in which few events seem alien because we Americanize their components.

"When confronted by a culturally exotic enemy," Lee Harris explained in the August/September 2002 issue of Policy Review, "our first instinct is to understand such conduct in terms that are familiar to us." Thus, for example, Bin Laden is a criminal whose activities are fueled by money — as opposed to a devout Muslim soldier fueled by faith — because Americans know how to beat well-heeled gangsters. We assume, moreover, that Bin Laden and the Islamists hate us for our liberty, freedoms and democracy, not because they and many millions of Muslims believe U.S. foreign policy is an attack on Islam or because the U.S. military now has a more-than-10-year record of smashing people and things in the Islamic world.

Our political leaders contend that America's astoundingly low approval ratings in polls taken in major Islamic countries do not reflect our unquestioning support of Israel and, as such, its "targeted killings" and other lethal high jinks. Nor, they say, are the ratings due to our relentless support for tyrannical and corrupt Islamic regimes that are systematically dissipating the Islamic world's energy resources for family fun and profit, while imprisoning, torturing and executing domestic dissenters. The low approval ratings, we are confident, have nothing to do with our refusal to apply nuclear nonproliferation rules with anything close to an even hand; a situation that makes Israeli and Indian nuclear weapons acceptable — each is a democracy, after all — while Pakistan's weapons are intolerable, perhaps because they are held by Muslims. And surely, if we can just drive and manage an Islamic Reformation that makes Muslims secular like us, all this unfortunate talk about religious war will end.

Thus, because of the pervasive imperial hubris that dominates the minds of our political, academic, social, media and military elites, America is able and content to believe that the Islamic world fails to understand the benign intent of U.S. foreign policy. This mind-set holds that America does not need to reevaluate its policies, let alone change them; it merely needs to better explain the wholesomeness of its views and the purity of its purposes to the uncomprehending Islamic world. What could be more American in the early 21st century, after all, then to re-identify a casus belli as a communication problem, and then call on Madison Avenue to package and hawk a remedy called "Democracy-Secularism-and-Capitalism-are-good-for-Muslims" to an Islamic world that has, to date, violently refused to purchase?

This is meant neither to ridicule my countrymen's intellectual abilities nor to be supportive of Bin Laden and his interpretation of Islam, but to say that most of the world outside North America is not, does not want to be and probably will never be just like us. And let me be clear, I am not talking about America's political freedoms, personal liberties or respect for education and human rights; the same polls showing that Muslims hate Americans for their actions find broad support for the ideas and beliefs that make us who we are. Pew Trust polls in 2003, for instance, found that although Muslims believed it "necessary to believe in God to be moral," they also favored what were termed "democratic values."

I'm saying that when Americans — the leaders and the led — process incoming information to make it intelligible in American terms, many not only fail to clearly understand what is going on abroad but, more ominous, fail to accurately gauge the severity of the danger that these foreign events, organizations, attitudes and personalities pose to U.S. national security and our society's welfare and lifestyle.

In order to make the decisions and allocate the resources needed to ensure U.S. security, Americans must understand the world as it is, not as we want — or worse yet, hope — it will be.

I have long experience analyzing and attacking Bin Laden and Islamists. I believe they are a growing threat to the United States — there is no greater threat — and that we are being defeated not because the evidence of the threat is unavailable but because we refuse to accept it at face value and without Americanizing the data. This must change, or our way of life will be unrecognizably altered.

We now know that "Anonymous" is CIA analyst Mike Sheuner, former head of the OBL unit. His hair is on fire and his argument is important. We are in a world of hurt.

The Sorrows of Empire

LA Weekly interviews Chalmers Johnson:

What provoked your political shift?

After the Soviets, who I thought were a real threat, collapsed, I expected a much greater demobilization, a pullback of American troops, a real peace dividend, a re-orienting of federal expenditures to domestic needs. Instead, our government turned at once to find a replacement enemy: China, drugs, terrorism, instability. Anything to justify this huge apparatus of the Cold War structure.

