Poisoning the World

Kurt Nimmo is more than a little over the top, but this important story has gotten buried for decades. Depleted uranium munitions kill both our "enemies" and our own people and are another of the really vile secrets of the Iraq war, both versions 1 and 2. Kurt writes:

It is totally astounding. Bush Senior, Clinton, and Bush the Junior are war criminals of a caliber not witnessed since the war against the people of Vietnam (2-3 million killed). It is estimated this threesome of mass murder have killed around 1.5 million Iraqis (under the supervision of Bush I and Clinton), at least 3,620 Afghan civilians (according to a count conducted by Marc Herold of the Guardian as of August 2002) and 100,00 Iraqi civilians under the supervision of Bush II (according to research conducted by The Lancet medical journal). Add to this staggering death toll approaching 2 million another 11,000 Americans killed by “Gulf War Syndrome” and you have crimes of Nuremberg tribunal proportions.

Add the World Health Organization (WHO) to the list of culprits. “An expert report warning that the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population would be endangered by British and US depleted uranium (DU) weapons has been kept secret,” writes Rob Edwards for the Sunday Herald. “The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.”

Clinton used the same deadly garbage in Kosovo and Bosnia. Avedon has done a better job than anyone of staying on top of this story.

The story is long, but it is important. At this stage of the game, compiling a list of our warcrimes in the last four years is going to take a more dedicated prosecutor than moi meme. I just turn over rocks and show you what I find there.

Snow Day

Well, this snowstorm has turned out to be an absolute bust in the DC area. I'm a little west of downtown and we've had maybe an 2 inches. Yesterday, the TV weathercritters were making it sound like it was going to be the end of civilization as we know it and The Weather Channel was participating in the frenzy.

The streets are going to be wicked nasty after the sun goes down and the slush freezes, however. I'm in for the night so it's not an issue. Snow food for tonight: three cheese omelet and a salad of wild field greens, french baguette with unsalted butter (hint, keep it in the freezer.) Here's a tip for particularly fluffy omelets: separate the whites and yolks and beat the whites to frothy. Beat the yolks separately with any herbs or spices (no salt! Makes the whites tough.) Make sure the omelet pan is ready to go, then quickly fold the yolks into the whites and turn immediately into your omelet pan before the yolks have time to break down the frothy whites. You get a lovely, light omelet out of this and it only takes a couple of more minutes of work.

Intimate Friends

Tim Grieve writes in Salon:

Oh, that crazy Vladimir

When George Bush sat down with Vladimir Putin in Bratislava last week to deliver his long-awaited lecture on civil liberties and freedom of the press, Newsweek says Putin shot back with an attack of his own: "We didn't criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS."

Newsweek , rising to the defense of freedom of the press in these United States, says it’s "all too clear" that Putin sees the relationship between Bush and the American media as being “just like his own.” Presumably, that means that Putin thinks Bush controls the U.S. media in the same way that he controls the Russian media. We can’t imagine where he got that idea.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

This just came in via the Center for American Progress's blog, ThinkProgress. At last, some good news!

With God At The Four Seasons

In April, 2002, Tom DeLay told a church crowd, "He [God] has been walking me through an incredible journey…He is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for biblical worldview in everything that I do and everywhere I am. He is training me, He is working with me."

DeLay's "incredible journey" continues today in a Travis County courthouse, where God's instrument will find himself the "focus of attention" of a civil trial involving allegations of illegal campaign contributions to Republican members of the Texas House. Two of DeLay's major political operatives in Washington and another political ally in Texas were indicted last year in a grand jury investigation, accused of participating in a scheme to make illegal corporate donations to Republican candidates for the Legislature.

Security v. Law

It's Called Torture
By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 28, 2005

As a nation, does the United States have a conscience? Or is anything and everything O.K. in post-9/11 America? If torture and the denial of due process are O.K., why not murder? When the government can just make people vanish - which it can, and which it does - where is the line that we, as a nation, dare not cross?

When I interviewed Maher Arar in Ottawa last week it seemed clear that however thoughtful his comments, I was talking with the frightened, shaky successor of a once robust and fully functioning human being. Torture does that to a person. It's an unspeakable crime, an affront to one's humanity that can rob you of a portion of your being as surely as acid can destroy your flesh.

Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen with a wife and two young children, had his life flipped upside down in the fall of 2002 when John Ashcroft's Justice Department, acting at least in part on bad information supplied by the Canadian government, decided it would be a good idea to abduct Mr. Arar and ship him off to Syria, an outlaw nation that the Justice Department honchos well knew was addicted to torture.

Mr. Arar was not charged with anything, and yet he was deprived not only of his liberty, but of all legal and human rights. He was handed over in shackles to the Syrian government and, to no one's surprise, promptly brutalized. A year later he emerged, and still no charges were lodged against him. His torturers said they were unable to elicit any link between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was sent back to Canada to face the torment of a life in ruins.

Mr. Arar's is the case we know about. How many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in the C.I.A.'s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do they have?

President Bush spent much of last week lecturing other nations about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was a breathtaking display of chutzpah. He seemed to me like a judge who starves his children and then sits on the bench to hear child abuse cases. In Brussels Mr. Bush said he planned to remind Russian President Vladimir Putin that democracies are based on, among other things, "the rule of law and the respect for human rights and human dignity."

Someone should tell that to Maher Arar and his family.

My AmStreet colleague Echidne of the Snakes reads National Review Online so that I, thankfully, don't have to, and brings us this bit of macro analysis from major conservative thinker Jonah Goldberg:

"If, because of a legal regime in the U.S. which guarantees the civil liberties of Americans -- and I'm all in favor of that -- we have to go to other countries in order to successfully interrogate terrorists, then I'm not horrified by that proposition," Goldberg says. And while he concedes that it fundamentally contradicts what the United States stands for, "what undermines what we stand for," he says, "is the publication of all this information."

"There are lots of things that are ugly and terrible about war," Goldberg adds. "I think that people on the right are more comfortable allowing for that."

It sounds to me like the Goldberg sprat missed some of his civics education. People on the right are "more comfortable allowing" violations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Sounds accurate to me.

The Social Contract

Don't Blame Wal-Mart
By ROBERT B. REICH

Published: February 28, 2005

The fact is, today's economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers and communities.

We can blame big corporations, but we're mostly making this bargain with ourselves. The easier it is for us to get great deals, the stronger the downward pressure on wages and benefits. Last year, the real wages of hourly workers, who make up about 80 percent of the work force, actually dropped for the first time in more than a decade; hourly workers' health and pension benefits are in free fall. The easier it is for us to find better professional services, the harder professionals have to hustle to attract and keep clients. The more efficiently we can summon products from anywhere on the globe, the more stress we put on our own communities.

But you and I aren't just consumers. We're also workers and citizens. How do we strike the right balance? To claim that people shouldn't have access to Wal-Mart or to cut-rate airfares or services from India or to Internet shopping, because these somehow reduce their quality of life, is paternalistic tripe. No one is a better judge of what people want than they themselves.

The problem is, the choices we make in the market don't fully reflect our values as workers or as citizens. I didn't want our community bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., to close (as it did last fall) yet I still bought lots of books from Amazon.com. In addition, we may not see the larger bargain when our own job or community isn't directly at stake. I don't like what's happening to airline workers, but I still try for the cheapest fare I can get.

The only way for the workers or citizens in us to trump the consumers in us is through laws and regulations that make our purchases a social choice as well as a personal one. A requirement that companies with more than 50 employees offer their workers affordable health insurance, for example, might increase slightly the price of their goods and services. My inner consumer won't like that very much, but the worker in me thinks it a fair price to pay. Same with an increase in the minimum wage or a change in labor laws making it easier for employees to organize and negotiate better terms.

I wouldn't go so far as to re-regulate the airline industry or hobble free trade with China and India - that would cost me as a consumer far too much - but I'd like the government to offer wage insurance to ease the pain of sudden losses of pay. And I'd support labor standards that make trade agreements a bit more fair.

These provisions might end up costing me some money, but the citizen in me thinks they are worth the price. You might think differently, but as a nation we aren't even having this sort of discussion. Instead, our debates about economic change take place between two warring camps: those who want the best consumer deals, and those who want to preserve jobs and communities much as they are. Instead of finding ways to soften the blows, compensate the losers or slow the pace of change - so the consumers in us can enjoy lower prices and better products without wreaking too much damage on us in our role as workers and citizens - we go to battle.

I don't know if Wal-Mart will ever make it into New York City. I do know that New Yorkers, like most other Americans, want the great deals that can be had in a rapidly globalizing high-tech economy. Yet the prices on sales tags don't reflect the full prices we have to pay as workers and citizens. A sensible public debate would focus on how to make that total price as low as possible.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, but the good people of Queens decided that the social cost of Wal-mart wasn't a price they were willing to pay. This is the point that Reich is trying, and largely failing, to make: the marketplace imposes costs for low prices elsewhere in the system.

A Trip To Sunny Mykonos on a Snowy Day

Some cold-weather food for the soon to be snowed-in (the left-overs are fabulous, this is multiple day food):

1 roaster chicken
4 lemons
5 cloves of garlic
1 medium onion
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil
Two stalks fresh rosemary
Kosher salt

When you get your fresh roaster home from the store, dump it into an icewater bath liberally laced with Kosher salt for at least an hour. Pull out the gizzards and reserve them for another use (your kitties, for example.)

After the roaster has soaked for at least an hour, drain it and pull the skin over the breast loose but don't damage it or tear it. Just make some space between the skin and the meat of the breast. Slice the lemons thinly and cover as much of the breast under the skin as you can with the lemon slices. Smash two garlic cloves and place the results, one each, on each side of the breast. Fill the cavity with the remaining lemon slices, the chopped onion and garlic, crushed again. Work each of the sprigs of rosemary onto either side of the breast beneath the skin. Coat the entire chicken with a film of olive oil.

Roast in a 350 oven at 20 minutes per pound. Baste often. Let the bird rest for 10 minutes before you carve it. Carve as usual.

Serve with orzo with browned butter and spinach wilted in a little oil and garlic and sprinkled with feta cheese and pine nuts. Your dinner guests will cheer.

On day two, make sandwiches with crusty bread, aioli and spinach. On day three, you are ready to make Greek Avgolemono soup on the carcass.

Chop up the carcass and place in the stock pot with 4 quarts of water. Simmer with 1 cup chopped celery, 1 cup chopped carrots, 1 cup chopped potatoes, all added after the carcass has simmered for one hour. Cook the vegetables in the stock for one hour. After an hour let it cool, skim the grease and remove the bones. Cut up any chicken larger than 1 inch square and return to the soup. Add a can of drained canellini beans. Prepare some good, fresh bread, a plate of cheeses. And some more of that aioli you made the other night. Reduce the soup to a bare simmer. Nothing more than a couple of bubble a minute on the surface. Beat two eggs together with the juice of two lemons. Add them to the soup, stirring the whole time. Don't let the eggs cook. You'll eat well this week and probably keep the flu away.

Serve this with a Greek mezze plate, olives, stuffed grape leaves, a good pita and some hummous. A little ouzo wouldn't be out of place.

I sometimes wish that my friends weren't scatttered all over the country. I have a dream in which I hire a hall and a caterer and you all land here for the party of your lives.

In the Deep Mid-Winter

Winter Storm Warning Issued for D.C. Area

By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 27, 2005; 2:40 PM

The National Weather Service has issued a heavy snow warning for the Washington area with a possibility of six to ten inches of snow between tonight and Monday night.

A little bit of snow could fall tonight and a whole lot of snow between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday with blowing, drifting and low visibility a distinct possibility.

The weather service noted, however, that "there is still some uncertainty as to the exact track of the storm."

It said that a small shift in the movement of a low pressure system moving up the East Coast could "yield large difference in snowfall accumulations," meaning that some areas could get more rain than snow or a mix of the two.

The warning comes just as moderate temperatures were melting down the snowfall that caused widespread school closings and delays late last week.

Depending on the storm track (the NWS is still hedging) this will be someplace between an annoyance and something that shuts the city down for a couple of days, with the NWS leaning in the latter direction.

Open Thread

Light posting ahead for the rest of the day. We're expecting a major snowstorm tomorrow and I've got a ton of things to do to get ready. I imagine the grocery stores are already a nightmare. I'll be back before evening and expect a regular day while I'm snowed in tomorrow.

Not Our Kind, Dear

Private Health Care in Jails Can Be a Death Sentence
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

Published: February 27, 2005

Brian Tetrault was 44 when he was led into a dim county jail cell in upstate New York in 2001, charged with taking some skis and other items from his ex-wife's home. A former nuclear scientist who had struggled with Parkinson's disease, he began to die almost immediately, and state investigators would later discover why: The jail's medical director had cut off all but a few of the 32 pills he needed each day to quell his tremors.

Over the next 10 days, Mr. Tetrault slid into a stupor, soaked in his own sweat and urine. But he never saw the jail doctor again, and the nurses dismissed him as a faker. After his heart finally stopped, investigators said, correction officers at the Schenectady jail doctored records to make it appear he had been released before he died.

Two months later, Victoria Williams Smith, the mother of a teenage boy, was booked into another upstate jail, in Dutchess County, charged with smuggling drugs to her husband in prison. She, too, had only 10 days to live after she began complaining of chest pains. She phoned friends in desperation: The medical director would not prescribe anything more potent than Bengay or the arthritis medicine she had brought with her, investigators said. A nurse scorned her pleas to be hospitalized as a ploy to get drugs. When at last an ambulance was called, Ms. Smith was on the floor of her cell, shaking from a heart attack that would kill her within the hour. She was 35.

In these two harrowing deaths, state investigators concluded, the culprit was a for-profit corporation, Prison Health Services, that had moved aggressively into New York State in the last decade, winning jail contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars with an enticing sales pitch: Take the messy and expensive job of providing medical care from overmatched government officials, and give it to an experienced nationwide outfit that could recruit doctors, battle lawsuits and keep costs down.

A yearlong examination of Prison Health by The New York Times reveals repeated instances of medical care that has been flawed and sometimes lethal. The company's performance around the nation has provoked criticism from judges and sheriffs, lawsuits from inmates' families and whistle-blowers, and condemnations by federal, state and local authorities. The company has paid millions of dollars in fines and settlements.

In the two deaths, and eight others across upstate New York, state investigators say they kept discovering the same failings: medical staffs trimmed to the bone, doctors underqualified or out of reach, nurses doing tasks beyond their training, prescription drugs withheld, patient records unread and employee misconduct unpunished.

This is the kind of health care the oligarchs want to bring to you. Those of you who have insurance. The rest of us won't even have that.

Tribalism

A Subdivision Becomes a Home
New Virginia Developments Forge a Sense of Community

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 27, 2005; Page A01

Far from desolate, life on the muddy frontiers of sprawl tends to run like a well-oiled, if insular, social machine. The reasons have to do with the very newness of such places and the rootlessness of their residents -- the very things often thought to stifle interaction but which encourage a pioneering esprit de corps, residents say. There is what residents themselves consider the blatant social engineering of clubhouses and gates, along with the shared experience of raising children, picking out pewter cabinet pulls and, for some, chucking convenience for a big house on a golf course.

In some ways, life out here is not unlike life in the shiny, new suburbs of the 1950s. Herbert Gans, a Columbia University sociologist, documented a similar hyperactivity among early residents of Levittown, N.J. In other ways, though, things have changed. There is more racial diversity, and increasingly, there are such features as intranets and paid, professional activities directors -- like cruise directors in developments floating amid farm fields -- which have eased the logistics of community building in an era of long commutes and two-career households.

In Loudoun, the nation's fastest-growing county, examples abound. Behind the rock-and-waterfall entrance to Brambleton, where sidewalks still fade into dirt, Jeff McCauley, 33, said the front porches are not purely ornamental; people actually sit on them. And the community intranet has opened a world of social possibilities.

"I know the joke -- that we're 'the pod people,' " he said. "The reality is the opposite."

Neighbors have listed 32 groups on the intranet, such as Brambleton Buddies, where births ("Baby Maldonado is here!") or requests for help ("Holly is having surgery on Monday") are posted. McCauley used it to start a regular poker group and to find fellow Virginia Tech football fans, who now share beers and rides to games.

"Like three Fridays ago, we went bowling," he said. "I mean, we never did things like that before," he said, referring to his old neighborhood.

Not far away, in Lansdowne on the Potomac, children have regular movie nights in the clubhouse pool, floating on rafts while taking in films. There have been garden galas and bone hunts for dogs.

And in South Riding, a planned community of 4,500 homes, residents have created a system of block captains whose purpose is to facilitate gatherings. "We break it down into blocks of 30 to 35 homes," explained Karin Kuropas, 35. "Our motto is 'Uniting neighbors through information and fun.' "

For a while, the captains organized competitive block parties, in which neighbors tried to outdo one another with elaborate fetes. There were moon bounces, fireworks, hired bands and caterers, until it simply got out of hand.

"I'm saying to people, 'Do a potluck. Do a happy hour,' " Kuropas said. "Let's get back to the basics."

Kristen Reed, stuffing welcome bags for newcomers at South Riding's town hall recently, said that precisely because of the isolation of work and traffic, there is a hunger to socialize.

"You literally need a break -- that's why we started our bunko groups," said Reed, 31, referring to the ubiquitous dice game of the suburbs. "Just to get out of the humdrum."

This is more than a teeny bit of bull***t. It's only community if you are straight, white and married. If you are older, single and female, you aren't included. We are the invisible population.

Back to the Spooks

Within C.I.A., Growing Worry Of Prosecution
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON

Published: February 27, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - There is widening unease within the Central Intelligence Agency over the possibility that career officers could be prosecuted or otherwise punished for their conduct during interrogations and detention of terrorism suspects, according to current and former government officials.

Until now, only one C.I.A. employee, a contract worker from North Carolina, has been charged with a crime in connection with the treatment of prisoners, stemming from a death in Afghanistan in 2003. But the officials confirmed that the agency had asked the Justice Department to review at least one other case, from Iraq, to determine if a C.I.A. officer and interpreter should face prosecution.

In addition, the current and former government officials said the agency's inspector general was now reviewing at least a half-dozen other cases, and perhaps many more, in what they described as an expanding circle of inquiries to determine whether C.I.A. employees had been involved in any misconduct.

Previously, intelligence officials have acknowledged only that "several" cases were under review by the agency's inspector general. But one government official said, "There's a lot more out there than has generally been recognized, and people at the agency are worried."

Of particular concern, the officials said, is the possibility that C.I.A. officers using interrogation techniques that the government ruled as permissible after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks might now be punished, or even prosecuted, for their actions in the line of duty.

The details of some of the inquiries have been reported, but the government officials said other cases under review have never been publicly disclosed. Officials declined to provide details of all the cases now under scrutiny. They would not say whether the reviews were limited to incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, where C.I.A. officers have been particularly active, or whether they might extend to cases from other countries, possibly including secret sites around the world where three dozen senior leaders of Al Qaeda are being held by the agency.

The officials said that the concern within the ranks had been growing since the agency's removal of its station chief in Baghdad, Iraq, in December 2003 in part because of concerns about the deaths of two Iraqis who had been questioned by C.I.A. employees.

The reason for the station chief's removal has not been previously disclosed. Former and current intelligence officials say the action occurred nearly four months before a wider pattern of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became publicly known. The removal was ordered by senior officials at C.I.A. headquarters in Washington within several weeks of their learning about the deaths of the Iraqi prisoners in separate incidents.

Some subtext for this: Gonzales is going to have appoint an independent prosecutor, because he's implicated (remember the torture memos?) Sy Hersh has another story waiting in the wings at the New Yorker on this and it is fair speculation that the chain of command on this goes all the way to the commander and chief.

Given how aggrieved the Agency professionals are by their treatment from Bushco, expect a lot more leaks. You will note that there is not ONE named source in this story. This may be Jehl and Johnston's (and expect participation by Walter Pincus at the WaPo before this is over with) "All the President's Men." Well, one can hope, anyway. I expect we'll learn a whole lot about "l'affaire Plame" before this is over with, as well.

This is the biggest story we've had so far this year. I'm lousy at predictions, but if Jehl and Johnston think they're sniffing a Pulitzer, don't expect this one to die.

Peace and Freedom

Revenge killings of members of Saddam's former regime rise

By Hannah Allam

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Since the Jan. 30 elections, Shiite militants have stepped up their campaign to exact street justice from men who were part of the regime that oppressed and massacred members of their sect for decades. While Shiite politicians turn a blind eye, assassins are working their way through a hit list of Saddam's former security and intelligence personnel, according to Iraqi authorities, Sunni politicians and interviews with the families of those who've been targeted.

Former Baathists have responded in kind, this month killing several Shiites allied with major political factions. Cases under investigation include the killings of two Shiite militiamen outside a popular restaurant in Baghdad a week ago and the deaths of three Shiite militiamen who were in police custody.

In a tactic borrowed from Sunni insurgents, Shiite militants have begun distributing printed death threats. One leaflet that lists several former Baathists targeted for assassination says: "We have given you the chance to repent for your crimes against the people of this country, but we have noticed during surveillance that you are instead trying to restore the glory of the atheist, corrupt Baath Party."

Among those killed in recent weeks:

- Taha Hussein Amiri, a prominent judge who handed down death sentences during Saddam's regime. Two gunmen on motorcycles shot and killed him Feb. 12 as he was being driven to work in the southern Shiite port city of Basra.

- Haider Kadhim, a former intelligence worker. He was shot in the back of the head Feb. 17 after six gunmen disguised as Iraqi security forces talked their way into his home in the Baghdad district of Saidiyah. The attack occurred at 7 a.m. - Kadhim was still in his pajamas, and his mother, wife and daughter were home.

- At least two other former Baathists were killed in Saidiyah in the past month, including Abdulrazak Karim al Douri, who was a major in Saddam's intelligence service and most recently worked at the Interior Ministry. He and a co-worker were killed when gunmen surrounded their car and pumped more than 50 bullets into their bodies, according to death certificates and an autopsy report.

Especially besieged are Shiite Baathists who live in predominantly Shiite or mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods, where targets are more accessible than in homogenous Sunni strongholds. Militiamen have demanded that former Baathists fly white flags to atone for their party membership and let their neighbors know they've renounced their pasts. Those who refuse often end up dead.

"They're doing it in Shiite neighborhoods because it's easier," said Mishan Jubouri, a prominent former Baathist who was one of the few Sunni Arabs elected to the new Parliament. "I know a lot of Shiite Baath Party members who have had to escape to Ramadi or Mosul or Tikrit," mostly Sunni territories.

There's been little or no investigation into any of the assassinations, the slain men's relatives said. Not that they need an investigation to place blame: The families staunchly believe that Shiite militias are behind the killings.

The assassination squads are widely believed to be from the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's most influential Shiite political party and the biggest winner in the elections.

"I believe they were Badr forces. They're assassinating all the well-known men," said Walid Rasheed, whose brother, a former Baathist named Falah Rasheed, was gunned down Monday outside his shop in Baghdad. "They just want to provoke strife among Iraqis."

Talk about winning your hearts and minds. This kinda flies in the face of Bushist rhetoric about all the wonderful things we're doing in Iraq, doesn't it?

Legislating Safety

EDITORIAL
Port Insecurity

More than 95% of imports from outside North America arrive on ships. Eighty percent of that goes through just 10 ports, with half of all imports passing through the Los Angeles-Long Beach complex, the nation's largest. A dirty bomb tucked inside a cargo container would be devastating, and not just to the population and economy of the ill-fated port city that received it. Between 50% and 60% of the $200 billion in cargo that moves each year through the Los Angeles and Long Beach complex is delivered to destinations outside Southern California. That's furniture, clothing, toys and electronics — and jobs — for much of the nation.

The private sector will have to bear some of the financial burden of protecting ports from terrorist attacks. But the government must play a role as well. And with 90% of federal transportation security funds going to airports, it can't afford to squander the miserly amount it has earmarked for ports by buying biohazard suits for Fargo, N.D., while Los Angeles and New York go begging.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) have introduced legislation that would require Homeland Security to allocate grants based on a port's vulnerability, the potential consequences of an attack and the actual threat as assessed by intelligence officials.

It's beyond belief that such common-sense rules require legislation. But it is now beyond doubt that they do.

Just another sign that making us safer is not high on the list of Bush priorities.

Dreamspinning

This is too weird to leave alone:

Romney links gay marriage, US prestige
Says nation cannot lead and allow legalization

By Michael Levenson, Globe Correspondent | February 26, 2005

SALT LAKE CITY -- Speaking before an adoring audience of Utah Republicans last night, Governor Mitt Romney drew a link between America's prestige around the world and the legalization of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.

''America cannot continue to lead the family of nations around the world if we suffer the collapse of the family here at home," Romney said, calling the Supreme Judicial Court's legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts ''a blow to the family."

Hours after gay marriage supporters in Boston criticized him for his recent, strident criticism of same-sex marriage, Romney delivered a half-hour speech laced with references to religion, family values, and praise for Ronald Reagan's foreign policy. In the latest in his recent series of out-of-state political appearances, he smiled as Utah Republicans made fun of Massachusetts' liberal reputation in their introductory remarks.

''I'm happy to be in my home away from home, here," Romney said, gushing at the mountain views and the abundance of Republicans. ''I love it here!"

He quoted what he said was an excerpt from the book, ''The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," by Harvard professor David S. Landes, declaring, ''If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference.

''America's culture is also defined by the fact that we are a religious people," Romney said. ''We recognize our God not only in our Declaration of Independence, but even in our currency. And we are also unique in that we recognize that the family is the fundamental building block of American society."

Right, the rest of the world deeply admires the way we deny any dignity at all to the relationships of same sex couples. Gov. Romney is fantasizing if he thinks that there is any prestige left for this country anywhere in the world.

The Cost of Empire

Iraq's liberation comes with a ballooning price tag

By Charles V. Pena
Commentary by
Thursday, February 24, 2005

The dollar cost of the Iraq war and subsequent occupation and reconstruction cannot be viewed in isolation. The fiscal year 2005 Defense Department budget that Bush signed last August was $417.5 billion, and the $80 billion supplemental brings military spending to nearly $500 billion. In real terms, that means that U.S. military spending is near an all-time high - exceeded only by spending in 1945-46 at the end of World War II and in 1952 at the height of the Korean War. It is more than peak spending during the war in Vietnam and the Reagan military buildup during one of the most intense periods of the Cold War.

The costs of the Iraq mission, though, are more than just dollars and cents. The prolonged U.S. military presence in Iraq has put a tremendous strain on the U.S. Army. Even if troop levels can be drawn down to 120,000 soldiers as is being currently planned (with another 30,000 U.S. troops in Kuwait to support the Iraqi military operation), the army will continue to be pushed to its limits. In order to maintain unit cohesiveness and meet rotation requirements, the Iraq mission has forced the military to resort to stop-loss orders to prevent soldiers from leaving service when their terms of enlistment expire. And to fill the need for critical skills, nearly 50 percent of the soldiers in Iraq are National Guardsmen and reservists, which threatens the viability of those force components. Indeed, in the past three years more National Guardsmen and reservists have been called to active duty than were cumulatively mobilized since the Cuban missile crisis - and that includes the Vietnam War, the Cuban refugee crisis, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and the 1991 Gulf War.

The Iraq mission has caused Wolfowitz to announce that what was supposed to be a temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers will now be a permanent increase in army troop strength in 2007. A recent letter from the Project for a New American Century to congressional leaders - signed by strange bedfellows including neoconservatives and liberal internationalists - called for increasing the size of the active duty army and Marine Corps by "at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years."

These military manpower pressures raise the specter of another potential cost: the return of the military draft. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Bush insisted, "We will not have a draft so long as I am president of the United States." The president is a man who means what he says and says what he means, so we should take him at his word. But avoiding a draft does not preclude the possibility of mandatory national service with a voluntary military component, as is done in some European countries.

Yet another hidden cost of the Iraq mission is the fact that many members of U.S. Special Forces units are resigning and taking more lucrative private security jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan. This has forced the U.S. military to offer bonuses of up to $150,000 to retain these highly trained soldiers. The true price tag, however, is that the depletion of Special Forces means reducing the ranks of the military units that are the most critical in fighting the war on terrorism against Al-Qaeda.

Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has surmised that "we will never achieve democracy and stability [in Iraq] without being willing to commit 500,000 troops, spend $200 billion a year, probably have a draft, and have some form of war compensation." Brzezinski conceded that Americans "are not prepared to do that." Clearly, the U.S. cannot afford to sustain the Iraq mission at the current level of commitment for an indefinite period. The Pentagon's budget is not a bottomless pit: With the cost of the Iraq war driving the budget deficit to a record $427 billion, even the Defense Department has been asked to trim its sails a bit.

Charles V. Pena is the director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute (www.cato.org) and an analyst for MSNBC television (www.msnbc.com). He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR

Bush has lost Cato, which should be one of his natural constituents. Now we have to wait for the public to awake from their Mesopotamian slumber.

I See Gay People

Episcopalians Affirm Pro-Gay View
Church's North American Members Back Same-Sex Unions

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 26, 2005; Page A06

Episcopal leaders in North America declined yesterday to apologize for endorsing the ordination of homosexual bishops and same-sex unions despite growing threats of a schism with other branches Anglican church, which has 77 million members worldwide.

The election of an American gay bishop and the blessing of same sex unions in the United States and in Canada have put the U.S. Episcopal Church on a collision course with the rest of the Anglican Communion. A conference of church leaders meeting in Northern Ireland on Thursday called on the Canadian and U.S. churches to voluntarily withdraw from the Anglican Consultative Council, a key decision-making body, until the controversy is resolved.

After a crisis meeting of the leaders of 35 Anglican national churches, the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said that any lasting solution to the crisis would "require people to say somewhere along the line, 'Yes, we were wrong.' " Williams, who is the titular leader of the worldwide church, has been under intense pressure from conservative bishops to crack down on the U.S. and Canadian churches.

The U.S. Episcopal Church was founded in 1789 as the direct descendant of the Anglican Church in the 13 colonies, and now has about 2.3 million members. Long-simmering tensions over the more liberal policies of the U.S. church came to a head in 2003 when an openly gay priest, V. Gene Robinson, was consecrated bishop of New Hampshire.

While U.S. bishops have repeatedly called for dialogue with other churches, they have given no indication that they are prepared to back down in the dispute. In a statement, Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold said that the Episcopal Church had "sought to act with integrity." Griswold told the BBC that Robinson's appointment as bishop of New Hampshire had been "right and proper."

U.S. church officials questioned whether the other church leaders had the right to request that the American church withdraw from the consultative council, which is due to meet in June in the English town of Nottingham. An Episcopal Church spokeswoman, Rev. Jan Nunley, said such a step should properly be taken by the consultative council itself.

Griswold, who attended the Northern Ireland meeting, will consult with his fellow bishops on the next step, Nunley said.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, where power flows from the pope, the Anglican Church functions as a decentralized federation of largely autonomous churches. American bishops recognize the archbishop of Canterbury as the first among equals, but do not feel subordinate to him in an administrative or doctrinal sense.

Reducing five centuries of ecclesiology to two sentences in the final graph is shoddy journalism, and shortchanges both Catholicism and the Anglican Communion. This is another of those stories in which the reporter is looking for analogies between faiths and, not finding them, attempts to create them. It's cheap work.

Update: Terry Mattingly of Get Religion has a whole lot more:

Anglican-beat reporters, please repeat after me once again: The Africans pray, the Americans pay and the British write the resolutions.

Follow the link if you want a lot of insiderish info on Anglican corporate life, well-written.

Reforms In Unlikely Places

Egypt's Mubarak Calls for Democratic Election Reforms
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 26, 2005

Filed at 8:03 a.m. ET

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday ordered a revision of the country's election laws and said multiple candidates could run in the nation's presidential elections, a scenario Mubarak hasn't faced since taking power in 1981.

The surprise announcement, a response to critics' calls for political reform, comes shortly after historic elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, balloting that brought a taste of democracy to the region. It also comes amid a sharp dispute with the United States over Egypt's arrest of one of the strongest proponents of multi-candidate elections.

``The election of a president will be through direct, secret balloting, giving the chance for political parties to run for the presidential elections and providing guarantees that allow more than one candidate for the people to choose among them with their own will,'' Mubarak said in an address broadcast live on Egyptian television.

Mubarak -- who has never faced an opponent since becoming president after the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat -- said his initiative came ``out of my full conviction of the need to consolidate efforts for more freedom and democracy.''

The audience before him at Menoufia University broke into applause and calls of support, some shouting, ``Long live Mubarak, mentor of freedom and democracy!'' Others spontaneously recited verses of poetry praising the government.

Mubarak said he asked parliament and the Shura Council to amend Article 76 of the constitution, which deals with presidential elections. Mohammed Kamal, a leading member of the ruling party's policy-making committee, said parliament would propose its amendment within two weeks.

Mubarak said the amendment would then be put to a public referendum before the presidential polls, which are scheduled for September. Kamal said he expected the referendum to be held within nine weeks.

As recently as last month Mubarak had rejected opposition demands to open presidential balloting to other candidates, and he was obviously aware of the historic potential of his announcement.

``If it happens, it would be the first time in the political history of Egypt that a chance is given to somebody who is capable of shouldering the responsibility to protect the people's achievements and future security to come forward for presidential elections with parliamentary and popular support,'' he said.

Egypt holds presidential referendums every six years in which people vote ``yes'' or ``no'' for a single candidate who has been approved by parliament. Mubarak has been nominated by his ruling National Democratic Party to stand in four presidential referendums, winning more than 90 percent of the vote each time.

Mubarak has not officially announced his candidacy for a fifth term, though he is widely expected to be nominated by his ruling party.

Several opposition leaders have demanded that Mubarak amend the constitution to let more than one candidate compete for the presidency. In recent meetings between opposition groups and the government, it was agreed that an amendment would be discussed after September's presidential referendum, making Mubarak's announcement even more surprising.

The move also comes amid a dispute between Egypt and the United States over the recent detention of an opposition leader.

Ayman Nour, head of the Al-Ghad Party, was detained Jan. 29 on allegations of forging nearly 2,000 signatures to secure a license for his party last year. He has rejected the accusation, and human rights groups have said his detention was politically motivated.

The prosecutor general has denied that charge.

His detention has been strongly criticized by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Rice canceled a Mideast visit that had been planned for next week, a decision believed to be in protest of Nour's detention.

Hafez Abu Saada, director of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, praised Mubarak's ``unexpected step,'' which he said reflected local, regional and international pressure.

This came out of nowhere. Anybody got a handle on the angle here?

Friday Night Open Thread

I bought a new cookbook today, so expect some recipes over the weekend to break up all the bad news. I need the occasional break from all the bad news, I don't want to get bitter and jaded. Oh, wait....

I'll also need some time to work up a new proposal for the publisher who is interested in this site. The last one didn't fly, but we had a conversation today and I think I have a much better idea of what they want and need to pull some things together. I'm now going to be paying a high price for never putting a category index on the site and now that I'm pushing 3,200 entries, searching by hand is out of the question. This is going to be work.

But tonight, I'm taking the rest of the night off, watching some TeeVee and drinking a little wine. See you in the morning.

And It Doesn't Work

Canadian ambassador talks missile defense

WILLIAM C. MANN

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Domestic political realities played a major role in Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin's refusal to buy into the nascent U.S. missile defense system, and his decision does nothing to diminish Canada's commitment to NORAD, the half-century-old joint air-defense monitoring system, Canada's outgoing ambassador said Friday.

Ambassador Michael Kergin also said he sees no basic damage to relations between the North American neighbors.

Interviewed on his last day in Washington, Kergin said details of Martin's decision had been communicated "in a fairly methodical, well-thought-out way" before the prime minister announced it in parliament Thursday.

Martin said he, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew and National Defense Minister Bill Graham deliberated extensively whether to sign on to President George W. Bush's plan for missile interceptors to protect the North American mainland from ballistic missile attack. In his speech, he said Canada "will continue to work in partnership with our southern neighbors on the common defense of North America and on continental security."
....
While U.S. officials, as expressed by the U.S. ambassador in Ottawa, Paul Cellucci, were angered by the decision, Kergin said he did not think it would have any fundamentally negative effects on the countries' relations.

That last line is a real charmer, innit? As if anyone who crosses Bush doesn't pay for it, Big Time....

Oh, pogge, expect major trade sanctions.

Anglican Disunity

Archbishop: Anglicans Could Face Division

58 minutes ago

By ROBERT BARR, Associated Press Writer

NEWRY, Northern Ireland - The issue of homosexuality threatens to split the Anglican Communion and the rift cannot be resolved easily, the archbishop of Canterbury said Friday, a day after church leaders asked the U.S. and Canadian churches to temporarily withdraw from a key council.

Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the 77 million-member communion, spoke after a five-day crisis meeting to discuss the election of a gay bishop in the United States and the blessing of same-sex unions there and in Canada, which have precipitated the most serious rift in the body's history.

"We still face the possibility of division, of course we do," Williams said. "That's not going to go away.

"Any lasting solution, I think, will require people to say somewhere along the line, 'Yes, we were wrong.'"

Williams said people who had acted in good faith might later realize "'I hadn't counted the cost.' And that applies in a number of different contexts here."

His comments came after the 35 primates, or church national leaders, meeting near Belfast on Thursday asked the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada to withdraw from the Anglican Consultative Council for three years — a move some feared could be the first step toward a permanent split in the communion.

The crisis erupted when the U.S. Episcopal Church consecrated V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire in November 2003. Robinson lives with his longtime male partner. Conservatives also have criticized North American dioceses for allowing blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples.

The two churches also were invited to explain to the council in June the theological reasoning behind Robinson's consecration and the decision by one Canadian diocese to authorize the blessing of same-sex unions.

Thursday's communique said Anglican teaching on sexuality had "been seriously undermined by the recent developments in North America." A 1998 resolution adopted by all Anglican bishops declared that gay sex was "incompatible with Scripture" and opposed gay ordinations and same-sex blessings.

Some conservative Anglicans hailed the statement as a victory.

"The clarity with which the primates have spoken is breathtaking," said Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, a leader of the conservative wing of the Episcopal Church.

"Individual provinces do have the freedom to act as they see fit under their various constitutions, but the exercise of that freedom beyond agreed teaching and practice will imperil their standing and participation in the communion," he said.

Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, head of the Episcopal Church, stressed that discussions continued. The communique "was written with a view to making room for a wide variety of perspectives," he said.

Andrew Hutchison, the Anglican Archbishop of Canada, said there had been a great deal of warmth and support at the meeting — although he confirmed that some of the primates had refused to participate in communion services with the North Americans.

My heart hurts for all you Anglicans and Episcopalians. This is not going to be an easy problem to solve. Frank Griswold, the American Presiding Bishop, said "We've had thirty years to discuss this issue. It's time to move on" in a press release a couple of years ago. But, clearly, there remain divisions within the American church which are as bitter as those between the industrialized nations and the third world churches.

My take? The Anglican communion's teaching on ever so many subjects has moved beyond Pauline proscriptions that it should move beyond this one, too. And I think that Archbishop Williams should have some hard questions about polygamy for those third world bishops.

Suspicious Minds

Poll: Americans Value Drugs, Question Drugmakers
70 Percent Say Companies Focus on Profits More Than Consumers

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 26, 2005;

By an overwhelming majority, Americans believe prescription drugs significantly improve their health and quality of life, but almost as many say the companies that make them put their own profits ahead of the well-being of consumers, according to a new poll released today.

The survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 78 percent of adults say prescription drugs make a "big difference" in people's lives, and 91 percent believe drug companies contribute significantly to society by researching and developing new drugs.

But 70 percent feel the pharmaceutical companies that produce them are more concerned "about making profits" than developing new drugs, according to the survey.

The poll also found that in 2004, a majority of Americans said for the first time that drug companies overall do a "bad job" of serving their customers. In 1997, when the survey began, 79 percent of those polled said that drug companies did a "good job" for consumers.

With public views of the big drug companies becoming more critical, the poll found that a large majority of Americans want the government to do more to reduce drug costs -- with 65 percent saying they wanted more government regulation of prices and 73 percent favoring changes that would allow Americans to buy cheaper drugs from Canada.

"Rightly or wrongly, drug companies are now the number one villain in the public's eye when it comes to rising health care costs," said Foundation President Drew E. Altman. "People want to rein in the cost of prescription drugs, and just about anything we poll on with that aim gets public support."

Turns out there is good reason to be suspicious not only of Big Pharma, but also the regulation system:

10 Voters on Panel Backing Pain Pills Had Industry Ties
By GARDINER HARRIS and ALEX BERENSON

Published: February 25, 2005

Ten of the 32 government drug advisers who last week endorsed continued marketing of the huge-selling pain pills Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx have consulted in recent years for the drugs' makers, according to disclosures in medical journals and other public records.

If the 10 advisers had not cast their votes, the committee would have voted 12 to 8 that Bextra should be withdrawn and 14 to 8 that Vioxx should not return to the market. The 10 advisers with company ties voted 9 to 1 to keep Bextra on the market and 9 to 1 for Vioxx's return.

The votes of the 10 did not substantially influence the committee's decision on Celebrex because only one committee member voted that Celebrex should be withdrawn.

Eight of the 10 members said in interviews that their past relationships with the drug companies had not influenced their votes. The two others did not respond to phone or e-mail messages.

Researchers with ties to industry commonly serve on Food and Drug Administration advisory panels, but their presence has long been a contentious issue.

Outsourcing and Civil Liberty

I have been aware of the Maher Arar case for many months, primarily by keeping up with the Canadian papers and blogs, since the American press hasn't been particularly interested. Part of Herbert's genius is to waken afresh the outrage in the breast of jaded observers such as myself, and I thank him for it.

Thrown to the Wolves
By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 25, 2005

In the fall of 2002 Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, suddenly found himself caught up in the cruel mockery of justice that the Bush administration has substituted for the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world. While attempting to change planes at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities, interrogated and thrown into jail. He was not charged with anything, and he never would be charged with anything, but his life would be ruined.

Mr. Arar was surreptitiously flown out of the United States to Jordan and then driven to Syria, where he was kept like a nocturnal animal in an unlit, underground, rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was tortured.

He wept. He begged not to be beaten anymore. He signed whatever confessions he was told to sign. He prayed.

Among the worst moments, he said, were the times he could hear babies crying in a nearby cell where women were imprisoned. He recalled hearing one woman pleading with a guard for several days for milk for her child.

He could hear other prisoners screaming as they were tortured.

"I used to ask God to help them," he said.

The Justice Department has alleged, without disclosing any evidence whatsoever, that Mr. Arar is a member of, or somehow linked to, Al Qaeda. If that's so, how can the administration possibly allow him to roam free? The Syrians, who tortured him, have concluded that Mr. Arar is not linked in any way to terrorism.

And the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a sometimes-clownish outfit that seems to have helped set this entire fiasco in motion by forwarding bad information to American authorities, is being criticized heavily in Canada for failing to follow its own rules on the handling and dissemination of raw classified information.

Official documents in Canada suggest that Mr. Arar was never the target of a terror investigation there. One former Canadian official, commenting on the Arar case, was quoted in a local newspaper as saying "accidents will happen" in the war on terror.

Whatever may have happened in Canada, nothing can excuse the behavior of the United States in this episode. Mr. Arar was deliberately dispatched by U.S. officials to Syria, a country that - as they knew - practices torture. And if Canadian officials hadn't intervened, he most likely would not have been heard from again.

Mr. Arar is the most visible victim of the reprehensible U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, in which individuals are abducted by American authorities and transferred, without any legal rights whatever, to a regime skilled in the art of torture. The fact that some of the people swallowed up by this policy may in fact have been hard-core terrorists does not make it any less repugnant.

Mr. Arar, who is married and also has an 8-year-old daughter, said the pain from some of the beatings he endured lasted for six months.

"It was so scary," he said. "After a while I became like an animal."

A lawsuit on Mr. Arar's behalf has been filed against the United States by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer with the center, noted yesterday that the government is arguing that none of Mr. Arar's claims can even be adjudicated because they "would involve the revelation of state secrets."

This is a government that feels it is answerable to no one.

It's a fact of anthropology that humans like to set up false dichotomies, to split the world into "Us" versus "Them." It's not true. We are all Maher Arar. What was done to him could be done to any of us.

Old-Time Religion

February 25, 2005 JONATHAN CHAIT:
George Bush's Stepford Critics
# You're likely to recant, zombie- like, if you betray the president.

Enough apostate Bush loyalists have retracted their heretical views that certain recognizable tropes have emerged. First, the heretic's repudiation of his own deeds should obviously contradict his own principles. Take the first known example of the type, Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.). A former dentist, Norwood had grown infuriated at the callousness of health maintenance organizations and made a patient's bill of rights his crusade.

Bush sought to kill Norwood's bill by promoting a toothless, industry-friendly alternative. In the spring of 2001, Norwood blasted Bush's sham bill as worse than the status quo and vowed to "personally exhaust every effort to defeat" Bush's plan. Then Norwood was summoned to the White House. As one newspaper reported, he "emerged from the hourlong meeting looking haggard" and instantly announced his support for Bush's bill.

Norwood's only explanation for renouncing his life's work was that "what I'm against is not having a change in the law." (To the surprise of no sentient observer, no patient's bill of rights was ever enacted.)

Second, there should be little or no explanation as to how the apostate came to change his mind. Consider John Weaver, a top advisor to John McCain. The lodestar of Weaver's ideology for years had been hatred of Karl Rove — who, Weaver complained, had spread vicious slanders about him when the two worked in Texas politics. Weaver was strategist for McCain's guerrilla campaign against Bush and Rove in 2000.

But then, last spring, Bush and the popular McCain began barnstorming the country together. It came out that their rapprochement had followed a meeting between Weaver and his arch-nemesis, Rove, whom he called "gracious" — perhaps the first time anyone had ever called Rove this. Weaver declared that the pair had "a very honest and very frank discussion, and let's just leave it at that."

Third, the recanting heretic's explanation should make no sense. Indeed, this very implausibility is part of the mystique. In 2002, John DiIulio, the former director of Bush's faith-based initiative, criticized the administration. "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm," he said, fleshing out the critique with damning details.

The next day, DiIulio announced that "my criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. I sincerely apologize and am deeply remorseful."

Or, as Galileo said of his declaration that the Earth revolves around the sun: "With sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect whatsoever contrary to the said Holy Church, and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me."

If I recall, this statement was preceded by an honest and frank discussion.

Recant or be killed, is more like it.

Family Values

I think that we will shortly be able to put a fork in this.

Kansas on My Mind
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 25, 2005

People like myself - members of what one scornful Bush aide called the "reality-based community" - tend to attribute the right's electoral victories to its success at spreading policy disinformation. And the campaign against Social Security certainly involves a lot of disinformation, both about how the current system works and about the consequences of privatization.