So where does that leave today’s authentic patriots?

The role of the citizen now is to be ever better informed. When Benjamin Franklin was asked, “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” he replied: “A republic if you can keep it.” We’ve not been paying attention to what we need to do to keep it. I think we made a disastrous error in the classic strategic sense when in 1991 we concluded that we “had won the Cold War.” No. We simply didn’t lose it as badly as the Soviets did. We were both caught up in imperial overreach, in weapons industries that came to dominate our societies. We allowed ideologues to capture our Department of Defense and lead us off — in a phrase they like — into a New Rome. We are no longer a status quo power respectful of international law. We became a revisionist power, one fundamentally opposed to the world as it is organized, much like Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Bolshevik Russia or Maoist China.

Indeed, your thesis is that since September 11, the U.S. ceased to be a republic and has become an empire.

It’s an extremely open question if we have crossed our Rubicon and there is no going back. Easily the most important right in our Constitution, according to James Madison, who wrote much of the document, is the one giving the right to go to war exclusively to the elected representatives of the people, to the Congress. Never, Madison continued, should that right be given to a single man. But in October 2002, our Congress gave that power to a single man, to exercise whenever he wanted, and with nuclear weapons if he so chose. And the following March, without any international consultation or legitimacy, he exercised that power by staging a unilateral attack on Iraq.

The Bill of Rights — articles 4 and 6 — are now open to question. Do people really have the right to habeas corpus? Are they still secure in their homes from illegal seizures? The answer for the moment is no. We have to wait and see what the Supreme Court will rule as to the powers of this government that it appointed.

You know from your study of history that when we traditionally speak of empire, we have in mind the model of European colonialism — the Brits in India, the French in Algeria and Indochina. Surely that’s not what you mean when you refer to an American empire.

By an American empire I mean 725 military bases in 138 foreign countries circling the globe from Greenland to Asia, from Japan to Latin America. This is a sort of base world — a secret, enclosed, separate world where our half-million troops, contractors and spies live quite comfortably around the world. I think that’s an empire. Granted, the unit of European imperialism was the colony. The unit of American imperialism is the military base.

These American bases are an outgrowth of U.S. containment policy from the Cold War. What’s their role now? Are they just pork? Or are they there to defend U.S. investment?

What they don’t do is defend U.S. security. They just grew, whether or not they had or have strategic value. We have 101 bases today in Korea even though the war has been over for 50 years. Once created, the military is endlessly creative in finding new functions for them, long after their real value has evaporated. This base world becomes part of the vested interest we associate not with security but with militarism, the danger of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned against.

You’re saying the real impetus here is more a self-perpetuating military bureaucracy rather than some grand rational strategy?

Right. I think Eisenhower was right when he spoke of how we didn’t recognize the unwarranted power of the arms industry. You know, a piece of the B-2 bomber is built in every one of the continental states.

What are the costs of this empire to democracy and the republic?

There’s the literal cost. We are flirting with bankruptcy. We are not paying for what is now a $750 billion tab. The defense appropriation itself is about $420 billion. That doesn’t include another $125 billion, which is the cost of Afghanistan and Iraq. Then another $20 billion for nuclear weapons in the Department of Energy. Add in another $200 billion or so for military pensions and for health benefits for our veterans. Together, that’s three-quarters of a trillion dollars.

We are putting it on the tab, running up some of the most extraordinary budget and trade deficits in history. If the bankers of Asia and Japan should tire of financing this, if they notice the euro is now stronger than the dollar, then all this ends — whether or not they like the Boy Emperor from Crawford. We would face a terrible crisis.

The greater cost is what the public will lose, if they haven’t already lost it: the republic, the structural defense of our liberties, the separation of powers to block the growth of a dictatorial presidency.

Fahrenheit and Class

Dr. Krugman is in the house.

And for all its flaws, "Fahrenheit 9/11" performs an essential service. It would be a better movie if it didn't promote a few unproven conspiracy theories, but those theories aren't the reason why millions of people who aren't die-hard Bush-haters are flocking to see it. These people see the film to learn true stories they should have heard elsewhere, but didn't. Mr. Moore may not be considered respectable, but his film is a hit because the respectable media haven't been doing their job.

For example, audiences are shocked by the now-famous seven minutes, when George Bush knew the nation was under attack but continued reading "My Pet Goat" with a group of children. Nobody had told them that the tales of Mr. Bush's decisiveness and bravery on that day were pure fiction.

Or consider the Bush family's ties to the Saudis. The film suggests that Mr. Bush and his good friend Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the ambassador known to the family as Bandar Bush, have tried to cover up the extent of Saudi involvement in terrorism. This may or may not be true. But what shocks people, I think, is the fact that nobody told them about this side of Mr. Bush's life.

Mr. Bush's carefully constructed persona is that of an all-American regular guy — not like his suspiciously cosmopolitan opponent, with his patrician air. The news media have cheerfully gone along with the pretense. How many stories have you seen contrasting John Kerry's upper-crusty vacation on Nantucket with Mr. Bush's down-home time at the ranch?

But the reality, revealed by Mr. Moore, is that Mr. Bush has always lived in a bubble of privilege. And his family, far from consisting of regular folks with deep roots in the heartland, is deeply enmeshed, financially and personally, with foreign elites — with the Saudis in particular.

Mr. Moore's greatest strength is a real empathy with working-class Americans that most journalists lack. Having stripped away Mr. Bush's common-man mask, he uses his film to make the case, in a way statistics never could, that Mr. Bush's policies favor a narrow elite at the expense of less fortunate Americans — sometimes, indeed, at the cost of their lives.

In a nation where the affluent rarely serve in the military, Mr. Moore follows Marine recruiters as they trawl the malls of depressed communities, where enlistment is the only way for young men and women to escape poverty. He shows corporate executives at a lavish conference on Iraq, nibbling on canapés and exulting over the profit opportunities, then shows the terrible price paid by the soldiers creating those opportunities.

The movie's moral core is a harrowing portrait of a grieving mother who encouraged her children to join the military because it was the only way they could pay for their education, and who lost her son in a war whose justification she no longer understands.

Viewers may come away from Mr. Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true. For example, the film talks a lot about Unocal's plans for a pipeline across Afghanistan, which I doubt had much impact on the course of the Afghan war. Someday, when the crisis of American democracy is over, I'll probably find myself berating Mr. Moore, who supported Ralph Nader in 2000, for his simplistic antiglobalization views.

But not now. "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a tendentious, flawed movie, but it tells essential truths about leaders who exploited a national tragedy for political gain, and the ordinary Americans who paid the price.

Like Barbara Ehrenreich's op-ed yesterday, Krugman's piece today is willing to take on the classism of the right. Krauthammer, Safire, Brooks and their ilk live in the bubble and aren't aware of it.

Too Small for the Job

Army Expects Further Involuntary Troop Call-Up
By: Will Dunham
Wed Jun 30, 2004 05:34 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands more former soldiers could be ordered to Iraq and Afghanistan in addition to 5,600 reservists already set to be called back into active-duty service, the Army said on Wednesday.

The Army is tapping into the Individual Ready Reserve, a rarely used pool now numbering 111,000 former soldiers who remain eligible to be called to active duty for years after completing their voluntary Army commitment and returning to civilian life. Many have been out of uniform for years.

"I would think that there's going to be soldiers who, yes, will be shocked. But I would say that the majority of the soldiers in the IRR today understand that they are in the Army," Col. Debra Cook, head of the Army's Human Resources Command, told a briefing.

These soldiers will begin to receive mobilization orders on July 6, said Robert Smiley, an Army official dealing with training, readiness and mobilization.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in January approved an Army request to mobilize up to 6,500 soldiers from this reserve pool -- being used in large numbers for the first time in 13 years -- and the Army initially plans to mobilize 5,674 soldiers, officials said.