But if that were all there is to it, Social Security should be safe, because this particular disinformation campaign isn't going at all well. In fact, there's a sense of wonderment among defenders of Social Security about the other side's lack of preparation. The Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation have spent decades campaigning for privatization. Yet they weren't ready to answer even the most obvious questions about how it would work - like how benefits could be maintained for older Americans without a dangerous increase in debt.

Privatizers are even having a hard time pretending that they want to strengthen Social Security, not dismantle it. At one of Senator Rick Santorum's recent town-hall meetings promoting privatization, college Republicans began chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security's got to go."

But before the anti-privatization forces assume that winning the rational arguments is enough, they need to read Mr. Frank.

The message of Mr. Frank's book is that the right has been able to win elections, despite the fact that its economic policies hurt workers, by portraying itself as the defender of mainstream values against a malevolent cultural elite. The right "mobilizes voters with explosive social issues, summoning public outrage ... which it then marries to pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends."

In Mr. Frank's view, this is a confidence trick: politicians like Mr. Santorum trumpet their defense of traditional values, but their true loyalty is to elitist economic policies. "Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. ... Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization." But it keeps working.

And this week we saw Mr. Frank's thesis acted out so crudely that it was as if someone had deliberately staged it. The right wants to dismantle Social Security, a successful program that is a pillar of stability for working Americans. AARP stands in the way. So without a moment's hesitation, the usual suspects declared that this organization of staid seniors is actually an anti-soldier, pro-gay-marriage leftist front.

It's tempting to dismiss this as an exceptional case in which right-wingers, unable to come up with a real cultural grievance to exploit, fabricated one out of thin air. But such fabrications are the rule, not the exception.

For example, for much of December viewers of Fox News were treated to a series of ominous warnings about "Christmas under siege" - the plot by secular humanists to take Christ out of America's favorite holiday. The evidence for such a plot consisted largely of occasions when someone in an official capacity said, "Happy holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas."

So it doesn't matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that was created by and for America's greatest generation - and that it is especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and Arkansas, where it's the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that anyone who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family values.

Their first attack may have missed the mark, but it's the shape of smears to come.

Op failure

Listen up. This one, while not entirely accurate, is important.

U.S. Moves To Preserve Iraq Coalition

By Robin Wright and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 25, 2005; Page A01

The United States is planning increasingly to shift the duties of foreign troops in Iraq from providing security to training Iraq's new army and police to prevent more countries from abandoning the international coalition there and possibly lure others back.

The coalition has included about three dozen nations, which contributed 20,000 to 25,000 soldiers, or about 11 percent, of the foreign troops performing security operations in Iraq, adding to a U.S. contingent of 155,000. But the deployments have been highly unpopular in several countries and a political liability for participating governments, especially with troops forced to stay longer than envisioned to defeat the insurgency.

Since last summer, troops from almost a dozen countries have withdrawn from Iraq or announced plans to leave.

Portugal quietly pulled out its 150 soldiers this month. Next month, the Netherlands will begin withdrawing its 1,700 troops, one of the largest contingents. And Ukraine's new government has signaled plans for a phased pullout of its 1,600 soldiers.

However, Iraq's elections last month and President Bush's goodwill mission to Europe this week appear to be breathing new life into the U.S.-led occupation, officials from European and coalition countries said. The plan to beef up training has sparked new commitments of instructors, funds and equipment, in addition to troops committed to other functions.

"Countries have been very supportive, especially recently," Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the training mission in Iraq, said in an e-mail. "We have indeed seen the impact of the sense of momentum building here as a result of the elections and the heartening performance of the Iraqi Security Forces during that period and since, despite challenges."

Pentagon officials declined to say how many trainers they seek. But the transformation of the coalition has already started. Australia announced this week that it will soon dispatch 450 new troops to Iraq -- more than double the number of Australian forces now deployed in the country -- to assist with training.

"There has been a change in the outlook for Iraq since the election. We are now at a tilting point," Australian Prime Minister John Howard told a news conference Tuesday. "Everybody now agrees that if the ultimate goal of the withdrawal of foreign forces and the assumption of internal security arrangements, as well as defense against an external threat, is to be undertaken by the Iraqis, they must be better trained. And we have a role to play in that."

Like other coalition members, Australia had withdrawn most of its forces, with its original 2,000-troop deployment down to 900. But most of the remaining force was outside Iraq, deployed in neighboring countries or on ships nearby, leaving about 200 in Iraq and almost none in combat deployments. Other countries are down to two dozen or three dozen troops in Iraq. All of Singapore's 180 deployed troops are on a ship offshore.

NATO's training mission -- designed to bolster U.S. efforts to create viable Iraqi security forces -- has proved more popular with European nations and members of NATO because countries can sign on without appearing to support the U.S.-led war. All 26 NATO nations have pledged support to the training efforts, some offering to send trainers into the country, others offering financial assistance or external training, something U.S. commanders deem vital.

And while the foreign security forces in Iraq shrink, with U.S. forces scaling back to pre-election totals of about 138,000 and other nations withdrawing their troops, U.S. commanders believe the training effort will generate the necessary number of Iraqi forces to replace them. Ideally, they say, the new Iraqi forces will be able to take over for U.S. units in calmer areas of Iraq as new recruits flood in. U.S. military leaders hope the Iraqi security forces will outnumber U.S. troops in the country by the end of this year.

In how many languages can you spell "failed mission?" This is the face of disaster.

Weather Toys

I'm doing this just because I can, and once in a while it's nice to take a break from my snarky, ironic Internet pose and just find things like this cool. Little things give me joy. It's the WaPo's live cam of the area snow, with a ruler stuck in the snow so you can watch it pile up. It's not piling up very much, in fact this storm was quite the flop, but the Fed still got still got sent home early. Rush hours are ugly here when the weather is perfect, so GSA's decision probably saved some lives. I'll support that.

I rescheduled everything I was planning to do today: around here it doesn't take very much snow at all to turn the entire area into gridlock, but we've had less than half the snow they forecast and everything could have gotten done.

Oh, well. I remember my first snow storm after moving here in '85. Another co-worker and I, another Minnesota expat newly arrived in the city (and a co-worker of mine from a previous career in Minnesota, go figure) had an afternoon appointment away from the office. It started snowing around 10 AM but we weren't concerned, we were Minnesotans and have driven in everything. We left the office at 2:00 for a 2:30 meeting a couple of miles north of our office on Wisconsin Ave just above Georgetown. In 30 minutes, we'd gone four blocks. The streets had frozen and there were buses scattered diagonally all over Wisconsin. At that moment, I realized that the weather has nothing to do with my prowess in the snow. The systems around here aren't set up to deal with snowy weather, and the drivers sure aren't used to it. I respect the fact that these are the operating conditions and make alternate plans.

In one of the alternate universes I occupy, I am also an amateur meteorologist (strange but true, and I've won some forecasting competitions.) There are some excellent computer models which demonstrate why snow casting in this part of the world is so hard to get right. They are pay sites, so I'm not linking. Suffice it to say, this is one of the spots in the country which is really difficult for precip forecasts in general, winter or summer, and I don't blame the NWS for failing to call it right so often. I can bash out a forecast most days for someplace like New Orleans or Oneonta, New York, which will be at least as successful as Accu-weather's. But in this part of the world, I'm as far off as NOAA most of the time.

For the locals: here is the li nk to the local NWS site in Sterling, Virginia. For those of you in the neighborhood, this is the data all of the local weathercasts are using for their base date. They may buy additional data from Accuweather and they probably own some of their own modeling tools, too, but the NWS data is the normative stuff everyone starts with.

Wherever you live, you can Google "nws+[your city]+forecast" and get the site of your local National Weather Service Office. Each of them do zone forecasts, so even if your location is relatively remote from the office, they'll have a map-based tool to get the forecast for you from the front page. The NWS websites aren't the prettiest around but they have a lot of data if you are willing to do some clicking around, and the best weather radar loops you are going to get for your area (doable but not fun on dial up, needs flash and java.)

Yes, Bump attempts to be a full service site. And pogge I don't want to hear a bit of guff out of you about what snow wimps we are down here. I'll put my month of August against yours anytime.

Frail Buck

Warning From the Markets

Published: February 24, 2005

When a seemingly innocuous remark from the central bank of South Korea makes the dollar tank, as happened on Tuesday, all is not well with the United States' position in the world economy.

The dollar has been on a downward trajectory for three years, thanks in part to the Bush administration's decision to try to use a cheap dollar to shrink the nation's enormous trade deficit. (A weak dollar makes exports cheaper and imports costlier, a combination that theoretically should narrow the trade gap.) To be truly effective, however, a weak dollar must be combined with a lower federal budget deficit - or even a budget surplus, something the administration clearly hasn't delivered. So predictably, the weak-dollar ploy hasn't worked. The United States' trade deficit has mushroomed to record levels, as has the United States' need to borrow from abroad - some $2 billion a day - just to balance its books.

Enter South Korea. On Monday, its central bank reported that it intended to diversify into other currencies and away from dollar-based assets. And why not? It holds about $69 billion in United States Treasury securities, or 4 percent of the total foreign Treasury holdings. Such dollar-based investments lose value as the dollar weakens, leading to losses that any cautious banker would want to avoid. But as the Korean comment ping-ponged around the world, all hell broke loose, with currency traders selling dollars for fear that the central banks of Japan and China, which hold immense dollar reserves - a combined $900 billion, or 46 percent of foreign Treasury holdings - might follow suit.

That would be the United States' worst economic nightmare. If it appeared that the flow of investment from abroad was not enough to cover the nation's gargantuan deficits, interest rates would rise sharply, the dollar would plunge further, and the economy would stall. A fiscal crisis would result.

As long as we continue running these enormous deficits backed up by Asian held paper, the danger continues. World markets are dangerously out of balance. The dollar at 1 PM EST: down vs. the Pound Sterling and the Yen.

U.S. Economy: January Durables Orders Decline

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. durable goods orders fell 0.9 percent in January, the first drop in three months, as lower demand for planes and automobiles overshadowed a surge in capital equipment. Jobless claims rose from the lowest level in more than four years.

Oil Surges to 4-Month High as Supplies Rise Less Than Forecast

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose above $52 a barrel in New York, a four-month high, after the Energy Department reported that U.S. stockpiles rose less than forecast.

Supplies rose 608,000 barrels to 297 million barrels last week, leaving inventories 8.5 percent higher than a year ago, according to the report. Thirteen analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected a 1.2 million barrel increase, according to the median of forecasts. Imports plunged to the lowest since September as refineries cut operating rates by 1.5 percentage points.

Credulous Kessler

An 'A La Carte' Coalition Between U.S. and Europe

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 24, 2005; Page A17

Two years ago, as the United States prepared to invade Iraq, much of the opposition in Europe focused on the need to restrain the American "hyperpower" from running roughshod over international norms.

But as President Bush nears the end of his goodwill tour of Europe this week, it is increasingly clear the attitude has shifted. With the United States pinned down in Iraq, where the continued deployment of nearly 150,000 troops has severely strained the U.S. military, European leaders no longer expect further military expeditions in Bush's second term. And so they have been gracious -- but assertive, thus reflecting how far the United States has fallen from "hyperpower" status -- a term coined about America by French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine.

Indeed, analysts said, European leaders are increasingly united against U.S. positions and feel emboldened to go their own way on such issues as Iran and China.

Francois Heisbourg, director of the International Foundation for Strategic Studies in Paris, said there is no longer an Atlantic partnership so much as what he called an "a la carte partnership" between Europe and the United States. On some issues, the two sides agree and try to work together, and on others there is disagreement and discord. There are also issues on which they disagree but are willing to find common ground, he said.

"This is the new world," Heisbourg said. "The mission determines the coalition," he added, deliberately echoing an assertion made by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Heisbourg said the divisions created by the Iraq war had also changed the dynamic within Europe, with officials trying to form a more united front on key issues. Europeans who had been more assertive in their stand on the war, such as the French, have become more restrained while the British, who had argued that Europe had little choice but to support the United States, have leaned back toward the rest of Europe. "Those at the center, such as Germany, have become more bold in stressing their Europeanism," he said.

The net effect is a Europe more willing to go its own way even as the Bush administration has engaged in a charm offensive in recent weeks to rebalance relationships badly frayed by the Iraq war.

Philip H. Gordon, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, said Europeans were deeply concerned when the Bush administration came into office in 2001 and took a number of unilateral steps, such as rejecting the Kyoto climate change treaty and pushing to abandon the antiballistic missile treaty.

"Europeans were worried we might be right and we did not need them," Gordon said. "They claimed to doubt we were so powerful but were worried we were. Now they see we are not."

He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's trip to Europe earlier this month and Bush's this week are viewed as "an American admission that allies are a little more necessary to us than we thought."

In the meantime, Gordon said, European nations have pressed ahead with negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, despite initial misgivings by the Bush administration. Yesterday, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley suggested Bush was mulling working with the Europeans to persuade Iran to give up the program.

On China, despite strong U.S. objections, European officials have made it clear they will lift an arms embargo imposed after the Tiananmen Square crackdown 15 years ago. European officials have also pressed ahead with setting up a European defense planning operation apart from NATO, rebuffed U.S. efforts to weaken the International Criminal Court and embraced the Kyoto treaty.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter, said that when he told a French newspaper last week the United States now understands that it is predominant but not omnipotent, the editors made that point its headline.

Compare and contrast this piece with the Tyson/Priest article below. All international cooperation will be window dressing for this administration.

Peace and Freedom

The Downside of Democracy
# What if the U.S. doesn't like what the voters like in the Mideast and beyond?

By Juan Cole, Juan Cole is professor of modern Middle Eastern and North African studies at the University of Michigan. He maintains a blog on Middle East affairs, Informed Comment.

With the emergence of Shiite physician Ibrahim Jafari as the leading candidate for Iraqi prime minister earlier this week, the contradictions of Bush administration policy in the Middle East have become even clearer than they were before.

President Bush says he is committed to democratizing the region, yet he also wants governments to emerge that are friendly to the U.S., benevolent to their own people, secular, capitalist and willing to stand up and fight against anti-American radicals.

But what if democratic elections do not produce such governments? What if the newly elected regimes are friendly to states and groups that Washington considers enemies? What if the spread of democracy through the region empowers elements that don't share American values and goals?

The recent election in Iraq is a case in point. The two major parties in the victorious Shiite alliance are Jafari's party, the Dawa, founded in the late 1950s to work for an Islamic republic, and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, the goal of which can be guessed from its name. To be fair, both have backed away from their more radical stances of earlier decades. But both parties — and Jafari himself — were sheltered in Tehran in the 1980s by Washington's archenemy, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and both acknowledge that they want to move Iraq toward Islamic law and values.

The victorious Shiite fundamentalists have already taken steps that may be making the Bush administration nervous. They made it clear that they would attempt to incorporate their paramilitaries into the new Iraqi army. SCIRI has the Badr Corps, made up of about 15,000 men under arms trained originally by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Dawa has its own paramilitary.

The two parties also announced that they would try to bring into the government's armed forces members of the Al Mahdi militia of Shiite nationalist Muqtada Sadr, which have fought hard battles against the U.S. military in Najaf and elsewhere. Jafari has previously said that he hoped to bring Sadr into the Iraqi government. Jafari likewise has protested U.S. military action in Fallouja.

In interviews, Jafari has warned against deliberate attempts to undermine Iraq's relations with neighboring Iran, which he has visited on several occasions for consultations since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

To be fair, Jafari has emerged as a moderate and skillful politician, and his devotion to his faith should in principle be no more objectionable than Bush's own devotion to Christianity. Yet it certainly seems that his new government will adopt policies far less welcome in Washington than those of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

In the current struggle over whether the fundamentalist Lebanese Shiite party, Hezbollah, should be designated a terrorist organization, it seems clear that both the Dawa and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq will side with Hezbollah.

The fact is, democracy is an unruly process; it doesn't always yield the results we want or expect. Bush likes to talk in terms of good versus evil, to suggest that the forces of freedom and democracy are doing battle with the defenders of tyranny — but he should be aware that the world isn't always that simple.

Bush's "my way or the highway" code doesn't take into account that the highway is a really big place.

As I read Juan's piece this morning (and he must have no life these days, I saw him on the Newshour last night, he's the "go-to" expert these days) I was thinking about the Fineman article I posted last night. Bush has no imagination for long-term goals or anything that goes beyond a personal "win" in the immediate sense. Watch him take his ball and go home when he doesn't get what he wants as he looks for opportunities for revenge. He's a classic bully and the rest of the planet has figured that out.

The Moderates

Specter Unbound

By Ruth Marcus
Thursday, February 24, 2005; Page A21

President Bush would be wise to "pick up the phone" and consult with Democrats before choosing a new Supreme Court justice. "The advice clause in the Constitution has been largely ignored." If there is a vacancy on the high court, "the far right is going to come hard at a nominee if it is not a nominee of their choosing. But I think there's a much broader base in America than the far right." Changing the Senate rules to prohibit filibusters of judicial nominees -- the "nuclear option" -- could have deleterious short-term effects and run the long-term risk of eroding the rights of the minority. "If we go to the nuclear option . . . the Senate will be in turmoil and the Judiciary Committee will be hell."

What is surprising about these comments is not so much the substance as the speaker: the new Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter. If you thought that his brush with losing the committee chairmanship had chastened the legendarily contrarian Specter, if you thought his recent diagnosis of Hodgkin's disease might have tempered his approach -- well, that wasn't the Specter on display in a visit with The Post editorial board yesterday. Instead, the discussion featured Specter Unbound: the Specter who voted against Robert H. Bork rather than the one who rallied to the defense of Clarence Thomas.

Specter had some cautionary words for Democrats as well -- chiding them for opposing qualified nominees such as Miguel Estrada, urging them to allow votes and avoid an ugly showdown, and placing blame -- properly so -- on both sides for inflaming and escalating the judicial nomination wars. For two decades, he said, Democrats and Republicans have been blocking the other side's judges, using increasingly unappetizing tactics. "Now," he said, "it's a situation where nobody wants to back down." Still, he reserved his toughest words for the extremists of his own party, pressed for accommodations from his own side and made clear that his cooperation with the administration would have its limits. All he had promised the president, Specter said, was a "prompt airing" for his nominees and a vote out of committee. "Those are the extent of my commitments," he said flatly.

This may be the Specter conservatives feared -- but it also seems like the chairman the committee (and the country) needs. The 75-year-old former district attorney -- as he is so fond of reminding listeners -- can be demanding and prickly: His aides are so well-trained that they not only arrive with notepad, water and coffee in tow but take care to break open the little plastic tab on the coffee cup so the senator doesn't have to be bothered. Specter is proud of the new traffic light setup he's installed in the committee hearing room to regulate speaking times, but some of his colleagues are none too pleased with what's likely to be a quixotic effort to keep their verbosity in check. But he is also smart and serious and -- most of all -- independent-minded at a time when there is all too little thinking that deviates from the party line on either side of the aisle.

Of course, it's just that attitude that almost cost Specter the chairmanship in November. His post-election comments that a Supreme Court nominee who opposed abortion rights was not likely to win Senate confirmation was reported as a warning to the president, and the groups that had hoped to unseat the moderate Specter in favor of a more conservative Republican then mobilized in an effort to deny him the chairmanship. Or, as Specter not so diplomatically put it, "the far right was ready to pounce on me if I'd done nothing but said the Lord's Prayer, and that was a crevice and they went after it."

This op-ed makes me want to ask a whole bunch of other questions Marcus didn't: are there other moderate R committee chairs? Who are they? Who else is liable to buck the conventional wisdom in the caucus?

Snow Day

All of this middle of the night posting is by way of preserving for me some Golden Hours. I want to be between the sheets and listening when the snow starts to fall at dawn.

The words "cozy and safe" mean something to me. In the case of a snowstorm, it means waiting it out in a bed with flannel sheets and then making sausage, eggs and coffee. I may toss a log in the fireplace later. And then I'll pick up the novel I was reading before the weather caught my interest.

Update: Yup, the city is shut down tight.

Empire

Pentagon Seeking Leeway Overseas
Operations Could Bypass Envoys

By Ann Scott Tyson and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 24, 2005; Page A01

The Pentagon is promoting a global counterterrorism plan that would allow Special Operations forces to enter a foreign country to conduct military operations without explicit concurrence from the U.S. ambassador there, administration officials familiar with the plan said.

The plan would weaken the long-standing "chief of mission" authority under which the U.S. ambassador, as the president's top representative in a foreign country, decides whether to grant entry to U.S. government personnel based on political and diplomatic considerations.
The Special Operations missions envisioned in the plan would largely be secret, known to only a handful of officials from the foreign country, if any.

The change is included in a highly classified "execute order" -- part of a broad strategy developed since Sept. 11, 2001, to give the U.S. Special Operations Command new flexibility to track down and destroy terrorist networks worldwide, the officials said.

"This is a military order on a global scale, something that hasn't existed since World War II," said a counterterrorism official with lengthy experience in special operations. He and other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposal is classified.

We'll go where we wanna go, kill who we wanna kill, and fsck you, host nation, we're the only hyperpower in the world. Eat our dust. Fsck you. We are the champions of the world. Bow down and acknowlege us or be crushed.

I'll curious to see how Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brz spin this on the weekend chat shows.

More Bad Reporting

Bush May Weigh Using Incentives to Dissuade Iran
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: February 24, 2005

WIESBADEN, Germany, Feb. 23 - President Bush said Wednesday that he and German, British and French leaders had discussed negotiating tactics to try to get Iran to give up its suspected nuclear weapons program, and his national security adviser later left open the possibility that Mr. Bush would consider offering incentives to dissuade Iran from its nuclear ambitions.

The tactic of incentives, favored by the Europeans, had been roundly rejected by the Bush administration as recently as two weeks ago.

Despite the glimmer of what the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, described as a "convergence" of the Americans and Europeans on the tactics to be used in negotiations with Iran, the president gave no indication that the United States would directly join in the talks, as the Europeans want.

Mr. Bush made his remarks in the Rhine city of Mainz at a joint news conference with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany in the Electoral Palace, a reconstructed German Renaissance building that was once the home of the archbishop of Mainz. The president was on the third day of a four-day trip to Europe to repair relationships ruptured after the war with Iraq, and he and Mr. Schröder had talks that focused on Iran, touched on their disagreement over the Kyoto Treaty on global warming and generally helped publicly smooth over the rift between the nations.

Mr. Bush also sought to soothe growing fears in Europe that Iran would become the next battleground for the United States.

"You know, yesterday I was asked about the U.S. position, and I said all options are on the table," he said, referring to comments he made at the European Union headquarters in Brussels. "That's part of our position. But I also reminded people that diplomacy is just beginning. Iran is not Iraq."

On Tuesday at a news conference at the European Union, Mr. Bush said bluntly, "This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous." But then he immediately added, to some laughter, "And having said that, all options are on the table."

The president also emphatically declared that blame for any lack of progress in the talks should be placed on Iran, not on the White House or Europe.

"The reason we're having these discussions is because they were caught enriching uranium after they had signed a treaty saying they wouldn't enrich uranium," Mr. Bush said of the Iranians. "They're the party that needs to be held into account, not any of us."

In his public comments about Iran's uranium enrichment, Mr. Bush appeared to have misspoken, because the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty permits uranium enrichment for commercial purposes as long as a country declares the activity and allows inspections.

In Iran's case, it hid enrichment facilities from the International Atomic Energy Agency for a number of years, but when caught, said all of its nuclear activities are solely for commercial purposes. The United States has charged that Iran is secretly pursuing weapons development, but the agency says that it has found no concrete evidence of such a weapons program.

Now if we can just get the NRO over the idea that Bush has anything like a coherent foreign policy or a clue about what the rest of the world has said in print, I think everything will be hunky-dory. Um, Ms. Bumiller, the president doesn't "mis-speak," he reshapes reality with his mighty hands and lips. Haven't you figured that out by now?

Next to Heaven

This is for serious foodies. If you've never tasted truffle, you haven't really lived. The news that there is now a domestic product and it is marginally more affordable than the imported product caused celebration in this household.

Smells Like $500
Move over, Perigord: The black diamonds known as truffles are quite happy to grow in North Carolina.

By Walter Nicholls
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 23, 2005; Page F01

ROLESVILLE, N.C.

A gray minivan bumps down an unmarked lane one recent morning and pulls into what appears to be a neatly groomed, dormant orchard. On the sloping, one-acre plot stand 500 filbert trees, bushes really, that produce hazelnuts. It's harvest time. But no one is here for the nuts.

Farmer and entrepreneur Franklin Garland and his dog Ginger, a 5-year-old standard poodle, get right to work.

"Find a truffle, Ginger. Find a truffle, Ginger," Garland repeats as the pair start down the first row, both heads tilting toward the ground.

Ginger uses her sensitive nose to detect aromatic, farm-raised black truffles -- Tuber melanosporum -- the highly prized, irregularly shaped fungi that are native to the Perigord region of France. Under the right conditions, they grow underground in a symbiotic relationship with the roots of the filbert tree (Corylus avellana). But this day, friendly Ginger is distracted by strangers nearby and can't seem to focus on fungus.

"She's being a total dingbat," says Garland's wife, Betty. "We should have brought another dog. In 20 minutes, we would have two pounds."

At her side is Todd Gray, chef and owner of Equinox restaurant in downtown Washington. Gray is a relatively new Garland customer who pays $500 per pound for the odorous truffles harvested yearly, from mid-November to mid-March, in this flat region of the state on the eastern edge of the Piedmont.

At Equinox, Gray shaves truffles over pasta dishes, minces them into sauces for beef and veal, and sprinkles tiny truffle batons on grilled scallops. Last Wednesday night, at the James Beard House in New York, Gray served a creamy Carolina truffle risotto with bacon-wrapped monkfish.

Today he's come for the first time to see the source for himself. "This is the real deal," says the chef, a native of Fredericksburg who is noted for his use of regional and seasonal ingredients. "I couldn't believe it when they sent me a sample. It had that great pungency, with that characteristic nutty, eucalyptus and tobacco smell."

I'm going to have to make the pilgrimage to North Carolina myself. Black truffle is best served with simple and fairly bland food and just allowed to take over. What it can do with a dish of noodles and simple alfredo sauce, quenelles of lobster and skate or plain cod steamed in white wine will absolutely knock your socks off. In the holiest of holies of human experience, truffles run a close second to sex.

I spent one summer after grad school touring Italy with a festival orchestra in the area where Italy grows their own. There was one week there in Umbria where I ate truffles twice a day and I'll never forget it. If you are ever in Spoleto, the restaurant to go to is La Pozza de la Mensa, The Table Lamp. Order three courses with truffles. You deserve it. And please, please, please, take me with you.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Loyal Bumper VC sent this along (thanks, VC!) and I'm happy to present it for your reading and commenting enjoyment. It needs no further commentary from me.

The win-at-all-costs president
Secret tapes show Bush’s combative side
ANALYSIS
By Howard Fineman
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 2:58 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2005

WASHINGTON - Here are two stories about young “Georgie” Bush that you may not have heard, but which are worth recounting as he travels the globe as a world leader.

But the key words are “had to do.” No Bush wants to play rough, of course. But to win — or at least maintain their dignity and pride — they have to.

Hear Her Sing

FBI abandons whistleblower secrets claim

By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor

Washington, DC, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- The Department of Justice has abandoned its claim that allegations made by a fired FBI translator are secret, paving the way for a court case that will air embarrassing allegations about incompetence, poor security and possible espionage in the translation unit of the Bureau's Washington Field Office.

At issue are the claims of Sibel Edmonds, a contract translator for the FBI hired in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Edmonds reported that many of those hired to work in the unit could barely speak English; that they left secure laptop computers lying around while they went to lunch; that they took classified material home with them; and -- even more disturbing -- that one co-worker had undeclared contacts with a foreign organization that was under FBI surveillance.

She said bureau operations -- including counter-terror ones -- were compromised as a result.

Edmonds is suing the FBI, claiming she was fired for bringing to light these problems -- which have been identified by several inquiries as significant contributing factors to the success of the Sept. 11 plot.

The Bureau has repeatedly tried to have the case thrown out, claiming that it cannot be heard without jeopardizing national security.

In two unclassified briefings for congressional staff in June and July 2002 senior FBI officials acknowledged the truth of a number of Edmonds' allegations, including those against a co-worker, Melek Can Dickerson, who had worked for an organization that was the target of surveillance in a counter-intelligence probe until she joined the bureau in October 2001 -- and did not disclose the work on her application.

yankee doodle comments:

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Sibel Edmonds case, this article is well worth reading (and in the Moonie Times, too! Will wonders never cease?). If our pathetic excuse for a media gives this case the airing it deserves a whole bunch of Bush’s 9-11 derelictions will come into public view. But it is equally important for the panalopy of sins it spotlights in the aftermath of 9-11: the abuse of power to cover up mistakes, improper classification of embarrassing documents, the attempt to declare information already released to the public domain retroactively classified, usurpation of powers belonging to the legislative branch…

Lenten Reflections

Fr. Jake attended a Lenten "quiet day" with the other priests of his diocese yesterday. The leader was an author whose books I have greatly enjoyed, and she offered some themes for reflection that are so good that I will pass them on to you:

If today were the last day of your life, what would you want more than anything else to do?

If you were on your deathbed, looking back over your life, how would you want the world to have been blessed by your having been here?

Someone once said, "May you live until the word of your life has been expressed." What is the "word" you want your life to express?

If God were to whisper in your ear, This is why I sent you here. This is what I sent you to do," What would God say next? Find out.

Margaret also shared a well known saying that I had never heard before; "The two most important days of your life were the day you were born and the day you knew why."

I've "known why" a few times in my life, and the "why" has changed more than once. How about you?

Cool Tools

Things you learn while clicking around the blogosphere. This is news to me:

Ask Metafilter
Answers from the hive mind

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Bump News

Mel Goux has just been elected First Vice Chair of the
Fulton County Democratic Party in Georgia. Click the link and go congratulate (although, judging from some of the other things she said in her email, perhaps condolences are more in order.)

Way to go putting your shoe-leather where your values are, Mel!

President Coward

Protestors kept far away during Bush visit to Germany
By Jenny Booth, Times Online

George Bush arrived for his first visit to Germany since the war in Iraq amid suffocating security that closed some of Germany’s busiest roads and left the centre of Mainz eerily empty except for police.

Manhole covers were welded shut, street mailboxes removed and police with sniffer dogs searched boats at marinas.

Rhine river traffic was stopped for the day, and residents in parts of town the US President was visiting were told to shutter their windows and stay off their balconies while he was there.

One boat with an anti-Bush protester on board managed to sail towards a bridge shortly before the President’s motorcade crossed it, police confirmed. The online version of Focus magazine said that three police launches intercepted the boat before it reached the bridge.

At least 4,000 anti-war demonstrators turned up to a rally in Mainz amid heavy snow, but were being kept at a safe distance from the security cordon, out of Mr Bush's sight. Police mingled with large crowd of protestors, handing out leaflets asking them to demonstrate quietly.

Mr Bush and Gerhard Schroeder, the German Chancellor, are still patching up strains from the Iraq crisis, which Schroeder now terms "a legend that should finally be buried."

In a joint news conference this morning, Mr Schroeder sought to play down any differences the United States and Europe have concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

"We absolutely agree that Iran must say no to any kind of nuclear weapons," he said.

"Iran must not have any nuclear weapons. They must waive any right to the production thereof."

Bush is such a coward that he has to be protected from protesters. I find this both fascinating and distasteful. Have we ever had a president more removed from the people he supposedly "serves?"

"Fighting" the Flu

I listen to NPR in the morning and often find myself wanting to throw things at my radio. Lucky for the radio, I'm usually wearing fuzzy slippers in the morning. The Nipper has done a slightly better job than the rest of the media in reporting the avian influenza story (which broke out into the networks last night) but this treatment is downright silly.

Flu Fears Threaten Thai Cockfighting Tradition

by Jon Hamilton

NPR.org, February 23, 2005 · This month marked the start of the Year of the Rooster, but in Thailand, where fighting cocks are considered a national treasure, the rooster has become an embattled creature.

Thai officials say they're trying to protect people. So far, only a few humans have been infected -- including at least one owner of a fighting cock. But each new infection increases the chance that bird flu will jump from chickens to humans. Disease experts say that could start a flu pandemic that would kill millions of people around the world.

Henry Niman's Recombinomics does a much better job with real news:

Pandemic Avian Influenza Evolution

Thus avian influenza has been achieving a pandemic potential on several fronts involving H5N1, H9N2 and human H1N1 genes. However, the monitoring or even announcing the existence of such viruses remains scandalous.

It's Still the Economy, Stupid

Meyerson's argument is a bit of a mess, but at least he is making it:

ISO: Working-Class Democrats

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, February 23, 2005; Page A19

Few Americans of any class give stellar marks to Bush on the economy. The Bush recovery is anemic by historical standards, and for working-class Americans it's altogether sickly. We are now into the 11th quarter since the recovery began in late 2001 and during that time, the Economic Policy Institute tells us, private-sector wages and salaries have risen by a scant 3.9 percent. If you average all the recoveries from 1949 through 1982, private-sector wages and salaries had risen by 18.2 percent by the time those recoveries were 11 quarters old.

So how did the white working class come to prefer Bush to Kerry on matters economic? At one level, we shouldn't read too much into the polling: The lack of trust that white workers felt toward Kerry on security questions surely spilled over to their assessment of him on other topics, too. Moreover, the Republicans did a better job of defining Kerry as a cultural plutocrat (no great achievement, that) than Kerry did of defining Bush as the economic plutocrats' favorite president. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg has observed that Kerry did not turn to populist themes in the campaign's final weeks, and that this hurt him particularly among white working-class women.

All this is true, and yet I think the Democrats kid themselves if they think this problem is Kerry-specific. To begin, de-unionization has taken a huge chunk out of Democratic vote totals.

Unionized working-class whites tend to vote Democratic at least 20 percent more than their nonunion counterparts, but with private-sector unionization now fallen to less than 8 percent of the workforce, there aren't enough unionized whites to put a state such as Ohio into the Democratic column.

Bill Clinton's repositioning of the party, of course, was supposed to have made it safe for working-class whites to vote Democratic again. Under Clinton, the Democrats became the party of fiscal responsibility. By ending welfare, Clinton sought to eradicate what many working-class whites saw, however incorrectly, as the Democrats' tilt towards blacks. No longer were the Democrats the party of racial preferences that they had been in the 1970s and '80s. And nothing that John Kerry said in 2004 reversed that repositioning.

But if the Democrats are no longer quite the party of racial preferences, they are not quite the party of class preferences either.

To be sure, they oppose the privatization of Social Security and support the provision of universal health care, and every poll shows that the American people back their positions. But on a broad range of economic matters, Democrats have alarmingly little to say to working-class Americans. For the past 35 years, as short-range share value has come to dominate our form of capitalism and the burden of risk has been shifted to the individual employee, far more manufacturing jobs have been sent abroad from the United States than from any other advanced industrialized nation. As the middle fell out of the economy, the Democrats advocated job retraining and, eventually, some form of managed trade, but these policies were too little and too late.

Today's working class isn't found largely in factories; it's in nursing homes, on construction sites, in Wal-Marts. Republicans talk to its members about guns, gays and God. Democrats often just stammer. And given the imbalance of power in today's de-unionized workplace, Democrats couldn't do much better than Bush when it comes to boosting wages in this raise-less recovery.

Democrats win when they deliver prosperity and security for working Americans, and in today's capitalism, those have become increasingly unattainable goals. Which is why, as they only now gear up their think tanks, Democrats need to promote alternatives to the kind of shareholder-driven capitalism into which our system has descended, to the detriment of millions of underpaid, insecure workers. They need to side with Main Street over Wall Street. Like the conservatives 40 years ago, the Democrats need to offend their own elites to build an America that reflects their best values, and in which working people can and do count on them for support.

This isn't just a "raiseless" recovery, it's a jobless recovery. Dems need to hit that hard, and I want to hear more about it from the Center for American Progress in their daily updates.

Snow Day

There go my Thursday plans:

WINTER STORM WATCH

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
327 AM EST WED FEB 23 2005

.A LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM OVER THE GULF STATES TODAY WILL STRENGTHEN
AND MOVE NEAR CAPE HATTERAS ON THURSDAY. THIS SYSTEM...COUPLED WITH
THE COLD AIR MOVING IN FROM THE NORTH...WILL ALLOW SNOW TO DEVELOP
THURSDAY AND THURSDAY NIGHT ACROSS THE MID ATLANTIC.

DCZ001-MDZ002>007-009>011-013-014-016>018-VAZ021-025>031-036>042-
050>057-WVZ048>055-232100-
ALBEMARLE VA-ALLEGANY MD-ANNE ARUNDEL MD-
ARLINGTON/FALLS CHURCH/ALEXANDRIA VA-AUGUSTA VA-BERKELEY WV-
CALVERT MD-CARROLL MD-CHARLES MD-CLARKE VA-CULPEPER VA-
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DC-FAIRFAX VA-FAUQUIER VA-FREDERICK VA-
FREDERICK MD-GRANT WV-GREENE VA-HAMPSHIRE WV-HARDY WV-HARFORD MD-
HIGHLAND VA-HOWARD MD-JEFFERSON WV-KING GEORGE VA-LOUDOUN VA-
MADISON VA-MINERAL WV-MONTGOMERY MD-MORGAN WV-NELSON VA-
NORTHERN BALTIMORE MD-ORANGE VA-PAGE VA-PENDLETON WV-
PRINCE GEORGES MD-PRINCE WILLIAM/MANASSAS/MANASSAS PARK VA-
RAPPAHANNOCK VA-ROCKINGHAM VA-SHENANDOAH VA-SOUTHERN BALTIMORE MD-
SPOTSYLVANIA VA-ST. MARYS MD-STAFFORD VA-WARREN VA-WASHINGTON MD-
327 AM EST WED FEB 23 2005

...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM THURSDAY MORNING TO LATE
THURSDAY NIGHT...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN STERLING VIRGINIA HAS ISSUED A WINTER
STORM WATCH FOR MARYLAND WEST OF THE CHESAPEAKE BAY AND EAST OF
GARRETT COUNTY...EASTERN WEST VIRGINIA...NORTHERN AND CENTRAL
VIRGINIA AND WASHINGTON DC.

THE BEST POTENTIAL FOR HEAVY SNOWFALL IS ACROSS SOUTHERN MARYLAND AND
NORTH CENTRAL VIRGINIA. THIS INCLUDES THE TOWNS OF LEXINGTON PARK
MARYLAND...FREDERICKSBURG AND CHARLOTTESVILLE VIRGINIA.

AT THIS TIME...BALTIMORE MARYLAND AND WASHINGTON DC METROPOLITAN
AREAS WILL BE ON THE NORTHERN FRINGE OF THE HEAVIEST SNOW.
HOWEVER...ACCUMULATIONS OF 5 INCHES OR GREATER ARE STILL POSSIBLE
WITHIN THESE MAJOR METRO AREAS.

A WINTER STORM WATCH IS ISSUED WHEN HAZARDOUS WINTER WEATHER IS
POSSIBLE. AT THIS TIME...THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR SNOW
ACCUMULATIONS OF 5 INCHES OR GREATER BEGINNING THURSDAY MORNING
THROUGH LATE THURSDAY NIGHT.

PEOPLE PLANNING TO TRAVEL THURSDAY AND THURSDAY NIGHT SHOULD BE
PREPARED FOR POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITIONS. STAY TUNED TO
NOAA WEATHER RADIO AND OTHER LOCAL MEDIA FOR FURTHER UPDATES.

$$

LEE/ALLEN

Passing from the Stage

The Waning Reign of Monarchs
Man and Nature Believed to Be Conspirators In Devastation of Mexico's Butterfly Population

By Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 23, 2005; Page A01

CERRO PELON, Mexico -- High on a remote mountaintop, Alfredo Cruz Colin gazed at a panorama of giant pines and firs where millions of orange and black monarch butterflies spend the winter after flying up to 2,000 miles from Canada and the United States. He saw two things: one of North America's most spectacular natural wonders and trees that could be sawed down and sold for $300 each.

"We can contemplate the butterflies," said Cruz, a lawyer. "Or we can send our children to school and feed our families" with the cash from the cut trees. "It's a tough choice."

The winter migration of monarch butterflies to Mexico, a stunning sight that draws vast numbers of tourists to mountain forests 100 miles west of Mexico City, has been devastated this year. One of the chief causes is logging that destroys butterfly sanctuaries, according to Mexican and U.S. environmentalists.

The butterfly population this winter is the lowest since researchers began detailed surveys 12 years ago and perhaps the smallest since the 1970s, when international scientists first discovered the colonies in central Mexico, according to Lincoln P. Brower, a biology professor at Sweet Briar College in central Virginia and an authority on monarch butterflies. He estimated that the population was at least 75 percent smaller than last year's.

In the last two years the butterflies carpeted an area spanning more than 20 acres, but this winter they cover a little more than five acres, said Ernesto Enkerlin, chief of protected areas for the Environmental Ministry. "We are not happy about having fewer monarch butterflies," he said.

The reason for the dramatic drop appears to be a combination of particularly cold, stormy weather in North America in recent years, herbicide use in the United States and Canada that is killing milkweed plants where butterflies lay their eggs, and persistent illegal logging in Mexico, according to a report issued last week by a panel of monarch researchers chaired by Brower.

Experts and officials agree that all three factors have contributed to the decline in the butterfly population, but there are differing views on whether the greater blame lies with nature or man. Brower said that without further study, it was impossible to determine what portion of the damage was caused by each factor.

But it is clear that the northeast face of this mountain has "been stripped of forest and burned," completely destroying long-established butterfly sanctuaries and leaving only one small butterfly area this year, said Brower, who has visited the site almost every year since the mid-1970s.

Conservationists are also concerned about threats from herbicides, which they say are killing thousands of acres of wild milkweed plants in the midwestern United States and Canada. While genetically engineered crops such as soy beans and corn are resistant to the chemicals, the weed-killers are causing massive destruction of butterfly eggs on milkweed leaves, they said.

"Why should we care?" said Brower. "For the same reasons we should care about the Mona Lisa or the beauty of Mozart's music."

If you have broadband, there is a stunning photo gallery. See beauty before we banish it from the world.

Orwell Speak

Starving Amtrak to Save It
By NORMAN Y. MINETA

Published: February 23, 2005

There are some who have suggested that our reforms are aimed at killing Amtrak. Not true. If we wanted to kill Amtrak, we wouldn't have to lift a finger. But we know that intercity passenger rail is too important to just stand by and watch it die.

Today, trains carry as many passengers between New York and Washington as the airlines do. In the Northeast, on the West Coast and in the Midwest, train ridership is growing. The problem is not that Americans don't use trains, it is that Amtrak has failed to keep up with times, stubbornly sticking to routes and services, even as they lose money and attract few users.

This is why dozens of state and local governments are planning new investment in passenger train service. A good example is the Cascades service that connects Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, British Columbia. The State of Washington has upgraded stations and tracks, and purchased new, higher-speed trains. It subsidizes the operating costs, while Amtrak's role is reduced to running the trains under contract. Ridership on the system has more than tripled since 1995. This is the kind of initiative that we should be helping.

Unfortunately, the federal government can do little to support such projects directly, because all of its money goes to Amtrak. Amtrak then decides how to invest those federal dollars, and in the past it has starved new initiatives to cover its operating losses. Even worse, the company has over the years shifted money away from much-needed repairs, maintenance and upgrades for tunnels, bridges and tracks to cover those losses.

The only way to improve our passenger rail is to put it on the same footing as other types of transportation - a federal-state partnership to plan, build and maintain the physical aspects of the system while allowing Amtrak and other train operators to do what they do best: operate trains.

Thus the reform package that the administration will soon reintroduce to Congress would establish a 50-50 partnership between the federal government and the states for investment in passenger rail improvements, and would introduce fair and open competition when picking someone - be it Amtrak, a regional organization, a state agency or a private company - to run the trains.

This proposal does not call for an end to Amtrak. Instead, it allows us to work with states and local entities to add federal support for the investments they are already making in tracks, tunnels, bridges and stations. At the same time, it would free Amtrak to focus on its core mission of running trains on time.

The answer to Amtrak's problems is not throwing more money into a flawed system. It will take top-to-bottom reform, which can be achieved only if Congress, the states and Amtrak's board work with us to save the system and make it worthy of its riders.

Julia, my AmStreet colleague, notes that what Bushco wants to do is kill Amtrak. Whenever you hear them say one thing, expect the opposite.

Sleepyhead Open thread

I have got to sleep in this morning because I need to be working late tonight. Please forgive me if the posting rate is slow in the morning.

Breaking the Army

Will there be a draft?
As military recruiting stumbles and needs grow, some say draft may be impossible to ignore.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

The US Army is beginning to face the same sort of recruiting problems that have already plagued the National Guard and Reserve, The Washington Post reported Monday. Since the Army's fiscal year began last October, it has only signed 18.4 percent of its target of 80,000 new recruits. That's less than last year's and well below the 25 percent target the Army had set for itself to meet by this time.

"Very frankly, in a couple of places our recruiting pool is getting soft," said Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, the Army's personnel chief. "We're hearing things like, 'Well, let's wait and see how this thing settles out in Iraq,' " he said in an interview. "For the active duty for '05 it's going to be tough to meet our goal, but I think we can. I think the telling year for us is going to be '06."

While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush have repeatedly said there is no need for a draft, and one of the military's top recruiters said only last week that a draft would not improve the quality" of soldier, Delaware Online reports that several well-known conservatives and moderates sent congressional leaders a letter in January that said, "the United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume.

In that letter, retired military leaders such as Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey joined with defense analysts such as Michele Flournoy and political commentators such as William Kristol in asking Congress "to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps. ... it is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active-duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years."

While the letter contained no explicit call for a draft, peace activists in particular say there is no way for the military to reach these numbers without instituting a draft. Some have started campaigns to teach young people of military age about "conscientious objection, the possibility of a draft, and countering military recruitment in schools."

Rolling Stone magazine reported in late January that two of Mr. Rumsfeld's deputies met with the head of the Selective Service Agency in February of 2003 to " debate, discuss and ponder a return to the draft." According to a memo from that meeting made public under the Freedom of Information Act:

"Defense manpower officials concede there are critical shortages of military personnel with certain special skills, such as medical personnel, linguists, computer network engineers, etc." The potentially prohibitive cost of "attracting and retaining such personnel for military service," the memo adds, has led "some officials to conclude that, while a conventional draft may never be needed, a draft of men and women possessing these critical skills may be warranted in a future crisis." This new draft, it suggests, could be invoked to meet the needs of both the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, US military recruiters are trying a variety of new options to entice more recruits into both the active force and the National Guard and Reserve. The Connecticut National Guard is planning to start a magazine, launch a show on local cable TV, double its current 32 member recruiting team, and make many more visits to local high schools in its efforts to "boost its ranks." Recruiters say they are ready to promise that new recruits won't be sent overseas for a year.

USA Today reported Monday that the US Army and some elite commando units "have dramatically increased the size and the number of cash bonuses they are paying to lure recruits and keep experienced troops in uniform." For some special elite units, the Pentagon is offering up to $150,000 in bonuses, while more than 49 percent of the job categories in the Army can now receive $15,000 bonuses, and "16 hard-to-fill job categories, including truck drivers and bomb-disposal specialists" are eligible for $50,000 bonuses.

But Rolling Stone also reports that military recruiters agree that, unless "America's elites" are willing to join the military, it will be harder for them to persuade "average Americans" to make the same sacrifices.

In a recent meeting with military recruiters, [Charlie Moskos, a professor of military sociology at Northwestern University] discussed the crisis in enlistment. "I asked them would they prefer to have their advertising budget tripled or have Jenna Bush join the Army," he says. "They unanimously chose the Jenna option."

Recruiters face other problems in convincing National Guard and Reserve soldiers in particular to reenlist or for new recruits to join. The Baltimore Sun reports that 41 percent of these soldiers are losing "thousands of dollars" through a pay gap between civilian salary and military pay.

And National Public Radio's Morning Edition reports that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says "hundreds of injured Army reservists and National Guard members – including many wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan – have lost medical care and pay because they were dropped from active duty status."

Finally, Time Magazine Canada looks at US troops who have chosen not to return to Iraq or Afghanistan and have fled to Canada instead. Still, the US military notes that the actual number of deserters has fallen to less than one percent of the total force, the lowest total since 1998.

What they don't tell you: we're in trouble and the enlistee shortage is the canary in the mine shaft. The American economy is set up to shuttle poor white and black high school grads into the military. If the DoD can't meet their targets with this population, there is a problem. The Time Canada numbers are artificially low.

Strong and Getting Stronger

Dave Johnson rings the bell yet again today:

Was Bush Giving A Speech?

Closed down 174.

The Other F-Word

Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest is turning out some extraordinary work these days:

Checks and Balances and the "F-Word"

I think we are entering a new phase of American history. These are not normal times, the pendulum is not swinging back, and historical trends of American politics no longer apply. American democracy was built on a system of checks and balances, and mechanisms of oversight and accountability. But the checks and balances and oversight and accountability are being removed. There is no Congressional oversight of this administration, the Justice Department does not investigate its crimes, the Federalist Society judges block all attempts to enforce the laws and the new media is no longer functional. The military acts as an arm of The Party and The Party is firmly in control of the State. The system of controls and protections that was carefully built over the last two centuries was put in place for reasons, by people who learned the lessons of history. I can not think of a time in history when a society left itself so wide open to tyranny from its leadership without it occurring.

Another Bush Experiment

Afghan Living Standards Among the Lowest, U.N. Finds
By CARLOTTA GALL

Published: February 22, 2005

While there has been rapid progress, said Zphirin Diabr, associate administrator of the United Nations Development Program, the country has a long way to go just to get back to where it was 20 years ago. The figures, as President Hamid Karzai says in the report's introduction, paint a gloomy picture.

Average life expectancy for Afghanistan's 28.5 million people is 44.5 years, at least 20 years lower than that of neighboring countries, the report said. Ambassador Christopher Alexander of Canada, whose government helped pay for the report, said that illustrated Afghanistan's post-conflict predicament and the prevalence of poverty.

One of two Afghans can be classified as poor, and 20.4 percent of the rural population does not have enough to eat, getting less than the benchmark of 2,070 calories a day. More than half of the population has suffered from the effects of a prolonged drought, the report said.

One-quarter of the population has at some time sought refuge outside the country, and 3.6 million remain refugees or displaced people.

Most glaring are the inequalities that affect women and children, still some of the worst social indicators in the world today, said Alistair McKechnie, country director of the World Bank, which financed the report along with the Canadians and the United Nations. One woman dies from pregnancy-related causes about every 30 minutes, and maternal mortality rates are 60 times higher than in industrialized countries, the report said.

One-fifth of the children die before the age of 5, 80 percent of them from preventable diseases, one of the worst rates in the world. Only 25 percent of the population has access to clean drinking water, and one in eight children die from lack of clean water.

Afghanistan now has the worst education system in the world, the report concluded, and one of the lowest adult literacy rates, 28.7 percent. Annual per capita income was $190 and the unemployment rate 25 percent, said Hanif Atmar, the minister of rehabilitation and rural development.

"Obviously this is a warning," the minister said of the report. "It shows why we are poor, how and in what way we can solve this."

This is the wonderful Afghan experiment in democracy that Bush likes to run on about. Hamid Karzai is the mayor of Kabul and the war lords and tribal sheiks remain in charge of most of the country.

Collapse of the American Empire

By KIRKPATRICK SALE

It is quite ironic: only a decade or so after the idea of the United States as an imperial power came to be accepted by both right and left, and people were actually able to talk openly about an American empire, it is showing multiple signs of its inability to continue. And indeed it is now possible to contemplate, and openly speculate about, its collapse.

Hence no chance to escape the collapse of empire.

The article is an excellent precis of the argument Jared Diamond makes in Collapse, and worth reading in it's entirety. I quote the summary in the conclusions because that seems to be so much a part of our values/morals conversation. I believe that Diamond is correct and that the values which served us mostly well in adapting to modernity have a dark side when they emerge into the post modern period. This is one of the reasons why we see income inequity expanding, rates of health insurance falling, increased poverty, rising unemployment and falling literacy.

It's a sign of how far we've fallen into a corrupt mixture of individualism and capitalism that there can even be any controversy over Social Security.

Hypocrisy Now!

Doubts Raised Over Bush's Faith-Based Commitment

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 22, 2005; 8:32 AM

As David Kuo, a former high-ranking official in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, faulted President Bush last week for not pushing the centerpiece of his "compassionate conservative" agenda, I was taken back to a hot summer day in Indianapolis nearly five years ago -- the day then-candidate Bush delivered the first policy speech of his first presidential campaign.

There are similarities between this and the gay marriage issue. In an interview with The Post in January, President Bush made it clear that this was not exactly his top priority. Social conservatives were also dismayed to learn last month that when Senate leaders drew up a list of 10 priorities, a constitutional ban for gay marriage wasn't among them. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said on Fox News recently that Senate leaders might not push the amendment this year, but perhaps next.

He really IS "all hat, no cattle."

About Face?

Editorial: Bush's Mideast shift

Does U.S. President George Bush finally get it? That is what skeptical Europeans are asking themselves, after hearing Bush deliver a fence-mending speech yesterday in Brussels to launch his second term.

Bush made an eloquent plea for European help in advancing freedom and democracy throughout the Mideast, including Iraq.

While his audience sat on their hands for the most part, he drew applause for two significant declarations about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict that may help bridge the transatlantic rift over Iraq.

He finally acknowledged that the Palestinian/Israeli dispute is "an unsettled grievance that is used to stir hatred and violence across the Middle East." He also said a peace deal is his "greatest opportunity and immediate goal," adding that "a settlement ... is now within reach."

The Europeans would like to believe these words signal a shift to a better-balanced U.S. Mideast policy.

Until recently, American officials rejected the European view that resolving the Mideast impasse will help drain the swamp that breeds recruits for terror organizations.

The U.S. claimed to see no linkage between the 9/11 attacks and the Mideast conflict. Bitter experience in Iraq seems to have led Bush to reconsider. He now agrees the Mideast impasse breeds terror.

Bush also did an about-face in Brussels by describing peace as his "immediate goal." Until now, he has been notoriously disengaged.

By vowing to "raise the flag of a free Palestine," Bush won additional applause, and balanced his demand that Iran give up nuclear ambitions, that Syria quit Lebanon and that both stop aiding terror.

The Star, like most of the international editorial pages I've scanned this morning, remains sceptical. I remain so, too. I've seen no sign that Bush has anything like a clue on a final status solution to the I/P situation.

Just Yack

It's a mighty cold day in Hell when I find myself agreeing with the likes of Mark Steyn, but the weatherpeople are talking snow tonight. As chance would have it, this actually came up in lunchtime conversation yesterday with a friend who's at least as lefty as I.

Atlanticist small talk is all that's left
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 22/02/2005)

Nato will not be around circa 2015 - which is why the Americans are talking it up right now. An organisation that represents the fading residual military will of mostly post-military nations is marginally less harmful than the EU, which is the embodiment of their pacifist delusions. But, either way, there's not a lot to talk about. Try to imagine significant numbers of French, German or Belgian troops fighting alongside American forces anywhere the Yanks are likely to find themselves in the next decade or so: it's not going to happen.

America and Europe both face security threats. But the difference is America's are external, and require hard choices in tough neighbourhoods around the world, while the EU's are internal and, as they see it, unlikely to be lessened by the sight of European soldiers joining the Great Satan in liberating, say, Syria. That's not exactly going to help keep the lid on the noisier Continental mosques.

So what would you do in Bush's shoes? Slap 'em around a bit? What for? Where would it get you? Or would you do exactly what he's doing? Climb into the old soup-and-fish, make small talk with Mme Chirac and raise a glass of champagne to the enduring friendship of our peoples: what else is left? This week we're toasting the end of an idea: the death of "the West".

Where is the population growth in the world? It ain't in the post-Judeo-Christian west.

Taking Dictation from Karl

Looking for Help in Iraq, Bush Meets With NATO Leaders
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: February 22, 2005

BRUSSELS, Feb. 22 - President Bush met with NATO leaders today about the alliance's future role in Iraq, hoping to receive a pledge for more training aid.

The alliance's 26 members are expected to announce that to they will take part in a modest program to train Iraq's military.

Mr. Bush, who is holding summit meetings with both NATO and the European Union on his four-day European visit, said, "The Iraqis have defied the terrorists and showed the world they want to live in a free society, and we're there to help them."

The president spoke after a breakfast meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and later met with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Viktor A. Yushchenko, the new president of Ukraine.

Mr. Bush's meetings came after he warned Russia on Monday that it "must renew a commitment to democracy and the rule of law," but said he believed that the nation's future lay "within the family of Europe and the trans-Atlantic community."

The president's words opened his first trip across the Atlantic since his re-election and were part of a speech aimed at building a new relationship with Europe after the dispute over the American-led invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Bush's 31-minute speech in the grand setting of Concert Noble, a 19th-century hall, declared that in a "new era of trans-Atlantic unity," the United States and Europe must work together to rebuild Iraq, seek peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, insist that Iran not develop nuclear weapons and demand that Syria end its occupation of Lebanon.

Bumiller's egregious stenography of Bush's argument by assertion is not limited to her wonder that Brussels contains a 19th-century hall. If the credulous US media thinks that anything is going to change, they really have drunk the Kool Aid.

Apologies for the slow rate of posting this morning. My read-around of the papers started at 5 but I can find so little worthy of your attention that I'm loathe to post for the sake of posting. Your time is worth more than that.

I did run across one thing yesterday that's probably worth memorializing. A couple of you pointed out Susie Madrak's superb piece of reportage yesterday on the Iraq casualty count. She's not the only one who has been sceptical about the "official" numbers released by the DoD. John Pike at GlobalSecurity.org has been crunching his own set of numbers and has some damn fine graphical representations of the data. He explains his methodology here.

In the Sands

Americans and rebels begin talks on timetable for withdrawal from Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn

22 February 2005

American officials are talking to negotiators from the anti-US resistance in Iraq, whom they have denounced in the past as foreign fighters and remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Insurgent leaders and Pentagon officials have confirmed to Time magazine that talks have taken place for the first time in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad.

The Sunni guerrillas want a timetable for a US withdrawal, first from Iraqi cities and then from the country as a whole. American officials aim to see if they can drive a wedge between nationalist guerrillas and fanatical Islamist groups.

Abu Marwan, a resistance commander, is quoted as saying that the insurgents want to "fight and negotiate". They are modelling their strategy on that of the IRA and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. This means creating a united political organisation with a programme opposed to the US occupation.

US military commanders are now dubious about the chances of winning an outright military victory over the Sunni rebels who have a firm core of supporters among the five million-strong Sunni Muslim community. The US military has lost 1,479 dead and 10,740 wounded in Iraq since the invasion began in March 2003.

The talks so far are tentative but they indicate a recognition on the part of the US that it will need a political solution. Those willing to sit down with US diplomats and officials are "nationalists" composed primarily of former military and security officers from Saddam's Hussein's government.

The former Marine [Scott Ritter] also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W. Bush has called "a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom," were not so free after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%.

Asked by UFPPC's Ted Nation about this shocker, Ritter said an official involved in the manipulation was the source, and that this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine -- an obvious allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh.

Farewell, Dr. Thompson

WaPo's Joel Achenbach writes a terrific appreciation of Hunter S. Thompson, who wasn't just a writer, he was a force of nature.

For all of Thompson's theatrics and self-abuse, he could write like a demon. His prose accelerated across the page like a sportscar with the top down. He kept himself squarely in the picture, to great comic effect. We understood that he needed drugs the way other people needed oxygen, that he had an odd fondness for guns and violence, and that he loathed Richard Nixon and most authoritarian institutions. Otherwise, he wasn't very complicated. He didn't gum up his narrative with soul-searching. He really served as a big eyeball, if perhaps a rather glazed one.

"I was still very close to the helicopter, watching the tires. As the beast began rising, the tires became suddenly fat; there was no more weight on them....The helicopter went straight up and hovered for a moment, then swooped down toward the Washington Monument and then angled up into the fog. Richard Nixon was gone."

Yes, It Is

Is Print Dead? 'The Washington Post' Ponders It

By E&P; Staff

Published: February 20, 2005 11:30 PM ET

NEW YORK In a lengthy article titled "Hard News: Daily Papers Face Unprecedented Competition," Frank Ahrens of the Washington Post on Sunday sketched an exceedingly unpleasant future for the print newspaper as we know it.

Post Publisher Boisfeuillet Jones Jr.: "It's challenging, and the newspaper is adapting and operating more effectively in many areas. If we focus on doing the business of journalism well, the newspaper and Web site should both be able to grow revenues."

It probably won't be everyone's cup of tea, and it was only two years ago that I told people that I couldn't imagine wanting to read any serious amount on my monitor. Now, it feels weird to read dead tree: it's so limited. The big US dailies update their websites throughout the day, so why would I want to spend 50 cents on something that's already out of date when it's delivered?

Flu News

Scientists face challenge assessing bird flu risks
By Clive Cookson in Washington
Published: February 21 2005 02:00 | Last updated: February 21 2005 02:00

The "very frightening" outbreak of virulent bird flu in Asia could lead to the most devastating human pandemic in history - or it could continue just to produce isolated deaths of people who are in close contact with poultry, the chief influenza scientist at the US Centres for Disease Control said yesterday.

Dr Nancy Cox told the American Association for the Advancement of Science: "There is a real challenge in public health in mobilising people into action without trying to scare them to death. If we knew for sure that a pandemic with, say, a 10 per cent fatality rate was going to occur, we could proceed in a more deliberate way."

She said scientists around the world were racing to answer some of the many questions about the ability of the H5NI strain of avian flu to mutate into a form that transmits itself easily between people. The virus has killed millions of birds in eight Asian countries. So far it has infected 55 people - almost all associated with poultry rearing or production - and killed 42 of them.

Although this 76 per cent human fatality rate looked terrifyingly high, Dr Cox said it might be exaggerated by under-reporting of less serious cases of H5N1, which might not be recognised as avian flu. "Some studies are going on to get a better handle on what the real case fatality case is," she said. For example, poultry workers exposed to the virus would be checked for any H5N1 antibodies in their blood.

Even if the real fatality rate was much lower, a mutation that made the virus easily transmissible between humans could still cause more deaths than the 1918-19 Spanish flu epidemic, which killed around 50m people with just a 1 per cent fatality rate, Dr Cox said.

Henry Niman of Recombinomics comments:

Although the issue of the "real case fatality rate" has been brought up many times, measuring "any H5N1 antibodies in their blood" may not provide much information on the the case fatality rate for the H5N1 in Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia that has resulted in reported human fatalities. It is this version of H5N1 that is the most likely precursor to a bird flu pandemic strain.
....
Indirect evidence for the lethality of the virus in mammals also comes from the H5N1 outbreak at the tiger zoo in Thailand. Although many of the 441 tigers were probably not exposed to H5N1 because of quarantine away from the sick tigers, 147 tigers died, which would give a case fatality rate between 33% and 100%, depending on how many of the 441 tigers were actually infected with H5N1.

Thus, all of the hard data for H5N1 in Vietnam and Thailand for 2004 indicates the virus is quite lethal in children, young adults, and tigers and these data provide little support for large numbers of individuals infected with H5N1 in 2004 that did not die.

UPDATE: This moved on the wires this afternoon:

CDC chief says avian flu is biggest threat

Feb 21, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – The nation's top disease-control official proclaimed in a speech in Washington, DC, today that avian influenza is the single biggest threat the world faces right now, according to wire service reports.

"I think we can all recognize a similar pattern probably occurred prior to 1918," she was quoted as saying. Experts believe the virus that sparked the 1918 pandemic probably originated in birds.

These are very strong words from Dr. Gerberding, one of the most circumspect of US public health officials.

Utility Flaws

Insurgents Wage Precise Attacks on Baghdad Fuel
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 20 - Insurgent attacks to disrupt Baghdad's supplies of crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, water and electricity have reached a degree of coordination and sophistication not seen before, Iraqi and American officials say.

The new pattern, they say, shows that the insurgents have a deep understanding of the complex network of pipelines, power cables and reservoirs feeding Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

The shadowy insurgency is a fractured movement made up of distinct groups of Sunnis, Shiites and foreign fighters, some of them aligned and some not. But the shift in the attack patterns strongly suggests that some branch of the insurgency is carrying out a systematic plan to cripple Baghdad's ability to provide basic services for its six million citizens and to prevent the fledgling government from operating.

A new analysis by some of those officials shows that the choice of targets and the timing of sabotage attacks has evolved over the past several months, shifting from economic targets to become what amounts to a siege of the capital.

In a stark illustration of the change, of more than 30 sabotage attacks on the oil infrastructure this year, no reported incident has involved the southern crude oil pipelines that are Iraq's main source of revenue. Instead, the attacks have aimed at gas and oil lines feeding power plants and refineries and providing fuel for transportation around Baghdad and in the north.

In an indication of how carefully chosen the targets are and how knowledgeable the insurgency is about the workings of the infrastructure, the sabotage often disrupts the lives of Iraqis, leaving them dependent on chugging, street-corner generators to stave off the darkness and power televisions or radios, robbing them of fuel for stoves and heaters, and even halting the flow of their drinking water.
....
The new pattern of sabotage, he said, lays the groundwork for chaos - a deeply resentful populace, the appearance of government ineffectuality, a halt to major business and industrial activities. The second side - the suicide bombings, assassinations and kidnappings - he said, is aimed in large measure at sowing discord among ethnic and religious groups.

"And I think they, honestly, stand a better chance with the first than the second," Mr. Kadhim said.

I wonder which part of "we're losing" the MSM hasn't gotten yet.

Not in Kansas Anymore

Weather Service Memo Says Cuts Could Curtail Lifesaving Warnings

By Brian Faler
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A25

A National Weather Service official said Congress has cut the agency's budget so drastically that it will impair its ability to warn the public of all sorts of foul weather, which, in turn, "will" lead to "unwarranted loss of life."

The warning, which came in an internal memo, said the budget Congress approved late last year will require the agency to slice a number of operations and programs "critical" to its duties. "The reductions in the FY 05 budget for the National Weather Service (NWS) will have a critical impact on its vital life-saving mission," the memo said. "These impacts will be 'felt' throughout the nation."
The unsigned, undated memo said the agency should expect to be forced to cut its staffing, training for weather forecasters and equipment maintenance. "The logical conclusion over all these impacts is obvious, warning lead times will shorten and tornado detection rates will decrease (as will most other NWS performance standards) leading to the troubling and tragic conclusion that there will be unwarranted loss of life," it said.
....
The imbroglio comes as Congress begins to debate the agency's -- and the rest of the federal government's -- budget for the next fiscal year. The NWS, which provides meteorological and oceanographic data and forecasts used across the country and around the globe, saw its operating budget shrink in fiscal 2005 by about $13 million, or 2 percent, to $617 million. The agency now faces a cumulative shortfall of $37 million, union and weather service officials said.

Some groups, such as the union, are demanding that lawmakers close the gap. President Bush has proposed increasing the agency's operating budget for fiscal 2006 by $35 million. But union officials said most of that increase is earmarked for new projects and inflationary adjustments, and would do little to make up a shortfall they said was crimping the NWS's day-to-day operations.

"We're not talking about some bureaucratic office position being held vacant. We're talking about somebody who's sitting in Dodge City, Kansas, looking for tornadoes -- his position being vacant. And we're talking about the parts that fix their radar maybe not being available," said Dan Sobien, a Weather Service meteorologist in Tampa, who is also vice president of the union.

"I work in an area where below-freezing temperatures have a significant economic impact on the area -- people look to our forecasts," he said. "If we get it wrong, then everyone's going to pay a whole lot more for tomatoes and citrus and all those other things that they grow down here in the winter. So there's a big economic impact, too -- probably a lot more than the $30 [million] or $40 million" shortfall.

Feeling safer?

Torture at Home

Brooklyn's Abu Ghraib'

Terror suspects allege abuse

Daily News Exclusive

By LARRY COHLER-ESSES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Some prisoners held at Brooklyn's federal Metropolitan Detention Center say they were abused by guards.

Defense attorneys call it Brooklyn's Abu Ghraib. On the ninth floor of the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, terrorism suspects swept off the streets after the Sept. 11 attacks were repeatedly stripped naked and frequently were physically abused, the Justice Department's inspector general has found.

The detainees - none of whom were ultimately charged with anything related to terrorism - alleged in sworn affidavits and in interviews with Justice Department officials that correction officers:

# Humiliated them by making fun of - and sometimes painfully squeezing - their genitals.

# Deprived them of regular sleep for weeks or months.

# Shackled their hands and feet before smashing them repeatedly face-first into concrete walls - within sight of the Statue of Liberty.

# Forced them in winter to stand outdoors at dawn while dressed in light cotton prison garb and no shoes, sometimes for hours.

"In December, they left me outside for more than four hours [wearing] only a jumpsuit and a light prison coat," Ahmed Khalifa, an Egyptian, told the Daily News. "I asked them to let me inside. They were laughing and pointing to me. When I finally got back inside, I felt like I had frostbite."

The Justice Department's inspector general has substantiated some of the prisoners' allegations - and some incidents were captured on videotape. But the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any federal correction officer at MDC.

"I was informed the videos amounted to nothing more than shoving, but no serious injuries," said one Justice Department official, who would speak only on condition he not be identified.

But Inspector General Glenn Fine, whose staff reviewed 380 MDC videotapes, reported in 2003 that "These tapes substantiated many of the detainees' allegations." Furthermore, the officers were not just a few bad apples but "a significant percentage of those who had regular contact with the detainees," Fine wrote last March.

The Justice Department currently is reconsidering its rejection of a News Freedom of Information request for the tapes, after the paper filed an appeal.

Meanwhile, interviews by The News with 12 ex-detainees - all but one now deported for visa violations - and a review of sworn complaints filed against the Bureau of Prisons adds shocking detail to the earlier findings of what occurred at MDC.

The picture that emerges mirrors some of the abuses the International Committee of the Red Cross denounced recently as "tantamount to torture" when inflicted by U.S. military authorities on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

This is systemic, not a "few bad apples." Once you've demonized a group, you can do anything to them.

Madness and Lies

Pentagon is lying its way out of an unwinnable war - again

Col. David Hackworth
Published: Sunday, Feb. 20, 2005

As with Vietnam, the Iraqi tar pit was oh-so-easy to sink into, but appears to be just as tough to exit.

This should be no big surprise! Most slugfests - from bar brawls to military misadventures like Vietnam and Iraq - take some clever moves to step away from once the swinging starts.

This is why most combat vets pick their fights carefully. They look at their scars, remember the madness and are always mindful of the fallout.

That’s not the case in Washington, where the White House and the Pentagon are run by civilians who have never sweated it out on a battlefield. Never before in our country’s history has an administration charged with defending our nation been so lacking in hands-on combat experience and therefore so ignorant about the art and science of war.

Now the increasingly flummoxed Bush team is stealing the page on Vietnamization from Nixon’s Exit Primer, coupled with the same deceitful tactics he used to get us out of the almost decade-long Vietnam quagmire: telling lies.

The Nixon gang kicked off its con in 1969 via a killer of a PR snow job to pacify an American public whose support for the war was exhausted. The guts of this spin show were: We have clobbered the enemy; the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) is main-event material and ready to take over the fighting; and we can bring our troops home. This propaganda was supported by ARVN combat-readiness reports systematically doctored by our brass to show that the units we were advising were good-to-go.

I was on the ground as an adviser to ARVN when the campaign launched, and I was completely floored. Even the elite outfits - Rangers, Special Forces, paratroopers - were not fully capable of defending their country when put to the test. And these gung-ho troops were ARVN’s finest. Average ARVN grunts down in the ordinary infantry divisions were so ineffective that they couldn’t have fought their way out of a day-care center without massive U.S. air support.

Meanwhile, U.S. units started redeploying. Two years after the last grunt climbed on the last silver “freedom bird” and headed home, ARVN folded like a wet noodle.

All that blood, sacrifice and billions of American taxpayer dollars went for naught because politicians hadn’t worked out the endgame before Round One. And then their solution-without-honor was to lie their way out of a no-win war.

Thirty-five years later, President Bush told the nation that Iraq had nine fully trained combat infantry battalions. Just as he was proclaiming the prowess of the Iraqi army, a major in the Iraqi Training Command told me that the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, when committed to their first battle, threw down their weapons and ran. “Not sure where the president is getting his info, but we have only one battalion that’s good-to-go,” he said.

Inquiring minds want to know: Is our president still being fed bad skinny comparable to the intel incorrectly linking Saddam to Sept. 11 or claiming that Iraq was chockablock full of weapons of mass destruction?

More recently, Pentagon hype claimed 140,000 trained and equipped Iraqi troops were set to go toe to toe against an estimated 15,000 insurgents. But when congressional pressure from both Republicans and Democrats lit fires around the feet of both Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, they were quick to admit that only 40,000 Iraqi soldiers were ready to meet the tiger. The rest, according to Myers, “were useful in less-taxing jobs . . . in relatively stable southern Iraq.”

The hard truth is that it takes a good 10 years to build an army from the ground up. And the major emphasis must be placed not on numbers such as how many battalions have been fielded or how ready the recruits are, but rather on good, old-fashioned officer training. Until this happens and the corrupt Iraqi officer leadership - from gold bar to four stars - gets a good scrub, our troops are stuck in the tar.

I watched Gen. Myers testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. His words had so little relationship with the facts on the ground in Iraq that my jaw dropped.

Yesterday's Observer revealed the following:

A British official was involved in drafting rules permitting extreme interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad, centre of the controversy over the use of torture by US forces against Iraqi prisoners.

Last night it emerged that the government has been forced to retract claims that no British military officer had seen or been involved with the crucial document allowing guards to subject detainees to interrogation methods including the use of dogs, sleep deprivation and stress positions, in breach of the Geneva Convention.

Last year the jail achieved notoriety when photographs emerged of guards forcing prisoners to strip naked and simulate sex acts. Other photographs showed detainees being set upon with dogs and beaten.

The Armed Forces Minister, Adam Ingram, has admitted in a letter to a Plaid Cymru MP, Adam Price, that a senior British Army lawyer assigned to the coalition's legal department in Baghdad contributed to 'comments provided by his superior' when drafting the document.

It is not known if the officer supported or opposed the document, but the revelation raises serious questions about who in the Army's chain of command knew of the interrogation techniques being employed at Abu Ghraib and when.

The British officer made a weekly report to his superiors and was also under a responsibility to alert them if he felt international law governing the treatment of detainees was being flouted.

'For the government to now admit that their earlier statement was incorrect and that a senior British lawyer had some role in the drafting process is very worrying,' Price said. 'The use of techniques such as sensory deprivation are illegal under British military law. It's against the Geneva Convention, too. The alarm bells should have been ringing. I would have expected the British chain of command to have been alerted to the Americans' practices.'

Once the moral sinkhole opens, everybody falls into it.

Light Day

Bumpers, today has been light while I've been working on something for the book. It's going to take me a bit to get the right mix of keeping a standard "feel" for Bump and doing some extended writing. We'll figure it out. But I've been on the computer since 5 this morning and I'm done for the day. The upshot is that I think the intro is mostly done and tomorrow should look like a much more normal Bump day. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

They're Watching

Continent Is Divided, Though Views Soften
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

Published: February 20, 2005

A poll published this month by the German Marshall Fund, for example, indicates that only 11 percent of French and Germans approve of Mr. Bush's handling of foreign affairs. Europe remains frustrated that the United States has refused to hear its voice on issues as wide-ranging as the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the standing of the world criminal court, engagement with Iran and structural change in the United Nations Security Council.

Other, more philosophical, differences persist as well. The Europeans tend to regard poverty and the dismal failure to bring peace to the Middle East as the root cause of terrorism; the United States tends to blame the absence of democracy. In discussing national security, the Europeans emphasize the word "stability," the Americans the word "liberty," even if it borders on what the Europeans might consider adventurism. Washington's strident statements about liberating Iran, for example, have spread concern across the Continent that America may try to use military force there.

The European Union is poised to lift its 15-year arms embargo on China this summer; the Bush administration opposes such a move. Washington wants the union to declare Hezbollah, the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group, a terrorist organization; many European governments, including that of France, note that it is also a recognized political party in Lebanon.

While some officials and analysts of the trans-Atlantic alliance were dazzled by the charm-infused, fence-mending performances by Ms. Rice and Mr. Rumsfeld on their trips to Europe, others remain unimpressed.

Mr. Rumsfeld's speech in Munich was aimed at bridging gaps. But he ended by saying that the United States would continue to intervene militarily without NATO when necessary. That language did not convince even the Americans present that a new day in relations had dawned.

"The tone was different," former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen said at the conference. "The tune was the same."

Since Bushco is all about rhetoric with nothing to back it up, I'm not expecting anything to change.

Right Turn

Europe's Jews Seek Solace on the Right

By CRAIG S. SMITH

Published: February 20, 2005

PARIS — A curious thing is happening in Belgium these days: a small but vocal number of Jews are supporting a far-right party whose founders were Nazi collaborators. The xenophobic party, Vlaams Belang, plays on fears of Arab immigrants and, unlike the prewar parties from which it is descended, courts Jewish votes. Perhaps 5 percent of the city of Antwerp's Jews gave it their votes in the last election.

The Belgian example is extreme, but it represents the sharpest edge of a much broader political shift by European Jews - away from the left, particularly the far left, and toward the center and right, in the face of rising displays of anti-Semitism and the European left's embrace of the Palestinian cause.

This drift from the left has "been going on steadily for the last 20 or 30 years," said Tony Lerman, who runs London's Hanadiv Charitable Foundation, which supports Jewish life in Europe.

Of course, the shift is not monolithic and some of it is also associated with a rise in Jews' social and economic status. In the vast majority of cases it represents a move toward tolerant parties of the center or center-right rather than a leap to the far end of the spectrum - where many xenophobic parties remain unfriendly to Jews as well as to Arabs. So the number of Jews on the far right remains a very slim minority.

But the fact that there are any at all is a measure of the degree to which many of Europe's 2.4 million Jews feel abandoned by the left and are still searching for a comfortable place in European politics.

Meanwhile, they are becoming increasingly active in the mainstream right.

In Britain in the last 60 years, the number of left-of-center Jewish members of Parliament has dropped from more than two dozen to about a dozen, primarily older, members while the number in parties of the center and right has climbed from none to about half a dozen. The Tories' would-be finance minister, Oliver Letwin, is Jewish, as is the party's new leader, Michael Howard. Mr. Lerman says Jews in Britain are now identified in public opinion more with the Conservative Party than the Labor Party.

This is a reminder of how different European political dynamics are from those in the US. American liberal Jews also feel a lot freer to be critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Courting the Old World

This is a useful exercise. But one might ask the question, "Does Europe want to be courted?"

Winning Back Europe's Heart

Published: February 20, 2005

What do Europeans want from the United States? As President Bush prepares for his first trip to Europe since his re-election - a five-day swing through Belgium, Germany and Slovakia - the Op-Ed page asked a variety of Europeans to name the single most important thing Mr. Bush could do to reinvigorate trans-Atlantic relations.

No New Wars
By ELFRIEDE JELINEK

Give a Little
By BONO

Be True
By STEFAN HRIB

Rogue Dollar
By ROBERT SKIDELSKY

All for One
By GIANNI RIOTTA
[Hi, Gianni!]

NATO for Everyone
By GUILLAUME PARMENTIER

Listen Up
By TARIQ RAMADAN

Posted by Melanie at 06:47 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Faking It

FRANK RICH:
The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news. Of these six, two have been syndicated newspaper columnists paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's "marriage" initiatives. The other four have played real newsmen on TV. Before Mr. Guckert and Armstrong Williams, the talking head paid $240,000 by the Department of Education, there were Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia. Let us not forget these pioneers - the Woodward and Bernstein of fake news. They starred in bogus reports ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," went the script) pretending to "sort through the details" of the administration's Medicare prescription-drug plan in 2004. Such "reports," some of which found their way into news packages distributed to local stations by CNN, appeared in more than 50 news broadcasts around the country and have now been deemed illegal "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office.

The money that paid for both the Ryan-Garcia news packages and the Armstrong Williams contract was siphoned through the same huge public relations firm, Ketchum Communications, which itself filtered the funds through subcontractors. A new report by Congressional Democrats finds that Ketchum has received $97 million of the administration's total $250 million P.R. kitty, of which the Williams and Ryan-Garcia scams would account for only a fraction. We have yet to learn precisely where the rest of it ended up.

Even now, we know that the fake news generated by the six known shills is only a small piece of the administration's overall propaganda effort. President Bush wasn't entirely joking when he called the notoriously meek March 6, 2003, White House press conference on the eve of the Iraq invasion "scripted" while it was still going on. (And "Jeff Gannon" apparently wasn't even at that one). Everything is scripted.

The pre-fab "Ask President Bush" town hall-style meetings held during last year's campaign (typical question: "Mr. President, as a child, how can I help you get votes?") were carefully designed for television so that, as Kenneth R. Bazinet wrote last summer in New York's Daily News, "unsuspecting viewers" tuning in their local news might get the false impression they were "watching a completely open forum." A Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence, intended to provide propagandistic news items, some of them possibly false, to foreign news media was shut down in 2002 when it became an embarrassing political liability. But much more quietly, another Pentagon propaganda arm, the Pentagon Channel, has recently been added as a free channel for American viewers of the Dish Network. Can a Social Security Channel be far behind?

It is a brilliant strategy. When the Bush administration isn't using taxpayers' money to buy its own fake news, it does everything it can to shut out and pillory real reporters who might tell Americans what is happening in what is, at least in theory, their own government. Paul Farhi of The Washington Post discovered that even at an inaugural ball he was assigned "minders" - attractive women who wouldn't give him their full names - to let the revelers know that Big Brother was watching should they be tempted to say anything remotely off message.

The inability of real journalists to penetrate this White House is not all the White House's fault. The errors of real news organizations have played perfectly into the administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundaries between the fake and the real and thereby demolish the whole notion that there could possibly be an objective and accurate free press. Conservatives, who supposedly deplore post-modernism, are now welcoming in a brave new world in which it's a given that there can be no empirical reality in news, only the reality you want to hear (or they want you to hear). The frequent fecklessness of the Beltway gang does little to penetrate this Washington smokescreen. For a case in point, you needed only switch to CNN on the day after Mr. Olbermann did his fake-news-style story on the fake reporter in the White House press corps.

"Jeff Gannon" had decided to give an exclusive TV interview to a sober practitioner of by-the-book real news, Wolf Blitzer. Given this journalistic opportunity, the anchor asked questions almost as soft as those "Jeff" himself had asked in the White House. Mr. Blitzer didn't question Mr. Guckert's outrageous assertion that he adopted a fake name because "Jeff Gannon is easier to pronounce and easier to remember." (Is "Jeff" easier to pronounce than his real first name, Jim?). Mr. Blitzer never questioned Gannon/Guckert's assertion that Talon News "is a separate, independent news division" of GOPUSA. Only in a brief follow-up interview a day later did he ask Gannon/Guckert to explain why he was questioned by the F.B.I. in the case that may send legitimate reporters to jail: Mr. Guckert has at times implied that he either saw or possessed a classified memo identifying Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative. Might that memo have come from the same officials who looked after "Jeff Gannon's" press credentials? Did Mr. Guckert have any connection with CNN's own Robert Novak, whose publication of Ms. Plame's name started this investigation in the first place? The anchor didn't go there.

The "real" news from CNN was no news at all, but it's not as if any of its competitors did much better. The "Jeff Gannon" story got less attention than another media frenzy - that set off by the veteran news executive Eason Jordan, who resigned from CNN after speaking recklessly at a panel discussion at Davos, where he apparently implied, at least in passing, that American troops deliberately targeted reporters. Is the banishment of a real newsman for behaving foolishly at a bloviation conference in Switzerland a more pressing story than that of a fake newsman gaining years of access to the White House (and network TV cameras) under mysterious circumstances? With real news this timid, the appointment of Jon Stewart to take over Dan Rather's chair at CBS News could be just the jolt television journalism needs. As Mr. Olbermann demonstrated when he borrowed a sharp "Daily Show" tool to puncture the "Jeff Gannon" case, the only road back to reality may be to fight fake with fake.

You use propaganda when the truth is ugly.

Utter Failure

News About Iraq Goes Through Filters
by Dahr Jamail
(Published on Thursday, February 17, 2005 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Eason Jordan, a CNN executive, told a panel that the U.S. military deliberately targeted journalists in Iraq. He said he "knew of about 12 journalists who had not only been killed by American troops, but had been targeted as a matter of policy," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts who was on the panel with Jordan.

When we hear this statement with the knowledge that 63 journalists have been killed in Iraq, in addition to the fact that in a 14-month-period, more journalists were killed in Iraq than during the entire Vietnam War, one begins to get the feeling that the military clampdown on the media is more than a myth or a conspiracy theory.

(Editor's note: Jordan has since resigned from CNN, telling fellow CNN staffers: "I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise.")

I've personally witnessed photographers in Baghdad who have had their cameras either confiscated or smashed by soldiers, who were, of course, acting on orders from their superiors. And no, the journalists weren't trying to photograph something that would jeopardize the security of the soldiers.

Even Christiane Amanpour, CNN's top war correspondent, announced on national television that her own network was censuring her journalism.

Most Americans don't know that on any given day, an average of three U.S. soldiers die in Iraq as a result of 75 attacks every single day on U.S. forces or that Iraqi civilian deaths average 10 times that amount.

Most Americans also don't know there are four permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, with the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root diligently constructing 10 others.

Most Americans don't know overall troop morale in Iraq resembles that of the Vietnam War, with tours being extended and stop-loss orders imposed.

Nor do most folks know where billions of their tax dollars have been spent that were supposed to be used in the reconstruction of Iraq.

But who can blame Americans when the military and mainstream media continue, day in and day out, to distort, deny and destroy the truth before it reaches the audience back home? An international peoples' initiative called the World Tribunal on Iraq met in Rome to focus on media complicity in the crimes committed against the people of Iraq as well as U.S. citizens who are paying with their blood and tax dollars to maintain the occupation. The tribunal found Western mainstream media outlets guilty of incitement to violence and the deliberate misleading of people into the war and ongoing occupation of Iraq.

Makes you wonder what else Americans aren't being told about Iraq. After spending eight of the past 14 months reporting fromIraq, I can tell you the points made here are just the tip of the iceberg.

This is what makes me absolutely nuts while I'm sitting here at the computer scanning the Internet for news with CNN on in the background. The utter softballs those so-called reporters toss when "interviewing" administration figures makes me want to throw things at the television.

Human Crime

The final proof: global warming is a man-made disaster
By Steve Connor, Science Editor in Washington

19 February 2005

Scientists have found the first unequivocal link between man-made greenhouse gases and a dramatic heating of the Earth's oceans. The researchers - many funded by the US government - have seen what they describe as a "stunning" correlation between a rise in ocean temperature over the past 40 years and pollution of the atmosphere.

The study destroys a central argument of global warming sceptics within the Bush administration - that climate change could be a natural phenomenon. It should convince George Bush to drop his objections to the Kyoto treaty on climate change, the scientists say.

Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and a leading member of the team, said: "We've got a serious problem. The debate is no longer: 'Is there a global warming signal?' The debate now is what are we going to do about it?"

The findings are crucial because much of the evidence of a warmer world has until now been from air temperatures, but it is the oceans that are the driving force behind the Earth's climate. Dr Barnett said: "Over the past 40 years there has been considerable warming of the planetary system and approximately 90 per cent of that warming has gone directly into the oceans."

He told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington: "We defined a 'fingerprint' of ocean warming. Each of the oceans warmed differently at different depths and constitutes a fingerprint which you can look for. We had several computer simulations, for instance one for natural variability: could the climate system just do this on its own? The answer was no.

"We looked at the possibility that solar changes or volcanic effects could have caused the warming - not a chance. What just absolutely nailed it was greenhouse warming."

America produces a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, yet under President Bush it is one of the few developed nations not to have signed the Kyoto treaty to limit emissions. The President's advisers have argued that the science of global warming is full of uncertainties and change might be a natural phenomenon.

The only question which remains is how much of the damage can be mitigated at this stage. Americans don't seem to embrace the amount of lifestyle change which would be necessary to make a dent in greenhouse gasses.

Sorrows of Empire

Clash over 'Kurdish veto' looms in Iraq
By Charles Clover in Baghdad
Published: February 18 2005 10:45 | Last updated: February 18 2005 20:43

A law promulgated during the US-led occupation of Iraq, which governs how the country's new constitution is to be written, has been largely rejected by members of the United Iraqi Alliance, which has a majority of seats in the new parliament.

The Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), which was brought into force last March by former US administrator Paul Bremer, was originally intended to head off a political crisis by, in effect, granting Iraq's Kurdish population a veto over the new constitution.

But while it solved a short term problem, the inclusion of the so-called "Kurdish veto" clause in the TAL seems set to cause a new crisis, as both Shia and Sunni Arabs say they now hope the new parliament will simply cancel it, before debate over the constitution starts in earnest.

Many Alliance members, including Ibrahim Ja'aferi, widely believed to be the leading candidate for prime minister, have said the law must be either amended or scrapped altogether.

Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Sahgeer, a high ranking Shia cleric and Alliance member, said of the veto: "Of course this is unacceptable. There is no such thing as a democracy in which the minority decides, and the majority plays no role."

The Alliance is dominated by Shia religious parties, which follow the word of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's highest ranking Shia cleric.

He registered his objections to the law last spring but has said nothing publicly about it since.

Kurds, who won the second largest bloc of seats in parliament, insist the clause stays, and a western diplomat told journalists yesterday that an effort to get rid of the law, or even the veto clause, could trigger a walkout by Kurds, "and everyone understands those risks", he said.

I have this sneaking suspicion that we're going to be living with Pro-Counsel Bremer's mistakes for a long, long time. I'm still stunned by the perfection of the cock-up Bush made in Iraq.

Wintry Mix

Whoops. This one snuck up on me. Gotta find some time for panic grocery shopping today. Looks like we'll have another event at mid-week. I can't really complain, it's been a mild winter.

Us and Them

1942-Style Bigotry Targets Muslims in the U.S. Today

By Lillian Nakano, Lillian Nakano is a third-generation Japanese American from Hawaii and was active in the redress campaign as a member of Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress. She lives in Torrance.

Feb. 19, 1942, was a day that changed the lives of Japanese Americans forever. I was a teenager growing up in Hawaii when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which set into motion the removal and incarceration of more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry in inland concentration camps.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, a tense atmosphere of suspicion and hysteria engulfed the West Coast and Hawaii. Decades of anti-Japanese and anti-Asian legislation and racism had already laid the foundation for the events that soon took place. We were rounded up without due process even though we had nothing to do with the attack. Our family was shipped to California, then to Arkansas and finally to Wyoming, where we spent the duration of the war.

Upon our release from the camps, Japanese Americans began to pick up the pieces of wrecked lives, in the face of continuing racism and hostility. For years, we suppressed our anger, bitterness and shame about the unfair treatment we got.

Today, many in the Japanese American community will attend the annual Day of Remembrance events in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities, with the goal of teaching new generations the lessons from that painful time. Some of my fellow Americans are now being targeted because they are Muslim, Arab or Middle Eastern. When the attacks of Sept. 11 happened, I mourned for the innocent lives that were lost. But I also began to identify and sympathize with the innocent Muslim Americans who immediately became victims of the same kind of stereotyping and scapegoating we faced 63 years ago. They too have become targets of suspicion, hate crimes, vandalism and violence, all in the name of patriotism and national security.

Feb. 19 is a day I do not wish upon anyone else. Now, the lessons are not just about events in a distant past, but events as they are occurring on a daily basis.

Let's not forget the infamous words of Gen. John DeWitt — who was in charge of West Coast defenses — in 1943, "A Jap is a Jap." Or Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who said, "Their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or even trust the citizen Japanese." How painfully familiar it seemed to see Muslim and Arab Americans suspected and ostracized as potential terrorists solely on the basis of ethnicity and religion.

In the 1970s and '80s, inspired by the civil rights struggle, the Japanese American community fought a 10-year-long campaign and won redress and an apology from the U.S. government in 1988. This was to be the official government acknowledgment that the internment was morally and legally wrong, and we were given hope that such an event would not be repeated.

Yet today there are renewed attacks on civil liberties in the name of the "war on terrorism." Legislation such as the Patriot Act and the government's willingness to arrest and charge innocent people contribute to an atmosphere that could lead to future internment camps.

Fear factor: 44 percent of Americans queried in Cornell national poll favor curtailing some liberties for Muslim Americans

THACA, N.Y. -- In a study to determine how much the public fears terrorism, almost half of respondents polled nationally said they believe the U.S. government should -- in some way -- curtail civil liberties for Muslim Americans, according to a new survey released today (Dec. 17) by Cornell University.