But Smiley said perhaps thousands more could be involuntarily mobilized.

"We expect to call some more," Smiley said.

These soldiers could remain on active duty for up to two years "based on mission requirements," Smiley said.

Army soldiers have been serving yearlong deployments in Iraq, although about 20,000 saw their tour extended by three months this spring.

Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, told reporters in a conference call arranged by presidential candidate John Kerry's campaign that the move "represents a major failure in planning for the Iraq and Afghanistan efforts."

ACTIVE DUTY

"The active-duty army is too small to handle the ongoing missions that it has," Levin said.
Smiley disagreed.

"No, I don't think the Army's too small. We're using a manpower pool that's available to us. This is good personnel management," Smiley said.

Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat who has introduced a bill opposed by the Pentagon to reinstate the military draft, said, "The Bush administration is resorting to the absolute worst kind of draft. It is forcing those people who have already honorably served and been discharged back into the service."

Smiley said soldiers who already have served in Iraq or Afghanistan but left active duty before July 2003 could be mobilized and sent back there. Those who served there in the past year but have left active duty could only be sent back if they volunteered.

Smiley may disagree, but the Army is being asked to do more things than it is sized for at the moment. It isn't brigades short, it is divisions short. The IRR call up is a brigade strategy for a division problem. It ain't gonna work.

To the Stars

These pictures give me wildly hopefull stuff for a human race whose meanness gets examined here on a regular basis. I think it is our destiny, I'd like to be on one of these ships before I translate to the great beyond. We are destined for the stars, friend, and I wish we'd act like it more often.

Spacecraft, Launched 7 Years Ago, Begins Saturn Mission
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Published: July 1, 2004

PASADENA, Calif., July 1 - Hours after entering into orbit around Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft began sending back close-up images of the giant planet's rings back to Earth, 900 million miles away, as awed scientists watched this morning here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

As the black and white images began coming in, 80 minutes after they were transmitted from the unmanned American-European craft, they grew crisper, showing the closeups of the rings that appeared like the edges of corrugated cardboard. Some of the rings' particles, which are mainly grains of water, ice and rock, showed straw-like patterns that the scientists said they do not understand.

Dr. Carolyn C. Porco, the mission's chief photo interpreter, said at a news conference here today that she was ``surprised by the beauty and clarity of these images.'' On first seeing them, she said, she ``thought they were simulations of the rings and not rings themselves.''

Some of the photo images, taken as the spacecraft passed through a large gap in the rings, exposed the scalloped edges of icy material, which scientists ascribe to gravitational effects of tiny moonlets that orbit within the rings and apparently help shape them.

``I can't describe how exciting this is for us,'' Dr. Porco said. ``It's just mind blowing.''

Cassini, launched seven years ago, is beginning a four-year mission of the ringed planet and its 31 known moons. The images that have been transmitted so far can be seen on Nasa's web site, at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/.

On Wednesday night, Cassini became the first exploring vehicle to orbit Saturn, the faraway planet of serene beauty embellished by an exquisite array of encircling rings. At the news conference today, Robert T. Mitchell, the program manager, said that tracking data showed that the initial orbit would take 116 days.

He also said that engineering data transmitted back to Pasadena showed that the craft survived its entry into Saturn's rings with no damage.

Wednesday night, when confirmation was received in Pasadena that the Cassini had successfully entered its orbit, members of the Cassini-Huygens mission broke into cheers and high-fives.

Cassini squeezed through a gap in Saturn's shimmering rings, fired its brakes and settled into a near-perfect orbit around the giant planet. ``It feels awfully good to be in orbit around the lord of the rings,'' said Dr. Charles Elachi, the team leader on the radar instrument onboard Cassini said, according to NASA officials. ``This is the result of 22 years of effort, of commitment, of ingenuity, and that's what exploration is all about.''