"Our results highlight the need for continued dialogue about issues of civil liberties in time of war," says James Shanahan, Cornell associate professor of communication and a principal investigator in the study. Shanahan and Erik Nisbet, senior research associate with the ILR Survey Research Institute, commissioned the study, and Ron Ostman, professor of communication, and his students administered it.

The full Cornell study is here in PDF.

We humans love to find our group by demonizing others. The emblematic book of cure for our age is Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation". I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Company Store

F.D.A. Is Advised to Let Pain Pills Stay on Market
By GARDINER HARRIS

Published: February 19, 2005

GAITHERSBURG, Md., Feb. 18 - A panel of experts voted unanimously on Friday to advise the Food and Drug Administration that three leading painkillers - Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx - can cause worrisome heart problems. But it also advised against banning the drugs, though by narrow margins in the cases of Bextra and Vioxx.

Most of the advisory panel's members said that the agency should do the following: place warnings on the drugs' labels detailing their heart risks; ban consumer advertising for the drugs; and require each prescription to include a guide outlining the risks.

"I think physicians need to be more thoughtful about how they use these drugs in the future," the panel's chairman, Dr. Alastair Wood, said after the meeting. "It would be a brave man or woman who started a patient with a clear history of heart disease on these drugs."

Dr. John Jenkins, director of the Office of New Drugs at the F.D.A., agreed, saying the panel had made clear "that they felt that these agents should maybe not be as widely used."

Several panel members said that patients in need of pain relief should first try naproxen, sold as Aleve by Bayer, before taking any of the three painkillers known as cox-2 inhibitors - Celebrex and Bextra, made by Pfizer, or Vioxx, made by Merck.

The panel voted 31 to 1 that Pfizer should be allowed to continue selling Celebrex, which members said was safer than the other two. The vote on Bextra was 17 to 13 with 2 abstentions, and 17 to 15 on Vioxx.

Vioxx has been off the market since September, when Merck withdrew it after a study showed that it doubled the risk of heart attacks and stroke, but the company told the panel that it might reintroduce the drug.

The F.D.A. is not bound to follow the advice of its panels, but it usually does. Dr. Jenkins said that the agency would announce regulatory decisions within weeks. Merck, he said, would not be allowed to reintroduce Vioxx without coming to agreement with the agency.

Though it is unlikely that the three painkillers will again approach their previous combined sales of $6 billion a year, Pfizer and Merck shares rose sharply, with investors apparently relieved that the panel did not seek to ban the drugs.

What they aren't telling you: none of this stuff works a whole lot better than Ibuprofen, whose risks are much better known. These are drugs which make a whole lot better money, however. If you think your safety is on the top of the FDA's mind, think again.

Consultation

I'll just post this and let you to decide what to make of it.

Iraq or No, Guard Bonus Lures Some to Re-enlist

SPRINGER, N.M. - Lisa Marez could not manage a smile as this town cheered the return of her husband's National Guard unit with a parade of pickups and police cars, followed by a celebratory calling of names in the high school gym. Just days earlier, she had learned that her husband, Sgt. Jesse Guillermo Marez, had accepted a bonus to re-enlist for six more years, virtually guaranteeing another tour in Iraq.

Sergeant Marez, who in civilian life in Albuquerque works as a machine operator at a weapons laboratory, stoically explained that he supported the war in Iraq and was not afraid to return. He also said he would soon receive a re-enlistment bonus of $15,000, part of the National Guard's effort to bolster its ranks after missing its recruiting goals for the first time in a decade last year.

"The money's a nice extra incentive," Sergeant Marez, 27, said in early February inside the gym before the ceremony for his unit in this small northeast New Mexico town.

"I'd like to put it in the bank for a while, maybe save some for college expenses," he said, pointing to his 10-year-old son, Michael.

Whether to pay down debt, splurge on a vacation, buy a car, make a home down payment or cover education costs, the bonuses are being embraced by some members of the National Guard as an unexpected bounty. The National Guard introduced the bonuses in mid-December in hopes of strengthening its forces, which now constitute a large part of the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sergeant Marez is one of two soldiers in his 57-member unit, about 90 percent Hispanic and mostly men from northern New Mexico, to re-enlist for six years while still stationed in Iraq. They can thereby collect their bonuses free from taxes. A third person in the unit, the 515th Corps Support Battalion, re-enlisted for three years for a $7,500 bonus.

The re-enlistment rate rose nationwide in the first weeks that the bonuses were available, though much of the gain was attributed to a single unit from North Carolina, many of whose members signed up together in Iraq to get the tax break. It is too soon to gauge the program's impact, and the early numbers could have been "artificially strong," said Lt. Col. Michael Jones, deputy division chief in charge of National Guard recruiting.

Last year, the Guard attracted 49,210 soldiers, about 7,000 short of its goal of 56,000, reflecting its shifting role from weekend duty preparing for national disasters to defending foreign soil.

"The Guard is looking for an economic solution to a socio-political problem," said David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland. "Fifteen thousand dollars is half a muscle car. I'd be surprised to see this policy have more than a marginal effect on the Guard's numbers."

Particularly in relatively poor areas of the country like Springer, a town of 1,200 people surrounded by small ranching communities, the Guard will be recruiting in coming months as its roster of recruiters swells to 4,100, from 2,700. A low-ranking Guard member can make about $35,000 a year in a combat tour in Iraq, or about $5,000 more than a young schoolteacher can earn here in a year.

Though $15,000 may stretch further here, the pay and the bonuses failed to sway many of the 515th who returned home with Sergeant Marez. Sgt. Dennis Trujillo explained why a couple weeks ago as he sat down for barbecue after the welcome-home ceremony concluded with a show of digital photographs of the unit in Iraq to a medley of hard-rock and heavy-metal classics.

No one in the 515th was killed in Iraq, Sergeant Trujillo said, but the unit had suffered about 40 indirect mortar attacks and its duties, which included supplying Army troops with gasoline and water, were sometimes grueling. The money the Guard was offering was "good but not enough," said Sergeant Trujillo, 29, who grew up in Roy, a ranching community of 400 people not far from Springer, and whose term with the Guard expires this summer.

"I'm happy to be back here," said Sergeant Trujillo, explaining how his main goal now was to secure a stable state job in the forestry service. "I don't see a reason to return to Iraq."

Ms. Marez, a 30-year-old teacher's assistant who stood by her husband's side throughout the ceremony celebrating the return of the 515th, did not look so favorably on the re-enlistment bonus either.

"This time of war has been so difficult," she said, holding back tears. "I don't care much for the Guard. It's taking my husband away."

If my partner did something like that without consulting me, I guarantee there would be trouble.

Blessed Are...

A couple of years ago, the Roman Catholic bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, put the church's money where its mouth was and demanded that every church meeting, from the parish level up, begin by asking what the effect of that meeting would be for the poor. Just for one year. It might be a wonderful thing if Congress would do that for just one session, just one year.

Where's the Faith In This Agenda?

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Saturday, February 19, 2005; Page A31

I was inspired to revisit Bush's famous compassion address by my friend David Kuo, who made news this week with an article criticizing the administration's failure to follow through on its faith-based agenda. "From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants," Kuo wrote in his essay on Beliefnet.com. "It never really wanted the 'poor people stuff.' "

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, inevitably altered the administration's focus, but they cannot fully explain why the "poor people stuff" received so little attention. Since Sept. 11, Kuo notes, the administration "has pushed an ambitious domestic agenda: Three huge budgets have been submitted, each of which had billions of dollars for other domestic 'priorities' but lacked any new money to pay for 'compassion agenda' promises, which are ever more in need of fulfillment."

Kuo is not some random liberal going after Bush. He was deputy director of Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and was a compassionate conservative before the comcons were cool. In fact, Kuo was one of the people who persuaded me in the 1990s to take compassionate conservatism seriously.

Kuo's approach, then and now, was to criticize liberals for failing to see the promise of religiously based social action and to criticize conservatives for indifference to the poor. For Kuo, compassionate conservatism was not a political ploy. On the contrary, he was hoping its rise would encourage a serious dialogue across the lines of party and ideology about what a serious commitment to lifting up the poor would look like.

When I asked Kuo in 1998 to write an essay for a little book I edited on community and civil society, his title was characteristic: "Poverty 101: What Liberals and Conservatives Can Learn From Each Other."

To this day, Kuo speaks warmly of the president he served. "No one who knows him even a tiny bit doubts the sincerity and compassion of his heart," Kuo wrote on Beliefnet. In a phone conversation, Kuo insisted that his essay was not anti-Bush but "in support of what Governor Bush said in 1999."

This issue is personal for me, as it is for Kuo. Over the years I have organized conferences and edited volumes on the pros and cons of government help for faith-based charity. I still hope that liberals and conservatives might someday come together in acknowledging that alleviating poverty requires the energies of both government and the charitable sector, emphatically including our religious institutions.

Unfortunately, the president's new budget moves us no closer to that happy time. It cuts programs for the poor while insisting that no tax cut for the wealthy be left behind. The politician who spoke so movingly in 1999 about our "bonds of friendship and community and solidarity" and offered "a vision of the common good beyond profit and loss" was on to something important. Whatever happened to that guy?

Friday Afternoon Open Thread

Bumpers, I just got an urgent note from our friend pogge. He received this from his A/V software vendor and tells us

Update your virus definitions. I just got an email from the vendor of my virus software to put me on "high alert". They only do that when there's something new that's working mischief on the internet.

Consider yourselves warned.

The re-fi docudump is happening this afternoon so I'm going to be tied up for the next few hours. Use this as an open thread.

Fail to Learn the Lessons of History

First, They Attack the Past
by John Pilger

How does thought control work in societies that call themselves free? Why are famous journalists so eager, almost as a reflex, to minimize the culpability of political leaders such as Bush and Blair who share responsibility for the unprovoked attack on a defenseless people, for laying to waste their land, and for killing at least 100,000 people, most of them civilians, having sought to justify this epic crime with demonstrable lies? Why does a BBC reporter describe the invasion of Iraq as "a vindication for Blair"? Why have broadcasters never associated the British or American state with terrorism? Why have such privileged communicators, with unlimited access to the facts, lined up to describe an unobserved, unverified, illegitimate, cynically manipulated election, held under a brutal occupation, as "democratic" with the pristine aim of being "free and fair"?

Phony elections were arranged, hailed in the West as "free and fair," with American officials fabricating "an 83 percent turnout despite Vietcong terror." The guide alludes to none of this, nor that "the terrorists," whom the Americans called the Vietcong, were also southern Vietnamese defending their homeland against the American invasion and whose resistance was popular. For Vietnam, read Iraq.

The historical parallels are stunning, including the propaganda used to sell the war. And half of the public is buying it all over again. You would think that we had learned something from the last time, but that would mean remembering beyond the historical revisionism we are still fed.

Leviathan

The Cruel Saga of Asbestos Disease

By Paul Brodeur, Paul Brodeur, a staff writer at the New Yorker for many years, is the author of four books on asbestos disease.

The renowned epidemiologist Dr. Irving J. Selikoff was known to say that studying asbestos disease was like throwing a rock into a pond and seeing how far the ripples extended outward.

In pioneering studies conducted in the 1960s, Selikoff demonstrated the horrific extent of asbestos lung disease in heavily exposed asbestos insulators. He then showed that asbestos disease was also striking less- exposed workers who toiled alongside the insulators in shipyards and on building construction sites. Other scientists found that the wives and children of asbestos workers were dying through exposure to the relatively small amounts of asbestos dust their husbands and fathers were bringing home on their work clothes.

Is it any wonder that during the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands of diseased asbestos workers brought product liability lawsuits against the manufacturers of asbestos insulation, which had failed to warn them of the hazard of inhaling asbestos fibers given off by the products? Or that most of these plaintiffs received compensation when they were able to prove that asbestos manufacturers had not only known for decades that asbestos could cause fatal lung disease but also had withheld this knowledge from them?

Since then, several hundred thousand lawsuits have been brought by construction workers, factory workers, refinery workers, brake mechanics and other members of the labor force who have either developed asbestos disease or whose chest X-rays show evidence of lung changes caused by their exposure. Asbestos diseases include asbestosis — a scarring of the lungs — lung cancer and mesothelioma, an always-fatal tumor.

Today, however, President Bush would have you believe that the justice system is being misused and that the economy is being held back by "frivolous asbestos claims." He and the Republicans in Congress are trying to convince the American people that there is no asbestos public health crisis, merely an asbestos litigation crisis, by pointing out that about 70 companies have filed for bankruptcy protection because of asbestos lawsuits, and that about $70 billion has already been paid out in claims and related costs.

What the president and the Republicans fail to appreciate is how far the ripples of asbestos disease have spread. For example, in the small town of Libby, Mont., where W.R. Grace & Co. mined asbestos-contaminated vermiculite, hundreds of the company's employees have died of asbestos disease, as well as many residents who never worked for Grace but were merely exposed to asbestos fibers in wind-swept dust coming from the mine. Grace not only knew about the asbestos hazard in Libby and did nothing to about it but also had been assessed punitive damages for outrageous and reckless misconduct in prior asbestos litigation. This did not deter Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader in the Senate, from describing Grace as a "reputable" company driven unfairly into bankruptcy.

When Thomas Hobbes wrote that, for the ordinary man, life was nasty, brutish and short, it was clear that he didn't think that this was a good thing. For Bushco, it seems more like a goal.

Bad Neighborhood

Bob Herbert is one of the few voices of clarity and truth in that sea of equivocation and Bush apologetics known as the NYT Op-ed page. I look forward to Fridays for all of the obvious reasons and for the fact that we get him and Paul Krugman together.

Our Friends, the Torturers
By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 18, 2005

The administration is trying to have it both ways in its so-called war on terror. It claims to be fighting for freedom, democracy and the rule of law, and it condemns barbaric behavior whenever it is committed by someone else. At the same time, it is engaged in its own barbaric behavior, while going out of its way to keep that behavior concealed from the American public and the world at large.

The man grabbed at Kennedy Airport and thrown by American officials into a Syrian nightmare was Maher Arar, a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated to Canada as a teenager. No one, not even the Syrians who tortured him, have been able to present any evidence linking him to terrorism.

He was taken into custody on the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2002, and was not released until Oct. 5, 2003. He was never charged, and when he wasn't being brutalized, he spent much of his time in an unlit, rat-infested cell that reminded him of a grave.

Government officials know that this kind of activity is not just wrong but reprehensible, which is why they won't admit publicly to the policy that permits them to kidnap individuals like Mr. Arar and send them off to regimes known to engage in torture. The policy is known as extraordinary rendition, which is an extreme variation of a little-known but longstanding legal principle called rendition. Rendition most commonly refers to the extrajudicial transfer of individuals from a foreign country to the United States for the purpose of answering criminal charges.

Think, for example, of a drug kingpin who is abducted in Colombia and brought to the U.S. to stand trial for trafficking. The defendant is said to have been "rendered" to justice in the U.S.

The courts here have tended to overlook the circumstances surrounding the seizure of such suspects. But upon arrival in the U.S., the normal rules of due process in criminal proceedings kick in, and the suspect is entitled to a fair trial.

In extraordinary rendition there are no rules. The person seized, presumably a terror suspect, is thrust into a highly secret zone of utter lawlessness, with no rights whatever. The entire point of this atrocious exercise is to transfer the suspect to a regime skilled in the art of torture. It's as if a cop picked up a suspect on the street and handed him over to the Mafia to extract a confession. One's guilt or innocence is not relevant. No legal defense is permitted. If a mistake is made, too bad.

U.S. officials knew what they were doing when they gave the signal to ship Mr. Arar to Syria. As far back as 1996, the State Department had this to say in a report about human rights in Syria:

"Former prisoners and detainees have reported that torture methods include electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; the forced insertion of objects into the rectum; beatings, sometimes while the victim is suspended from the ceiling; hyperextension of the spine; and the use of a chair that bends backwards to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the spine."

According to the State Department, torture was most likely to occur at one of the many detention centers run by the Syrian security forces, "particularly while the authorities are trying to extract a confession or information about an alleged crime or alleged accomplices."

Extraordinary rendition is antithetical to everything Americans are supposed to believe in. It violates American law. It violates international law. And it is a profound violation of our own most fundamental moral imperative - that there are limits to the way we treat other human beings, even in a time of war and great fear.

Yellow Ribbons

Hurt Troops Often Denied Pay, Benefits
# Guard and Reserve soldiers injured in combat face financial and medical 'friendly fire' once back in the U.S., officials say.

By John Hendren, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of Army Reserve and National Guard troops returning home after being wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone months without pay or medical benefits they were entitled to receive, military officials and government auditors said Thursday.

Because of a bureaucratic mistake, about 1,000 reservists and Guard members were removed from the active-duty rolls once home, even though their wounds entitled them to extended care, according to a Government Accountability Office study released Thursday.

"This is the equivalent of financial and medical 'friendly fire,' " Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, told military officials at a hearing.

The disclosures represent the latest in a list of problems confronting many returning war veterans, including shortages of physicians, a lack of mental healthcare and spotty medical treatment.

As the number of returning troops grows, Congress has increasingly focused on addressing their problems.

Defense officials and the GAO blamed the wartime crush of wounded part-time troops for overburdening a military health system that has not seen such an onslaught since World War II.

"This is clearly an example of not being able to handle the kind of operational tempo that we have today," said Gregory D. Kutz, director of the GAO's financial management and assurance office.

Lawmakers said they were fielding many calls from wounded Reserve and Guard troops who might have been wrongly denied their benefits. In one GAO sample of 38 wounded reservists who had trouble getting the Army to recognize them as being entitled to benefits, 24 went weeks or months without pay and benefits, according to the agency, the investigative arm of Congress. They confront a "convoluted and poorly defined process" to obtain benefits, the GAO said.

This, unfortunately, is nothing new. The same thing happened after the first Gulf War, Kosovo and Bosnia. The DoD and Veterans department are chronically unable to learn from past mistakes.

Two Views

Army Files Cite Abuse of Afghans
Special Forces Unit Prompted Senior Officers' Complaints

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 18, 2005; Page A16

Members of an Army Special Forces unit allegedly punched, slapped, kicked and beat Afghan civilians in two villages southeast of the capital of Kabul last May, prompting official complaints from two senior Army psychological operations officers who were present and said they witnessed the incidents.

The allegation is detailed in internal Army criminal files, released yesterday, that also document other allegations of abuse in Afghanistan as recent as last year. Previous abuse allegations have mostly concerned U.S. military activities in Iraq in 2003; these documents detail parallel conduct in Afghanistan in 2004.

In one strikingly similar event, the Army last year found about half a dozen photographs that depict masked U.S. soldiers standing with their weapons pointed at the heads of handcuffed and hooded or blindfolded detainees at a base in southern Afghanistan and, in one case, pressing a detainee's head against the wall of a "cage" where he was brought for interrogation.

The photographs were found on a compact disc left in one of the unit's offices, and the discovery set off a lengthy search by the Army for additional copies in the cars, homes, barracks, computers and cameras of members of the unit, part of the 22nd Infantry Regiment based in Fort Drum, N.Y.

None of the photos have been published -- unlike a set of photos the news media obtained last summer depicting similar acts of abuse and humiliation in Iraq -- and an Army spokesman said yesterday that they are being withheld from release "to protect the privacy" of the Afghan victims.

The acts photographed in Afghanistan occurred without provocation between December 2003 and February 2004 and violated Army regulations, according to testimony in the Army documents. The Geneva Conventions, which the Bush administration pledged to respect in Afghanistan "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity," bar inhumane treatment as well as any "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

Members of the unit said they took the pictures for sport and also said they destroyed some images after photos appeared in the media of similar acts at the U.S. military's Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to the documents.

"I realized there would be another public outrage if these photographs got out, so they were destroyed," said a soldier whose name was deleted from an Army investigative report dated July 8, 2004. Another said his squad leader had directed that photos be deleted from a camera, adding that "I realize it makes me and my unit look bad, and in no way meant for this to happen."

Several of the published photos of earlier abuse in Iraq depicted the corpse of Manadel Jamadi, who had been in the custody of a Navy SEAL team and CIA interrogators. Yesterday, the Associated Press reported for the first time a claim by Army guards at the prison that before the man's death, he had his hands handcuffed behind him and was suspended by his wrists in an effort to coerce his cooperation.

The wire service, quoting what it described as a summary of an interview conducted by investigators with one guard, Sgt. Jeffery Frost, said Frost had depicted Jamadi's arms as so badly stretched he was surprised they "didn't pop out of their sockets." Eight Navy workers have received nonjudicial punishments in the case, while two others are awaiting further Navy judgment.

Funny thing, The Guardian covers this story with a whole lot of detail omitted from the WaPo's piece:

Papers reveal Bagram abuse

· Prisoners subjected to 'mock executions'
· Photographs of detainees being sexually humiliated

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and James Meek
Friday February 18, 2005
The Guardian

New evidence has emerged that US forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking "trophy photographs" of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation.

Documents obtained by the Guardian contain evidence that such abuses took place in the main detention centre at Bagram, near the capital Kabul, as well as at a smaller US installation near the southern city of Kandahar.

The documents also indicate that US soldiers covered up abuse in Afghanistan and in Iraq - even after the Abu Ghraib scandal last year.

A thousand pages of evidence from US army investigations released to the American Civil Liberties Union after a long legal battle, and made available to the Guardian, show that an Iraqi detained at Tikrit in September 2003 was forced to withdraw his report of abuse after soldiers told him he would be held indefinitely.

Meanwhile, photographs taken in southern Afghanistan showing US soldiers from the 22nd Infantry Battalion posing in mock executions of blindfolded and bound detainees, were purposely destroyed after the Abu Ghraib scandal to avoid "another public outrage", the documents show.

In the dossier, the Iraqi detainee claims that three US interrogators in civilian clothing dislocated his arms, stuck an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, choked him with a rope until he lost consciousness, and beat him with a baseball bat.

"After they tied me up in the chair, then they dislocate my both arms. He asked to admit before I kill you then he beat again and again," the prisoner says in his statement. "He asked me: Are you going to report me? You have no evidence. Then he hit me very hard on my nose, and then he stepped on my nose until he broken and I started bleeding."

The detainee withdrew his charges on November 23 2003. He says he was told: "You will stay in the prison for a long time, and you will never get out until you are 50 years old."

A medical examination by a US military doctor confirmed the detainee's account, yet the investigation was closed last October. "It is further proof that the army is not seriously investigating credible allegations of abuse," said Jameel Jaffar, a lawyer for the ACLU.

The latest allegations from Afghanistan fit a pattern of claims of brutal treatment made by former Guantánamo Bay prisoners and Afghans held by the US, and reported by the Guardian last year. In December the US said eight prisoners had died in its custody in Afghanistan.

In a separate case, which the Guardian reveals today, two former prisoners of the US in Afghanistan have come forward with claims against their American captors.

In sworn affidavits to a British-American human rights lawyer, a Palestinian says he was sodomised by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Another former prisoner of US forces, a Jordanian, describes a form of torture which involved being hung in a cage from a rope for days.

Both men were freed from US detention last year after being held in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Neither has been charged by any government with any offence.

Fabricating Controversy

Drugs Raise Risk of Suicide
Analysis of Data Adds to Concerns On Antidepressants

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 18, 2005; Page A01

Adults taking popular antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide as patients given sugar pills, according to an analysis released yesterday of hundreds of clinical trials involving tens of thousands of patients.

The results mirror a recent finding of the Food and Drug Administration that the drugs increase suicidal thoughts and behavior among some children, and offer tangible support to concerns going back 15 years that the mood-lifting pills have a dark side.

The examination of 702 controlled clinical trials involving 87,650 patients is the most comprehensive look at the subject and is particularly telling because it counted suicide attempts and included patients treated for a variety of conditions, including sexual dysfunction, bulimia, panic disorder and depression.

Experts cautioned, however, that the risks should be balanced against the drugs' benefits. They have been shown to be effective against depression and a host of other disorders in adults, a positive track record largely missing in tests of the drugs on children.

Adults with severe depression should continue to be considered for drug treatment, but those with milder symptoms should probably not be medicated, said John Geddes, a professor of epidemiological psychiatry at Oxford University, who wrote a commentary accompanying the studies.

"For a lot of time, these drugs were seen as a panacea for low mood in general," he said in a telephone interview. "We do need to ensure they are only prescribed for patients with clearly diagnosed depressive disorders."

The new study is certain to add to the controversy over the class of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRI's. After the arrival of Prozac in 1988, these drugs have transformed psychiatry in the United States, even as persistent critics have warned that their benefits were hyped and their risks ignored. A spate of lawsuits in recent years have claimed that the drugs were responsible for violent and suicidal behavior.

New analyses of clinical trials in children last year prompted FDA to require a prominent black-box warning on labels that the medications could increase the risk of suicide. The warning refers only to children but is given to all patients.

American psychiatrists continue to strongly back SSRI drugs. Groups such as the American Psychiatric Association say that fears of drug-induced suicide are vastly exaggerated and that untreated depression carries a far greater risk of suicide.

"If these medications were really increasing the incidence of suicide attempts, you would think we would be seeing more completed suicides," said David Fassler, an APA trustee and psychiatrist in Burlington, Vt. "In fact, we are seeing exactly the opposite."

There is less here than meets the eye, and the real story is missing. The press loves to hype a "controversy" so it creates them.

The psychotherapy industry has known for more than a half century that the risk of suidice is one of the by-products of treating depression. Some times depressed people get "better" enough to have the energy to attempt the very things they were too depressed to do before treatment. This is the reason why these drugs should always be offered within the context of ongoing therapeutic support.

Too often these days, the drugs are being prescribed by general physicians who can't provide that kind of support, or they are being given within an extremely curtailed therapy cycle of single-digit visits. The insurance industry has a lot to do with this, as mental health coverage is still not treated the same way as physical health insurance coverage in many jurisdictions.

A friend of mine once showed me an exercise you can do with the front page of the NYT or WaPo (two of the worst offenders.) With the print edition and a pen in hand, scan the front and look for heds, subheds, photos and ledes that contain words related to conflict or controversy. Circle them. On most days, you will find that you have circled one half to three quarters of the stories on the page. Check to see how many of those are above the fold. You will have just learned a great deal about the way "journalism" is taught these days.

Dismal Scientist

Three-Card Maestro
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 18, 2005

Let me make a detour here. The way privatizers link the long-run financing of Social Security with the case for private accounts parallels the three-card-monte technique the Bush administration used to link terrorism to the Iraq war. Speeches about Iraq invariably included references to 9/11, leading much of the public to believe that invading Iraq somehow meant taking the war to the terrorists. When pressed, war supporters would admit they lacked evidence of any significant links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, let alone any Iraqi role in 9/11 - yet in their next sentence it would be 9/11 and Saddam, together again.

Similarly, calls for privatization invariably begin with ominous warnings about Social Security's financial future. When pressed, administration officials admit that private accounts would do nothing to improve that financial future. Yet in the next sentence, they once again link privatization to the problem posed by an aging population.

And so it was with Mr. Greenspan. He painted a dark (and seriously exaggerated) picture of the demographic problem, and said that what we need is a "fully funded" system. He then conceded that Bush-style privatization would do nothing to improve the system's funding.

But privatization "as a general model," he said, "has in it the seeds of developing full funding by its very nature." Nice metaphor, but what does it mean? Clearly, he was trying to create the impression of links where none exist.

Mr. Greenspan went on to concede that the opponents of privatization are right to worry about the huge borrowing that Bush-style privatization would entail.

Privatizers claim that financial markets won't be disturbed by all that borrowing because the Bush plan prescribes offsetting cuts in guaranteed benefits for the workers who open private accounts. Mr. Greenspan, who does know a thing or two about markets, put his finger on the reason why those prospective future benefit cuts wouldn't offset current borrowing in the eyes of investors: "Well, the problem is that you cannot commit future Congresses to stay with that."

Yet the chairman managed to avoid admitting the obvious - that borrowing on the scale the Bush plan requires would substantially increase the risk of a financial crisis. And the headlines didn't emphasize his concession that crucial critiques of the Bush plan are right. As he surely intended, the headlines emphasized his support for privatization.

One last point: a disturbing thing about Wednesday's hearing was the deference with which Democratic senators treated Mr. Greenspan. They acted as if he were still playing his proper role, acting as a nonpartisan source of economic advice. After the hearing, rather than challenging Mr. Greenspan's testimony, they tried to spin it in their favor.

But Mr. Greenspan is no longer entitled to such deference. By repeatedly shilling for whatever the Bush administration wants, he has betrayed the trust placed in Fed chairmen, and deserves to be treated as just another partisan hack.

I listened to Mr. Andrea Mitchell's testimony before Congress earlier this week. The fact that he couldn't make the case for the dangers of a falling dollar with rising debt before his oversight committee tells me even more than Krugman's article that the man is a hack. This is our cental banker? We are in deep, deep shft. This is delusional.

Be Careful What You Wish For

A 'pragmatic' Islamist for Iraq
Ibrahim Jaafari, a former exile and a physician, appears poised to become Iraq's new prime minister.
By Dan Murphy and Jill Carroll | staff writer and contributor

BAGHDAD – Ibrahim Jaafari, a stern and careful Iraqi doctor whose Islamist activism began in his youth and continued during a 20-year exile, is pulling ahead of his rivals in the race to lead Iraq's first elected government since World War II.

Though there's still room for change, aides to both Mr. Jaafari and members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the party of his main rival, say they're close to a deal that will deliver him the premiership.

"There's a general acceptance that Jaafari should be our sole candidate,'' says Adnan Ali al-Khadimi, Jaafari's deputy chief of staff. "That's what we're hearing, but there hasn't been a formal announcement yet."

Jaafari's rise will put a Shiite Islamist in charge of the government for the first time in Iraq's history. It also underscores waning US influence over Iraq's politics. The US would have preferred to see a secular leader emerge, not an Islamist who once lived in Iran. Jaafari's party is also unlikely to support expanded ties with Israel, a goal articulated by the US at the start of the war.

And while Jaafari enjoys some support among Iraqis, his new parliament may well be consumed by politicking over constitutional issues rather than creating jobs that Iraqis desperately want and fixing the power supply.

The name of Jaafari's party loosely translates as "Islamic Call" or "Islamic Propagation." While his priorities are protecting the rights of all citizens and ending the war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Islam is at the center of his party's vision for the country.

As a politician, Jaafari presents a blend of a secular style, human rights rhetoric, and commitment to Islamic values that sometimes seem contradictory to Western observers.

But his friends and allies say no contradiction exists - that he's a pragmatic politician who sees Islam as the best guarantee against more turmoil, and who believes that a modern interpretation of Islam's political role can be found that's acceptable to most who live here.

"Iraq's minorities must be protected, and they must be given their rights,'' Jaafari said in a recent interview with the Monitor. "But we must also respect the majority, so Islam should be the official religion of the state ... and we shouldn't have any laws that contradict Islam."

"He looks at Islam as a bridge to all humanity, not just for on particular type of people,'' says Mr. Khadimi. "He doesn't want an Islamic republic like Iran's, or a system like Saudi Arabia's. He wants to see something modernized and that recognizes that Iraqis are closely tied to their religion and traditions. He's going with what the Iraqi people want."

"I wouldn't say he's secular, or religious either,'' says Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary University in London. While Dawa - Iraq's oldest Shiite party - traditionally wanted sharia (Islamic law) for Iraq, Mr. Dodge says the exiles have recognized that something on an Iranian model would be distasteful to average Iraqis, and have altered their message. "Jaafari has been particularly honest about this. He is a pragmatist and the reason he has [some] support ... now is because he recognizes he can't fulfill the dreams of exiles."

But Iraq's top job will not come without complications. The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the religious Shiite slate that won 140 seats in Iraq's 275-member national assembly, has been locked for a week in marathon negotiations over how to divvy up power and patronage.

The UIA's main players are Dawa and SCIRI, who are sparring over both the premiership and ministerial posts.

Bush's worst nightmare. This is not the secular democracy Bush thought he could bring. C+ Augustus lost his first and last bid for empire.

The Dog's Day is Over

I typically don't link to blog posts, I figure that if you like my work you'll visit my blogroll. But once in a while I find one that's so compelling that I want to make sure that you see it before it scrolls off the front page of the blog it's on. I found one such this evening at BOP. Ian Welsh is rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers. I'm just going to give you a bit of the beginning and the end. It's long, so just go over and read it.

The Players
by Ian Welsh

The old male stands massive in the middle of the circling wolves. Blood stains his teeth, and under one massive paw a victim writhes. The old alpha is huge still, but his tendons stand out in clear relief, his limbs tremble and his eyes are mad with pain and rage. Old, weakened, he is still a dangerous foe, but his day as leader of the pack will soon be done.

It is the end of Empire – but the Game of Empire is eternal.

Sloppy Seconds

House Joins Senate in Backing Limits on Class-Action Lawsuits
By DAVID STOUT

Published: February 17, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 - In a legislative victory for President Bush, the House of Representatives easily passed a bill this afternoon that would sharply limit the ability of people to file sweeping, multistate lawsuits against companies.

The vote to limit class-action lawsuits was 279 to 149. Since the Senate approved the measure last week by 72 to 26, it now goes to President Bush, who is eager to sign it and many do so as early as Friday.

The legislation has long been advocated by businesses, especially manufacturers and insurance companies. Business interests have complained that too many frivolous lawsuits by profit-hungry lawyers have sprung up under the label of class actions, roughly defined as those suits brought by large groups of people who are affected by the same questions of law and fact.

The bill passed today would bar state courts from considering the kind of suits most bothersome to corporate America. It would preclude those courts from considering claims of more than $5 million and those in which many members of the suing "class" live in states different from the defendant's.

This is really an obscenity, a blow job for corporate interests which privileges their rights over the rights of individuals (a trend that started with Reagan.) Any plaintiff should be able to seek relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.

Building Palaces

Critical Republicans Look to Cut Bush's $82 Billion War Request

By Mike Allen and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 17, 2005; Page A04

House Republican leaders said yesterday that they may cut some of the nonmilitary parts of President Bush's $82 billion budget request for Iraq and anti-terrorism efforts because they are not emergencies.

The sharp comments they made in challenging the budget request marked an abrupt departure from the deference the Republicans have shown Bush on earlier war funding. Party members said they are determined to reassert their authority over the budget at a time when the White House is accusing lawmakers of being big spenders.

The main target of the rebellious Republicans is a request for $658 million to build what would be the largest embassy in the world: a fortress in Baghdad's Green Zone that would replace the former palace complex that U.S. officials are using.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, during a flurry of appearances on Capitol Hill, faced repeated questions from Republicans about whether the administration is trying to sneak through expenses as emergencies so they would undergo less scrutiny. GOP lawmakers also complained that the White House funding requests were too vague to analyze.

This is predictable. Bush over-reach is going to cost them in their districts and they have to take defensive positions.

Miserable Failure

War Helps Recruit Terrorists, Hill Told
Intelligence Officials Talk Of Growing Insurgency

By Dana Priest and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 17, 2005; Page A01

The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

On a day when the top half-dozen U.S. national security and intelligence officials went to Capitol Hill to talk about the continued determination of terrorists to strike the United States, their statements underscored the unintended consequences of the war in Iraq.

"The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss said in his first public testimony since taking over the CIA. Goss said Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist who has joined al Qaeda since the U.S. invasion, "hopes to establish a safe haven in Iraq" from which he could operate against Western nations and moderate Muslim governments.

"Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment," Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate panel. "Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world."

Jacoby said the Iraq insurgency has grown "in size and complexity over the past year" and is now mounting an average of 60 attacks per day, up from 25 last year. Attacks on Iraq's election day last month reached 300, he said, double the previous one-day high of 150, even though transportation was virtually locked down.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that he has trouble believing any of the estimates of the number of insurgents because it is so difficult to track them.

Rumsfeld said that the CIA and DIA had differing assessments at different times but that U.S. intelligence estimates of the insurgency are "considerably lower" than a recent Iraqi intelligence report of 40,000 hard-core insurgents and 200,000 part-time fighters. Rumsfeld told Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the committee's ranking Democrat, that he had copies of the CIA and DIA estimates but declined to disclose them in a public session because they are classified.

So let me see if I understand this correctly: Goss is saying that Bush's policy and Rummy's execution are complete failures. So where are the impeachment hearings?

Director of National Intelligence

The Center for American Progress's blog, Think Progress brings us the following news:

At 10AM this morning, President Bush will name John Negroponte as the new Director of Intelligence for the United States.

Negroponte maintained he knew nothing about them, leading to his nickname, “the ostrich ambassador.” The abuses, however, were widely chronicled in local papers. That means he either willfully ignored the mass murders and torturing of citizens or he was so out of touch that he didn’t see the atrocities going on beneath his very nose. Neither of these scenarios is what the United States needs in a National Director of Intelligence.

With a sponsor of torture running the DOJ, and this loon as DNI, this government has descended to new levels of squalor.

Prophecy

I met Fr. Dear when I first started working for the Washington Theological Consortium. He's the real deal, a prophet among us:

Pharisee Nation
by John Dear

I was not at all surprised that George W. Bush was reelected president. As I travel the country speaking out against war, injustice and nuclear weapons, I see many people consciously siding with the culture of war, choosing the path of violence, supporting corporate greed, rampant militarism, and global domination. I see many others swept up in the raging current of patriotism. Since most of these people, beginning with the president, claim to be Christian, I am ashamed and appalled that they support war and systemic injustice, that they do it in the name of God, and that they feign fidelity to the nonviolent Jesus who gave his life resisting institutionalized injustice.

In the old days, the early Christians had big words for such behavior, such lies. They were called “blasphemous, idolatrous, heretical, hypocritical and sinful.” Such words and actions were denounced as the betrayal, denial and execution of Jesus all over again in the world’s poor. But the empire needs the church to bless and support its wars, or at least to remain passive and silent. As we Christians go along with the Bush administration and the American empire, we betray Jesus, renounce his teachings, and create a “Church of Christ without Christ,“ as Flannery O’Connor foresaw.

This is one of my Lenten meditations.

The Begging Week

I start every Bump day with the radio, the place where I cut my teeth on the news and learned the business of politics as a shift announcer during NPR's tentative broadcasts of the Watergate hearings.

Even as my career moved on, I supported my public radio stations at their funder weeks each year. I don't anymore. As NPR has slid to the right, my dollars have gone elsewhere. When Bob Edwards was fired last year, that was the last straw.

I'm bringing this up now because my local NPR outlet is going through their semi-annual funder this week and I've been listening to it with increasing annoyance all week. They have become the tool of Archer-Daniels-Midland and I'm done with them.

If you are, like me, a former donor/member of an NPR station, how about donating those bucks to your favorite blogger this year? I've dumped those bucks into the needs of a couple of bloggers who would go silent without reader help in the last weeks. These are not always people that I always agree with, but I'm willing to put some cash behind the first amendment.

If you are listening to your local NPR drive or watching it (sigh) on your local PBS station, how about turning it into a funder for your sources in the blogosphere?

My donor bucks, particularly precious this year, went toward bringing a couple of bloggers back from the dead, writers who were losing their computers or Internet connections.

Let me propose this during Koufax Award week: I'm not a finalist for any of the awards this year, but let's all of us make this the fundraising week for the blogs each year. If you are used to shelling out for your local public radio and TV stations, how about diverting those donations to the blogs who are doing a better job of giving you the news than are the compromised networks? We can, on our own, turn Valentine's week into our own act of love.

Go seek out that PayPal or Amazon link at your favorite blogger's house and give. The blogger is doing it for nothing and putting time and expense out there in the public interest. For you. Give back. Go. Share the love.

More of the Myth

Greenspan Backs Idea of Accounts for Retirement
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: February 17, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, gave his blessing on Wednesday to the creation of individual investment accounts in Social Security but expressed unease that the change could lead to trillions of dollars in additional government borrowing in the next few decades.

Mr. Greenspan's cautiously hedged support for the core of President Bush's plan to overhaul the retirement system came as Mr. Bush, in newspaper interviews published Wednesday, left the door open to raising taxes on upper-income people to help deal with Social Security's projected financial problems.

In what appeared to be an effort to show Democrats that he is serious about bipartisan compromise, Mr. Bush, responding to questions from a group of regional newspaper reporters, did not rule out raising or eliminating the cap on earnings that are subject to the payroll tax that pays for Social Security benefits.

The tax is currently levied on wages up to $90,000. Until now, Mr. Bush has said he is against raising "payroll taxes" but has been vague about whether he was talking about the earnings cap as well as the payroll tax rate of 12.4 percent, which is split equally between workers and their employers.

"The one thing I'm not open-minded about is raising the payroll tax rate," Mr. Bush said in the interviews, which took place on Tuesday at the White House. "And all the other issues are on the table, and that's important for people to know."

Asked specifically if he was open to raising the earnings cap, he replied, "I've been asked this question a lot, and the answer is, I'm interested in good ideas."

Taken together, the developments reflected the continued wariness on all sides about the costs, ideological ramifications and political risks of trying to reshape Social Security and put it on a sounder financial footing as the American population ages.

Did you want to know if Mr. Andrea Mitchell was an ideologue? I believe you have your answer. Back in the day when I could eat out occasionally, I'd run into them in some of the better restaurants in Washington. These high-livers won't be touched by the stuff they propose.

A Menu

Yes, I'm tiring of the bad news, so there are recipes ahead.

I'm the designated cook for this year's Easter Dinner. For me, this is both a sacred and historical dinner that my theological and geneological ancestors trod millenia ago, and my thoughts on the menu go back that far. Here is the proposed menu, noting that my Sister In Law can't eat onions or garlic.

1-3# leg of lamb, boned and butterflied
1# baby spinach
12 oz. feta cheese
3 0z. fresh rosemary

1/4 # butter
1 # Yukon Gold Potatoes

I Bunch fresh asparagus
1 egg
1cup olive oil
1 handful fresh tarragon

To roast the butterflied leg:

In the opened leg,spread the cheese, rosemary and spinach and roll up like a pastry. This will need to be tied for roasting with butcher twine. Wrap it soundly, thick end to thin. And recruit a girl scout with knot knowledge to tie it down fast.

Place in a roasting pan if the oven is pre-heated to 400 degrees.

If you care about such things, a meat thermometor placed in the thick part will tell you to retrieve it from the oven and let it sit when the thermometor reaches 150 degrees. About an hour and a half.

Slice the potatoes into eighths and scatter them arround the roast before roasting with the bits of butter. The oils from the roast will help them cook nicely.

When the roast is nearly done, break the asparagus. There is a point in each spear where you can separate the delicious tips from the woody stem. After you've washed them, find it with your fingers, the woody part won't bend, and get rid of it. They will need to be steamed for about two minutes in the microwave, so make the sauce first.

Into the food processor or blender, place one egg yolk, the juice of one lemon and one tablespoon of vinegar. Process on high, while slowly adding a cup of olive oil. In dribs and drabs, this really has to be slow while you use a spatula to drive the material on the walls of the processor back down into the main mix. Add the fresh terragon and process for 20 seconds. The resulting sauce will go nicely over your steamed asparagus and be a fine side with your lamb.

Your guests will wonder how you did it. Make up your own story.

House of Bush, House of Saud

Saudi Arabia's Meager Election

Published: February 17, 2005

By excluding women from the election - as they are from virtually all aspects of Saudi society - the kingdom's rulers turned the voting into another exercise in repression. By limiting the election to seats on municipal councils, they prevented even male voters from flexing true political muscle. The councils are largely advisory boards for mundane tasks, not power centers - and, in any event, only half of the seats were up for grabs. The other half, including the equivalent of the office of mayor, are still filled by appointees of the Saudi rulers. Functioning neither as forums of power nor as places for debate, the councils are far removed from issues like corruption, unemployment, women's rights and constitutional governance, which preoccupy Saudi reformers - some of whom are currently in jail.

Two more elections are scheduled, in March and in April. At that point, all of the kingdom's eligible men will have had a chance to cast ballots. (Only about one-fourth of those eligible registered for the first of the three elections.) If, against the odds, the elections were to move the kingdom toward some power sharing, that would be good. Success should be measured by the extent to which the Saudi people gain a true voice in their most important affairs.

But if the elections result in further consolidation of the royal family's power, the United States must be critical. That may be hard, given American dependence on Saudi oil and the high price Americans are paying - in blood, money and reputation - to promote elections in the Middle East. But the point of voting - and democracy - in Saudi Arabia and its neighbors is to remedy the dissatisfactions feeding Islamic extremism. If elections only solidify authoritarian rule, as they did in the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and still do in Syria and Egypt, they are worse than counterproductive.

This was a put-up job, a sham to play patty-cake with the Bush-Saud relationship. That they handled it so badly tells you how little they think of us, the consumer of such news. With half of our nation slumbering still, they'll get away with it.

What's On

Chuck Dupree over at Bad Attitudes has a terrific essay on how television coverage of the war affects the regular view and a little history lesson:

All Propaganda, Almost All the Time

I don’t think red-staters are bad people, but they do seem to be avoiding certain facts about the situation the country faces. This is why I’ve begun referring to Homer states and Lisa states instead of red and blue states: it makes it easier to keep track of who’s paying attention.

Venom

Paul Craig Roberts is in a cold fury:

Conservative Sycophants Lose Credibility
by Paul Craig Roberts

The conservative media will never recover from its role as Chief Sycophant for the Bush administration. Journalists who demanded that Clinton be held accountable for a minor sex scandal (Monica Lewinsky) and a minor financial scandal (Whitewater) now serve as apologists and propagandists for the Bush administration's major war scandals.

A former Delta Force soldier, Goff joined up with Military Families Speak Out. Roy penned a defense of the right of Iraqis to resist military occupation, and Wolf agreed that Iraqis have a right to resist Bush's occupation of Iraq. Frank views beatings, arrests, interrogations, torture, and death as appropriate responses to these peaceful expressions of dissent.

How did it happen that this kind of hate speech came to be acceptable? We are in more than just political trouble when these kinds of things start happening; the culture of public speech, and the popular culture, have become very, very sick.

The tradition of tolerance in this country never did run very deep. We have always been a nation of extremes, but I don't recall this level of poison since 1968.

Changing World

The Kyota Global Warming Treaty goes into effect today. As you probably know, the Bush administration has refused to be a signatory to this agreement, denying that the problem even exists. Via The Agonist, here is a link to a BBC photo essay which provides graphic documentation of the changes. It's stunning.

Intel Hearing Open Thread

RESPONSE TO TERRORISM
Intel Chiefs on World Threat
The Senate Select Intelligence Cmte. holds a rare open hearing on the world threat to the United States. Witnesses include FBI Director Robert Mueller, Central Intelligence Director Porter Goss, DIA Director Lowell Jacoby, Acting DHS Sec. James Loy, and others. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) chairs the hearing.