A planned highlight of the $3.3 billion American-European mission is the first thorough investigation of Saturn's mysterious planet-size moon, Titan. Earlier, the spacecraft had approached Saturn from underneath the plane of the rings, gathering speed from the giant planet's gravity. When it threaded its way through a gap in the broad system, it was traveling more than 50,000 miles an hour, almost twice its velocity at the beginning of the day. The spacecraft has seemed to have had a charmed life since its launching in 1997. Its quirks and malfunctions have been few. Before the orbital maneuver, Julie Webster, chief of the spacecraft operations team, said that Cassini was ''in an excellent state of health.''

Propulsion engineers had expressed confidence in the rocket engines, noting that they performed flawlessly in 17 previous trajectory maneuvers, most recently three weeks ago.

Kevin Johnson, the lead propulsion engineer at the Lockheed Martin Corporation in Denver, which built the engines, said that in all previous firings the main engine performed normally.

As for the risks of a passage through the Saturnian rings, flight controllers were reassured by telescopic observations that found no sign of hazards in the gap between the F and G rings, which Cassini had to traverse. They also pointed out that previous Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, on fly-by missions, had passed safely through gaps in the ice, dust and rock of the rings.

Have you any idea how cool this is? Cassini should have been shredded by the pebble field around the rings, but instead it is beaming back pictures. I'll be married to NASATV for the next few days. The universe is starting to be our oyster and I couldn't be happier.

You Have to Dig

Insurgents Stage Attacks Across Iraq
By EDWARD WONG

Published: July 1, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 1 - On a day when Saddam Hussein gave a rambling, defiant speech in an arraignment before an Iraqi judge, insurgents staged deadly attacks across the country today, pressing their tenacious efforts to drive out American troops and their allies.

The strikes showed that the insurgency was still robust despite American hopes that the transfer of formal sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on Monday would quiet the rebels.

An American military official said that although guerrillas had not mounted the kind of spectacular car bomb attacks that marked the bloodiest days of the insurgency, the average number of daily attacks, including roadside bombings and assassinations, was still the same as before the handover of limited powers on Monday.

In the northern town of Mosul, patrolled by the Stryker Brigade of the United States Army, a roadside bomb ripped into a military convoy on the southern outskirts of the city, killing an American soldier and wounding two others, the military said. Officials also said that a marine had been killed in western Iraq, possibly around the volatile city of Falluja. They did not provide more details.

At least 855 American soldiers have died since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and nearly 85 percent of those casualties occurred after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003.

Knight-Ridder is moving a story today about conservative complaints about liberal media bias. I'd say that CNN is giving a Bush campaign commercial all day today with its wall-to-wall Saddam coverage. The story of the war is not being covered at all.

Called Out

Republican senator rips Bush on Iraq strategy
Hagel says war hurt U.S. in terror battle

James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Los Angeles -- Sen. Chuck Hagel, an influential moderate Republican from Nebraska, sharply criticized the Bush administration in an interview here Tuesday, saying that the war in Iraq appears to have hurt America in its battle against terrorism.

Hagel, a politician sometimes mentioned as a future presidential contender, also said the United States is going to have to consider restarting the draft to maintain its many military commitments abroad.

In a sharp critique of the leader of his own party, Hagel said he believes the occupation of Iraq by the American military was poorly planned and has spread terrorist cells more widely around the world.

"This put in motion a new geographic dispersion" of the terrorists, said Hagel, 58, in an interview before delivering a speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles. "It's harder to deal with them because they're not as contained. Iraq has become a training ground."

He added that although it is too soon to judge how the war in Iraq will ultimately influence the war on terror, in the short term it has created more terrorists and given them more targets -- American soldiers.

Hagel, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, said he agrees with President Bush that the duration of the war on terror might be measured in generations and that to sustain the badly overstretched military for the struggle, a new draft may be needed.

"We are seeing huge cracks developing in our force structure," he said. "The fact is, if we're going to continue with this, we're going to have to be honest with the American people."

Hagel is clearly trying to carve out a role for himself as a leading moderate voice within the Republican Party, particularly in foreign policy. He has given a string of speeches over the past year advocating a cooperative approach in foreign policy, and he wrote an essay in the current issue of "Foreign Affairs," a policy journal, in which he spells out his principles for a more internationalist and pragmatic Republican foreign policy.

A two-term senator, Hagel is regarded as a pragmatist who is ideologically out of line with the conservatives in the Bush administration. There were even reports recently that he had been courted by Sen. John Kerry, the likely Democratic nominee for president, as a vice presidential candidate.

Asked if he had been approached or if he would consider the offer, Hagel said he is a diehard Republican "and I'll stay in the Republican Party."

But after finding his moderate views largely ignored by the president, Hagel said he feels that Bush, who has taken a strong unilateral approach to foreign policy, is now being forced to embrace positions much closer to those Hagel and other moderates have advocated.

I'd call Hagel center-right, and I applaud him for telling the truth. The fact of the matter, and it scares the hell out of me, is that Bush's Mesopotamian Misadventure has left us a lot less safe. Bush may be performing a climb-down from where the neocons have taken us, but rhetoric isn't action.

CNN Rant

In a piece of non-news, Saddam Hussein got hauled into court last night. Whooptie. Apparently, there is no other news today, as CNN is wall-to-wall with the film of it, and that's all they have today. The bubble heads can't talk about anything other than how thin he is, how many lawyers he has, the Iraqi legal system, yada yada yada. I can remember when Christianne Ammanpour was actually a journalist. I can also remember when CNN was actually a news network, rather than an infotainment channel. This infomercial is getting really old.

You have to read Juan Cole to discover that 11 American troops were wounded in an attack in Samawah today.

Working with Class

Dude, Where's That Elite?
By BARBARA EHRENREICH

Published: July 1, 2004

You can call Michael Moore all kinds of things — loudmouthed, obnoxious and self-promoting, for example. The anorexic Ralph Nader, in what must be an all-time low for left-wing invective, has even called him fat. The one thing you cannot call him, though, is a member of the "liberal elite."

Sure, he's made a ton of money from his best sellers and award-winning documentaries. But no one can miss the fact that he's a genuine son of the U.S. working class — of a Flint autoworker, in fact — because it's built right into his "branding," along with flannel shirts and baseball caps.

My point is not to defend Moore, who — with a platoon of bodyguards and a legal team starring Mario Cuomo — hardly needs any muscle from me. I just think it's time to retire the "liberal elite" label, which, for the past 25 years, has been deployed to denounce anyone to the left of Colin Powell. Thus, last winter, the ultra-elite right-wing Club for Growth dismissed followers of Howard Dean as a "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show." I've experienced it myself: speak up for the downtrodden, and someone is sure to accuse you of being a member of the class that's doing the trodding.

The notion of a sinister, pseudocompassionate liberal elite has been rebutted, most recently in Thomas Frank's brilliant new book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?," which says the aim is "to cast the Democrats as the party of a wealthy, pampered, arrogant elite that lives as far as it can from real Americans, and to represent Republicanism as the faith of the hard-working common people of the heartland, an expression of their unpretentious, all-American ways, just like country music and Nascar."

Like the notion of social class itself, the idea of a liberal elite originated on the left, among early 20th-century anarchists and Trotskyites who noted, correctly, that the Soviet Union was spawning a "new class" of power-mad bureaucrats. The Trotskyites brought this theory along with them when they mutated into neocons in the 60's, and it was perhaps their most precious contribution to the emerging American right. Backed up by the concept of a "liberal elite," right-wingers could crony around with their corporate patrons in luxuriously appointed think tanks and boardrooms — all the while purporting to represent the average overworked Joe.