This one has the potential for some fireworks, as I expect the threat assessment to be highly politicized. C-Span provides a live streaming video link if you want to watch on-line. Since I'm a C-Span junkie, I would be watching but for the fact I have monthly spiritual directors peer group this morning and a boatload of errands in the afternoon. Fortunately for me, C-Span archives these things so I can watch later.

Use this as an open thread while I'm away this morning.

A River in Egypt

War price tag surpasses $300 billion
Bush asks for $82 billion
By Alan Fram, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Bush asked Congress on Monday to provide $81.9 billion more for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for other U.S. efforts overseas, pushing the total price tag for the conflicts and anti-terror fight past $300 billion.

Republicans hope to push the package through Congress by early spring, reflecting both parties' desire to finance U.S. troops in the field and give Iraqis more responsibility following their national elections. Bush asked lawmakers to pay for the new spending by borrowing the
money — which will make huge federal deficits even larger.

"The majority of this request will ensure that our troops continue to get what they need to protect themselves and complete their mission," Bush said in a statement accompanying his request.

He also said the money would help continue the pursuit of terrorists and help the United States "seize the opportunity to build peace and democracy in the Middle East."

The bulk of the package — $74.9 billion — was for the Defense Department,
ranging from the direct costs of fighting and replacing damaged equipment to training Iraqi and Afghan forces.

There was also aid for U.S. allies like Pakistan and Ukraine, money to build a new embassy in Baghdad, and assistance for tsunami-damaged Indian Ocean countries and help for victims of war in Sudan.

Are the taxpayers aware of this? Probably not.

Iraq: the 25-second war
From Broadcasting and Cable, February 14, 2005
By John Eggerton

Although many considered the November presidential election a referendum on Iraq, that would have been hard to tell by the time devoted to the war in local TV newscasts.

Parts of the study suggesting underreporting of local races—8% of the over-4,000 newscasts studied covered local elections, the study found—are also expected to be used by Senator John McCain. Campaign reformer McCain, who has been pushing stations to do more election coverage, is planning to talk about the study at a press conference in Washington Tuesday.

Tough Book

Toshiba gets tough with notebooks
By Tony Smith
Published Tuesday 15th February 2005 16:45 GMT

Toshiba today launched a new line of business-oriented notebooks, claiming the systems offer better connectivity, data security and reliability than rival products.

Toshiba is shipping a range of Tecra notebooks - the A3, A4, S2 and M3 - with EasyGuard technology built in, along with a new Portégé, the M300, that incorporates the system. All five systems are offered in a variety of configurations. The M300s are priced from £999, the Tecra M3s from £1649 and the S2s from £699, and the A4s from £699. Tecra S2 pricing was not available at press-time.

Finally, a computer for klutzes. Given the way I chew through keyboards, this is clearly the computer for me when it gets to be time for a notebook. I am one of those people who are perpetually poorly oriented as to space: I'm always covered with bruises from collisions with doorframes and furniture that I don't remember having. I drop and bump things because the distance between them and my hands is always something I misgauge. While I never actually dropped any of my previous laptops, it was a near thing more than once.

Moral Questions

All I can do is post this story and step back, shaking my head in wonder and confusion. My country is a moral monster.

White House Turns Tables on Former American POWs
# Gulf War pilots tortured by Iraqis fight the Bush administration in trying to collect compensation

By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.

Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.

"It seems so strange to have our own country fighting us on this," said retired Air Force Col. David W. Eberly, the senior officer among the former POWs.

The case, now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, tests whether "state sponsors of terrorism" can be sued in the U.S. courts for torture, murder or hostage-taking. The court is expected to decide in the next two months whether to hear the appeal.

Congress opened the door to such claims in 1996, when it lifted the shield of sovereign immunity — which basically prohibits lawsuits against foreign governments — for any nation that supports terrorism. At that time, Iraq was one of seven nations identified by the State Department as sponsoring terrorist activity. The 17 Gulf War POWs looked to have a very strong case when they first filed suit in 2002. They had been undeniably tortured by a tyrannical regime, one that had $1.7 billion of its assets frozen by the U.S. government.

The picture changed, however, when the United States invaded Iraq and toppled Hussein from power nearly two years ago. On July 21, 2003, two weeks after the Gulf War POWs won their court case in U.S. District Court, the Bush administration intervened to argue that their claims should be dismissed.

"No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of this very brutal regime and at the hands of Saddam Hussein," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters when asked about the case in November 2003.

Government lawyers have insisted, literally, on "no amount of money" going to the Gulf War POWs. "These resources are required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq," McClellan said.

The case also tests a key provision of the Geneva Convention, the international law that governs the treatment of prisoners of war. The United States and other signers pledged never to "absolve" a state of "any liability" for the torture of POWs.

Former military lawyers and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have been among those who have urged the Supreme Court to take up the case and to strengthen the law against torturers and tyrannical regimes.

"Our government is on the wrong side of this issue," said Jeffrey F. Addicott, a former Army lawyer and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. "A lot of Americans would scratch their heads and ask why is our government taking the side of Iraq against our POWs."

Prior Punishment

Self-Inflicted Wounds

Jane Mayer wrote recently in The New Yorker about Maher Arar, a Syrian-born citizen of Canada arrested by American agents on vague suspicions of terrorist ties. He says he was was shipped to Syria, a country routinely denounced by Washington for its brutality, and tortured for a year. Ms. Mayer wrote that Mr. Arar "eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say," but the Syrians said they had found no terrorist link.

In Sunday's Times, Raymond Bonner wrote about Mamdouh Habib, accused of helping to train some of the 9/11 hijackers. Even if he is guilty, he'll never be charged. Mr. Habib says he was beaten by American jailors at Guantánamo Bay, where a female interrogator threw what seemed to be menstrual blood at him. He was then shipped to Egypt, where, he said, he was beaten and burned.

These accounts cannot be dismissed as tales concocted by the nation's enemies; they fit right into patterns documented by witnesses, the International Red Cross and the American government's own investigations. The Bush administration still clings to the policy of "extraordinary rendition," the bureaucratic euphemism for sending prisoners to countries where the public and the press don't kick up a fuss about torture. The new attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, defended it in his recent confirmation hearings in the Senate.

What's been going on here is not what supporters of the administration's policies depict: an awful but necessary and skilled inquiry reserved for the worst terrorists, who hold secrets that could cost innocent lives. That's the stuff of 21st-century fiction, where Kiefer Sutherland saves mankind with a well-placed pistol butt. This is about a system that was hastily conceived, ineptly formulated, incompetently administered and now out of control. It lowers the humanity of the people who practice it, and the citizens who condone it.

An Israeli judge, Aharon Barak, summed it up six years ago when he ruled that abuses of Palestinian prisoners were illegal. "This is the destiny of a democracy," he said, "as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it."

And it continues, although I can't say that the US media are covering it very well. The ICRC continues to lodge complaints and it doesn't appear that anything is being done.

We live in this weird age where real reportage has to be done by FOIA request.

Failed Thinking

Top Iraq Rebels Elude Intensified U.S. Raids
Military Shifts to More Selective Targeting

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Feb. 14 -- Intensified military raids in Iraq over the past few months have significantly battered the ranks of mid-level insurgents but have scored few gains against the 30 or so most wanted rebels, according to senior U.S. military officers here.

As much as a third of this group is thought to move in and out of Iraq with some frequency, the officers said. Many have eluded U.S. and Iraqi forces by a combination of moving constantly, avoiding use of telephones and receiving protection from family or tribal connections.

"Are we having success rolling up some of the top-tier leaders? Not at this time," said Brig. Gen. John DeFreitas, the highest-ranking Army intelligence officer in Iraq. "But we're successfully working the second- and third-tier leaders to put pressure on the top tier."

After a lull in the days after the Jan. 30 elections, insurgents have resumed bombings, suicide attacks and assassinations, an increasing share of them directed against Iraqi civilians and security forces. There are now an average of about 60 attacks each day, close to the rate before the elections, according to U.S. military tallies, and most remain concentrated in Sunni Muslim-populated provinces of central and northwestern Iraq.

This is all whoosh. You don't defeat a well-established fourth generation war with top-down thinking and tactics. The truth is, successful fourth generation campaigns are non-heirarchical and improvisatory, able to move quickly and respond to circumstances. The Army continues to use set-piece thinking, which is why this war was lost when it began.

My only question now is if we withdraw in good order or perform the Iraqi equivalent of lifting off a 'copter from the roof of the Saigon embassy.

Catastrophic Success

No Fast Exit From Iraq

By Fareed Zakaria
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A17

The biggest obstacle to a productive U.S. relationship with Iraq is the widespread anti-Americanism in the country. That's why some of us were so critical of the many mistakes of the occupation; they threatened to destroy the possibilities of a long-term U.S. involvement there. But I do not believe that this hostility is endemic. Polls suggest that most Iraqis have been frustrated, disappointed and enraged because the occupation failed to deliver to them basic security and a better life. If and when conditions improve, they will see the United States in a different light.

Remember those often-cited studies saying that having a large force to secure the peace is crucial in nation-building? Well, all of them point to another, perhaps even more important, requirement for success: Don't leave. During the 1990s the places the United States and its allies left -- Haiti, Somalia -- were failures. The places where they stayed -- Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor -- have been relative successes. Look at Afghanistan. It's faring decently today, but if foreigners left, it would almost certainly regress, probably into some kind of failing narco-state.

The outstanding cases of U.S. success at nation-building and democracy-making are, of course, Germany, Japan and South Korea. It is not coincidental that American forces remain in those countries to this day. That model may not be appropriate in Iraq, but we should approach this endeavor with a similar sense of commitment. That will help produce success, and that's the only sensible strategy, whether or not it produces an exit.

Fareed is delusional, there is no way Afghanistan can be considered a success. Our appointed puppet, Hamid Karzai is the mayor of Kabul, and the tribal warlords govern the out provinces as narco states. The opium harvest last year was the largest on record. We've got fewer than 15, 000 troops total in Afghanistan, with a population of 28 million. We can't find bin Laden and there is no way we provide security in a country the size of Texas with a bare division.

In Bed with the Airlines

Robert Scheer:
What We Don't Know About 9/11 Hurts Us

For the last three years, administration apologists have tried to make the FAA the scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks. But it is the president who ultimately is responsible for national security, not a defanged agency that is beholden to the industry it allegedly monitors.

The terrible fact is that the administration took none of the steps that would have put the protection of human life ahead of a diverse set of economic and political interests, which included not offending our friends the Saudis and not hurting the share prices of airline corporations.

The warnings provided by intelligence agencies to the FAA were far clearer and more specific than suggested by Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission when she reluctantly conceded the existence of a presidential briefing that warned of impending Al Qaeda attacks. Rice had dismissed those warnings as "historical," but according to the newly released section of the 9/11 report, an astonishing 52 of the 105 daily intelligence briefings received by the FAA — and available to Rice — before the Sept. 11 attacks made specific reference to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Given this shocking record of indifference on the part of the administration, it is politically understandable that it tried to prevent the formation of the 9/11 commission in the first place, and then for five months prevented the declassification of key sections of the final report. Commission members, including its Republican chairman, Thomas Kean, stated in the past that there was no national security concern that justified keeping those sections of the report from the public.

And let's be clear: The failure to fully disclose what is known about the 9/11 tragedy is not some minor bureaucratic transgression. Not since the Soviets first detonated an atomic bomb more than half a century ago has a single event so affected decision-making in this country, yet the main questions as to how and why it happened remain mostly unanswered.

Even worse, what we do know calls into question our government's explanation that a diabolical international terrorist conspiracy exploited our liberal, naive society. What has emerged, instead, is a portrait of an often bumbling terrorist gang allowed to wreak havoc because the top tiers of the administration were so indifferent to the alarms, which former CIA Director George Tenet described so graphically: "The system was blinking red."

Had the business-friendly administration put safety first and ordered a full complement of air marshals into the air, over the obscene objections of airlines loath to give up paid seats, nearly 3,000 people might not have died that day. And had the president of the United States taken some time from his epic ranch vacation that August to order a nationwide airport alert, two bloody wars abroad, as well as an all-out assault on civil liberties in this country, probably would not have happened.

Instead, an administration that resisted spending the tens of millions required to fortify airline security before 9/11 is nearing the $300-billion mark on Afghanistan and Iraq. And declassified documents have unmistakably said the latter had nothing to do with 9/11. Meanwhile, those countries that at least indirectly did, most notably "allies" Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have been let off the hook.

Indeed, the 9/11 commission was not allowed to get near that story: It is an unnoticed but startling truth that the basic narrative on the tragedy derives from the interrogations of key detainees whom the 9/11 commissioners were not allowed to interview. Nor were they permitted to even take testimony from the U.S. intelligence personnel who interrogated those prisoners.

When the truth and governmental transparency are arbitrarily trumped by the invocation of national security, the public is simply incapable of making informed decisions on the most crucial decisions we face — starting with whom we elect as our commander in chief.

Bush was criminally negligent. I wanna see an impeachment vote in the Senate.

Performance Review

Condi, don't forget Nepal and Togo

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | February 15, 2005

THE ITINERARY of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quite lovely. England. France. Germany. Italy. Belgium. Luxembourg. Poland. Turkey. Israel. West Bank.

Most human beings want to ease into their first few days on the job, and she obviously is no exception. In her inaugural foray abroad, she gave a lot of speeches about freedom and democracy in places that are free, democratic, and in the upper half of the world's wealthiest nations. No heavy lifting.

Even her visit to Israel and Ramallah came at a moment of hope between the Israeli government and Palestinians. She got in and out of Paris without any nasty confrontations to remind her how the French opposed the invasion of Iraq. You just got the feeling that the stars were aligned for her to save her energy for places that really need her to fight for democracy.

Thus, we await word on what the good secretary is going to do about Nepal and Togo.

Rice is representing a president who recently bragged, ''I firmly planted the flag of liberty'' in Iraq and Afghanistan. So it should be a matter of only a few seconds before Rice threatens to haul Nepal and Togo before the United Nations, right? Then again, there is no need to bother with formalities.

Since the presence of weapons of mass destruction are no longer an American prerequisite to invade countries to plant our flag, let's gear up the National Guard right now.

Even as Rice prepared to jet overseas, King Gyanendra of Nepal sacked the government, shut down all communications, closed the international airport, called a state of emergency, suspended freedom of speech, assembly, and privacy, banned criticism of him for six months, sealed the borders, arrested political leaders and activists, and what else? Let's see. Oh, yes, he claimed it was all in the name of democracy!

In Togo last weekend, the military propped up Faure Gnassingbe as president after his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, died of a heart attack. Eyadema was the world's second-longest-standing leader after Fidel Castro of Cuba. Eyadema was a leader of a 1963 coup and took sole power of the nation in 1967. His repressive reign was marked by things such as murderous and corrupt reelection campaigns, police killings of pro-democracy activists, and his nation being cited as a ''case study'' in child trafficking by Human Rights Watch.

The son appears to be no different. Gnassingbe's presidency was rubber-stamped by a cowering parliament. He sealed the borders and closed the airports. Three days later, Gnassingbe made a speech where he offered amnesty to opponents and said he would hold ''free and transparent general elections as soon as possible.'' No one seems impressed. The 53-nation African Union condemned the takeover and is talking about sanctions. Togo was suspended by France's league of French-speaking nations.

All the United States has had to say about this is, ''The United States has long encouraged Togo to move toward a full and participatory democracy.'' That was from State Department spokesman Edgar Vazquez. On Nepal, deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said, ''These are actions which deeply trouble us. It is a serious step back from democracy.'' Ereli did not volunteer the small matter of how the United States has given $22 million in military aid to Nepal on the notion the government would use the money to fight Maoists.

So far, neither Togo nor Nepal have made their way into Rice's speeches, even though she said last week about Iran that ''its behavior toward its own population is something to be loathed.'' The United States has to do more than issue deadpan outrage and travel warnings. It has to start talking sanctions and other forms of diplomatic pressure.

We know that the Bushies are more than just yack because they've managed to spend 1,500 American and untold Iraqi lives in the interests of freedom and democracy. Or something. The fact that they are incompetent at it, however, ought to have some sort of re-call mechanism. You fire incompetent employees, right?

Clickable

Here are my "go to" places for news about the federal budget, all things economical and jobs:

Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

Economic Policy Institute

Job Watch (an initiative of EPI)

Center for American Progress'sEconomic Policy Shop

Max Sawicky

Brad deLong

Morgan Stanley's Global Economic Forum

Y'all are smart people. You can read and make up your own minds.

If you are using Firefox or Mozilla for browsing, you can easily add these to your bookmarks. After you have done so, click on "manage bookmarks" and "sort by name" and it will alphabetize them for you. Isn't that easy?

Jobless Recovery?

Economy's Growing, but Where Are the New Jobs?
# Firms are expanding without hiring. Some analysts wonder if this change is permanent.

By Nicholas Riccardi, Times Staff Writer

Carlton Guthrie sees bright times ahead. After weathering the 2001 recession, his manufacturing company has made enough money to pay off some debt and position itself to expand.

But he's not planning to add jobs.

"I don't see us hiring anytime soon," said Guthrie, co-chairman of Detroit Chassis, which makes chassis for motor homes. "I see a tremendous amount of room for us becoming more efficient."

Guthrie's ability to expand his business without enlarging the payroll — a feat achieved by many executives across the nation — helps explain why job creation continues to be sluggish even while the economy appears to be booming.

The U.S. economy grew at a brisk 4.4% clip last year, but it was not until last month that the number of jobs recovered to the levels of early 2001. The Labor Department pegs the unemployment rate at 5.2%, the lowest in four years, but the share of people who have stopped hunting for work is the largest it has been since 1988. Today's job growth is more than twice as slow as it was after the 1990-91 recession, and slower than during any recovery since World War II, analysts say.

The discrepancy is fueling a growing debate about whether such low employment growth is a harbinger of a world in which businesses can rake in increasing profits without much of it trickling down to workers.

"Until now, this recovery has been all about businesses," said economist Mark Zandi of Economy.com, an economic research firm in West Chester, Pa. "Businesses are in about as good a financial shape as I've seen them."

Instead of aggressively adding workers, corporations have been buying labor-saving equipment, banking cash, distributing record dividends, buying back stock or undertaking ambitious mergers that often lead to job losses.

There is a wide range of reasons for these choices. Manufacturers such as Guthrie are pinched by price competition and required to continually cut costs. Other executives are wary about expanding payrolls in a time of ballooning healthcare premiums. Companies are cautious about bloating their staffs, remembering the excesses of the late 1990s. And shipping jobs out of the country still seems cheaper than paying American salaries.

The high level of corporate profits and cash leads many analysts to forecast that more jobs will be created down the road. History shows, they argue, that excess cash is eventually spent, creating opportunities for workers. The last time the country fretted about a so-called jobless recovery was during the early 1990s — just before an avalanche of employment stemming from the tech boom.

Another factor that could soon lead to more job growth: slowing gains in productivity. Companies have squeezed just about all they can out of existing workers through labor-saving technology and efficient management practices, analysts say.

Skeptics point to the fact that wages remain relatively flat, growing slower last year than the rate of inflation — translating into a cut in take-home pay for many workers. That stagnation indicates to skeptics that the traditional business cycle — in which growth leads to a tight labor market that bids up wages — may be a thing of the past.

"The big question is: Has there been some structural change, in that what we're seeing in the rearview mirror doesn't apply to what's in front of us?" asked Jared Bernstein of the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

Drew Brosseau, managing director of investment company S.G. Cowen, thinks he has an answer: Money is increasingly being invested in high-technology sectors that do not require as many people as do old-fashioned factory jobs.

"A lot of the information industries that are drivers of growth these days are not as person-intensive as manufacturing," Brosseau said.

You might have noticed that I've been following this story a little obsessively for the last year. Given how much difficulty I'm having finding a job, you might further notice that perhaps the problem isn't with me.

Looking for Home

The Fighting Moderates
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 15, 2005

"The Republicans know the America they want, and they are not afraid to use any means to get there," Howard Dean said in accepting the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. "But there is something that this administration and the Republican Party are very afraid of. It is that we may actually begin fighting for what we believe."

Those words tell us what the selection of Mr. Dean means. It doesn't represent a turn to the left: Mr. Dean is squarely in the center of his party on issues like health care and national defense. Instead, Mr. Dean's political rejuvenation reflects the new ascendancy within the party of fighting moderates, the Democrats who believe that they must defend their principles aggressively against the right-wing radicals who have taken over Congress and the White House.

It was always absurd to call Mr. Dean a left-winger. Just ask the real left-wingers. During his presidential campaign, an article in the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch denounced him as a "Clintonesque Republicrat," someone who, as governor, tried "to balance the budget, even though Vermont is a state in which a balanced budget is not required."

Even on Iraq, many moderates, including moderate Republicans, quietly shared Mr. Dean's misgivings - which have been fully vindicated - about the march to war.

But Mr. Dean, of course, wasn't quiet. He frankly questioned the Bush administration's motives and honesty at a time when most Democrats believed that the prudent thing was to play along with the war party.

We'll never know whether Democrats would have done better over the past four years if they had taken a stronger stand against the right. But it's clear that the time for that sort of caution is past.

For one thing, there's no more room for illusions. In 2001 it was possible for some Democrats to convince themselves that President Bush's tax cuts were consistent with an agenda that was only moderately conservative. In 2002 it was possible for some Democrats to convince themselves that the push for war with Iraq was really about eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

But in 2005 it takes an act of willful blindness not to see that the Bush plan for Social Security is intended, in essence, to dismantle the most important achievement of the New Deal. The Republicans themselves say so: the push for privatization is following the playbook laid out in a 1983 Cato Journal article titled "A 'Leninist' Strategy," and in a White House memo declaring that "for the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win - and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country."

By refusing to be bullied into false bipartisanship on Social Security, Democrats have already scored a significant tactical victory. Just two months ago, TV pundits were ridiculing Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, for denying that Social Security faces a crisis, and for rejecting outright the idea of diverting payroll taxes into private accounts. But now the Bush administration itself has dropped the crisis language, and admitted that private accounts would do nothing to improve the system's finances.

By standing firm against Mr. Bush's attempt to stampede the country into dismantling its most important social insurance program, Democrats like Mr. Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Dick Durbin and Barbara Boxer have, at a minimum, broken the administration's momentum, and quite possibly doomed its plan. The more time the news media spend examining the details of privatization, the worse it looks. And those Democrats have also given their party a demonstration of what it means to be an effective opposition.
....
For a while, Mr. Dean will be the public face of the Democrats, and the Republicans will try to portray him as the leftist he isn't. But Deanism isn't about turning to the left: it's about making a stand.

As a 'way leftie, I realize that I'm not part of the political mainstream in this country, but hope that those like me are part of the political discussion in a healthy democracy. Without a functional Democratic party, I'm not.

With the emergence of Dr. Dean, I believe that the party once again invites me to be part of the national conversation, and I welcome him.

Working Without A Net

Top Iraq Rebels Elude Intensified U.S. Raids
Military Shifts to More Selective Targeting

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Feb. 14 -- Intensified military raids in Iraq over the past few months have significantly battered the ranks of mid-level insurgents but have scored few gains against the 30 or so most wanted rebels, according to senior U.S. military officers here.

As much as a third of this group is thought to move in and out of Iraq with some frequency, the officers said. Many have eluded U.S. and Iraqi forces by a combination of moving constantly, avoiding use of telephones and receiving protection from family or tribal connections.

"Are we having success rolling up some of the top-tier leaders? Not at this time," said Brig. Gen. John DeFreitas, the highest-ranking Army intelligence officer in Iraq. "But we're successfully working the second- and third-tier leaders to put pressure on the top tier."

After a lull in the days after the Jan. 30 elections, insurgents have resumed bombings, suicide attacks and assassinations, an increasing share of them directed against Iraqi civilians and security forces. There are now an average of about 60 attacks each day, close to the rate before the elections, according to U.S. military tallies, and most remain concentrated in Sunni Muslim-populated provinces of central and northwestern Iraq.

What this says is that we have no meaningful intel on the insurgents. Not that this is new news.

Public Health

Gays Debate Radical Steps to Curb Unsafe Sex
By ANDREW JACOBS

Published: February 15, 2005

After all the thousands of AIDS deaths and all the years of "Safe Sex Is Hot Sex" prevention messages, it has come down to this: many gay men who know the rules of engagement in the age of AIDS are not using condoms. As news of a potentially virulent strain of H.I.V. settles in, gay activists and AIDS prevention workers say they are dismayed and angry that the 25-year-old battle against the disease might have to begin all over again.

While many are calling for a renewed commitment to prevention efforts and free condoms, some veterans of the war on AIDS are advocating an entirely new approach to the spread of unsafe sex, much of which is fueled by a surge in methamphetamine abuse. They want to track down those who knowingly engage in risky behavior and try to stop them before they can infect others.

It is a radical idea, born of desperation, that has been gaining ground in recent months as a growing number of gay men become infected despite warnings about unsafe sex.

Although gay advocates and health care workers are just beginning to talk about how this might be done, it could involve showing up at places where impromptu sex parties happen and confronting the participants. Or it might mean infiltrating Web sites that promote gay hookups and thwarting liaisons involving crystal meth.

Other ideas include collaborating with health officials in tracking down the partners of those newly infected with H.I.V. At the very least, these advocates say, gay men must start taking responsibility for their own, before a resurgent epidemic draws government officials who could use even more aggressive tactics.

"Gay men do not have the right to spread a debilitating and often fatal disease," said Charles Kaiser, a historian and author of "The Gay Metropolis." "A person who is H.I.V.-positive has no more right to unprotected intercourse than he has the right to put a bullet through another person's head," he said.

I'm putting this rather deliberately inflammatory NYT story up for a couple of reasons. There was a public discussion about public health that should have happened when AIDS broke out the first time and the discussion never happened because the disease and the people who got it, mostly, were too stigmatized. That conversation needs to happen now. Why? If not this year, we are on the verge of some very scary diseases which are within shooting range of becoming public pandemics or epidemics, and most aren't sexually transmitted, with all the baggage that carries. We need to be thinking about and talking about what kinds of limitations on civil liberties are both appropriate and tolerated when a major disease breaks forth, and to make sure that we know how to restore those civil liberties after the disease ebbs. I'm not sure that this would have been a question in my mind before the present administration, but that is why I think we need to raise it publicly now.

I'm alarmed to think that the gay community is already thinking about policing its own with some very heavy handed tactics. If these strategies become mainstreamed in the public imagination for one of our most reviled minorities, I don't want to think about how the government might use them.

Kiss your honey

Valentines are for lovers.

There are several people who make this site possible and I am the least of them.

The Foundress

The Designer

The Technologist

The Architect and Master Builder

Without them, we wouldn't be here.

I have always relied on the kindness of others. Without them, and without you, I wouldn't be here.

Don't Get Used.

Pogge and I have been on the receiving end of trackback spam attacks off and on all day today. This uses band-width and trashes up the site.

If you don't have a decent personal firewall on your system, it is YOUR computer that's being used by the spambots for attacks like this. Pogge has all the poop on what you need to do to avoid becoming part of the problem.

End of Romance

Love's Dying Ritual

By William Raspberry
Monday, February 14, 2005; Page A17

Maybe Valentine's Day is a good time to talk about something that's been on my mind for a while: the alarming decline of courtship.

Calling it alarming, of course, places me firmly on the old-fogy side of the discussion. The youngsters I talk to at Duke University don't seem particularly alarmed, though a few will acknowledge some discomfort, some disappointment that they find themselves in a world in which boys don't come courting. They are, willy-nilly, in a hookup culture that they (the girls, at least) don't remember asking for but feel powerless to change.

What am I talking about?

Listen (with her permission) to a young woman in my "Family and Community" class last fall:

"Friday night, my sorority had a function in an abandoned field, where the only activity is to get really drunk," she wrote in a paper I assigned on the decline of courtship. "I asked this older boy that I sort of knew, just because I needed a date and he was cute. Everyone was drinking so heavily that the majority of the conversations did not even make much sense.

"When the party ended, we all got on the buses (nicknamed the 'hook-up buses') to return to campus. I went back to his room 'to talk,' but obviously talking turned into making out. Later, I walked back from his dorm all the way to my dorm by myself."

Thank goodness she spared me the details of her make-out session, though she and her classmates drove home the point that "hooking up" can include anything from kissing and petting to sexual intercourse.

Several of them made it clear that alcohol consumption is a significant part of the hookup experience -- as though to give all involved a pretext for saying that what happened last night wasn't really them.

My young student said something that still has me scratching my head.

"At the end of the night, I could have batted my eyes, given him a hug, and said 'Thanks for a wonderful evening.' But in today's society, that is rude. A hug is the universal sign for 'not interested.' "

The disjuncture from courtship as earlier generations remember it is startling. For us, sex was the Super Bowl of relationships. For many of today's youngsters, it's just a pickup game. I don't envy them.

I know what Raspberry means, this reduces sex to mercantilism, two people using each other. One of the delights (one of the few during this long season of unemployment) of the last ten months of my life has been the courtship carried on by email and IM. To have received such letters from a real writer is an unimaginable treat and it is the primary reason why I want to find a data recovery firm nearby to see if I can't rescue my Mozilla mail (and addressbook--losing that was a major nightmare).

Giving it Away

WASHINGTON (AP) U.S. officials in postwar Iraq paid a contractor...

By Larry Margasak, Associated Press, 2/13/2005 13:55

WASHINGTON (AP) U.S. officials in postwar Iraq paid a contractor by stuffing $2 million worth of crisp bills into his gunnysack and routinely made cash payments around Baghdad from a pickup truck, a former official with the U.S. occupation government says.

Because the country lacked a functioning banking system, contractors and Iraqi ministry officials were paid with bills taken from a basement vault in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces that served as headquarters for the Coalition Provisional Authority, former CPA official Frank Willis said.

Officials from the CPA, which ruled Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004, would count the money when it left the vault, but nobody kept track of the cash after that, Willis said.

''In sum: inexperienced officials, fear of decision-making, lack of communications, minimal security, no banks, and lots of money to spread around. This chaos I have referred to as a 'Wild West,''' Willis said in testimony he prepared to give Monday before a panel of Democratic senators who want to spotlight the waste of U.S. funds in Iraq.

A senior official in the 1980s at the State and Transportation departments under then-President Ronald Reagan, Willis provided The Associated Press with a copy of his testimony and answered questions in an interview.

James Mitchell, spokesman for the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, told the AP that cash payments in Iraq were a problem when the occupation authority ran the country and they continue during the massive U.S.-funded reconstruction.

''There are no capabilities to electronically transfer funds,'' Mitchell said. ''This complicates the financial management of reconstruction projects and complicates our ability to follow the money.''

The Pentagon, which had oversight of the CPA, did not immediately comment in response to requests Friday and over the weekend. But the administrator of the former U.S. occupation agency, L. Paul Bremer III, in response to a recent federal audit criticizing the CPA, strongly defended the agency's financial practices.

I'm listening to the Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing right now. It's clear that Iraq became a "free fraud zone" and that billions of dollars were looted by Custer Battles, Bechtel, SAIC, Halliburton and a host of others. There is no oversight being offered by the Republican Congress and no legal remedies will be pursued by the Bush administration. This is unbelievable. The hearing is being held by Congressional Democrats in Oklahoma City today and does not have standing to issue subpoenas. This is our tax dollars which are being looted at a time of record budget deficits. The Republicans were invited but declined to participate. This really is the kind of stuff that should have the peasants in the street with pitchforks.

Galloping Incompetence

Deeper Budget Cuts on the Horizon

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Monday, February 14, 2005; 7:01 AM

To get a scope on the extent of the federal budget problem, consider this:

In the short term, Congress will likely do nothing to get serious about the budget deficit. Democrats aren't likely to propose any significant budget cuts and Republicans will probably continue to insist on tax cuts, saying they will cause the economy to grow fast enough to erase the deficit.

I am mindful of the fact that every business Bush ran, he ran into the ground. He's doing the same thing with the country.

Sometimes You Get What You Need

I am convinced that Suzie Madrak spoke prophecy last night when she wrote:

Love calls us to the possibility of the of the hero in ourselves, whether it's on a public stage or "only" in our private lives. It's the ultimate hero's journey.

The more I see what's going on around us, the more convinced I am it's the only useful weapon.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

One of the theologians I follow carefully was a truly nasty human being named Bernard Lonergan. He was both brilliant and a mean drunk. Very late in his life he fell in love, and that was a good thing. He said there are five non-negotiable imperatives you have to know to live a good life: be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible and be in love. The last he added in that later part of his life. I have found this to be good advice. I try to remember every day that this website is a work of love visible.

Happy Valentine's Day

Forget champagne, online chat is the way to woo

Alok Jha, science correspondent
Monday February 14, 2005
The Guardian

Scouring the internet may not sound as romantic as wooing your future partner with candlelight and champagne but it could be much more effective, research suggests.

As a result, many couples sitting down tonight to enjoy Valentine's night might well have met in cyberspace.

A study of members of online dating sites led by Jeff Gavin, a psychologist at the University of Bath, found that when couples who had built up a significant relationship by emailing or chatting online met for the first time, 94% went on to see each other again, some having relationships that lasted over a year.

Surprisingly, men were found to be more committed to their online partners than women. The research will be published in the Journal of Personal and Social Relationships.

Increasing numbers of time-starved Britons are believed to be signing up to internet dating services. Dr Gavin's team reckons that up to six million people may be members in the UK alone.

Until now, psychologists have thought that people who met online might have problems sustaining relationships away from their computer.

"When people are using on line chat or email, they're expressing themselves in ways that they often can't express themselves in face-to-face relationships," said Dr Gavin.

The research focused on 229 people aged 18-65, and studied how the forms of communication they used - including email, live chats, phone calls, webcams or exchange of gifts - affected the strength of their subsequent relationship.

"Email and chat were the two dominant forms of communication but the amount of email they sent to each other didn't seem to have an effect on the strength of the relationship," said Dr Gavin. "What did affect it, though, was whether they used chat or not."

This was important because it indicated that the best way to develop online relationships with someone you will eventually meet in the real world is to use live forms of communication.

"You get to know the other person better using live communication, we think, because there's less chance for impression management," said Dr Gavin. "With email you can re-read your email before you send it and plan what you're going to say and make it look a certain way."

The anonymity of online meetings also affected how people behaved. Women were found to be more sexually adventurous online than in the real world.

"Males felt they could be more emotionally honest when they were online and they get embarrassed when they are face to face with people," said Dr Gavin. "Women are more cautious than men and more concerned about safety."

This meant that men were quicker than women to commit to relationships with people they met online.

Sending gifts also proved to be a good way to cement a relationship. "We think the reason is it's one of the first physical forms of relationship between online partners," said Dr Gavin. It was also a matter of trust - sending gifts needs an address.

The researchers found that the average length of online relationships was seven months, and nearly a fifth of the successful relationships lasted longer than a year.

Some people in these longer-term relationships still maintained their affinity to the online environment. "We found in past research that some people were having anniversaries online," Dr Gavin said. "It's like going back to the restaurant where you first met somebody. They still have an attachment to where they first met."

An informal survey of the people I know best, the folks in my peer group, indicated that at least one family member had met their current spouse on-line. My peers are all people older than me, part of an older cohort, so I think the on-line community is beginning to take hold. My bro, a biker, uses netsites to find fellow riders for rides in the spring and fall. It's a community thing we have going one here.

UPDATE: I am one of those with an on-line relationship. In addition, I moderate several on-line communities besides this one.

The Gentleman's "C"

The Importance of Being Earnest

Published: February 14, 2005

For all its talk of deficit reduction, President Bush's 2006 budget is a map of reckless economic policies and shows how they have backed the United States into a precarious position in the global financial markets.

Mr. Bush needs to convince foreign investors that he's serious about cutting the budget deficit. Here's why: Each day, the United States must borrow billions of dollars from abroad to finance its enormous budget and trade deficits. Without a steady stream of huge loans, the country would face rising interest rates, higher inflation, a dropping dollar and slower economic growth. The lenders want to see less of a gap between what the government collects in taxes and what it spends, because a lower budget deficit always eases a trade deficit. A lower trade deficit also implies a stronger dollar. And a stronger dollar would reassure foreign investors that dollar-based assets remain their best choice.

As it is, their belief is being sorely tested: in 2003, the European Central Bank lost $625 million to the weak dollar and reportedly stands to lose $1.3 billion for 2004. Japan's central bank, which has the world's largest foreign stash of dollars - some $715 billion - could lose an estimated $40 billion if the dollar weakened to around 95 yen, a level many analysts expect to see this year. No wonder that a week before Mr. Bush released his budget, Japan's finance minister said that Japan had to be careful in managing those dollar-filled foreign currency reserves.

It's not hard to see what brought the United States to this juncture. Mr. Bush's first-term tax cuts were too expensive and too skewed toward top earners to work as effective, self-correcting economic stimulus. Instead, predictably, they've driven the nation deep into the red. Having reduced tax revenue to a share of the economy not seen since 1959, the cuts are a huge factor in the swing from a budget surplus to a $412 billion deficit.

The administration also erred big in deciding to deal with the ballooning trade imbalance by letting the dollar slide. That might have been a winning gambit if it had been paired with a commitment to cut the deficit. Theoretically, a weakening dollar would have begun the process of easing the trade imbalance, while deficit reduction, which takes longer to bring about, would have addressed the gap in a more lasting way. Instead, Mr. Bush has unceasingly pursued deficit-financed tax cuts, even as the weak dollar has failed to fix the trade imbalance. The result is that the country's deficits - and borrowing needs - remain enormous even as dollar-based investments are becoming less attractive.

Lately, Mr. Bush has been talking the deficit reduction talk, but there's no sign that he is willing to walk the walk. In his 2006 budget, he pledges to slash spending, but largely in areas that would have only a small impact on the deficit and where cuts would be politically difficult, not to mention cruel, such as food stamps, veterans' medical care, child care and low-income housing. Meanwhile, he is pounding the table for more deficit-bloating measures - making his first-term tax cuts permanent, at a 10-year cost of as much as $2.1 trillion; putting into effect two high-income tax breaks that were enacted in 2001 but have been on hold, at a 10-year cost of $115 billion; and introducing new tax incentives to allow high earners to shift even more cash into tax shelters, at a cost that would ultimately work out to more than $30 billion a year when investors cashed in their accounts tax-free.

Oh, yes. Mr. Bush also wants to borrow some $4.5 trillion over two decades to privatize Social Security, which is a bad idea even without the borrowing and a horrendous one with it.

The global financial community won't be fooled. The dollar may have bouts of relative strength, as it has recently. But these are due largely to currency traders' focus on short-term advantages, like Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes, which are perceived as a positive for the dollar, or the appearance of profit-taking opportunities. Inevitably, the budget and trade deficits will reassert their drag on the dollar, and then on Washington's ability to comfortably borrow money from abroad.

Congress can avert this crisis-in-waiting by forcing Mr. Bush to be serious about deficit reduction. The first-term tax cuts should be allowed to lapse. Cuts that are not yet in effect should not be allowed to begin. And no new programs should be started that require megaborrowing. If the president doesn't see that he has more important tasks than cutting taxes for the rich and undermining Social Security, Congress should set him straight

Rather than crafting arguments, Bush simply asserts things, rather like the hubristic college student his colleagues and teachers remember from his undergrad days. That might be a substitute for effort for the fortunate son of a legacy admission, but for the rest of us, we can't get away with it. Our checkbooks actually have to balance.

This is the return of voo-doo economics, sponsored by someone who ran every business he was ever given into the ground.

I Sing the Body Electric

The Public Thinker
By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 14, 2005

If you can't say it in 30 seconds, you have to move on. God made man and the godless evolutionists are on the run. Donald Trump ("You're fired!") and Paris Hilton ("That's hot!") are cultural icons. Ignorance is in. The nation is at war and its appetite for torture may be undermining the very essence of the American character, but the public at large seems much more interested in what Martha will do when she gets out of prison and what Jacko will do if he has to go in.

Mr. Miller's death last week meant more than the loss of an outstanding playwright. It was the loss of a great public thinker who believed strongly, as Archibald MacLeish had written, that the essence of America - its greatness - was in its promises. Mr. Miller knew what ignorance and fear and the madness of crowds, especially when exploited by sinister leadership, could do to those promises.

His greatest concerns, as Charles Isherwood wrote in Saturday's Times, "were with the moral corruption brought on by bending one's ideals to society's dictates, buying into the values of a group when they conflict with the voice of personal conscience."

The individual, in Mr. Miller's view, had an abiding moral responsibility for his or her own behavior, and for the behavior of society as a whole. He said that while writing "The Crucible," "The longer I worked the more certain I felt that as improbable as it might seem, there were moments when an individual conscience was all that could keep a world from falling."

For the United States, which launched a misguided, pre-emptive war in Iraq, is shipping prisoners off to foreign countries to be tortured and has pressed the rewind button on matters of social progress, this may be one of those moments.

Reading Miller again, and looking back on his life, it's interesting to see some of the differences he has spotlighted in two sharply defined eras: the Depression-wracked 1930's and the prosperous, postwar 1950's. "It was not that people were more altruistic," he wrote in "Timebends," "but that a point arrived - perhaps around 1936 - when for the first time unpolitical people began thinking of common action as a way out of their impossible conditions. Out of dire necessity came the surge of mass trade unionism and the federal government's first systematic relief programs, the resurgent farm cooperative movement, the TVA and other public projects that put people to work and brought electricity to vast new areas, repaired and built new bridges and aqueducts, carried out vast reforestation projects, funded student loans and research into the country's folk history - its songs and tales collected and published for the first time - and this burst of imaginative action created the sense of a government that for all its blunders and waste was on the side of the people."

By the early 50's the agony of the Depression was gone. McCarthyism was in flower and the dean of Mr. Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan, was complaining that his students' highest goal was to fit in with corporate America rather than separating truth from falsehood.

The dean, Erich Walter, said, "They become experts at grade-getting, but there's less hanging round the lamppost now, no more chewing the fat," or, as Mr. Miller put it, "speculating about the wrongs of the world and ideal solutions, something no employer was interested in, and might even suspect."

Mr. Miller understood early that keeping the population entertained was becoming the paramount imperative of the U.S. We're now all but buried in entertainment and the republic is running amok. Mr. Miller is gone, and if we're not wise enough to pay attention, his uncomfortable truths will die with him. (He felt, among other things, that most men and women knew "little or nothing" about the forces manipulating their lives.)

Anyway, the Grammys were last night and Michael Jackson's trial resumes today.

Arthur Miller? Broadway dimmed its lights Friday night. His country may decide that's enough of a tribute and it's time to move on.

We deride our public intellectuals until the time we offer obituaries. That's not smart. We need public discussions of hard questions and people to lead them; shooting those messangers stifles our public life.

Don't Look

Freedom, From Want
By JAMES TRAUB

Published: February 13, 2005

Why does foreign aid have such a dismal reputation in the country that financed the Marshall Plan? Maybe it's the term itself (which may explain why it has been replaced by the studiously neutral ''official development assistance''). For many Americans, ''foreign aid'' sounds suspiciously like ''welfare for foreigners.'' We don't like welfare, and we aren't quite sure what to think about foreigners. What's more, American giving typically proceeds from a sense of personal affiliation, whether to church or community or school; and we have, until very recently, thought of foreigners as a remote species. That era came to an end with 9/11, of course. In his Inaugural Address, President Bush vowed that ''all who live in tyranny and hopelessness'' will find a staunch friend in the United States. For all those around the world who live in poverty, however, he made no such promise.

Tyranny is a very great evil, and freedom a very precious good; but there are other evils, and other goods. The week after the president's address, Europe's three major leaders -- Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder -- addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Blair, as ever, defended President Bush's self-assigned mission of democracy promotion. But he went on to say that ''if America wants the rest of the world to be part of the agenda it has set, it must be part of their agenda, too.'' And Blair, like Chirac and Schroder, defined the core of that agenda very differently from President Bush. For all three, strikingly, the great good worth striving for was the elimination of global poverty, and the paramount means was an increase in aid.

The subject has barely dented the American debate; and yet there was an almost giddy sense at Davos that a transformative moment on aid and development was nigh. Gordon Brown, Blair's chancellor of the exchequer, spoke of ''a worldwide change of opinion'' on the subject. Blair himself asserted that he would dedicate his leadership of both the G8 and the European Union this year to the issue of Africa. And Chirac proposed a new scheme of taxes on international currency transactions to finance a big increase in aid. This is to be the year of development, but it's widely understood that very little will happen without the United States.

The emerging development agenda includes debt relief, chiefly from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; the reduction of trade barriers to benefit poor nations; and big increases in development aid. On the first two issues, the Bush administration is within hailing distance of its allies, though Washington is reluctant to appropriate money to cover the canceled debts.

Aid, however, has become the great symbol of American myopia and self-isolation. In 2002, the wealthy nations, including the United States, committed themselves to increasing development assistance radically so that each was spending at least 0.7 percent of its gross national income on aid by 2015. The Scandinavian countries are already close to that figure; others have committed themselves to a specific timetable to reach the threshold. The United States has not. Currently we rank 22nd and dead last among donor nations, at 0.15 percent of G.N.I. The Bush administration proudly proclaims that it has raised that figure by 50 percent; but even that assertion may prove illusory, since the administration has decided that next year it will seek $3 billion, rather than a promised $5 billion, for its chief new aid initiative.

There is an even more fundamental problem which Traub misses: Americans don't care about poverty right here at home, so it is unlikely that we are going to be interested in it elsewhere. In my mind, this goes back to the distorted Calvinist assumptions that underlay the culture's view of poverty and wealth: that either state is a reflection of the basic worthiness of the individual, when nothing could be further from the truth. Accidents of birth have more to do with it than does the protestant work ethic.

Europe, in particular, doesn't tolerate the level of poverty which plagues this country. That we claim to be the wealthiest nation on earth and don't try to take care of our own is fairly damning.

Chewing up the 2nd Loots

Iraq's shadow extends to West Point

Michael Winerip, New York Times
February 13, 2005

Cadets don't have to study the opinion polls to know they're heading off to an unpopular war. Applications to the military academies are down substantially. At West Point, applications hit a post-9/11 high of 12,383 for the school year that began 2003. The 10,412 applications for the coming school year represent a 16 percent drop in two years.

The Naval Academy is down 2,852 applicants, a 20 percent drop in just a year, and the Air Force Academy is down 3,054 applicants from 2004, a 24 percent drop.

After two years at West Point, a cadet is given a last chance to leave without having to serve in the military. Last summer, 52 members of the sophomore class of 963 left, compared with 32 the year before and 18 the year before that. West Point officials were relieved it wasn't more. "We were hearing rumors of mass resignations," said the admissions director, Col. Mike Jones. "But it was just rumors. Our numbers are down, but still very strong," he said, citing 10 applicants for every slot.