Beyond that, the idea of a liberal elite nourishes the right's perpetual delusion that it is a tiny band of patriots bravely battling an evil power structure. Note how richly the E-word embellishes the screeds of Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and their co-ideologues, as in books subtitled "Rescuing American from the Media Elite," "How Elites from Hollywood, Politics and the U.N. Are Subverting America," and so on. Republican right-wingers may control the White House, both houses of Congress and a good chunk of the Supreme Court, but they still enjoy portraying themselves as Davids up against a cosmopolitan-swilling, corgi-owning Goliath.

Yes, there are some genuinely rich folks on the left — Barbra Streisand, Arianna Huffington, George Soros — and for all I know, some of them are secret consumers of French chardonnays and loathers of televised wrestling. But the left I encounter on my treks across the nation is heavy on hotel housekeepers, community college students, laid-off steelworkers and underpaid schoolteachers. Even many liberal celebrities — like Jesse Jackson and Gloria Steinem — hail from decidedly modest circumstances. David Cobb, the Green Party's presidential candidate, is another proud product of poverty.

It's true that there are plenty of working-class people — though far from a majority — who will vote for Bush and the white-tie crowd that he has affectionately referred to as his "base." But it would be redundant to speak of a "conservative elite" when the ranks of our corporate rulers are packed tight with the kind of Republicans who routinely avoid the humiliating discomforts of first class for travel by private jet.

So liberals can take comfort from the fact that our most visible spokesman is, despite his considerable girth, an invulnerable target for the customary assault weapon of the right. I meant to comment on his movie, too, but the lines at my local theater are still prohibitively long.

Thank you, Barbara. This is one of the most obnoxious parts of the right wing assault on the left: it is classist. Like all of the other lefties I know, I'm blue collar, part of the first generation to go to college and still barely keeping my economic head above water. We don't have 401(k)'s and have to pray that Social Security stays solvent.

Incompetence

Prisoner abuse: America pays the price

By Pete Peterson

MY VIEW

During my military career, I was constantly drilled on the provisions of the Geneva Conventions. I have been extremely proud that the United States has led the world in upholding treaties governing the status and care of enemy prisoners.

As a former POW in Vietnam, I know what life in a foreign prison is like. To a large degree, I credit the Geneva Conventions for my survival. While the Vietnamese rarely abided by the rules, the international pressure on them to do so forced them to walk a line that ensured they did not perpetrate the sort of shocking abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Life in a Vietnamese prison was hell, but I was never subjected to such degrading sexual humiliation. The human body can withstand enormous physical pain and recover. But the human mind is different: One seldom fully recovers from ruthless psychological or sexual torture. I am certain my treatment would have been worse had the Geneva Conventions not been in place and had the world not insisted that Vietnam abide by them.

Having survived the ordeal of a POW, I never believed I would have to revisit the issue of prisoner treatment. But when I learned that the administration had created a new prisoner status for persons captured in Afghanistan after 9/11, I sensed something was drastically wrong. Labeling prisoners "enemy combatants" instead of POWs was an apparent ploy to circumvent the Geneva Conventions and deny them the right, at the very least, to a review to determine their status.

The Vietnamese called me a "criminal," not a POW. They argued that America was fighting an illegal war in Vietnam - therefore, the Geneva Conventions did not apply. I am appalled to find my own government using that hollow argument 35 years later.

The flippant, disrespectful view of the Geneva Conventions within the administration was reflected again in the zealous advice given to President Bush by his top legal adviser, Alberto Gonzales. He wrote in 2002 that the new post-9/11 "paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

In a similar vein, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "The reality is the set of facts that exist today with al-Qaida and the Taliban were not necessarily the set of facts that were considered when the Geneva Convention was fashioned."

Meanwhile, political appointees in the Justice and Defense departments were feverishly working with the White House to build a framework for circumventing legal constraints against prisoner abuse. These high-level advisories were plainly written not to prevent torture, but to authorize it and to help officials accused of torture escape punishment. At the same time, the Pentagon approved interrogation guidelines for Iraq and probably Afghanistan that permitted using dogs on prisoners, binding them in painful "stress positions," and subjecting them to sleep and sensory deprivation - techniques forbidden by the Army's traditional rules.

These decisions, which the administration still defends, undeniably set the stage for the horrible and illegal torture at Abu Ghraib. I am disgusted, angry, outraged and at the same time grossly embarrassed by what my government has sought to justify in the name of freedom! This is not the principle of freedom that I nearly gave my life to defend. Americans not only subjected prisoners to pain, suffering, isolation, hunger and degenerate sexual humiliation; some were apparently theatrically killed.

To compound matters, most of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib were not military combatants at all, but ordinary civilians picked off the streets during indiscriminate raids. Before the pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib emerged, the chain of command ignored or denied reports submitted the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and even military intelligence personnel working at Abu Ghraib (who cannot yet be identified for fear of retribution). Even after they came out, the administration reacted with denial, cover-up, stall and scare tactics, calculated to ensure that only a handful of enlisted men and women are held responsible and to protect senior officers and officials.

But my military experience reminds me that low-ranking personnel do not establish methods of interrogation, treatment or punishment on their own. Military personnel know precisely their authority and responsibilities. The military manual on how to clean a toilet likely requires 100 pages.

Prisoner interrogation and treatment is no less regulated. Top officers and their civilian counterparts must have directly or indirectly signed off on the disgraceful torture at Abu Ghraib. The Bush administration's disdain for our allies, its haste to invade a sovereign nation without honest justification, its abrogation of the Geneva Conventions and international law, and now the revelations of torture, have cost America our moral high ground. To regain it, we must ensure that those officials responsible for damaging America's good name are held accountable. Holding a few enlisted military personnel responsible for their leaders' mistakes would be unconscionable.

If the administration doesn't come clean, no one will suffer more than our proud and courageous military men and women. Americans in uniform know that the Geneva Conventions are not just there to protect the enemy; they are there to protect us.

Sen. Joseph Biden said, "There's a reason why we sign these treaties ... so when Americans are captured they are not tortured!" We must not forget that. Unfortunately, the Bush administration did forget and America is paying a heavy price.

Pete is a vet, a former member of Congress and our first post-war ambassador to Viet Nam. He's calling Bushco for short-sightedness. I'd take it a little further than that and call them on complete incompetence.

Draft-esque

Army Plans Broader Call-Up of Reservists
Wed Jun 30, 2004 08:46 PM ET

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army plans to summon a new group of about 4,000 reserve soldiers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking the total number of additional call-ups announced this week to nearly 10,000, officials said on Wednesday.

The Army formally announced plans to involuntarily mobilize 5,674 soldiers from its Individual Ready Reserve, former soldiers who remain eligible to be called to active duty for years after returning to civilian life.

Robert Smiley, an Army official dealing with training, readiness and mobilization, said thousands more reservists from this pool could be involuntarily mobilized in future as the Army strives to find enough troops to cope with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army plans to order to active duty "about 4,000" soldiers from Army Reserve and Army National Guard units that have not been deployed, Smiley added. These soldiers would fill specialized jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan the Army was unable to fill from the Individual Ready Reserve, he said.

Smiley did not offer a timetable for when the Guard and Reserve soldiers would be summoned.

The moves are the latest indication of how heavily the Pentagon is relying on reservists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Smiley said the Individual Ready Reserve soldiers will begin to receive mobilization orders on July 6. Many have been out of uniform for years.

The Individual Ready Reserve troops were scheduled to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan later this year and early next year as part of the regular rotation of U.S. troops.

"I would think that there's going to be soldiers who, yes, will be shocked. But I would say that the majority of the soldiers in the IRR today understand that they are in the Army," said Col. Debra Cook, head of the Army's Human Resources Command.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in January approved an Army request to mobilize up to 6,500 soldiers from this reserve pool -- being used in large numbers for the first time in 13 years, officials said.

How bad does it have to get?