Bodor said it's no mystery why the numbers are down. "Iraq," he said. "Same as Vietnam. When you're in an unpopular war, people question, 'Is this what I want to be doing?' "

These cadets, who get a free education in return for five years of military service, are likely to face two Iraq tours if current projections hold. Their own feelings about the war seem surprisingly mixed. While Erwin and Williams expressed confidence in the effort to establish a democratic society in Iraq, Linnington, Ramos and Jarick Evans sounded less hopeful.

"There are cadets who might not want to go, they might not believe we should be over there the same way the American public feels," Linnington said. "But as military people we have a duty."

Ramos sees the division of opinion in classroom discussions. "At this point, to me, it's too late to debate," he said. "We may not like it, but we have to make the best of it. We're there."

He is grateful, he said, "that the American public knows it's not the soldiers' fault if they disagree with the war."

These kids have a much better sense of what is going on than do the rest of their cohort. Yet another Viet Nam comparison comes sneaking in.

"People" Journalism

Researchers Try to Squelch Spread of Avian Flu
Goal Is to Keep Virus From Infecting People

By Susan Levine
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page C04

Daniel Perez is in a race. Against time -- and an especially lethal virus.

In a low-slung, antiseptic-looking building in College Park, the University of Maryland scientist is working with a small cadre of researchers to try to avert what they worry could one day be a script for a real-life horror story. Assisting them is a small flock of chickens and quail.

Their focus is avian influenza, a scourge that worldwide has caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses of infected, or merely exposed, poultry -- a figure that experts say pales beside the potential risk to people.

There already have been ample cases, mostly in Asia, establishing the dire threat when humans contract the virus from birds. "It's scary," Perez said. "Most of them die."

The researchers' race is to figure out how the microorganism replicates before it mutates enough to be transmitted easily within a family, a community or more.

"The biggest question is, what is it going to take for this virus to gain the ability to go from human to human?" Perez asked. He acknowledged: "There are many things that are out there that we don't know."

The pandemic against which infectious diseases usually are measured is the 1918-19 Spanish flu outbreak, which claimed the lives of 20 million to 50 million people worldwide. Yet in the instances in which avian influenza has been diagnosed in people, it has proven even more virulent -- killing 32 of 44 victims in 2004, most of them otherwise healthy children and young adults.

Symptoms start in the usual flulike way. Then the virus ramps up, with the body's immune system fighting so much and so hard that it begins breaking down.

The University of Maryland is the lead institution in a new national project to prevent and control avian influenza. University officials say a $5 million grant it recently received from the U.S. Agriculture Department is the largest the agency has awarded for the study of a single animal disease or health threat. Researchers and extension specialists in 17 states are involved in the effort.

Perez, an assistant professor of virology and leading avian influenza researcher, is directing the project. He likens the job ahead to detective work -- though it will be sleuthing in a laboratory, clad in face masks and shields, special gloves and suits, as genetic material is studied, manipulated, injected into the birds and studied anew.

At last, the media notice, but only by turning this into a personality piece. They still don't get it that this killer, if it emerges, has the potential to change civilization.

House Divided

The Revolution That Wasn't

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: February 13, 2005

WASHINGTON — If the history of the Republican revolution were being written today, a single overarching question would have to be answered: Whatever happened to the promise of smaller government?

That question was asked again last week, when President Bush unveiled a $2.57 trillion budget for 2006, the largest in the nation's history. The cuts he called for, in areas like veterans' medical care, farm subsidies and vocational training, were met in Washington with doubts that they would ever get through the Republican Congress.

"Republicans have lost their way," lamented Newt Gingrich, the government-slashing firebrand of a decade ago.

In 1995, a band of 73 freshman Republicans swept into the House of Representatives, with Mr. Gingrich as their speaker. Flush with ideological zeal and determined to get government off the backs of the people, as Ronald Reagan would say, they pushed through a budget resolution that called for eliminating scores of programs and three federal departments.

Their fervor was so politically potent that in 1996, a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, declared, "The era of big government is over."

Yet government has only grown. The Cato Institute, a libertarian research institution, says overall federal spending has increased twice as fast under Mr. Bush as under Mr. Clinton. At the same time, the federal deficit is projected to hit a record high of $427 billion this year.

These trends seem likely to continue. The White House estimated last week that the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries, originally projected at $400 billion from 2004 to 2013, would, in fact, be $724 billion from 2006 to 2015. Republicans called for scaling back the benefit, but on Friday, Mr. Bush said no and vowed to veto any changes to the Medicare bill.

"The era of big government being over is over," declared Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist Democratic research organization. That would certainly seem to be borne out in the record of the Republican revolutionaries, known as the "Class of 1994" for the year they were elected. Of the 30 who are still in the House of Representatives, 28 hsponsored bills in the last Congress that would have increased government spending overall, according to the National Taxpayers Union, an antitax group.

Some of the expansion in government was beyond their control. One big reason for the rise in spending is the growth of mandatory entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. Another is the administration's "war on terror"; the government has added an entire new agency, the Department of Homeland Security, since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has spent many billions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Those were legitimate reasons for more expansive spending," said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota. "But we can no longer hide behind that."

Republicans like Mr. Thune say they are pleased that Mr. Bush's budget calls for cutting or eliminating 150 programs, and they applaud his promise to cut the deficit in half within five years. Yet the old Gingrich revolutionaries have lowered their battle cry to a whimper; instead of demanding that federal agencies be put out of business, they are fighting among themselves over small-bore questions of what to cut and what to keep.

I just heard Frist on Fox News Sunday say that the Democrats are divided. What a laugh, I think that it's the Republicans who are having a little coherence problem.

Judging Results

POLL RESULTS ANNOUNCED

The result of Iraq's historic election will be announced at one o'clock this afternoon.

On Friday a mosque and a bakery were targeted.

We'll see if they are believed, however, which is an entirely separate problem.

The Daily Horror

Painful Commutes Don't Stop Drivers
Even With 30-Minute Trips, Most in D.C. Area Pass Up Public Transit, Poll Finds

By Richard Morin and Steven Ginsberg
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page A14

Washington area residents spend far longer getting to work and find themselves in daily traffic jams three times as often as commuters elsewhere, according to new local and national polls by The Washington Post.

Half of the region's commuters spend 30 minutes or more traveling to work, or an hour each day to get to their jobs and back home. Even when compared with commuters in other major urban areas, the surveys suggest that Washington residents spend significantly more time on the road.

One big reason that drives are longer here is because traffic tie-ups are far more frequent. Nearly 6 in 10 commuters say they get tangled up in traffic jams at least once a week. And more than 1 in 4 -- 28 percent -- said they encounter serious tie-ups every day, compared with 9 percent of commuters nationally.

In spite of increasingly long and frustrating commutes, the survey found that Washingtonians remain addicted to their cars. Three in four area commuters drive to work alone. Carpooling is no more prevalent here than it is elsewhere in the country. Metro is widely admired but largely bypassed, a boutique transportation system that serves a hard-core constituency but is viewed by most commuters as inconvenient.

Overwhelming majorities of residents in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs and 4 in 10 District residents agree that congestion along their commutes has become progressively worse in the past five years, and most people in each jurisdiction predict that it will only get worse.

Transportation officials and experts said the results show a network in collapse.

"Our transportation systems are breaking down and failing," said Virginia Transportation Commissioner Philip A. Shucet. "We are quickly coming to a point where we're not able to provide a minimum level of service in our core transportation needs."

Solid majorities of area residents polled support a variety of big-ticket items to help ease traffic congestion, from extending Metro to Dulles International Airport to building an intercounty connector in the Maryland suburbs. Half would even be willing to pay higher gasoline taxes to fund transportation projects, compared with a third nationally.

Most people who eschew public transit do so because it is inconvenient. I use it all the time because I have a bus-to-subway connection at my back door, and most of the places I need to reach in DC are within blocks of a Metro stop. That's not true for everyone and much of the commuting in the area is from one suburb to another, something Metro never took into account when the system was built.

We have some of the worst traffic in the country--it reminds me alot of Toronto, another of the worst traffic knots in North America--and it isn't likely to get better anytime soon. I've pretty much stopped using the Beltway and the other Interstates in the area in favor of surface roads. The latter might be slower, but the traffic is usually moving. And I use the train if I have to move between cities. Forget the I-95 corridor.

A 30-minute commute? I don't know anyone who has one that short. An hour each way is more like it for everyone I know.

Moral Failure

Via The Agonist:

Pentagon covers up failure to train and recruit local security forces
Police and army numbers falling far short of projections as post-election violence surges and wait for results drags on

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, Kim Sengupta in Basra, and Raymond Whitaker in London

13 February 2005

Training of Iraq's security forces, crucial to any exit strategy for Britain and the US, is going so badly that the Pentagon has stopped giving figures for the number of combat-ready indigenous troops, The Independent on Sunday has learned.

Instead, only figures for troops "on hand" are issued. The small number of soldiers, national guardsmen and police capable of operating against the country's bloody insurgency is concealed in an overall total of Iraqis in uniform, which includes raw recruits and police who have gone on duty after as little as three weeks' training. In some cases they have no weapons, body armour or even documents to show they are in the police.

The resulting confusion over numbers has allowed the US administration to claim that it is half-way to meeting the target of training almost 270,000 Iraqi forces, including around 52,000 troops and 135,000 Iraqi policemen. The reality, according to experts, is that there may be as few as 5,000 troops who could be considered combat ready.

The gap between troops "on hand" and the overall target for fully trained and equipped security forces has actually widened in recent months, according to John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington- based think-tank. Between October and November last year, just before the Pentagon quietly stopped giving figures for fully trained troops, the shortfall more than doubled, from 69,400 to 159,000. At current levels, the targets would not be met until next year.

htRumsfeld says Iraq forces gaining `professionalism'
By Associated Press
Saturday, February 12, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hailed what he described as progress among Iraqi security forces after seeing some of them in action yesterday, but he said it was too soon to discuss when U.S. troops could begin coming home.

Rumsfeld shuttled around Iraq to observe Iraqi security and military units demonstrate their training.

``There's no question progress has been made,'' Rumsfeld said of Iraqi forces. ``The professionalism of these units is advancing.''

At Camp Victory outside Baghdad, Rumsfeld watched an Iraqi counterterrorist team attack a compound in a demonstration that began with a sniper taking out a mock sentry from a thousand yards away.

Two helicopters swooped in, one disgorging a team of Iraqi commandos, who rappelled into the compound while the other circled above. More commandos arrived on Humvees, and together the team blasted into the compound.

See what I said earlier about the affect of lies on the formation of national character.

Rummy, like the rest of Team Bush, prefers "show" to "go." There is nothing wrong with PR when it reflects the truth, but when you use it to hide, you are in deep trouble. The problem is, he's taking the entire nation with him. You are a failure, as a project, when your "go" doesn't match your "show."

Moral Theology

As we all sit down at our computers and try to figure out what the blogs and the Internet mean to our life in the 21st Century, here is a clue:

The most powerful man in Iraq is an ayatollah with a website

From Stephen Farrell in Baghdad and Richard Beeston

The hopes and fears of a nation swirl around this ascetic

THE most powerful man in Iraq sits on the floor of a modest room, off a narrow alley in a provincial city south of Baghdad. His gown is dark and threadbare. His face is sandwiched betweeen a long white beard and a black turban. On the rare occasions that he leaves his home, it is to pray at the nearby shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of Shia Islam, in Najaf.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani has never met an American official or soldier. He did not vote in Iraq’s elections last month. And yet this religious recluse could wield more influence over Iraq’s destiny than all the foreign troops and Iraqi politicians put together.

The Shia List, which he endorsed, looks certain to be the biggest group in Iraq’s new 275-strong assembly when the election results are announced any day now. It will therefore be the dominant voice in the formation of a new government and the drafting of a new constitution. That means the 74-year-old cleric is likely to play a key role in determining whether Iraq becomes an Islamic state or a secular democracy and whether its rival communities peacefully co-exist or sink into sectarian conflict.

Anyone doubting Ayatollah al-Sistani’s influence should consider the key events of the past year. The huge Shia turnout in January’s election was the result of his simple fatwa instructing the faithful that voting was a religious duty.

That the elections were held at all was largely due to him. When the US-led coalition proposed a transfer of power without letting the people cast their ballots, a single edict from Ayatollah al-Sistani brought hundreds of thousands of Shia protesters on to the streets until the Americans backed down.

Now that the Shias are set to govern Iraq for the first time in more than 500 years the country and the rest of the world want to know what kind of nation he wants to build.

His supporters insist he is dedicated to creating a tolerant, democratic state that respects the rights of all Iraq’s minorities. His critics fear the birth of a new theocracy similar to that in neighbouring Iran, where he was born.

Senior members of the Shia coalition are desperately trying to reassure Iraq’s Sunni minority that it will not be marginalised, the Kurds that their automony will not be threatened and other religious minorities that they will not become second-class citizens.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the leader of the Shia al-Dawa Party and a potential prime minister, pointedly refers to the ayatollah as “Mr”, not “Sayyid” — the title given to a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.

The London Times isn't one of my favorite sources, but the article is fascinating, read the whole thing. We have no clue about Sistani or his influence and our media is uniquely unqualified to report on anything having to do with religion. The Times reporters caught an interesting detail in that last paragraph. Anyone who has studied Islam in the Iran-Iraq context would understand the significance. Jaafari's party is secular.

I am not an arabist, but I sat at the feet of several of them in the years after September 11 to see if I couldn't heal at least a little of my ignorance. I learned enough to know that my ignorance of Islam and arabism in general will take the reast of my life to repair, but I have learned a few things. Some of it from the local Islamic clerics. There is as much variety in Islam as there is in any of the more familiar faiths: Islam is not a monolith. Neither are Arab people. Even within Iraq, the variations are huge.

We are so terribly ignorant of this region Bush thinks he can remake that I'm embarrassed for us. Embarrassed for our hubris and our ignorance. Embarrassed for our overweening sense of entitlement. Embarrassed that half of this country thinks we are right to kill thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands in pursuit of something which looks today like nothing more than our own power. Embarrassed for the rest of the world which feels it still has to accord us some deference when our officials travel abroad, when they should be put in the stocks.

I think about all the theology and spirituality I've studied and about what I learned about truth, honesty and the difficulty of doing it well, and the necessity to do so. I've heard the same from the 12 step programs, and the many directees who've sat in my living room telling me how terribly hard it is to do, and how necessary.

And now I wonder if we aren't a society in decline because we've reached the tipping point between truth and accomodation and have permanently wandered over the hard to find line.

I've learned, maybe, three things in life. Learn to find balance between work and the rest of life. When you love (if you're lucky enough to find it) do it with utter abandon, or don't do it all. Always tell the truth.

The price of a lie always ends up being more than you can pay, even if it takes a while. It will bite your ass in the end, and you won't like it. Truth has a cost, too, but it is cheaper, over time, than a lie. Lies charge a lot of interest and do so for a long time.

Bloody Hell

Sectarian massacres shake Iraq

Rory Carroll in Baghdad
Saturday February 12, 2005
The Guardian

Violence swept Iraq yesterday as insurgents switched the focus of their attacks from the security forces to Shia civilians, killing at least 12 in a bombing outside a mosque and gunning down nine in a Baghdad bakery.

The massacres appeared designed to raise sectarian tension as the country prepared for the results from last month's election which will cement the ascendance of the Shia majority and the political marginalisation of the Arab Sunni minority.

In the bombing, a pick-up truck laden with vegetables parked in front of a Shia mosque in Balad Ruz, a town 45 miles north of Baghdad. As worshippers emerged on to the street, Iraqi troops approached the vehicle to investigate when it blew up. The police reported 13 dead and 40 wounded while the national guard reported 12 dead and 23 wounded.

In a brazen assault in the capital, several car-loads of gunmen sealed off a street in a predominantly Shia neighbourhood and opened fire at a crowd inside a bakery, killing at least nine. Witnesses said walls plastered with posters of Shia clerics were splattered with blood.

"I was just leaving my house which is facing the bakery when I saw them shooting. They were masked and shouting Allahu Akbar [God is Greatest] as they were shooting," one resident, Atheer Abdul Amir, told Reuters. However analysts did not rule out the possibility that the atrocity was a criminal, mafia-style hit under the guise of insurgency.

Would-be assassins shot a cleric on a Tuesday evening as he left a Baghdad mosque, hitting him seven times but not killing him. Sheik Ammar al-Hilali is an aide to Grand Aya tollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shia leader.

The attacks appeared to be an attempt to provoke Shias, who make up 60% of the population, on the eve of their historic political ascendance over Sunnis, a minority which ruled Iraq for decades and enjoyed a privileged position under Saddam Hussein.

It also underlined the insurgents' versatility and determination to sabotage, or at least stain with blood, the formation of a new parliament, government and constitution. Election officials said they needed "only a few days maximum" to complete the count. Preliminary results show a landslide for a Shia coalition tacitly endorsed by Ayatollah Sistani. Threats of violence and a boycott call by leaders yielded a low Sunni turnout.

Looks like a set-up for civil war, doesn't it?

Peter Pan Nation

There are some writers out there who can predictably get me to think about things in a way I haven't thought about them before. Frank Rich is one such who writes powerful cultural criticism and does it remarkably unsentimentally.

FRANK RICH:
How Dirty Harry Turned Commie

What galls the film's adversaries - or so they say - is a turn in the plot that they started giving away on the radio and elsewhere in December, long before it started being mentioned in articles like the one you're reading now. They hoped to "spoil" the movie and punish it at the box office, though there's no evidence that they have succeeded. As Mr. Eastwood has pointed out, advance knowledge of the story's ending did nothing to deter the audience for "The Passion of the Christ." My own experience is that knowing the ultimate direction of "Million Dollar Baby" - an organic development that in no way resembles a plot trick like that in "The Sixth Sense" - only deepened my second viewing of it.

Here is what so scandalously intrudes in the final third of Mr. Eastwood's movie: real life. A character we love - and we love all three principals, including the narrator, an old boxing hand played by Morgan Freeman - ends up in the hospital with a spinal-cord injury and wants to die. Whether that wish will be granted, and if so, how, is the question that confronts not just the leading characters but also a young and orthodox Roman Catholic priest (Brian F. O'Byrne). The script, adapted by Paul Haggis from stories by F. X. Toole, has a resolution, as it must. But the movie has a powerful afterlife precisely because it is not an endorsement of any position on assisted suicide - or, for that matter, of any position on the disabled, as some disability-rights advocates have charged in a separate protest. The characters of "Million Dollar Baby" are complex and fictional, not monochromatic position papers outfitted in costumes, and the film no more endorses their fallible behavior and attitudes than "Ray" approves of its similarly sympathetic real-life hero's heroin addiction and compulsive womanizing.

"I never thought about the political side of this when making the film," Mr. Eastwood says. He is both bemused and concerned that a movie with no political agenda should be construed by some as a polemic and arouse such partisan rage. "Maybe I'm getting to the age when I'm starting to be senile or nostalgic or both, but people are so angry now," he adds. "You used to be able to disagree with people and still be friends. Now you hear these talk shows, and everyone who believes differently from you is a moron and an idiot - both on the right and the left." His own politics defy neat categorization. He's supported Democrats (including Gray Davis in the pre-Schwarzenegger era) as well as Republicans, professes the libertarian creed of "less government" and "was never a big enthusiast for going to Iraq but never spoke against it once the troops were there." In other words, he's in the same middle as most Americans. "I vote for what I like," he says. "I'm not a loyalist to any party. I'm only a loyalist to the country." That's no longer good enough, apparently, for those who feel an election victory has empowered them to enforce a strict doctrine of political and spiritual correctness.
....
What really makes these critics hate "Million Dollar Baby" is not its supposedly radical politics - which are nonexistent - but its lack of sentimentality. It is, indeed, no "Rocky," and in our America that departure from the norm is itself a form of cultural radicalism. Always a sentimental country, we're now living fulltime in the bathosphere. Our 24/7 news culture sees even a human disaster like the tsunami in Asia as a chance for inspirational uplift, for "incredible stories of lives saved in near-miraculous fashion," to quote NBC's Brian Williams. (The nonmiraculous stories are already forgotten, now that the media carnival has moved on.) Our political culture offers such phony tableaus as a bipartisan kiss between the president and Joe Lieberman at the State of the Union, not to mention the promise that a long-term war can be fought without having to endure any shared sacrifice or even too many graphic reminders of its human cost.

Last Sunday's was the first Super Bowl in 19 years that didn't feature the "I'm Going to Disneyland" spot for the victor, but maybe that's because it's superfluous. Whether in reaction to the trauma of 9/11 or for reasons that are as yet unknowable, we seem determined to will ourselves into Fantasyland at all times. This cultural syndrome is perfectly encapsulated by Jacques Steinberg's report in The New York Times last week of a new ABC "reality" program with the working title of "Miracle Workers." In this show, in which DreamWorks is also a participant, a "dream team" of physicians will miraculously run to the rescue of critically ill Americans, the perfect imaginary balm for what ails a country spiraling into a health-care catastrophe.

There's no dream team, either in the boxing arena or in the emergency room, in "Million Dollar Baby." While there is much to admire in the year's other Oscar-nominated movies - the full-bodied writing in "Sideways," the cinematic bravura of "The Aviator," the awesome Jamie Foxx in "Ray" - Mr. Eastwood's film, while also boasting great acting, is the only one that challenges America's current triumphalist daydream. It does so not because it has any politics or takes a stand on assisted suicide but because it has the temerity to suggest that fights can have consequences, that some crises do not have black-and-white solutions and that even the pure of heart are not guaranteed a Hollywood ending. What makes some feel betrayed and angry after seeing "Million Dollar Baby" is exactly what makes many more stop and think: one of Hollywood's most durable cowboys is saying that it's not always morning in America, and that it may take more than faith to get us through the night.

Rich is absolutely correct: the narrative of the popular culture is sentimental and has little tolerance for ambiguity. That means that the story we tell ourselves about ourselves is demonstrably false because it comports so poorly with reality. If we succumb to the popular narrative, we are deeply in denial and defying the struggle which would allow us to grow up and develop maturity. It's the struggle with reality which develops our humanity.

Cluelessness

Survey: Only 4 in 10 know how many troops killed in Iraq

By THOMAS HARGROVE and GUIDO H. STEMPEL III
Scripps Howard News Service
February 11, 2005

- Most Americans guess wrong when asked to estimate how many troops have died in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, a sign that many are giving scant attention to the nation's most dangerous military operation since the Vietnam War.

A new survey of 1,001 adults conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University found that fewer than half said they "very closely" follow news coverage of the military occupation. Less than a third named "the war on terror" or "peace in the Mideast" as the most important issue facing America. Most others preferred domestic concerns like the economy, Social Security, education or health care.

So far this year, soldiers and Marines have died at a rate of about three per day in the conflict. More than 1,450 military personnel and several dozen civilian employees of the Defense Department have died since Operation Iraqi Freedom began nearly two years ago.

Forty percent of people in the poll gave the correct answer when asked, to the nearest 500, how many have died in the six-week war and the bloody military occupation that followed. Thirty-two percent guessed that 1,000 or fewer have died, 21 percent said 2,000 or more have died and 7 percent could not make a guess.

People who oppose the war tend to overestimate the number of fatalities in Iraq while those who support it are more likely to underestimate the death toll.

Participants in the poll were asked, "How often would you say you think about America's military occupation of Iraq?" About 5 percent said they think about it "almost every hour," 35 percent said "several times a day," 35 percent said "about once a day," 15 percent said "several times a week" and 10 percent said "about once a week" or "less than once a week."

The survey also asked, "How carefully would you say you follow news media coverage of America's military occupation of Iraq?" Forty-two percent said "very closely," 47 percent said "somewhat closely" and 11 percent said "not closely."

People who said they are following war news closely are much more likely to know how many Americans have died in Iraq than people who don't read or watch war accounts in newspapers and on television. The proportion who correctly identified that "about 1,500" have died in Iraq was 51 percent among people who follow war news "very closely," 34 percent among those who follow news accounts "somewhat closely" and 25 percent who are "not closely" following news from Iraq.

The decision to commit American troops to Iraq has never been especially popular, according to a series of six previous surveys taken during the past two years.

In the latest poll, people were asked, "Despite everything that has happened, do you think the United States has done a good thing or a bad thing by sending our military to occupy Iraq?" Forty-seven percent said the United States has done "a good thing," 44 percent said it's "a bad thing" and 9 percent were undecided.

Regardless, they re-elected the Chimperor.

Dark Ops

Break-In At SAIC Risks ID Theft
Computers Held Personal Data on Employee-Owners

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page E01

Some of the nation's most influential former military and intelligence officials have been informed in recent days that they are at risk of identity theft after a break-in at a major government contractor netted computers containing the Social Security numbers and other personal information about tens of thousands of past and present company employees.

The contractor, employee-owned Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego, handles sensitive government contracts, including many in information security. It has a reputation for hiring Washington's most powerful figures when they leave the government, and its payroll has been studded with former secretaries of defense, CIA directors and White House counterterrorism advisers.

Those former officials -- along with the rest of a 45,000-person workforce in which a significant percentage of employees hold government security clearances -- were informed last week that their private information may have been breached and they need to take steps to protect themselves from fraud.

David Kay, who was chief weapons inspector in Iraq after nearly a decade as an executive at SAIC, said he has devoted more than a dozen hours to shutting down accounts and safeguarding his finances. He said the successful theft of personal data, by thieves who smashed windows to gain access, does not speak well of a company that is devoted to keeping the government's secrets secure.

"I just find it unexplainable how anyone could be so casual with such vital information. It's not like we're just now learning that identity theft is a problem," said Kay, who lives in Northern Virginia.

About 16,000 SAIC employees work in the Washington area.

Bobby Ray Inman, former deputy director of the CIA and a former director at SAIC, agreed. "It's worrisome," said Inman, who also received notification of the theft last week. "If the security is sloppy, it raises questions."

Ben Haddad, an SAIC spokesman, said yesterday that the Jan. 25 theft, which the company announced last week, occurred in an administrative building where no sensitive contracting work is performed. Haddad said the company does not know whether the thieves targeted specific computers containing employee information or if they were simply after hardware to sell for cash. In either case, the company is taking no chances.

"We're taking this extremely seriously," Haddad said. "It's certainly not something that would reflect well on any company, let alone a company that's involved in information security. But what can I say? We're doing everything we can to get to the bottom of it."

SAIC has facilities scattered across Northern Virginia so the article doesn't do much to help locate which building this was in. I have enough friends who work for the company that I've been in and out of their buildings and the security is typical for the area. This stinks of "inside job." And that means the motives are darker than simple theft of equipment.

The New World Order

Since we've spent more than a little time on this site dealing with genetic mutation, reassortment and recombination in viruses, the following story may have some traction with readers:

Rare and Aggressive H.I.V. Reported in New York
By MARC SANTORA and LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

Published: February 12, 2005

A rare strain of H.I.V. that is highly resistant to virtually all anti-retroviral drugs and appears to lead to the rapid onset of AIDS was detected in a New York City man last week, city health officials announced on Friday.

It was the first time a strain of H.I.V. had been found that both showed resistance to multiple drugs and led to AIDS so quickly, the officials said. While the extent of the disease's spread is unknown, officials called a news conference to say that the situation is alarming.

"We consider this a major potential problem," said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The department issued an alert to all hospitals and doctors in the city to test all newly detected H.I.V. cases for evidence of the rare strain.

The virus was found in a New York City man in his mid-40's who engaged in unprotected anal sex with other men on multiple occasions while he was using crystal methamphetamine. Health officials have long said that the drug's stimulating effect and erasure of inhibitions contributes to sex marathons that have increased the spread of H.I.V.

The man, whose name was not released to protect his privacy, is believed to have had unprotected sex with hundreds of partners, according to one person briefed on the case who insisted on anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

Some AIDS specialists outside New York City expressed skepticism about the alarm, believing that it might be an isolated case related to the patient's immune system. But Dr. Frieden said the case heightened the importance of using condoms.

"This case is a wake-up call," Dr. Frieden said. "First, it's a wake-up call to men who have sex with men, particularly those who may use crystal methamphetamine. Not only are we seeing syphilis and a rare sexually transmitted disease - lymphogranuloma venereum - among these men. "Now we've identified this strain of H.I.V. that is difficult or impossible to treat and which appears to progress rapidly to AIDS."

While H.I.V. strains that are resistant to some anti-retroviral drugs have been on the rise in recent years, both in New York City and nationally, city and federal officials said that the new case was worrisome for several reasons.

The viral strain in the unnamed patient was resistant to three of the four classes of drugs used to treat H.I.V. from the start of treatment. Typically, drug resistance occurs after a patient is treated with retroviral drugs, often because the patient veers from the prescribed course. And more often than not, a person is resistant to only one or two classes of drugs.

But in this case, the drug resistance is combined with a rapid transformation into AIDS. Both of those phenomena have been seen before, but are not believed to have occurred together.

This story has eerie echoes in the first news stories of the outbreak itself.

The world in which I grew up (and most of you my age will have had similar experience) is one in which you take some pills to get rid of nearly every illness. The new world in which we now live is the one in which bugs fight back.

Recently a friend of my fought a urinary tract infection with multiple courses of Cipro. Only two decades ago, that bug would have been knocked down with ten days of "cillin" drugs rather than hauling out the heavy artillary. This is scary new territory we are in.

Sociopath in Chief

We Have Nothing to Fear But Bush Himself
by Paul Craig Roberts

Suppose you are the party responsible for invading a country under totally false pretenses. Suppose you had totally unrealistic expectations about the consequences of your gratuitous aggression.

What do you do when, instead of being greeted with flowers, you find your army is tied down by insurgents and you have no face-saving way to get out of the morass? If you are the moronic Bush Administration, you blame someone else.

Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Cheney and Bush blame Syria and Iran for the troubles that they brought upon themselves. The Iraqi insurgency, say the Five Morons, is the fault of Syria and Iran.

Here is Rumsfeld excusing himself for his dismal failures in Iraq: "Partly it's [the insurgency] a function of what the Syrians and the Iranians are doing."

You see, the facts that the US invaded Iraq on false pretenses, killed and maimed tens of thousands of Iraqis, shot down women and children in the streets, blew up Iraqis' homes, hospitals and mosques, cut Iraqis off from vital services such as water and electricity, destroyed the institutions of civil society, left half the population without means of livelihood, filled up prisons with people picked up off the streets and then tortured and humiliated them for fun and games are not facts that explain why there is an insurgency. These facts are just descriptions of collateral damage associated with America "bringing democracy to Iraq."

The insurgency, according to the Five Morons, is because Syria and Iran won't close their borders, thus letting in "terrorists" who are responsible for the insurgency. Some might think that this accusation is an example of the pot calling the kettle black coming as it does from the US, a country that has not only proven itself incapable of closing its own borders but also has demonstrated no respect whatsoever for the borders of other countries.

The Bush administration, which already held the world record as the most deluded government in history, has now taken denial to unprecedented highs by blaming Syria and Iran for its "Iraqi problem." Why didn't Americans realize that it is dangerous to put a buffoon in charge of the US government who hasn't a clue about the world around him, what he is doing or the consequences of his actions?

Why is Secretary of State Rice trying to set Iran up for UN sanctions – which the US can manipulate to justify invading another Muslim country – when the US has proven to the world that it cannot occupy Baghdad, much less Iraq?

Are Iran and Syria going to quake in their boots after witnessing the success of a few thousand insurgents in tying down eight US divisions? The bulk of the US force in Iraq is engaged in protecting its own bases and supply lines. It was all the generals could do to scrape up 10,000 Marines for their pointless assault on Fallujah.

There can only be a few answers to these questions which make any sense at all. The first and most obvious is that George W. Bush is such a creation of his own ideology that he is unable to see reality for what it is and that he doesn't hear facts which challenge his view. I lean toward this answer.

I'm sure that inside the White House Rice's little triumphal tour of Europe was seen as a great success. In reality, other nations will note our disconnect from facts and act with great caution while in the presence of a sociopath that they can't avoid. They will give W the high honors he demands on his trip abroad later this month, while he again carries his own 12 chefs with him and his staff treds down the flowerbeds in every unfortunate location where he cares to spend the night.

And When Another Day is Through, I'll Still Need Friends Like You

Here are the print front pages of

The LAT

The WaPo

The NYT

I was up late on the phone giving aid and comfort to a fellow blogger. We do take care of each other. Find the news stories and post the links in comments. I'm sleeping in.

Pinning the Congress Critters

Congressman James Moran
2239 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515-4608
email:

Phone: (202) 225-4376
Fax: (202) 225-0017

Dear Congressman Moran,

Today's painful revelations, Bush team tried to suppress pre-9/11 report into al-Qa'ida, and US al-Qaeda warning revealed
From correspondents in Washington
11feb05 had to be revealed by the foreign press because the American press is too cowed to do so.

What are Congressional Democrats planning to do about this scandal? President Clinton was impeached for a blow job. Is President Bush going to be left untouched for leaving this country vulnerable to September 11?

The rest of the world is watching. In their eyes, the US has been an unmitigated disaster for the last four years. We could remedy some of the damage with a decent investigation of this tragedy. What motions do you plan to offer on the floor of the House?

your constituent,

Melanie M. Mattson

Off the Scale of Stupid

Here is the Bruce Schneier Op-Ed Charles was talking about. Before we let Lou Dobbs own the issue, here is common sense.

National ID Card Wouldn't Make Us Safer

Bruce Schneier
Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 1, 2004

This essay also appeared, in a slightly different form, in The Mercury News.

It doesn't really matter how well an ID card works when used by the hundreds of millions of honest people that would carry it. What matters is how the system might fail when used by someone intent on subverting that system: how it fails naturally, how it can be made to fail, and how failures might be exploited.

The first problem is the card itself. No matter how unforgeable we make it, it will be forged. And even worse, people will get legitimate cards in fraudulent names.

Two of the 9/11 terrorists had valid Virginia driver's licenses in fake names. And even if we could guarantee that everyone who issued national ID cards couldn't be bribed, initial cardholder identity would be determined by other identity documents ... all of which would be easier to forge.

Not that there would ever be such thing as a single ID card. Currently about 20 percent of all identity documents are lost per year. An entirely separate security system would have to be developed for people who lost their card, a system that itself is capable of abuse.

Additionally, any ID system involves people... people who regularly make mistakes. We all have stories of bartenders falling for obviously fake IDs, or sloppy ID checks at airports and government buildings. It's not simply a matter of training; checking IDs is a mind-numbingly boring task, one that is guaranteed to have failures. Biometrics such as thumbprints show some promise here, but bring with them their own set of exploitable failure modes.

But the main problem with any ID system is that it requires the existence of a database. In this case it would have to be an immense database of private and sensitive information on every American -- one widely and instantaneously accessible from airline check-in stations, police cars, schools, and so on.

The security risks are enormous. Such a database would be a kludge of existing databases; databases that are incompatible, full of erroneous data, and unreliable. As computer scientists, we do not know how to keep a database of this magnitude secure, whether from outside hackers or the thousands of insiders authorized to access it.

And when the inevitable worms, viruses, or random failures happen and the database goes down, what then? Is America supposed to shut down until it's restored?

Proponents of national ID cards want us to assume all these problems, and the tens of billions of dollars such a system would cost -- for what? For the promise of being able to identify someone?

What good would it have been to know the names of Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, or the DC snipers before they were arrested? Palestinian suicide bombers generally have no history of terrorism. The goal is here is to know someone's intentions, and their identity has very little to do with that.

And there are security benefits in having a variety of different ID documents. A single national ID is an exceedingly valuable document, and accordingly there's greater incentive to forge it. There is more security in alert guards paying attention to subtle social cues than bored minimum-wage guards blindly checking IDs.

That's why, when someone asks me to rate the security of a national ID card on a scale of one to 10, I can't give an answer. It doesn't even belong on a scale.

All Security Involves Tradeoffs

I've been meaning to begin this for months now, but I am probably the world's Grand Champion Procrastinator. One of my failings is to allow the minutiae of daily events to overwhelm strategic intent. But I have some spare time, my deliverables are in, and so I'm going to begin this thing.

When I first thought do do a series of posts on Infosec, an obvious contraction of "information security", my first thought was to begin with TCP/IP and progress to firewalls, what they do and do not do, and how to think about configuring them. This betrays my prejudices; firewalls are what got me into this business in the first place, more than five years ago. Upon more lengthy consideration, I came to realize that this would be a mistake.

So I will begin at the true beginning, the ideas that underpin not only information security, but all security. I will be working from Beyond Fear, by Bruce Schneier, as well as writing about what I've learned myself.

A little background on this gentleman is in order at this time. Ten years ago, he wrote what is arguably the most famous book in the entire field of cryptography, Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C, Second Edition. He was as qualified to do this as anyone on the planet. Back in the day, he was to cryptography what Erwin Rommel was to tank warfare. He has his own website these days, with a blog. He also publishes a monthly newsletter. IMHO, his perspective will appeal to Bumpers. It really doesn't surprise that so many security geeks are lefties.

Check out his Op Ed blasting the idea of a national ID card. Interestingly, he doesn't attack it from the POV of civil liberties. His main objections are from the standpoint of security. A national ID card will make us less secure, not more secure, and he explains why.

So let's begin

What is security?

• Security is about prevention of actions with consequences perceived to be adverse. Preventing a car from being stolen or an airliner from being hijacked.
• Security deals with intentional action. The flu? Workplace injuries? These are safety issues, not security ones. Though, that being said, it continually amazes me how often concepts I learned thinking about security issues apply perfectly to thinking about safety issues. But strictly speaking, security is about things like preventing your home XP box from being from 0wn3d by Joe Hacker, or your car from being stolen by Joe Carjacker, or your country from being attacked by the latest lot of Islamist nutjobs to come out of the Middle East.
• The intentional actions security deals with are those perceived as being unwarranted from the defender's point of view.
• Security issues presuppose an attacker, either actual or potential. It's important to be non-perjorative here. The attacker may be on your side. The attacker may not even have malicious intent.
• The intentional and unwarranted actions being defended against are the attacks.
• The targets of the attack are the assets. For example, the asset you are defending against the Alaskan brown bear trying to pry open your Jeep like a can of salmon is your life.
• Countermeasures are the mechanisms put in place to provide the protection. The lock on your front door is an anti-burglary countermeasure. The watermarks and fancy color changes and metal thread in the new $20 bills (which, BTW, I find much prettier than the old $20 bills) are all anti-counterfeiting countermeasures.

All security involves tradeoffs

If you think about this, it's only common sense, writ large. Security always has a price tag. Sometimes it's money. Sometimes, it's convenience. Sometimes, it's quality time spent learning new ways to do old jobs. Sometimes, the price tag for increasing one form of security is decreasing another form of security.

For example, the reason the old telnet and ftp protocols stink to the very Throne of God is because the entire transaction over the network, including the authentication and credentials passing piece, is done entirely in the clear. Think about that one, Bumpers. All Joe Hacker need do to steal your ID and password, and then impersonate you at login time, is to intercept the traffic with a sniffer and steal your credentials. All it takes to hose you is a laptop with an induction tap or an illicit network cable into the right hub or a wireless card.

One way you mitigate this risk is with a suite called, collectively, Secure Shell. On the client, it replaces telnet with ssh and ftp with scp. On the server, the new daemon is called sshd.

When an Secure Shell connection is requested, the first thing that happens is a client-server negotiation, which takes place entirely under the hood. They negotiate a shared secret key, which is never passed over the wire, and is used to encrypt every subsequent transaction. Only when the encryption is established and running are you asked to authenticate. The encryption protects the credentials with great efficiency. Further sweetening the pot is the fact that every single bit of data sent down the wire, OS commands, file transfers, whatever, is protected by that same encryption .

Cost of the software? Open SSH is freeware, protected by the GPL. There is truly awesome client software for both ssh and scp on generic Windows boxes, PuTTY and PSCP, which may be found here, which is also free. Apparent money cost = $0.

So why, for Pete's sake, is anybody still using telnet or ftp?? I can assure you, both of these will be found in every bank in the land, in continuous use. I can also assure you that on that glorious day when the Federal government legally mandates the retirement of unencrypted telnet and ftp in financial institutions, every security geek who works in one will break into spontaneous and joyful song.

Well, for openers, the money cost really isn't $0. OpenSSH ships with every Linux distro on Planet Earth, pretty much. But it most assuredly does NOT ship with Microsoft's little bundles of joy. So you're going to have to do software installs on every single MS box you've got, unless some nameless, providential, and no doubt underpaid IT geek has already made it part of the standard Windows OS builds.

Further, like every other piece of client-server software out there, OpenSSH grows out security vulnerabilities. So does PuTTY. You now have yet another security worry of a different sort, which will require an appropriate level of vigilance.

And then there's the problem of selling it. Some of your vendors don't support it at their end and don't want to. "We've been using ftp for years and we haven't had any problems". And the bank security geeks at the other end of the table think dark thoughts to themselves that they daren't voice. "Right, lard-ass, you wouldn't know that you'ld been hacked if a Jolly Roger replaced your company logo upon system boot".

Further, you are also going to have staff on your end who are gun shy, afraid to spend the really trivial amount of time it takes to learn to use a different suite of programs to communicate and transfer files.

So something that looks like a security silver bullet may never get fired from IT's revolver.

• It does cost a nonzero amount to implement in shops with MS boxes.
• It imposes security hazards of its own, different in nature but real.
• It can, and probably will, intrude compatibility and political problems into your vendor relationships.
• It will be perceived to impose a scary learning curve by some of your own line troops.

Every single one of these issues is a tradeoff. Is the security benefit proffered by Secure Shell worth what it's going to cost you?

Open Thread

It's Friday night and I'm outa here until tomorrow. This is an open thread, but I'd appreciate hearing from self employed people who have found some decent health insurance. Once the re-fi is concluded, I can buy some. Tell me where to go looking.

What are you doing this weekend? I'm making up lists of things to do and fix before the BF gets here. The list is pretty long. The laundry seems damn near endless. I'm on load three for the day and I live alone and haven't bought any new clothes in years.

Now, off to a little tv after spending most of the day jousting with the damn bank over monthly statements. Wachovia is stuck in the last century. If your bank can't provide you with an e-statement, move. The woman I talked to read her script and couldn't deviate.

PGP will give you pretty good protection but it seems that the business blogosphere is having trouble keeping up with Open Source.

Phwthwthwthwtht.

They Knew

US al-Qaeda warning revealed
From correspondents in Washington
11feb05

EIGHT months before the September 11 attacks the White House's then counterterrorism adviser urged then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to hold a high-level meeting on the al-Qaeda network, according to a memo made public today.

"We urgently need such a principals-level review on the al-Qaeda network," then White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke wrote in the January 25, 2001 memo.

Mr Clarke, who left the White House in 2003, made headlines in the heat of the US presidential campaign last year when he accused the Bush White House of having ignored al-Qaeda's threats before September 11.

Mr Clarke testified before inquiry panels and in a book that Rice, his boss at the time, had been warned of the threat. Rice is now US Secretary of State.

However, Ms Rice wrote in a March 22, 2004 column in The Washington Post that "No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration".

Mr Clarke told a commission looking into intelligence shortcomings prior to the attacks, "There's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options - but all of the things we recommended back in January were those things on the table in September. They were all done, but they were done after September 11."

The document was released by the National Security Archive, an independent US group that solicits government documents for public review.

Another document released by the archive said that from April to September 2001, the US Federal Aviation Administration received 52 intelligence reports on al-Qaeda, including five that mentioned hijackings and two that mentioned suicide operations, according to today's New York Times.

Bush team tried to suppress pre-9/11 report into al-Qa'ida
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

11 February 2005

Federal officials were repeatedly warned in the months before the 11 September 2001 terror attacks that Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida were planning aircraft hijackings and suicide attacks, according to a new report that the Bush administration has been suppressing.

Critics say the new information undermines the government's claim that intelligence about al-Qa'ida's ambitions was "historical" in nature.

The independent commission investigating the attacks on New York and Washington concluded that while officials at the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) did receive warnings, they were "lulled into a false sense of security". As a result, "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/11 did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures".

The report, withheld from the public for months, says the FAA was primarily focused on the likelihood of an incident overseas. However, in spring 2001, it warned US airports that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable".

Kristin Bretweiser, whose husband was killed in the World Trade Centre, said yesterday the newly released details undermined testimony from Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser, who told the commission that information about al-Qa'ida's threats seen by the administration was "historical in nature".

She told The Independent: "There were 52 threats that were mentioned. These were present threats - they were not historical. There were steps that could have been taken. Marshals could have been put on planes that spring. Condoleezza Rice's testimony is undermined." To the consternation of members of the commission who published the original report last year, the administration has been blocking the release of the latest information. An unclassified copy of this additional appendix was passed to the National Archives two weeks ago with large portions blacked out.

They knew. They lied.

That last link is highly controversial but continues to look more and more likely as we learn more. Whether Bushco is incompetent or down right evil, I don't care. I want them impeached and jailed.

Formula for Disaster

Iraq's election was a technical success but insurgency rages and outlook uncertain

By Robert H. Reid, Associated Press, 2/10/2005 13:53

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) With slogans declaring Iraqis to be in control, American officials boarded airplanes last summer and left the country, formally declaring a successful end to the U.S. occupation of this fractured land.

Just three months later, Iraqi highways were killing zones. Cities and towns across the Sunni Arab heartland, including Fallujah, had fallen under the insurgents' sway. And hooded gunmen routinely sliced off the heads of hostages.

Now, the country once again stands at a dangerous turning point.

Iraq pulled off a national election Jan. 30, deemed largely successful despite about 40 deaths in attacks. Millions turned out especially in the Shiite south and Kurdish north to choose their first elected leaders since Saddam Hussein's fall. The vote count isn't over, but Shiites are already the clear winners.

However, it is by no means certain the elections will set the stage for a stable Iraq. Instead, the weeks ahead could repeat the slide into chaos that followed last summer's transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government.

Ominously, violence is once again on the rise just as some of the most experienced U.S. military units prepare to leave. Their replacements, some of them part-time soldiers from the National Guard, will need time to learn the situation on the ground.

''Success is probably going to take a month to determine,'' said Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

''It isn't about who is elected, it's what they do,'' he added.

In particular, there is no sign the elections have cut into the core of the insurgents' support Saddam loyalists, nationalists and religious extremists among the Sunnis of central, northern and western Iraq.

In addition, the low Sunni turnout could sharpen religious and ethnic differences at a time the nation desperately needs unity.

Success can come only if the Shiite leadership wins the trust of the roughly 20 percent Sunni minority. Iraqi Kurds, poised to take a significant share of power, must moderate their own aspirations for that to happen.

''Much will depend upon the deals made among the winners and losers,'' said James Dobbins, a former assistant secretary of state now with the Rand Corp.

Fears of a vacuum as more troops go home
By Richard Beeston
Withdrawls prompt concern among the Iraqi politicians who rely on presence of foreign forces

SEVERAL key members of the US-led coalition in Iraq are making plans to withdraw or substantially reduce their presence in the country now that democratic elections have taken place.

Even before the results are announced, and in spite of the upsurge in violence, thousands of foreign troops are to leave in the coming weeks and months.

Many of the troops are from European countries, where domestic political pressure for them to come home is strong.

Although the move is causing concern among Iraqi leaders in Baghdad, the trickle could turn into a flood at the end of the year by which time Iraq should have in place a constitution, an elected government and improved security forces. By that time the United Nations mandate for foreign forces in Iraq will also expire.

The latest country to complete its mission is Portugal. Yesterday its 127-strong contingent of national guards returned home two days ahead of schedule. Their hasty repatriation was seen as a political move by the centre-right Government in Lisbon. It faces a snap election on February 20 and is trailing in the polls behind the opposition Socialist Party, which was against the deployment from the outset.

If you know these two things, you know everything you need to know about what is going to happen in Iraq.

"SILLY"

Gross criticizes Social Security plan
Manager of biggest bond fund contends individual accounts not the answer, wants deficit reduction.
February 4, 2005: 8:13 AM EST
SPECIAL REPORT

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Bill Gross, manager of the world's largest bond fund, is criticizing President Bush's plan to privatize part of Social Security.

"By reducing budget deficits now, and especially that portion of the deficit owed to foreign governments, we would be able to keep more of our domestic production within our borders and therefore available to senior citizens."

Gross is the Warren Buffet of the bond market and if he thinks the privatization plan is a bad idea, it's probably toast.

Torture Administration

Editorial: Try Khadr, or free him

Omar Khadr is one of 545 people from 40 countries being held as "enemy combatants" by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In that respect, he is nothing special.

But he is the only known Canadian there. Now 18, Khadr was 15 when jailed. He is still there even though 208 detainees, including British, Australian and French citizens, have been freed. He says he has been beaten, threatened with rape and otherwise abused. And the U.S. reportedly has plans to hold some detainees for life, without due process.

All this should galvanize Prime Minister Paul Martin to insist Khadr be tried for his alleged crimes, or set free. The Americans have had time to build a case. And the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled Washington cannot lawfully deny detainees the right to challenge their incarceration.

Khadr is in no position to help Al Qaeda. He was captured during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, when Afghan and U.S. forces attacked an Al Qaeda camp. He allegedly threw a grenade at U.S. Army medic Sgt. Christopher Speer, killing him. Khadr was shot several times. Khadr says he had been "dropped off" at the camp by his father.

Khadr should be brought before a competent U.S., Afghan or international court —not a partisan U.S. military tribunal — where he can plead his case, explain the circumstances and seek clemency if convicted.

To be sure, there is little sympathy in Canada for the Khadr clan.

Omar's Egyptian-born father Ahmed Said Khadr was an Osama bin Laden confidante and suspected financier who shuffled his family around Canada, Pakistan and Afghanistan. A self-described "Al Qaeda family," they nursed hatred for Americans, cheered 9/11, trained their sons in Al Qaeda camps, and urged them to become martyrs.

Ahmed Said Khadr was killed in 2003 by Pakistani security forces. A son, Karim, was hurt in that battle. Another, Abdullah, is missing.

Now Omar's mother, Maha Elsamnah, is begging "every Canadian mother and father to help me get justice for my son and bring him home."

Regardless of how much the Khadr family is despised here, Canada's lawmakers cannot look the other way when a citizen is held in foreign custody for years, under abusive conditions, and denied due process. That makes Ottawa a silent partner in human rights abuse.

It is an absolute scandal that the American people have not risen up and demanded that the government apply the same rights to these people that has traditionally applied to US citizens, because if Bush can do this to them, he can do it to you.

Calling the Shots

Getting the Purple Finger

By Naomi Klein, The Nation. Posted February 11, 2005.

Near-sighted election observers think the Iraqi people have finally sent America those long-awaited flowers and candies, when Iraq's voters just gave them the (purple) finger.

So will the people who got all choked up watching Iraqis flock to the polls support these democratically chosen demands? Please. "You don't set timetables," George W. Bush said four days after Iraqis voted for exactly that. Likewise, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the elections "magnificent" but dismissed a firm timetable out of hand. The UIA's pledges to expand the public sector, keep the oil and drop the debt will likely suffer similar fates. At least if Adel Abd al-Mahdi gets his way – he's Iraq's finance minister and the man suddenly being touted as leader of Iraq's next government.

And that should be enough. Because if it weren't for the invasion, Iraqis would not even have the freedom to vote for their liberation, and then to have that vote completely ignored. And that's the real prize: the freedom to be occupied. Wow – do I stand corrected.

With Blitzer spewing the party line, it's good to be reminded how meaningless this all is.

Too Late

Snubbing Kyoto: Our Monumental Shame
# As the world celebrates the global warming pact's debut, Bush continues to pander to the energy industry.

By Laurie David, Laurie David is a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-founder of the Detroit Project, a not-for-profit campaign that pressures automakers to produce fuel-efficient cars.

The rules that apply to the rest of the world, the administration in effect is saying, need not apply to us. International agreements — whether they involve the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol or the Geneva Convention — should not be allowed to bind the hands of the most powerful nation on Earth. On that point, at least, the U.S. is are consistent.

At a time when international cooperation is more important than ever, it's hard to overstate just how out of step the United States is with the rest of the world. Instead of providing leadership, we are standing in the doorway of the future blocking an eminently reasonable attempt at self-preservation.

Few people bother to deny the problem anymore. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for instance, noted the "emerging consensus" on climate change at the Davos conference last month.

But the U.S. energy industry continues to spend millions on lobbyists and propagandists in an effort to spread doubt and confusion on the subject. The industry, instead of putting money into research and development to come up with the renewable energy technologies desperately needed to secure both our national security and its own economic future, has mounted a relentless campaign to discredit the truth.

Of course, corporate America would not have the power to torpedo common-sense solutions to an imminent threat were it not for the complicity of our elected officials. Take Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. He has been so hypnotized by enormous campaign contributions from the energy industry that he actually had the chutzpah to say that "global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

And what's Michael Crichton's excuse? His latest best-selling novel, "State of Fear," offers up the delusional notion that global warming is the creation of environmental groups looking to boost their profile and fill their coffers. This is like arguing that the link between smoking and cancer was dreamed up by oncologists, radiologists and funeral home directors. Unfortunately, Crichton's sophomoric fiction may be the only thing many Americans read on global warming.

The truth is that the jury is no longer out; there is no more room or time for confusion, doubt or skepticism. Global warming is real and rapidly altering our weather, our economy and our world. The 1990s were the hottest decade in the last 1,000 years, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record occurred after 1994, according to the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization.

The arctic ice sheet has shrunk 20% since 1979. And bears are coming out of hibernation a month early, throwing off their entire life cycles.

The can't-do crowd in our industry and our government continues to claim that anything we do to control emissions will hurt our economy unacceptably. Get real!

The Kyoto Protocol is not the be-all to ending global warming, but it is an important first step. And we are spitting in the eye of the rest of the world by refusing to be part of it.

Too late to save the reef
By Melissa Fyfe
Environment reporter
February 12, 2005

The Great Barrier Reef's coral could disappear in as little as 20 years as sea temperatures rise faster than expected, a world expert on coral and climate change has warned.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Centre for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland, says bleaching will occur and coral will die regardless of what happens in the battle against global warming.

"It is shocking to wake up and realise we really are in a desperate time," he said. "We may see a complete devastation of coral communities on the reef and a major change to the pristine values, which at the moment are our pride and joy.

"We are likely to see corals rapidly disappear from great parts of the Barrier Reef, as it has already from large parts of the Caribbean."

The warning comes as The Age begins a three-part series on the Kyoto Protocol, which becomes international law on Wednesday.

Marine scientists are closely watching the coral, hoping the widespread bleaching of 1998 and 2002 are not repeated. In 1998, 16 per cent of the world's coral died after rising sea temperatures caused mass bleaching on almost every reef.

"We now have less time left," said Professor Hoegh-Guldberg. "Across the globe we should be rallying around as though we are facing a confrontation like a world war."

Coral has a small tolerance for rises in sea temperatures. A rise of one degree means that the tiny algae that live in the coral polyps are expelled, leaving coral white or "bleached". If this happens repeatedly, or for long periods, the coral dies.

Most scientists now agree that greenhouse gases from industry, electricity use and cars have caused the planet to warm 0.6 degrees in the past century. Because the gases can live in the atmosphere for 50 to 200 years, another increase in warming is already locked in, regardless of action on cutting back pollution.

The latest figures from NASA say this warming - if we stopped all emissions as of today - will be an extra 0.6 degrees by 2030, bringing the global average rise to at least 1.2 degrees. Many scientists are discussing how greenhouse gases may be stabilised to halt warming at two degrees above the long-term average. The most pessimistic scenario from the United Nations sees a warming of 5.8 degrees by the century's end.

"There are impacts in the pipeline, due to the inertia of the climate system. In 20 years' time, bleaching is highly likely to be annual and that will cause shallow-water corals to be in decline," said Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, who is leading a $20 million study into coral bleaching mostly funded by the World Bank.
Boats on the Great Barrier Reef moor around a pontoon which has an adjoining five-metre by five-metre shadecloth placed on the surface of the ocean to reduce light which exacerbates heat stress on coral.

"We need to start working out how we can help people who rely on it for their income. It's really quite a stunning fact."

The Road to Serfdom

Bush's Class-War Budget
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 11, 2005

It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. And it offers the Democrats an opportunity, if they're willing to take it.

First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families.

And the budget really does shower largesse on millionaires even as it punishes the needy. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities informs us that even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions - originally put in place under the first President George Bush - that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households.

More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars; 97 percent would go to people with incomes exceeding $200,000.

It so happens that the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income is about the same as the number of people who would have their food stamps cut off under the Bush proposal. But it costs a lot more to give a millionaire a break than to put food on a low-income family's table: eliminating limits on deductions and exemptions would give taxpayers with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of more than $19,000.

It's like that all the way through. On one side, the budget calls for program cuts that are small change compared with the budget deficit, yet will harm hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans. On the other side, it calls for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and for new tax breaks for the affluent in the form of tax-sheltered accounts and more liberal rules for deductions.

The question is whether the relentless mean-spiritedness of this budget finally awakens the public to the true cost of Mr. Bush's tax policy.

Until now, the administration has been able to get away with the pretense that it can offset the revenue loss from tax cuts with benign spending restraint. That's because until now, "restraint" was an abstract concept, not tied to specific actions, making it seem as if spending cuts would hurt only a few special interest groups.

But here we are with the first demonstration of restraint in action, and look what's on the chopping block, selected for big cuts: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health insurance for children and aid to law enforcement. (Yes, Mr. Bush proposes to cut farm subsidies, which are truly wasteful. Let's see how much political capital he spends on that proposal.)

Until now, the administration has also been able to pretend that the budget deficit isn't an important issue so the role of tax cuts in causing that deficit can be ignored. But Mr. Bush has at last conceded that the deficit is indeed a major problem.

Why shouldn't the affluent, who have done so well from Mr. Bush's policies, pay part of the price of dealing with that problem?

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities which Krugman cites has a new report which says the new budget does the following:

* As a group, veterans’ programs would be cut by 16 percent by 2010. These include programs that provide health care to veterans.

* Income security programs would be cut by 11 percent. A wide range of programs are contained within this overall category, such as housing assistance programs, some child care assistance, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

The wealthy, however, seem to be making out nicely.

Picking Up The Cluephone

Poll shows older Americans deserting Bush
11/02/2005 - 07:10:39

The public’s confidence in President George Bush’s job performance and the United States’ direction have slipped in the opening weeks of his second term, particularly among people 50 and older, according to a poll.

Adults were evenly divided on Bush’s job performance in January, but now 54% disapprove and 45% approve, the Associated Press poll says. The number who think the country is headed down the wrong track increased from 51% to 58% in the past month.

But people are slightly more optimistic about the possibility of a stable, democratic Iraq.

The poll, conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs, was taken after the president’s State of the Union address and the elections in Iraq and at the start of a heated debate over creating personal social security accounts.

Older Americans, especially those 65 and above, were most responsible for the declining confidence and approval numbers. Middle-aged people between 30 and 50 were about evenly split on Bush’s job performance.

“It looks like people are reacting to the State of the Union and plans to change social security,” said Charles Franklin, a political scientist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The AP poll did not ask about social security, although only four in 10 in the poll said they approved of Bush’s handling of domestic policy in general. And a majority of people disapproved of his handling of the economy.

The AP-Ipsos consumer confidence index found people were less optimistic about the economy generally, a dip that comes after reports of sluggish job gains and increasing interest rates.

What this tells me is that people are sensative to their own pocketbook issues and that the media are doing a s**tty job telling Americans how awful Iraq is. Watching the execrable Wolf Blitzer every day, as I do (so you don't have to), I can confirm that American media coverage of the disaster in Iraq is rather lacking.

My Country, Right or Wrong

Lawyer Is Guilty of Aiding Terror

By JULIA PRESTON

Published: February 11, 2005

Lynne F. Stewart, an outspoken lawyer known for representing a long list of unpopular defendants, was convicted yesterday by a federal jury in Manhattan of aiding Islamic terrorism by smuggling messages out of jail from a terrorist client.

In a startlingly sweeping verdict, Ms. Stewart was convicted on all five counts of providing material aid to terrorism and of lying to the government when she pledged to obey federal rules that barred her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, from communicating with his followers. Her co-defendants, Ahmed Abdel Sattar and Mohamed Yousry, were also convicted of all the charges against them.

The verdict was a major victory for Justice Department prosecutors in one of the country's most important terror cases since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ms. Stewart's April 2002 indictment was announced in Washington by John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, and the verdict was hailed yesterday by his successor, Alberto R. Gonzales.

The convictions "send a clear, unmistakable message that this department will pursue both those who carry out acts of terrorism and those who assist them with their murderous goals," Mr. Gonzales said.

After a trial that lasted more than seven months, the jurors announced their verdict after 12 days of deliberations that spanned four weeks. In a case watched by lawyers nationwide, the jurors were persuaded that Ms. Stewart had crossed a professional line, from vigorously representing her client to conspiring in his followers' plans to launch violence in Egypt.

In recent days the jurors asked for dozens of government exhibits that went to the question of whether Ms. Stewart intended to help the sheik's terrorist followers. One juror complained to the judge at one point of being harshly treated by another juror.

The jurors returned to the courtroom at 3.17 p.m. yesterday. As the foreman, Juror No. 329, announced their verdict on each count, Ms. Stewart slumped slightly in her chair, and her chief lawyer, Michael E. Tigar, put his hand on her shoulder. She grew pale and rubbed her eyes to stop tears from coming down her face.

There were gasps and sounds of weeping from Ms. Stewart's followers, who filled the wood-paneled courtroom. The daughter of Ms. Stewart's co-defendant Mohamed Yousry, Leslie Yousry Davis, began to sob and covered her face with her hands.

Afterward, Ms. Stewart said she was stunned and vowed to appeal the verdict. She called the trial a government assault on the practice of law.

"I see myself as being a symbol of what people rail against when they say our civil liberties are eroded," she said to a small cluster of her supporters outside the federal district courthouse. "I hope this will be a wake-up call to all the citizens of this country, that you can't lock up the lawyers, you can't tell the lawyers how to do their jobs."

US al-Qaeda warning revealed
From correspondents in Washington
11feb05

EIGHT months before the September 11 attacks the White House's then counterterrorism adviser urged then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to hold a high-level meeting on the al-Qaeda network, according to a memo made public today.

"We urgently need such a principals-level review on the al-Qaeda network," then White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke wrote in the January 25, 2001 memo.

Mr Clarke, who left the White House in 2003, made headlines in the heat of the US presidential campaign last year when he accused the Bush White House of having ignored al-Qaeda's threats before September 11.

Mr Clarke testified before inquiry panels and in a book that Rice, his boss at the time, had been warned of the threat. Rice is now US Secretary of State.

However, Ms Rice wrote in a March 22, 2004 column in The Washington Post that "No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration".

Mr Clarke told a commission looking into intelligence shortcomings prior to the attacks, "There's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options - but all of the things we recommended back in January were those things on the table in September. They were all done, but they were done after September 11."

The document was released by the National Security Archive, an independent US group that solicits government documents for public review.

Another document released by the archive said that from April to September 2001, the US Federal Aviation Administration received 52 intelligence reports on al-Qaeda, including five that mentioned hijackings and two that mentioned suicide operations, according to today's New York Times.

The Times quoted a previously undisclosed report by a commission set up to investigate the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The report criticises the FAA for failing to strengthen security measures in light of the reports and describes as "striking" the false sense of security that appeared to predominate in the civil aviation system before the attacks, the paper said.

So, we prosecute people like Stewart instead of taking care of real threats. Condi Rice lies like a rug, and people die, and that's just fine. There was a time, not all that long ago, when the US was a champion of human rights, instead of one of the torturers. Does this make me cringe? Yes.

The Serf Class

Senate Approves Measure to Curb Big Class Actions

By STEPHEN LABATON

Published: February 11, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 - Handing President Bush a significant victory, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure on Thursday that would sharply limit the ability of people to file class-action lawsuits against companies.

The measure, adopted 72 to 26, now heads to the House of Representatives, where Republican leaders say it will be approved next week and sent to the White House for Mr. Bush's signature.

The measure would prohibit state courts from hearing many kinds of cases they now consider, transferring them to federal courts. Experts say many cases will wind up not being brought because federal judges have been constrained by a series of legal precedents from considering large class actions that involve varying laws of different states.

The legislation also makes it more difficult for class-action lawsuits to be settled by payments of coupons for goods and services instead of cash by the defendants, a practice that has been heavily criticized by Democrats and Republicans.

The measure does not affect pending cases.

Mr. Bush issued a statement praising the vote, his first legislative victory of his second term.

"Our country depends on a fair legal system that protects people who have been harmed without encouraging junk lawsuits that undermine confidence in our courts while hurting our economy, costing jobs and threatening small businesses," the president said. "The class-action bill is a strong step forward in our efforts to reform the litigation system and keep America the best place in the world to do business."

The legislation has long been promoted by large and small businesses, particularly manufacturers and insurance companies, and failed by a single vote in the Senate in 2003. It could have an especially significant effect on cases involving accusations of defective products, like drugs and cars; plaintiffs in such cases have had success in bringing large class actions in state courts. Automakers and drug makers have worked for years with manufacturers and insurers to press Congress to adopt the bill.

The business groups have asserted that the legislation is necessary to curtail frivolous litigation that benefits lawyers more than plaintiffs. They have said it is important to eliminate the unfair practice of lawyers' shopping for state courts that were more favorable to plaintiffs.

Your ass just got screwed. This bill will make the tobacco or asbestos suits impossible. This is a big, wet kiss for the corporations.

Learning Curve

Goodnight, Bump. As Lent started today, you have been much on my mind, your struggles and fears.

Let's journey the next 40 days together and see what we can learn.

New Toys

Toys for those of you who have already made the switch or need a little more inducement to do so:

Yahoo! betas! toolbar! for! Firefox!
By Drew Cullen
Published Thursday 10th February 2005 13:56 GMT

Yahoo! has released a beta toolbar for the Mozilla Firefox browser. You can download the Windows version here. The net giant is to release MacOS and Linux flavours "shortly".

So not exactly earth-shattering, but this a nice pat on the back for Firefox and the Mozilla Foundation, and removes one barrier to switching from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Fear Mongering

Sidney Blumenthal has a few questions.

The threat to Bush
The fear the president invoked to marshal support for the Iraq war is failing him in his war on the New Deal.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Sidney Blumenthal

Feb. 10, 2005 | Fear made George W. Bush's presidency, gave him his "mission" and allowed him to remain in office. Before Sept. 11, 2001, he had drifted to the lowest approval rating ever for a president after just eight months on the job. Throughout the 2004 campaign, Republicans hammered "Sept. 11," "terrorism" and "Saddam Hussein" like an anvil chorus. Bush's victory, carried by the theme of terrorism, was the smallest win of any second-term president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916, but he acts as if it is the moment of deliverance Republicans have awaited for three generations -- the chance to undo the unnatural world that has been built up since Herbert Hoover lost the White House. Bush's transference of fear from the war on terrorism to the war on the New Deal may not be confusing to him because he remains its conductor. Fear fostered his "political capital." Why should it fail him in his attempt to instill social insecurity against Social Security?

The momentum of events abroad and at home has carried him to an unknown place where complication may ambush him at every turn. The consequences of George W. Bush are the greatest threat to George W. Bush.

The issue here is that Karl Rove is a one-trick pony, and not every situation works with his one trick.

A Timely Reminder

US plans $400m reward for allies
US President George W Bush is asking Congress for $400m (£215m) to reward a number of countries that sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.

A White House spokesman said the money would "assist nations which have taken political and economic risks".

"The reason we're having to do this is that we never reached out to those who have the ability and capacity to do this to begin with," he said.

The Beeb got suckered on this one. Joe, all those other nations declined to join our illegal war on Iraq, remember?

Evil Empire

Foes Dig In as Wal-Mart Aims for City
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: February 10, 2005

"Wal-Mart is eager to make New York City its next frontier," said the company's eastern region spokeswoman, but many New Yorkers seem ready to welcome Wal-Mart as enthusiastically as a frontier town welcomes a desperado.

Small businesses, union leaders, City Council members and even some mayoral candidates are gearing up to prevent Wal-Mart from setting foot in town, now that the world's largest retailer has acknowledged it wants to open its first New York City store, planned for Rego Park, Queens, in 2008.

Vornado Realty Trust, the developer whose proposed shopping complex would include a 132,000-square-foot Wal-Mart, has filed a land-use application with the city, and the approval process is expected to take seven months. But Wal-Mart's opponents plan to pressure every government body that will consider the application - the community board, the City Planning Commission and the City Council - to reject it.

The fight seems likely to become the biggest battle against a single store in the city's history, because the labor movement sees Wal-Mart as Public Enemy No. 1 since it is so anti-union, and because many small businesses fear that tens of thousands of Wal-Mart-loving consumers will flock to the store, taking millions of dollars in business with them.

"There will never be a more diverse and comprehensive coalition than this effort against Wal-Mart," said Richard Lipsky, spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, an anti-Wal-Mart coalition in New York. "It will include small-business people, labor people, environmental groups, women's groups, immigrant groups and community groups."

One factor that will make the fight unusually intense is that labor has decided that frustrating Wal-Mart's New York ambitions is pivotal to its new, nationwide campaign to pressure the company to improve the way it pays and treats its workers.

"Wal-Mart has come to represent the lowest common denominator in the treatment of working people," said Brian M. McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, the umbrella group of more than one million union members. "Wal-Mart didn't build its empire on bargains. They built it on the backs of working people here and abroad."

Wal-Mart - which says it is looking at more sites in New York - has faced opposition elsewhere, most notably in Chicago and Inglewood, a Los Angeles suburb. Last May, the Chicago City Council voted to allow a Wal-Mart on the city's West Side, but blocked one proposed for the South Side, while in Inglewood voters rejected a Wal-Mart, 60 percent to 40 percent, in a referendum last April.

Wal-Mart: Union Flap Forces Store's Closing in Canada

By Adam Geller
AP Business Writer
Wednesday, February 9, 2005; 4:54 PM

NEW YORK -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Wednesday it will close a Canadian store whose workers are on the verge of becoming the first ever to win a union contract from the world's biggest retailer.

Wal-Mart said it was shuttering the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, in response to unreasonable demands from union negotiators, that would make it impossible for the store to sustain its business. The United Food & Commercial Workers Canada last week asked Quebec labor officials to appoint a mediator, saying that negotiations had reached an impasse.

"We were hoping it wouldn't come to this," said Andrew Pelletier, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Canada. "Despite nine days of meetings over three months, we've been unable to reach an agreement with the union that in our view will allow the store to operate efficiently and profitably."

Pelletier said the store will close in May. The retailer had first discussed closing the Jonquiere store last October, saying that the store was losing money.
....
The closest a U.S. union has ever come to winning a battle with Wal-Mart was in 2000, at a store in Jacksonville, Texas. In that store, 11 workers -- all members of the store's meatpacking department -- voted to join and be represented by the UFCW.

That effort failed when Wal-Mart eliminated the job of meatcutter companywide, and moved away from in-store meatcutting to stocking only pre-wrapped meat.

Recently, some workers in the tire department of a Wal-Mart store in Colorado have sought union representation, and the National Labor Relations Board has said it intends to schedule a vote.

Wal-Mart spokesman Pelletier said the company was closing in Jonquiere because of unreasonable union demands over scheduling and staffing, and the UFCW's refusal to detail its pay requirements.

PressThink

Fake news, fake reporter
Why was a partisan hack, using an alias and with no journalism background, given repeated access to daily White House press briefings?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Eric Boehlert

The Gannon revelations come on the heels of the discovery that Bush administration officials signed lucrative contracts for several conservative pundits who hyped White House initiatives and did not disclose the government's payments. The Talon News fiasco raises serious questions about who the White House is allowing into its daily press briefings: How can a reporter using a fake name and working for a fake news organization get press credentials from the White House, let alone curry enough favor with the notoriously disciplined Bush administration to get picked by the president in order to ask fake questions? The White House did not return Salon's calls seeking answers to those questions.

Talon's unusual access to the White House has upset journalists at other small outlets who don't enjoy the same privileged connections. "We're a weekly newspaper with a circulation of 22,000 and I'm pretty sure we couldn't get a White House press pass," says Mike Hudson, editor of the Niagara Falls Reporter in Niagara Falls, N.Y. "How does Gannon, which isn't even his real name, get past security?" Hudson wrote to Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., asking her office "to look into how a partisan political organization and an individual with no credentials as a reporter -- and apparently operating under an assumed name -- landed a coveted spot in the White House press corps."

Don't you yet understand? These people don't know or care about the "rules" or what's custom. They are law unto themselves. And none of you journos question that. You all have been working next to Gannon for years and never asked a question. You are lazy, cowed curs.

Up in the Air

U.S. Airlines Under a Tax Cloud

A $1.5-billion airline tax hike in President Bush's proposed budget is supposed to fund tougher security measures to protect passengers, flight crews and those on the ground from terrorists. But it could be a knockout punch for some airlines already reeling from high fuel costs and cutthroat fare wars that make it difficult to raise ticket prices.

The federal government was obligated to dramatically strengthen national security in the wake of 9/11, and airlines should pay a fair share. But air carriers were already hit disproportionately hard by the Sept. 11 attacks, and they're in no position now to foot an even larger bill.

Domestic airlines lost more than $9 billion last year and have lost a cumulative $30 billion since the terrorist attacks. Immediately after 9/11, Washington offered cash infusions, federally backed loan guarantees and insurance assistance to keep the troubled industry flying.

Despite that federal largess, two of the industry's largest competitors are in bankruptcy court and a third is teetering on the edge.

The same fare wars that delight passengers keep the industry from boosting ticket prices to cover rising costs. Airlines have laid off 125,000 employees. If they can't increase revenue, they'll be forced to cut costs by laying off more employees and dropping more destinations. Even the nation's healthiest airlines are ill equipped to deal with another tax increase.

Market forces are likely to shutter some of the weakest airlines, and that's all to the good because more-efficient carriers will take their place. The government shouldn't disrupt that process with more bailouts, but it also shouldn't push airlines prematurely over the brink by increasing taxes they can't afford to pay.

The marketplace should decide which airlines keep flying.

Oh? The "marketplace" hasn't had much to do with any of the domestic carriers for years. Subsidies have kept USAir, United and Delta in the air for years.

Only Make-Believe

Asterisk Aside, First National Vote for Saudis
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Published: February 10, 2005

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 9 - It is not exactly a democratic revolution - the election is for only half the members of municipal councils and women may not vote. Still, Saudi Arabia embarks on its first nationwide elections on Thursday and the exercise may end up being more than symbolic.

Until now, the country's authoritarian founding dynasty, the al-Sauds, have rejected even the notion of sharing power, imprisoning and lashing those who dare carry out virtually any public protest.

So the entry of elected public figures into the government even at an extremely low level introduces an unpredictable element into the equation of how this desert kingdom is ruled.

"Despite its drawbacks," said Abdel Aziz al-Qasim, a political activist and former judge, "this is the first time that people can really participate in public life outside the mosques."

One change that is already tangible is the sheer exuberance of the newly minted candidates, who in a uniquely Saudi manner transformed this often dreary capital with its ban on bars, movie theaters or dance clubs.

With almost 100 men running for each of the seven available seats, the candidates resembled carnival barkers in their often outlandish attempts to draw potential voters into their election tents.

They slaughtered countless camels and sheep to feed the voters.

They offered all manner of religious clergy giving advice on everything from why Islam condones democracy to how to take a second wife without actually living with her.

They lighted bonfires and bounced powerful spotlights off tall city buildings.

One of the country's most prominent bankers even packed his hall by giving free lectures on the route to successful investing in the booming stock market.

"You can call this Democracy 101, but we are hoping it will lead to Democracy 106," said Ibrahim al-Nassar, a voter who was sitting underneath a gilded chandelier in a packed wedding hall, just before a poet took to the stage to sing the praises of both the nation and one particularly rich candidate.

Until the campaign season started about 12 days ago, in fact, Saudi voters - all males over 21 outside the military - appeared largely uninterested. Of the nearly 600,000 eligible in the capital region out of a population of over four million, a mere 149,000 bothered to register.

Democracy 101 my a**. Even the Saudis aren't buying that can of whoosh. The "municipal councils" won't have any authority or any money. This is paste-up job, a poster, play-acting in the direction of democracy. Give me a break.

Imagination Control

Encouraging Nuclear Proliferation

Published: February 10, 2005

There are many things the United States military badly needs these days, like better armored vehicles for combat zones like Iraq and more unpiloted aircraft for reconnaissance and bombing. One thing it has no pressing use for is a new line of nuclear warheads being designed at America's three nuclear weapons laboratories to replace the roughly 10,000 still on hand from the overbuilding frenzies of the cold war. This is essentially a make-work project for weapons designers that risks triggering a new worldwide nuclear arms race. America's nuclear creativity should be focused on convincing nations like Iran and North Korea that nuclear weapons will not enhance their own security, not on setting a perverse contrary example.

Nuclear weapons are extremely ill suited for most conceivable battlefield situations. They are unique in their power to destroy innocent civilian lives, and there are almost always cleaner, more efficient ways to destroy purely military targets. Since the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost 60 years ago, they have never again been used in combat.

The American arsenal no longer serves its cold war purpose of deterrence. This is an era of conventional combat against lesser military powers, of counterinsurgency operations and global military campaigns against terrorism. American technological supremacy now finds its most effective military expressions in "smart" conventional weapons, like laser-guided bombs and pilotless aircraft and the powerful new satellite reconnaissance and computer communications networks.

Back home, however, Pentagon planners and nuclear scientists keep trying to think up new uses for nuclear arms, from miniaturized battlefield weapons to large bombs designed to pulverize underground unconventional weapons labs - provided, of course, that the targeters know where such labs are. The other main argument put forward for designing new nuclear weapons concerns reliability. With nuclear testing indefinitely suspended, some weapons scientists argue that some of the bombs in America's vast but aging stockpile may not detonate properly if they are ever used.

It is beyond time to put this in our ancient past. It is only our imaginations which which will keep us from getting beyond the nightmare.

Hard Words

Like nearly everything Samantha Power has written, this aches for justice like flesh torn open, like a bloody wound. I don't know how to bring that justice other than to reprint her words here.

Court of First Resort
By SAMANTHA POWER

Published: February 10, 2005

Cambridge, Mass.

TEN years ago, I asked Bosnian civilians under siege in Sarajevo where they would go if they could escape. Most chose one of the sand or pebble beaches along the Adriatic. Last summer, when I traveled through the Sudanese province of Darfur, I asked the same question of Sudanese who'd seen their homes torched, their cattle stolen and their children butchered. The surprisingly common answer, whether from refugees wandering the Sahara, or from farmers who had never had electricity or running water, was this: "The Hague." They had heard there was an international court there, and they wanted to go testify.

I didn't have the heart to tell them that their attackers couldn't be tried at the International Criminal Court because Sudan was not a party to it and because the United States, even though it was Khartoum's fiercest critic, was likely to block an investigation by the court.

In late January, a United Nations commission issued its findings on Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed. Much has been made about the commission's refusal to describe the atrocities by government-backed militias as genocide. But more striking was the commission's authoritative documentation of some of the worst horrors of the last half-century: violations "without any military justification" that "no doubt constitute large-scale war crimes." In addition, the team delivered a sealed list with the names of 51 Sudanese suspected of war crimes and recommended just what the Darfurians had been urging all along: investigation and prosecution in The Hague.

The Bush administration has been more forthright than any of the United Nations' 191 member states in denouncing the atrocities in Sudan - a fact that should shame European nations that pride themselves on their human rights pedigrees. The United States was the first to characterize the violence as genocide and the first, way back in June, to name potential perpetrators and call for punishment. It has also dismissed offers by the Sudanese government to conduct the trials at home, rightly recognizing that Khartoum is unlikely to prosecute crimes that it has ordered and committed.

But the Bush administration can't decide what it dislikes more: genocide or the International Criminal Court, which aims to punish it. Administration officials have missed no opportunity to undermine the court. During President Bush's first term, the United States suspended military aid to more than 20 countries that refused to shield Americans from potential prosecution, including Mali (a fledging democracy), Ecuador (a partner in drug interdiction efforts), and Croatia (a fragile government trying to stem a nationalist tide).

In one of its most astounding moves, the administration teamed up with Republican lawmakers in August 2002 to pass a law that includes a measure known colloquially as the "Hague invasion clause," which authorizes American troops to use "all means necessary and appropriate" to liberate American servicemen should they ever be imprisoned. That's not exactly the kind of diplomacy that will, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised on the eve of her trip to Europe, join the United States and its allies "around a common agenda for the next several years, one that is firmly rooted in our values, our shared values."

Since coming into force in July 2002, has the court done anything to justify the administration's fears that Americans will be hauled before an "unaccountable" tribunal? For example, has its chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, begun investigating the torture and murder carried out by American soldiers and contractors in Iraq or Guantánamo Bay? No. Mr. Moreno Ocampo has explained that these crimes don't fall within his jurisdiction.

Instead, working with Christine Chung, formerly a top federal prosecutor in New York, Mr. Moreno Ocampo has been busy building complex cases against militia leaders in Congo and against the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, which the State Department has branded a terrorist group. Mr. Moreno Ocampo took up these cases not on his own initiative, but because Congo and Uganda asked him to. And now, although Mr. Moreno Ocampo has the funds and the personnel to investigate the horrors in Darfur, he cannot act unless the United Nations Security Council tells him to.

Hard words to hear. Justice carries a heavy burden.

Humiliation Patrol

Detainees Accuse Female Interrogators
Pentagon Inquiry Is Said to Confirm Muslims' Accounts of Sexual Tactics at Guantanamo

By Carol D. Leonnig and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 10, 2005; Page A01

Female interrogators repeatedly used sexually suggestive tactics to try to humiliate and pry information from devout Muslim men held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a military investigation not yet public and newly declassified accounts from detainees.

The prisoners have told their lawyers, who compiled the accounts, that female interrogators regularly violated Muslim taboos about sex and contact with women. The women rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes in front of them, made sexually explicit remarks and touched them provocatively, at least eight detainees said in documents or through their attorneys.

A wide-ranging Pentagon investigation, which has not yet been released, generally confirms the detainees' allegations, according to a senior Defense Department official familiar with the report. While isolated accounts of such tactics have emerged in recent weeks, the new allegations and the findings of the Pentagon investigation indicate that sexually oriented tactics may have been part of the fabric of Guantanamo interrogations, especially in 2003.

The inquiry uncovered numerous instances in which female interrogators, using dye, pretended to spread menstrual blood on Muslim men, the official said. Separately, in court papers and public statements, three detainees say that women smeared them with blood.

The military investigation of U.S. detention and interrogation practices worldwide, led by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III, confirmed one case in which an Army interrogator took off her uniform top and paraded around in a tight T-shirt to make a Guantanamo detainee uncomfortable, and other cases in which interrogators touched the detainees suggestively, the senior Pentagon official said.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report has not yet been made public, said the fake blood was used on Muslim men before they intended to pray, because some Muslims believe that "if a woman touches him prior to prayer, then he's dirty and can't pray." Muslim men also believe that contact with women other than their wives diminishes religious purity.

It will anger some people to learn this, but we are not the nation of "morning on the planet earth." We are capable of willfull evil, have done it before and will do it again unless the people scream their outrage. I see us in denial at the moment.

Changin Tactics

Iraq Suffers Bloody Day of Assassinations
Three U.S. Soldiers Killed in Northern and Central Iraq

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 9, 2005; 3:45 PM

Gunmen in Iraq carried out a series of assassinations in different parts of the country today, killing an Iraqi journalist who worked for a U.S.-funded Arabic television network, a senior Housing Ministry official and three Kurdish political party members.

In addition, a senior Interior Ministry official was abducted from his car in Baghdad, and the U.S. military disclosed the deaths of three soldiers in northern and central Iraq.

The latest violence came as Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission announced that final results from the landmark Jan. 30 elections would be delayed because officials need to recount the votes from about 300 ballot boxes. The final results were scheduled to be made public Thursday. It was not immediately clear when the recount would be completed and the final tally announced.

In the southern city of Basra, gunmen killed Abdul Hussein Khazal, a journalist for the Virginia-based al-Hurra satellite television network, and his 3-year-old son as they were leaving their home, officials said. The network was launched in February 2004 to compete with other Arabic-language news networks such as the Dubai-headquartered al-Arabiya and the Qatar-based al-Jazeera -- outlets that some U.S. officials have criticized as purveyors of anti-American propaganda.

Khazal, 40, was politically active, working for the Shiite Muslim Dawa Party and serving as head of the press office at the Basra City Council, the Associated Press reported. He also was the editor of a local Basra newspaper.

In Baghdad, a director in the Ministry of Housing was assassinated by gunmen who attacked his car, Reuters news agency reported.

Earlier assailants killed three members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in an ambush in the capital's Haifa Street neighborhood, a stronghold of insurgents fighting the interim government and U.S. forces in Iraq, the agency reported. Radical Sunni Muslim rebels also have targeted members of the country's Shiite Muslim majority, ethnic Kurds, Iraqi Christians and foreigners in general.

Anyone who becomes politically active, accepts a government appointment or runs for office is a target. The country will be ungovernable. Two of Sistani's aides were assassinated yesterday. You better believe he won't be calling for the troops to stay.

Mark Your Calendar

Is It a Backdoor Draft?

NOW t r u t h o u t | Programming Note

As war rages on, the U.S. Army is desperately short of troops to fight in Iraq. But are the Pentagon's policies to keep up troop levels going too far? On Friday, February 11, 2005 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), NOW examines how the Pentagon has been forced to resort to what critics call a backdoor draft to deal with the severe troop shortage. The report looks at the debate over these hard-line tactics, including extending tours of duty and reactivating semi-retired soldiers, evaluates their effects on families and asks if America is willing to make the sacrifices needed to be the world's policeman. As part of the broadcast, NOW looks at the efforts in one beleaguered town south of Baghdad to shift from U.S. troops to newly trained Iraqi troops.

I haven't seen David Brancaccio on the new format yet. This goes into the calendar for Friday night. Does anyone know how long it takes them to get their tanscripts up?

Trouble in Redmond

Here's the update to the Microsoft story Charles posted last night:

Microsoft posts record 13 patches
By John Leyden
Published Wednesday 9th February 2005 12:29 GMT

Microsoft yesterday released 13 security bulletins - nine "critical" - in its biggest monthly patch yet. Twelve patches fix multiple components in Windows and Windows-based applications and one updates an October 2004 alert to protect Exchange 2000 users against possible attack.

Microsoft advises users to visit Windows Update and Office Update to receive the updates that apply to their systems. Virtually all Windows users, including those who are using Win XP SP2, are going to need to do some patching. MSN Messenger 6.1 and 6.2 users will be automatically notified to upgrade when they sign in for the service.

If you are using any of the affected software, download those patches immediately. If you are using MSN Messenger, you need to know that Yahoo IM has already solved its security problems in its most recent build. Most of the techs I know consider Win 2k Pro the most stable OS and I'd leave XP behind completely if I were you. The hackers and cracker will just move on to the next set of vulnerabilities in XP. It's really a hopeless OS.

Structural Flaws

Important Job, Impossible Position
By RICHARD A. POSNER

Published: February 9, 2005

Chicago

ROBERT M. GATES, a highly regarded former head of the C.I.A., announced last week that he would not leave his job as president of Texas A&M; University to become the first director of national intelligence. This is evidence that the Bush administration may be having trouble finding a qualified candidate who is willing to take the job. It is now close to two months since President Bush signed the law that created the position - almost as long as it took Congress to pass it.

The delay may be attributable to a fundamental structural defect in the law, a consequence of the haste with which it was passed. The publication last July of the report of the 9/11 commission started a political stampede. Within days both presidential candidates had endorsed most of the commission's recommendations; within weeks there were bills in Congress; within months the president had signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The core of the new act, which reflects the commission's principal recommendation, is the creation of the post of director of national intelligence; the director would be the presiding deity of the nation's intelligence system.

The beguiling premise of the commission's report was that the 9/11 attacks occurred because there wasn't enough sharing of intelligence data among America's 15 or so federal intelligence agencies. The report's reassuring conclusion is that we can solve the problem by centralizing the control of the intelligence system. The premise is doubtful; only in hindsight do the scattered clues gathered in the summer of 2001 point to the attacks that took place.

This is a deeply dishonest op-ed, a tactic Posner has never shied away from. The extremely flawed 9/11 Commission Report never named any names, but the completely ineffective Condi Rice's name should be featured prominently. Remember that Presidential Daily Brief from August 6, 2001? "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Within the United States?" Remember Richard Clarke's "hair on fire?" We don't need an intel czar, we need people in the executive branch who are capable of listening to competent people.

Orin Hatch, Attack Dog

The "Nuclear Option"

By Ralph G. Neas, AlterNet. Posted February 9, 2005.

The right's all-out attack on the filibuster could pave the way for extremist nominees to the Supreme Court.

With the self-sanctimony that only the short of memory can so blithely muster, Hatch argues in the National Review that "[u]nprecedented, unfair, and partisan [Democratic] filibusters ... constitute a political crisis." The truth is that on the issue of blocking nominations, the Senate Republicans' history (and Hatch's own) has been one of obstruction, hypocrisy and lack of responsibility. As conservative columnist George Will recently noted, "Actually, some Republican senators' hearts are about as pure as the driven slush after the treatment they dished out to some of President Clinton's judicial nominees."

Blaming former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle for the judicial stalemate, Hatch ignores the role that Republicans have played in creating the current contentiousness over court appointments. He has declared himself the defender of fairness, bipartisanship and precedent, but he has flip-flopped on the issue of filibusters – defending their use when he was in the minority and leading the campaign to restrict them when in the majority. Hatch's hypocrisy extends far beyond rhetoric. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee he engineered a number of power plays that demonstrate his willingness to change the rules, abandon precedent and prior agreements – essentially to ignore the rule of law – in order to secure unimpeded passage of his agenda.

The Daily Astorian (OR), EDITORIAL (November 17, 2003)

Filibuster Holds; Constitution Lives
Founders enshrined minority rights and resistance to the mob in the Senate.

When the Senate leadership on Friday failed to gain the 60 votes necessary to cut off a filibuster, a White House spokesman castigated a "partisan minority" of senators. Welcome to American history.

The founders of our nation created a decidedly conservative mechanism. Minority rights are enshrined in the Senate. The founders did that as a counterweight to a willful executive and to the power of the mob, which could make itself felt in the House of Representatives.

In George W. Bush we have a willful executive. He seeks no consensus on judicial nominations. He uses them to reward the religious right wing that put him into office.

Senators were not intended to be rubber stamps for the president. Anyone in the Senate or outside the Senate who doesn't understand that is missing the essence of our nation and our government.

That second link is to a set of resources compiled by Earthjustice, the folks who exist because "the earth needs a good lawyer." They are one hell of an outfit, real effective and my former colleague Big Tino has gone to work for them. I know that they are trying to get this story out. A Supreme Court packed with radical conservatives would be a disaster on any number of levels, but their concern is for the environment. Think about it: the radical corporatist agenda for rape of the environment would be difficult to impossible to undo at a later date.

Death of the Small Town

Here is what the fly-over country Red Staters have reaped as the GOP has taken over all of their local politics and sold their states to the corporate interests. This story is common, by the way.

Keeping Iowa's Young Folks at Home After They've Seen Minnesota
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Published: February 9, 2005

These days, all the entry-level jobs in agriculture - the state's biggest industry - happen to be down at the local slaughterhouse, and most of those jobs were filled by the governor's incentive, a few years ago, to bring 100,000 immigrant workers into the state.

Business leaders all across Iowa have been racking their brains to think of ways to spur economic development. But nearly every idea leaves industrial agriculture intact. That means a few families living amid vast tracts of genetically modified soybeans and corn, with here and there a hog confinement site or a cattle feedlot to break the monotony.

People love to blame the death of America's small towns on the coming of Wal-Mart, but in Iowa, Wal-Mart is just a parasite preying on the remains of a way of life that ended years ago. Every farming crisis - they seem to come at least once a decade - has shaken a few more farmers out of the business, consolidating land holdings and decreasing the rural population that actually depends on small towns to do business in. The complex connection between town and country that characterized the state when I lived there has long since been broken.

There is not enough life in the small towns of Iowa to keep a young person, and there is no opportunity on the land. The state faces an excruciating paradox. It can foster economic development of a kind that devours farmland - the sort of thing that is happening around Des Moines. Or it can try to reimagine the nature of farming, with certain opposition from farmers themselves and without any help from the federal government, which has fostered industrial agriculture for decades.

I used to joke that Iowa's two leading crops were rural poverty and crystal meth. But it's not a joke. The fact is that Iowa is a beautiful state. Minneapolis isn't that far away. Iowa would be a great place to live, if only the air and the water weren't polluted and you could be sure you wouldn't find yourself living next to 10,000 sows in a hog prison. There was a time, well within my dad's memory, when Iowa's agriculture was diversified and when the towns were rich in a culture of their own devising.

I grew up in the latter days of such a town, and I find it hard to imagine a better place to have been a kid.

My family moved away from Iowa in 1966, for reasons that had to do with my mother's health and not with economics or even the decline in pheasant hunting. I'd like to say I stared out the rear window as we pulled out of town, watching the state of my boyhood recede, but I didn't. We were going to California, which trumps Minneapolis. I was lucky to leave before I knew I would need to.

I was back in my hometown for a family funeral a couple of winters ago. It's in rural northern Minnesota. The story is the same there: no jobs and the young people head for the Twin Cities or the coasts. It's not just the small farm lifestyle that's going the way of the blacksmith, it is small town life in general.

My hometown is on the Mesabi Iron Range, where the taconite industry died decades back.

Flunking Arithmetic

Former public radio colleague turned newspaper editorLex Alexander uses his newsman's nose to summarize Bush's budget:

At what point can we agree that not just that the numbers in a budget don't add up but that they so don't add up that the people who put the budget together must be either lunatics or criminals?

And, as a citizen of a self-governing country, what, if anything, do you intend to do about it?

Lex is a Republican, by the way.

Save the Bay

Bush Request to Fund Nuclear Study Revives Debate
Administration Wants to Research 'Bunker Buster,' but Critics Seek to Reassess U.S. Readiness

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 9, 2005; Page A09

The Bush administration is seeking $8.5 million to resume a study by the Energy and Defense departments on the feasibility of a nuclear "bunker buster" warhead, but the proposal is generating opposition in Congress and some leaders are pushing for a broader review of the nation's multibillion-dollar nuclear weapons programs.

Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that handles the $6 billion-plus annual budget of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, says he wants to raise fundamental questions this year about the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile and why so many weapons remain on high levels of alert.

"Why are we still preparing to fight the last war?" Hobson asked in a speech last week to the Arms Control Association. "The time has come for a thoughtful and open debate on the role of nuclear weapons in our country's national security strategy."

The Ohio Republican, backed by a bipartisan group of House members, last year killed the nuclear bunker-buster study, a version of which was revived in the budget presented to Congress on Monday after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld urged last month that the project be revived as a means to attack hardened deep-underground targets.

No Chesapeake Bailout In President's Budget
Programs Cut, $1 Billion Request Denied

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 9, 2005; Page A08

For the past year, politicians and environmentalists in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have looked to the Bush administration as an unlikely white knight.

Specifically, they hoped the federal government would contribute as much as $1 billion to jump-start the bay restoration program, a creaking, 22-year-old bureaucracy that environmentalists say has made only slow progress.

Va. Gov. Mark R. Warner called funding for the bay "a disappointment."

On Monday, they got their answer, with the release of the president's proposed 2006 budget.

The budget, which included belt-tightening across the government, contained no billion-dollar windfall for the Chesapeake and, in fact, cut some bay-related programs. It left many around the bay with hopes dashed -- or at least delayed.

"It's a disappointment," Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) said in a telephone interview yesterday. "This is a national treasure. It's one that needs a strong federal partnership."

The idea of a federal bailout for the Chesapeake Bay had picked up steam this year as local officials and environmentalists became increasingly disenchanted with the partnership running the cleanup efforts. Founded in the early 1980s, it includes Maryland, Virginia, the District, Pennsylvania and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Bay is a disaster and none of the local entities has the resources to do much about it. Billions for un-needed nukes, but nothing for the local watershed. It figures.

Oh, Canada

Outpost in Ottawa

The National Post in Canada yesterday listed prominent U.S. neighbors as likeliest successors to outgoing Ambassador Paul Cellucci in Ottawa. Marc F. Racicot, former Montana governor, and more recently chair of the 2004 Bush campaign, was in the mix, as was former House member George R. Nethercutt (R-Wash.), who lost his bid for the Senate in November.

Another top candidate was said to be former Michigan senator and more recently secretary of energy Spencer Abraham. Abraham, often asked to visit America's largest supplier of energy, generally demurred, preferring important conferences in Europe and Walt Disney World. But, when he finally made it up there, we're told, he found the ambassadorial digs exquisitely comfy.

Canadians, I have no idea if any of these individuals would be less offensive than Cellucci, whom I can only describe as terminally clueless, but at least they are probably aware that Canada exists as a whole separate country.

Oh, and by the way, your embassy here in the capital city is regarded as one of the most beautiful. I have no idea how comfy the ambassador's residence is, but I've played for some parties at the embassy and it is a space you can be proud of. Yes, I was on the embassy circuit for a while before I found honest work.

"Marge, hide the brie and the shrimp, here come the musicians."

Raising Hell

Congressman James Moran
2239 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515-4608
email:

Phone: (202) 225-4376
Fax: (202) 225-0017

Dear Congressman James Moran:

From watching the proceedings on CNN and C-Span, and accounts on The Washington Post website, I understand that our president is touring the country to sell his new version of Social Security demolition to hand-picked audiences vetted by the local Republican parties. It appears that there are lists of who can and who cannot attend these events.

Perhaps I am being presumptuous, but it seems to me that when I'm paying for these events, I ought to be able to attend them, whether I agree with the president or not.

Are congressional Democrats going to continue to allow Mr. Bush to travel and govern in his pre-approved bubble on the backs of the taxpayers? If none of you will raise a stink about this, I don't know who will. I'm copying your Minority Leader on this letter.

your constituent,

Melanie

cc: Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi
Washington, D.C. Office - 2371 Rayburn HOB - Washington, DC 20515 - (202) 225-4965
email: [email protected]

Sea of Red Ink

New White House Estimate Lifts Drug Benefit Cost to $720 Billion
By ROBERT PEAR

Published: February 9, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - The Bush administration offered a new estimate of the cost of the Medicare drug benefit on Tuesday, saying it would cost $720 billion in the next 10 years.

That is much more than the $400 billion Congress assumed when it passed legislation creating the benefit in late 2003.

Medicare Drug Benefit May Cost $1.2 Trillion
Estimate Dwarfs Bush's Original Price Tag

By Ceci Connolly and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 9, 2005; Page A01

The White House released budget figures yesterday indicating that the new Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost more than $1.2 trillion in the coming decade, a much higher price tag than President Bush suggested when he narrowly won passage of the law in late 2003.

The projections represent the most complete picture to date of how much the program will cost after it begins next year. The expense of the new drug benefit has been a source of much controversy since the day Congress approved it, with Democrats and some Republicans complaining that the White House has consistently low-balled the expected cost to the government.

Golly, and we haven't even gotten anywhere near the earmarked pork part of the budget process yet.

Deficits as far as the eye can see until the foreign central banks decide not to fund them.

Mickysoft

OK, folks. Ordinarily, I do not make a thing of Microsoft bashing. But today, I am pissed off, for cause. Why, you ask? Well, I got this little number in my Inbox at work today, that's why.

From: Symantec Alert [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 10:53 AM To: Roten, Charles D. Subject: DeepSight Increased ThreatCon from 1 to 2 Alert

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Name: Increased ThreatCon from 1 to 2
Location:

Summary: The ThreatCon is being elevated to Level 2 in response to the
release of several Microsoft Security Bulletins disclosing a
number of critical vulnerabilities in various Microsoft
applications.

View public key at:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFCCQqJUuGvlu3xvN4RAlpDAJ9bZYcKH5kb4VxdDa+PkTsy0UEusACfYL/Q
vEUT2xLgNwnaGnRG1TpxeWk=XzUU
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

This alert was triggered by the monitor: ThreatCon Monitor
This delivery method is named: Default Email Device

Symantec Corporation
The World Leader in Internet Security Technology and Early Warning
Solutions
Visit our website at www.symantec.com

_______________________________
Symantec Deepsight Alert Services

Powered by EnvoyWorldWide, Inc.

And in addition, Microsoft vulnerability email alerts from Bugtraq, the Focus MS mailing list, Secunia, and the for-pay vulnerabilities list we subscribe to were all over my Inbox like a poison ivy rash.

I guess it's too much to ask to expect these morons to develop decent coding standards and stick to them. Or to make "Trustworthy Computing" something more than the industry joke and utterly transparent empty marketing ploy we all know it to be.

And I guess I should meditate on the fact that the vast and terrible idiocy emnating from the Fortress Of Stupidity across Lake Washington in Redmond represents job security for infosec geeks like me.

But here I'm getting spun up and my boss is getting spun up and his boss is getting spun up, and every bloody security geek in the bank is getting spun up. Because, yeah, there is exploit code out there in the wild for some of the vulnerabilities that were all over the mailing lists today, just waiting to be built into the next Great Killer Worm From Hell to make the six o'clock news.

My bank is, almost entirely, at the worker bee level, a Microsoft shop.

So we have to get the bank ready for Universal Armageddon, instead of busting idiots who keep porn on their work machines! Let me tell, you, the second of those jobs is one hell of a lot less stressful than the first.

All you have to worry about with the porn addict is documentation of your use of forensics tools on an image of his hard drive to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the porn is there, then hand off to his manager. Case closed.

But right now, we are wondering if we should wait until the officially blessed time to patch, or push patches out on an emergency basis for some of this crap, with millions upon millions of dollars riding upon the accuracy of our judgement call. And no, we have no idea what the right one is. Patching can break apps. You are stupid not to test before you patch, given any time at all, if you're patching 50 thousand freaking boxes at a go. But we have no real idea of how much time those little hacker sociopaths are going to give us, either. The generic answer, of course, is "not much". Yeah, that sort of thing is why most infosec geeks smoke like chimneys.

Let me tell you a secret. If orders were to come down from On High that the use of Mozilla or Firefox was now mandated for connection attempts from the bank's trusted network to all non-bank websites, I think my boss would have an orgasm on the spot. And do you have any real idea of exactly how much money the bank would save if Linux became our official worker bee desktop? Millions, people, millions! Just in licenses for A/V software alone. We have more than 50,000 seats of Windows boxes.

When was the last time you heard of a Linux virus that was more than a laboratory toy? Never, that's when! My God, the "Bliss" virus was back in 1997, and it would disinfect itself if asked to.

I really do wonder how much coding work MS subcontracts to the Mumbai Mercenary Brigade. Quite a bit, I suspect. And if you ask one of that lot if he codes for bounds checking of input variables, he'll just blink at you. He knows less about bounds checking than CBS News knows about fact checking, and cares less still.

You know something, people? If I figured the decision was survivable for my job (as I know curst well it's not), WXP would be off my laptop's hard drive like a shot. SuSE, anyone?

The Unementionables

God,

Today was really hard so I hope you'll cut me a little slack in the redemption department. It took me hours to get the computer working again, and that seems to be the place where you and I connect, so I wonder what you were telling me here? Or was it the gremlins at Microsoft? I couldn't fix it without help and I assume you want me to learn something from that. Tell me if I'm wrong.

The little cat is going to be okay. Thanks for answering that prayer. But I notice that you haven't come up with a plan for me yet, I'm still hanging out on the internet, writing my guts out and waiting for income. God, would you hear that prayer? What's to become of me? I assume that you don't abandon those street ladies carrying all of their possessions in a shopping cart, but I'm in no rush to join them. But where are we, the street ladies and me? Where is your call to us? Where is our purpose?

Eddie filleted my left palm in really fine fashion trying to get him into the carrier today. I'm using instant bandage until I can find some insurance again. It needs stitches. And I have no insurance, God. Which prayer will you answer, God?

Biological Warfare in 1942

Yes, Bumpers, you read that right.

It's beginning to look increasingly probable that just exactly that took place.

In his 1999 autobiography, Biohazard, Ken Alibek asserted that the Soviet Union had used tularemia as an actual fielded biological weapon, against the Wehrmacht in 1942, in the runup to the Battle of Stalingrad. This is a very controversial assertion. Croddy and Krcalova attacked it sharply, in this editorial, which ran in the journal "Military Medicine" in October of 2001.

Now personally, I have tended to credit Alibek's assertion, on the basis of access to sources. Before his 1992 defection, he was in a position to examine documents and speak to persons nobody on this board will ever have access to. In fact, just a year before he flew the coop, he was the number two man in the entire Soviet offensive biological warfare effort. He was a colonel in the Red Army, as well as a bioweaponeer with a decade and a half of active service behind him. 38,000 Biopreparat employees worked for him.

Well, three days ago, this story broke. In, of all places, the electronic edition of Pravda.

Soviet Army used 'rat weapon' during WWII

02/05/2005 15:14

Rats spread the disease in German troops very quickly. The effect was astonishing

Tulameria, or rabbit fever is reputed to be a record-breaking infection. Humans will most likely conquer the disease in the near future: scientists have recently decoded the genome of Francisella tularensis microbe. Only ten of these bacteria are enough to cause an extremely dangerous disease. Western specialists believe that the microbe can be used as a very effective biological weapon, for it possesses an inhalational capacity.

The microbe was discovered in 1911 during an outburst of rabbit fever, when the disease killed a large number ground squirrels in the area of Tulare Lake in California. The lake gave the name to the disease - tularemia. Scientists determined that tularemia could be dangerous to humans: a human being may catch the infection after contacting an infected animal. The ailment soon became frequent with hunters, cooks and agricultural workers. Pathogenic organisms penetrate into a body through damaged skin and mucous membranes.

The disease has a very fast and acute beginning. A patient suffers from headache, fatigue, dizziness, muscle pains, loss of appetite and nausea. Face and eyes redden and become inflamed. Inflammation proceeds to lymphadenitis, fever and gland suppuration, which eventually develops life-threatening complications.

An epidemic of tularemia broke out in the spring of 2000 in Kosovo. About 650 people fell ill with rabbit fever by the beginning of May. Kosovo's water pipelines were destroyed with the bombing - the region was suffering from the shortage of fresh water, and it was impossible to stop the epidemic.

As it turned out later, tularemia was a respiratory-transmissible disease. An American man caught the infection in 2000, when his lawn-mower ran into an infected rabbit.

The problem became a lot more important for the USA in 2001, when tularemia obtained a potential biological threat. Francisella tularensis was a perfect example of biological weapon for terrorists. The microbe possesses a large infecting capacity, which results in a high death rate. In addition, only a microscopic amount of the bacteria will be enough to trigger a massive epidemic.

It goes without saying that secret services were conducting scientific researches of so-called "rat weapons." The USSR used it during WWII against Friedrich von Paulus's army. The Soviet government did not risk to infect fascists with plague or ulcer - they chose tularemia. Rats spread the disease in German troops very quickly. The effect was astonishing: Paulus had to take a break in his offensive on Stalingrad. According to archive documents, about 50 percent of German prisoners, who were taken captive after the battle of Stalingrad, were suffering from classic symptoms of tularemia. Unfortunately, every action leads to a counteraction. The use of infected rats against the Nazi army had an inverse effect too: the disease came over the front line, and infected a lot of Soviet soldiers.

Soviet scientists continued their research with the tularemia microbe after the end of WWII. Military biologists brought the bacteria to perfection at the end of the 1970s, having increased its destructive capacity.

Russian medics, however, do not believe that the tularemia pathogen can be referred to as an efficient bacteriological weapon. The body develops a life-long immunity against tularemia, if the disease is treated properly and timely. Furthermore, an infected individual does not pose a danger to other people. To crown it all, direct sunlight kills Francisella tularensis in only 30 minutes. The microbe dies in boiling water within one or two minutes. Disinfecting fluids kills the pathogen in 3-5 minutes. Well-known antibiotics, such as streptomycin, levomycetin, tetracycline destroy the germ within a very short period of time too.

British scientists have recently discovered that the tularemia pathogen contains the genes, which cannot be found in any other organism in the world. The genome has been declassified: humans will soon invent the anti-tularemia vaccine, which will push aside the opportunity of using the disease as a weapon of mass destruction.

One of the most amazing things about this whole business is that this story ran in Pravda. I guess that when the Russians talk about "glasnost", they're not just whistling Dixie.

BTW, the thing that put me wise to the news story in Pravda was a note at the Russian BW Monitor site. Most of the items posted there are dry as dust. Openings of institutes, funding issues, conferences and meetings, that sort of thing. But every once in a while it reports something pretty massive. That's where the Novosti article I cited in Swords into Plowshares came from, too.

The Gimlet Eye

There has been, in my opinion, way too much crowing in the blogosphere about the handshake agreement between Abbas and Sharon. I know little about Abbas, but I know a lot about Sharon. He's a thug. The Israelis know it, too, and they elected him anyway.

Ghazi Hamed has been covering the ME for the Lebanon Daily Star for a long time. My skepticism matches his.

Israelis and Palestinians aren't firing, but for how long?

By Ghazi Hamed

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Among Palestinians the hot topic of the day is what exactly is the nature of the understandings that appear to have been reached between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the different armed factions. There have been many educated guesses - some say a truce or cease-fire was agreed upon, while others say what happened was simply a "calming" of the situation and not a truce in the true sense.

The wording is very important, and goes some way to explaining the attitude of the Palestinian factions. Abbas knew that the factions would not respond to a demand for a full truce if they did not get guarantees in return that Israel would halt all its military operations against the Palestinians, especially the assassinations, incursions and house demolitions. Israel has responded to the current calm unenthusiastically, and is simply issuing official statements. Abbas has received no formal guarantees of anything yet.

It is in this context that the statements of Hamas and other factions must be understood. The factions have already declared that what is happening is only a calming of the situation, with Hamas saying that it "would not accept a truce except in the context of the higher interests of the people and an integral policy congruent with the challenges of the coming phase." The movement said it considered this an inappropriate time for any talk about a truce or cease-fire since the Israeli Army is continuing its crimes against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

Statement after statement from the armed factions have come back to make the same point. What matters is what happens on the ground, and for as long as people are killed - on Jan. 26, for example, the victim was a three-year-old girl named Rahma Abu Shamas - the factions will take this as a signal that Israel is not prepared to encourage the calm.

According to Palestinian Authority (PA) sources, Abbas received "definite promises" that the Israeli government would halt assassinations and incursions, and informed the factions of this. The sources said he did not release his statement about the truce until he had confirmed the Israeli position and after a meeting between Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and former Palestinian Public Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan, which resulted in an understanding to transfer security authority in five West Bank cities to the PA and to further deploy Palestinian security forces in the northern and southern Gaza Strip. An Israeli official had previously announced that the army would halt "targeted liquidations" of Palestinian activists if Palestinian police enforced calm and security.

But the factions are liable to want formal guarantees of a cessation of Israeli violence, as well as clear signals of intent, including a release of prisoners. One Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahhar, was recently quoted as saying: "We will not grant calm except in exchange for a national price, the first of which is the release of all prisoners. We will not allow the calm to continue if any prisoner of any political coloring remains in jail."

The Palestinian factions also remain skeptical regarding what any cease-fire is likely to bring on the political track. One anonymous Hamas source recently told me that it "is not right for Hamas to offer [Abbas] a truce [simply] for him to return to the same erroneous political track that was taken by [the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat." On this track, he added, Hamas "must have a role."

That is indeed the critical question, how to bring in the other critical factions who don't have a role in the PLO. They will watch and wait and then act in accordance with their own perceived best interests unless Abbas can find a way to make the PLO into a really big tent.

Staring Down Interest Rates

The 'ticking budget' facing the US
Analysis
By Max Sawicky
Economic Policy Institute in Washington

Mr Bush says he wants to enforce greater spending restraint
The budget proposals laid out by the administration of US President George W Bush are highly controversial. The Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, which tends to be critical of the President, looks at possible fault lines.

US politicians and citizens of all political persuasions are in for a dose of shock therapy.

Without major changes in current policies and political prejudices, the federal budget simply cannot hold together.

News coverage of the Bush budget will be dominated by debates about spending cuts, but the fact is these will be large cuts in small programs.

From the standpoint of the big fiscal trends, the cuts are gratuitous and the big budget train wreck is yet to come.

Under direct threat will be the federal government's ability to make good on its debts to the Social Security Trust Fund.

As soon as 2018, the fund will begin to require some cash returns on its bond holdings in order to finance all promised benefits.

Coming shock

The trigger for the coming shock will be rising federal debt, which will grow in 10 years, by conservative estimates, to more than half the nation's total annual output.

The decline of the dollar is a warning sign that current economic trends cannot continue

Bush budget seeks deep cutbacks
This upward trend will force increased borrowing by the federal government, putting upward pressure on interest rates faced by consumers and business.

Even now, a growing share of US borrowing is from abroad.

The US Government cannot finance its operations without heavy borrowing from the central banks of Japan and China, among other nations.

This does not bode well for US influence in the world. The decline of the dollar is a warning sign that current economic trends cannot continue.

The dollar is already sinking. Before too long, credit markets are likely to react, and interest rates will creep upwards.

That will be the shock.

But it won't be a shock to Bumpers because we've been all over this story for almost a year. There is a reason why I read all these smart economists and synthesize what they are telling us: so you don't have to. Go show Max some love. The link is over on the blogroll. And if you aren't reading these people...

I say again: do what you have to do to get out of consumer debt NOW. I'm using equity, and with bad credit that means an ARM that I'll convert as fast as possible. If you can do it with a fixed, move NOW. When interest rates go through the roof again, you won't have any exposure and you'll have your mortgage locked.

Please note that this is a BBC story. You might want to ask yourself why Max, a DC economist, doesn't get published in his local paper. Then again, you might not need to ask yourself that question.

Swords into Plowshares

This next item should come as no surprise whatsoever to anyone who has researched the old Soviet offensive biowar program. Which was freaking huge. Unlike Dubya and his buddies with Halliburton, Russians know a threat when they see one. And they know what to do next.

The original article appeared in Novosti.

RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS COME UP WITH CHICKEN FLU PROMPT DETECTION METHOD

MOSCOW, February 7 (RIA Novosti) - Russian specialists from the Flu Research Institute have manufactured and passed into production diagnostic preparations for rapid detection of chicken flu in man, the Pacific information agency Ostrova (Islands) cites the Federal Consumer Rights and Human Wellbeing Supervision Service (Rospotrebnadzor) as saying.

They detect the presence of antibodies in man, specialists explain. They are especially efficient with regard to the latter-day Asian chicken flu strains, which are actively spreading among humans.

Rospotrebnadzor recommend their use for the examination of poultry farms and prompt detection of the disease.

The diagnostic preparations have already been registered and checked by the Tarasevich State Research Institute of Medical Preparations' Standardization and Control, based in Moscow. The Flu Vaccines and Diagnostic Strains Commission recommends them for production.

According to the World Health Organization, 54 cases of humans contacting chicken flu, 41 of them lethal, have been detected in South-East Asia last year. Twelve people died of it in Thailand and 29 in Vietnam.

Political Theater

Dan Froomkin is becoming one of the most critical voices at the WaPo. While he's not a beat reporter, he's doing a hell of a lot more "fact checking" than his straight news colleagues are. Dan seems to have mastered the complexities of Google and Lexis-Nexis in ways that have eluded the political beat reporters. He has a gem today:

The Clinton Comparison

I'm no presidential historian -- and I welcome those of you who are to chip in with an e-mail -- but I do remember a bit about the last guy. And Bush himself invited comparison with President Clinton in his Jan. 26 press conference.

"Okay, better? I'll keep working on it."

Earlier in his column today, Dan does a turn on the fact that the taxpayers are paying for these scripted events to which the likes of you and I are not invited. It's time to make a stink about that.

Homeland Insecurity

Iraq: spinning off Arab terrorists?
Counterterror experts from 50 countries met in Saudi Arabia to discuss how to combat emerging threats.

By Faiza Saleh Ambah | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA – The lessons of Afghanistan are not lost on counterterrorism experts and Arab government officials here.

As the insurgency continues in Iraq, the risk is that the country becomes a regional training ground for terrorists - as Afghanistan was in the 1990s - creating newly radicalized and experienced jihadis who return home to cause trouble in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere.

In fact, there's evidence it's already happened in Kuwait. In the past month, the tiny Gulf state has been rocked by a series of shootouts with Muslim militants, some of whom learned their craft by working alongside Iraqi insurgents.

"We found during the interrogations that about four of the suspects had learned how to make explosives in Iraq," says Col. Khaled al-Isaimi, who heads the Kuwaiti delegation at a four-day global counterterrorism conference which ends Tuesday in Riyadh. Some 40 terror suspects have been handed over to Kuwaiti prosecutors in the past month.

Saudi security expert Nawaf Obaid agrees that Arab fighters returning to Saudi Arabia from Iraq is an issue. "This is a major concern in the sense that some people have gone to Iraq and have been getting training but there's no indication that they've come back [yet]. We know fighters have gone but we don't know how many exactly," says Mr. Obaid, a Saudi security consultant.

This proves it: Bush is a danger to the entire freakin' planet. I listen to all the Bushwa on CNN about "security" and think, "These bozos don't have a clue."

Spheres of Influence

Law of Unintended Consequences
# Careful what you wish for in Iraq.

Robert Scheer

What we are witnessing here is a startling application of the law of unintended consequences: A U.S. president who is intent on breaching the wall between church and state in his own country on issues such as birth control and the "sanctity of marriage" has now used the world's most powerful military to pave the way for a new Muslim theocracy in the heart of the Arab world. Furthermore, Bush has unwittingly strengthened the hand of Iran, a nation allegedly developing weapons of mass destruction and supporting global terrorism.

For now, of course, the slate is fresh for Iraq's incoming leaders. But it would be naive for the White House to think that a winning coalition headed by self-defined Islamic revolutionaries long nurtured by Iran would not emulate key aspects of their former Tehran hosts' thinking.

Mind you, there is certainly no harm in the U.S. strongly urging that minority and individual rights and the separation of church and state be written into Iraq's coming constitution. Washington might seem a bit hypocritical on this, however, considering the tight ties the U.S. and the Bush family have with the totalitarian theocracy in Saudi Arabia.

Bottom line, though, is that the Shiite ayatollahs have held the keys to Baghdad since Hussein's predominantly Sunni military regime was dismantled after the invasion. They successfully demanded an election in the midst of a Sunni insurgency and boycott, and they won it.

Washington has crashed against the limits of foreign military power as an instrument for crafting a culture of freedom for another people. It does not help that our motives are corrupted by a rapacious thirst for petroleum, our vision blurred by an insufferable ignorance of the complexity of local cultures and our presumption exaggerated by the effrontery of our own leader's claims to the wisdom of God.

What Sistani Wants

He refuses a new air conditioner, yet his office is Internet-wired. He wants women to take political office, but not to shake the hands of men outside their families. He is easily the most powerful man in Iraq. Yet he's an Iranian.

Creative Fiction

For Budget Director, No Red Ink and the Skies Are Not Cloudy All Day

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 8, 2005; Page A07

"I actually enter into this with a happy spirit," White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten said during his hour-long briefing yesterday on President Bush's 2006 budget.

It's no wonder Bolten was so chipper: His budget was full of happy thoughts.

The spending plan Bolten outlined was a model of fiscal responsibility. But as he fielded questions for an hour, it became steadily clearer why the new budget seemed so restrained: The White House left out a lot of expenses the government is likely to have, while including savings the government is unlikely ever to see.

For example, Bolten granted that it is certain that more money will be needed for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006 and beyond. "But," he added, "it wouldn't be responsible for us to take a guess at what those costs are."

Yet, moments later, Bolten explained why it was perfectly responsible to guess about new revenue from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- even though such a program has not been approved by Congress. "Well," he said, "the budget is the right place to present the entirety of the president's policies, so all of his proposals are reflected in there."

The theme repeated itself throughout Bolten's briefing: Potential good news was embraced, and potential bad news was left out of the equation. How about the hundreds of billions of dollars the government would borrow to convert Social Security to personal accounts under Bush's plan? Not included. "The budget went to bed . . . before the president's proposals were announced," Bolten explained.

Nor are the hundreds of billions of dollars that it would cost to change the alternative minimum tax, which Bush had vowed to do as it hits more middle-class taxpayers. "It does need to be reformed," Bolten said, but it is not in the budget forecasts.

Such strategic inclusions and omissions -- a part of every budget, to be sure, but particularly big this year -- allowed Bolten to start his briefing with an optimistic display of charts: With labels such as "Rising Receipts," "A Disciplined Budget" and "Cutting the Deficit," the artwork was done without even a hint of red ink.

I saw Bolton on CNN yesterday taking this same "happy talk" approach. The unifying theme of Bush appointees is the ability to stare directly at the facts and pronounce the opposite.

Milbank's tone of bemused wonder is new, and I can't imagine why. He's been listening to these fairy stories for as long as he's been covering the Bush executive branch.

The Social Contract

Spearing the Beast
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 8, 2005

Jason Furman of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the guaranteed benefits left to an average worker born in 1990, after the clawback and the additional cuts, would be only 8 percent of that worker's prior earnings, compared with 35 percent today. This means that under Mr. Bush's plan, workers with private accounts that fared poorly would find themselves destitute.

Why expose workers to that much risk? Ideology. "Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," declares Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."

By the welfare state, Mr. Moore means Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - social insurance programs whose purpose, above all, is to protect Americans against the extreme economic insecurity that prevailed before the New Deal. The hard right has never forgiven F.D.R. (and later L.B.J.) for his efforts to reduce that insecurity, and now that the right is running Washington, it's trying to turn the clock back to 1932.

Medicaid is also in the cross hairs. And if Mr. Bush can take down Social Security, Medicare will be next.

The attempt to "jab a spear" through Social Security complements the strategy of "starve the beast," long advocated by right-wing intellectuals: cut taxes, then use the resulting deficits as an excuse for cuts in social spending. The spearing doesn't seem to be going too well at the moment, but the starving was on full display in the budget released yesterday.

To put that budget into perspective, let's look at the causes of the federal budget deficit. In spite of the expense of the Iraq war, federal spending as a share of G.D.P. isn't high by historical standards - in fact, it's slightly below its average over the past 20 years. But federal revenue as a share of G.D.P. has plunged to levels not seen since the 1950's.

Almost all of this plunge came from a sharp decline in receipts from the personal income tax and the corporate profits tax. These are the taxes that fall primarily on people with high incomes - and in 2003 and 2004, their combined take as a share of G.D.P. was at its lowest level since 1942. On the other hand, the payroll tax, which is the main federal tax paid by middle-class and working-class Americans, remains at near-record levels.

You might think, given these facts, that a plan to reduce the deficit would include major efforts to increase revenue, starting with a rollback of recent huge tax cuts for the wealthy. In fact, the budget contains new upper-income tax breaks.

Any deficit reduction will come from spending cuts. Many of those cuts won't make it through Congress, but Mr. Bush may well succeed in imposing cuts in child care assistance and food stamps for low-income workers. He may also succeed in severely squeezing Medicaid - the only one of the three great social insurance programs specifically intended for the poor and near-poor, and therefore the most politically vulnerable.

All of this explains why it's foolish to imagine some sort of widely acceptable compromise with Mr. Bush about Social Security. Moderates and liberals want to preserve the America F.D.R. built. Mr. Bush and the ideological movement he leads, although they may use F.D.R.'s image in ads, want to destroy it.

Dr. Krugman is correct and Stephen Moore is being particularly frank. Something deep and strange has happened in this country that we can be debating a fundamental change in the nature of the social contract we hold with each other and with our polity without naming it: we have become a meaner country. We have the most fundamentally wide divide between rich and poor of any industrialized nation and we are in the process of making it worse.

Greek Drama

A Breathtaking Budget

Tuesday, February 8, 2005; Page A22

THERE ARE TWO ways to treat a president's budget proposal. The realistic, even cynical, method is to unmask the various bits of budget gimmickry involved, to assume that some aspects are dead on arrival, and to view the document as the administration's opening gambit in a long political chess match. The other is to take it seriously, as the administration's idealized vision of what government should be. Either way, the fiscal 2006 budget proposed yesterday by President Bush is breathtaking -- in the first approach as farce, in the second as tragedy.

First, the farcical aspects: To meet its claimed target of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, the new budget omits the cost of the war in Iraq; the cost of the president's proposed private accounts for Social Security; and the cost of correcting the alternative minimum tax, which is hitting growing numbers of middle-class taxpayers rather than the rich it is intended for.

To make its already unaffordable tax cuts permanent, the administration wants to change the budget-scoring rules so that the cuts show up on the score card as cost-free. In fact, making them permanent would cost $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years. To obscure the real-world consequences of its unrealistic spending caps for discretionary programs, the administration has neatly avoided the inconvenience of specifying where, in future years, the necessary cuts would be made. It eliminated the traditional tables from the budget documents showing what spending would be in those programs beyond next year.

As to the tragic: Budget austerity is wise, but cuts as draconian as the administration proposes are not necessary and would fall too heavily on those who can tolerate it least. Under the administration's discretionary spending caps, spending for defense and homeland security would be permitted to grow, as it must; for example, military spending (and this doesn't include the costs of war in Iraq) would rise from $400 billion this fiscal year to $419 billion in 2006 to $492 billion in 2010. By contrast, other discretionary spending would be trimmed, from $391 billon this year to $389 billion next year and frozen at that level through 2010. Given expected inflation, this would mean a cut, in real terms, of 14 percent by 2010 in such areas as housing, environmental protection, education and transportation.

Living this close to the White House means that it takes real effort to retain some idealism and not be taken over by cynicism.

Distraction

Eddie is going to be spending the day here for a bunch more tests. The vet wants to rule out more complicated problems because some of the blood work looked a little funky. Yes, I'm worried.

I've been owned by companion critters all my life and have made the trip to this side of The Rainbow Bridge more times than I care to think about, and know that I'll go there again. I just don't want to do it again soon.

So pardon me if I'm distracted today.

Testify

This broadband cable connection means that I can do all kinds of stuff I couldn't do before, and bring you things I had to miss earlier. Here's a link to Juan Cole's appearance on C-Span last week. In view of the current Cole/Jonah Goldberg dust-up, it makes interesting viewing. You'll need RealMedia.

Dr. Cole has a few more words for Mr. Goldberg this morning:

Poor Jonah can't get anything right when it comes to me. He tries to imply that I don't speak Arabic, citing a comment by As'ad Abukhalil on my recent al-Jazeerah appearance. As`ad praises me for apologizing to al-Jazeerah readers for not speaking Arabic in the bulk of the interview. What he didn't say was that I began by speaking in Arabic and I apologized in Arabic. I said I preferred to speak English because the subject required exactitude. I have given more than one interview in Arabic, including on Radio Sawa Iraq. In this instance I felt it was important to have absolute control of nuance, which can only be had in one's mother tongue. When we were bantering before the show in Arabic, and I explained how I felt to Fuad Ajami and the others, Fuad quipped that my Arabic was better than some (highly westernized) Arab rulers. I know three kinds of Arabic-- Modern Standard, Lebanese dialect and Egyptian dialect. My Arabic is not free of solecisms because I didn't start it until I was an adult, and sometimes something from one of the three slips into the other. But I did live in the Arab world nearly 6 years altogether, and do speak the language. Sorry, Jonah, the problem with not knowing what you are talking about is that you get things wrong.

One of the things that makes me nuts about contemporary American culture is that fact and opinion get mushed together and everyone, no matter how ignorant, feels "entitled to their opinion." Entitlement needs to be earned, as does esteem.

The Blues

The Times uses particularly orbicular language to say: the budget deficit is going to be balanced on the backs of children and the poor.

Avoiding the Real Challenge

Published: February 8, 2005

Programs benefiting low-income citizens, like community development and health care, are destined to bear close to half of the cuts even though they accounted for less than 10 percent of the spending increases during the first Bush term. Some of the cruelest cuts would affect hundreds of thousands of working poor people who rely on child-care assistance and food stamps.

The deficit problem is a reflection of lowered revenue more than high spending - a fact that the president and the Republicans in Congress are determined to ignore. To the contrary, their proposal is to lock the once-"temporary" Bush tax cuts into stone. Meanwhile, expensive outlays will continue for the Pentagon, homeland security and mandated costs like Medicare. With such a lopsided perspective, vital environmental, education and housing programs cannot help but be disproportionately trimmed.

As a political tract, the budget neatly omits any accounting for next year's costs of the Iraq war, lately running at more than $5 billion a month. Nor do the budget figures for later years mention the hundreds of billions in borrowing that would be required to start up President Bush's plan to allow Social Security taxes to be directed into private investments.

Washington hands expect many, if not most, of the president's proposed cuts to be reinstated by Congress. And given Mr. Bush's preoccupation with Social Security, it's hard to imagine him wasting much effort on a leaner Pentagon budget or saner agricultural subsidies. In the end, only the programs with the least political clout - generally aimed at helping the weakest groups in the country - will be pared down or eliminated. That might give some politicians a sense of political cover, but it would be a bad choice and would hardly solve the problem.

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said but it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

The Family-Friendly North

Via Bump-friend pogge, I see that our wingnuts are exporting intolerance:

Religious right sends cash north
To fight same-sex marriage in Canada. U.S. groups taking credit for Bush re-election fund local allies' efforts to 'save the family'

ELIZABETH THOMPSON; KIRSTEN SMITH of CanWest News Service contributed to this report.
The Gazette; CanWest News Service

February 7, 2005

Powerful religious groups in the United States are quietly sending money and support to allies in Canada fighting same-sex marriage.

Moreover, some U.S. groups say they are prepared to spend whatever it takes to ensure same-sex marriage does not become legal north of the border.

Patrick Korten, vice-president of communications for the Knights of Columbus head office in New Haven, Conn., says no limit has been set on the help his organization is prepared to offer.

"Whatever it takes," he said. "The family is too important."

I note that Canadians are markedly less worried about their families than American righties are: same sex marriage is already legal by provincial option in seven provinces and one territory.

Spongedob is in on it, too:

Another formidable opponent of same-sex marriage, Focus on the Family, is also sending support and services worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year north of the border to its Canadian affiliate.

Sending money across the border to fund allies fighting Canadian legislation is not illegal under Canadian law. While Canadian-registered charities must spend no more than 10 per cent of their budgets on political activity, interest groups are restricted in what they can spend on political lobbying only during elections and referendums.

While the $304,125 Canadian that Focus on the Family Canada received in services from its U.S. parent in 2003 - and didn't declare in its financial statement - is equivalent to only 3.1 per cent of its total revenues that year of $9.6 million, Alex Munter, national co-ordinator for Canadians for Equal Marriage says it is several times more than the $46,000 his opposing group has been able to raise within Canada since the Supreme Court reference on same-sex marriage.

Canada, we're deeply sorry that we can only get our wingnuts to pay attention to your frozen existence. However, if the draft returns, I'm certain you'll discover a popularity with Americans that you haven't had since, oh, 1973.

Corporatist Kitchen

White House Dish: Chef Not to Laura’s Taste

After 11 years as White House chef, Walter Scheib III has been pushed out of the kitchen by First Lady Laura Bush. While Scheib says he wants to leave on a positive note, insiders say that the 'top toque' was unhappy at the Bush's insistence that he give up all French recipes and cooking techniques, and create an elaborate inaugural menu paying tribute to the brand names of a dozen top Bush campaign and GOP donors.

Tensions were further exacerbated, say sources close to the chef, by White House orders that Scheib create a special inaugural menu to honor the brand names represented by more than a dozen top GOP and Bush campaign donors. Scheib was reportedly vocal about his unhappiness over having to create dishes that featured such ingredients as Coca-Cola, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Pilgrim's Pride Whole Butter Basted Turkeys.

This is enforcing corporatist ideological purity to an insane degree. I'm sure that Scheib will go on to a bright future somewhere where he can use his creativity and training.

Who is my Brother?

Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25, verses 40-41: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

Remember the Poor

Monday, February 7, 2005; Page A20

BETWEEN 2000 and 2003, the number of people living in poverty rose 14 percent. In 2003, the most recent year for which numbers are available, one out of every eight Americans was poor, a disproportionate number of them children. The number without health insurance was the highest on record; more Americans went hungry. The poorest fell further below the poverty line while the richest took home a greater share of national income than ever.

We recite these depressing numbers today, as President Bush prepares to unveil his fiscal 2006 budget, because budgets are not only dry, fact-choked documents but a measure of the national character. These are the budgetary times that try the nation's soul: tax cuts that have drained the available revenue; a deficit that demands austerity; a war on terrorism, at home and abroad, that requires resources to keep the country safe. In the face of this unhappy fiscal reality, the risk is that the budget ax will fall most heavily on the poorest and most vulnerable Americans, those with the greatest need for government help but the smallest voice in the corridors of power.

This is not an idle worry. Tax increases -- more accurately, undoing the reckless tax cuts that account for a good portion of the current constraints -- are, unfortunately, off the political table. What scant room there is for increased spending is to be consumed largely by defense and homeland security costs: Mr. Bush's new budget will seek $419 billion in defense spending, up 4.8 percent, and this amount does not include funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As much as we think the president's pledge to cut the deficit in half in five years is a sham -- an inadequate target achieved by misleading budgeting -- the cuts will have to come from somewhere if he is to even pretend to achieve that goal.
....
All this leaves programs for poor Americans -- housing vouchers, home heating aid and food stamps, among others -- potentially exposed to troubling cuts. Medicaid, whose costs have been growing sharply along with health care costs in general, is slated for a cut of at least $44 billion over 10 years, shifting more costs to states and risking leaving more Americans with no insurance or inadequate coverage.

No program is sacrosanct, and no waste should be tolerated in any program. But a key test for lawmakers as the budget-writing process proceeds will be how the neediest are treated -- not whether they are lavished with government assistance but whether they endure a cruelly disproportionate share of the cuts that are to come.

Not in Our Name

Breaking Ranks to Shun War
# An Army sergeant who refuses to return to Iraq seeks a discharge as a conscientious objector. He may instead face a court-martial.

By David Zucchino, Times Staff Writer

HINESVILLE, Ga. — His sergeant called him a coward to his face. His chaplain sent him an e-mail saying he was ashamed of him. His commanders had him formally charged with desertion.

Sgt. Kevin Benderman, who has served one tour of duty in Iraq, is refusing to serve another. When his fellow soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division packed their gear and left nearby Ft. Stewart for Iraq last week, Benderman stayed home. He says he has chosen to follow his conscience — not his commanders.

After 10 years in the Army, Benderman has applied for a discharge as a conscientious objector — a heresy to many in the military at a time when the country is fighting two wars overseas.

Today, Benderman, 40, will attend a military court hearing at Ft. Stewart that will determine whether he will face a court-martial for desertion and failure to report for a unit deployment. He could face up to seven years in prison if convicted.

"War is the greatest form of wrong," Benderman wrote in his seven-page conscientious objector application. "I believe that my moral obligation to humanity is to not allow myself to be a part of this destruction."

In the six months he spent in combat in Iraq in 2003, Benderman said, he was badly shaken by what he witnessed. He saw a young Iraqi girl with her arm horribly burned and blackened, standing helplessly on a roadside as Benderman's convoy rushed past. He saw dogs feasting on civilian corpses that had been dumped into pits. He saw young U.S. soldiers treat war like a video game, he said, with few qualms about killing or the effects of the invasion on ordinary Iraqis.

Benderman said he begged an officer to stop and help the girl, but was told that the unit couldn't spare its limited medical supplies. "I had to look at that little girl, look into her eyes, and in her eyes I saw the TRUTH. I cannot kill," Benderman wrote in his application.

Only a handful of conscientious objector applications have been filed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are being fought by professional soldiers, not draftees. Vietnam, a war that bitterly divided the U.S., produced 172,000 conscientious objector applications from draftees and 17,000 from active-duty soldiers.

For the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, applications increased from 23 in 2002 to 60 in 2003 and 67 last year, according to Pentagon figures. Of those applications, 71 — almost half — have been approved. Unlike Benderman, few applicants have spoken publicly about their beliefs.

After seeing the civilian corpses, Benderman said, he made a point of befriending ordinary Iraqis, only to be warned by officers not to fraternize with "the enemy." He had long talks with an English-speaking schoolteacher. He began reading the Koran and realized that the religious and moral values of most Iraqis were similar to his. Everything he had been told about the rationale for the U.S. invasion, he said, seemed misguided and destructive.

Benderman said he now believed the war in Iraq — and all wars — were immoral. His conscience would no longer allow him to fight or kill, he said, even if that made him a pariah.

"War robs you of your humanity. It makes people do terrible things they would otherwise never do," Benderman said in the living room of his home in Hinesville, his wife, Monica, by his side and his dog, Carl, at his feet.

When Benderman returned from Iraq to Ft. Stewart a year ago, he began studying the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. He engaged in long discussions with his wife. He weighed his options before deciding to file his application Dec. 28. Benderman said his military superiors tried to shame him and talk him out of it. But he said he was willing to endure the contempt of his peers, and even go to prison.

"I'm not going to run from my convictions," he said. "I believe what I'm doing is the right thing, whatever the consequences."

Monica Benderman, whose essay on a faith-based pacifist website about the immorality of war helped crystallize her husband's views, said she was proud of him. Many soldiers and their families have told the couple they share their opposition to war, she said, but were afraid to speak up for fear of being ostracized. Several Vietnam veterans have stepped forward to support them.

"We believe in speaking the truth. You put forward the truth and the right things will happen," she said.

I can tell you from cold, hard personal experience that telling the truth will rarely gain you advantage or friends. It will usually land you in hot water. I believe I read somewhere that prophets usually don't find honor in their homelands. I am mindful of the fact that the soldier who blew the whistle at Abu Ghraib and his wife had to go into the federal witness protection program. The story was in the August GQ of last year and not available on-line and was very disturbing.

Class Warfare

$2.5 Trillion Budget Plan Cuts Many Programs
Domestic Spending Falls; Defense, Security Rise

By Mike Allen and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, February 7, 2005; Page A01

President Bush plans to unveil a $2.5 trillion budget today eliminating dozens of politically sensitive domestic programs, including funding for education, environmental protection and business development, while proposing significant increases for the military and international spending, according to White House documents.

Overall, discretionary spending other than defense and homeland security would fall by nearly 1 percent, the first time in many years that funding for the major part of the budget controlled by Congress would actually go down in real terms, according to officials with access to the budget. The cuts are scattered across a wide swath of the government, affecting a cross-section of constituents, from migrant workers to train passengers to local police departments, according to officials who read portions of the documents to The Washington Post.

About 150 programs in all would be shuttered or radically cut back to help meet Bush's goal of shaving the budget deficit in half by 2009. One out of every three of the targeted programs concerns education. Medicaid funding would be reduced significantly and even major military weapons programs would be scrapped to make more resources available for the war in Iraq.

So much for your Edumacation Preznit. This is the equivalent of waving to the middle class and saying "Ta tah. We don't need you any more."

O' course, in another four years, we'll all be "associates" at Wal-Mart and what would be the point of all that high-priced education, anyway?

Magic

Bush's Deficit Plan Is All in the Math
# The budget strategy to halve the shortfall by 2009 relies on how and what things are counted.

By Joel Havemann, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The budget President Bush will present to Congress today will show the federal deficit cut in half by the time he leaves office in four years.

At least technically it will.

Achieving that goal relies on where the budget math starts and stops, how things get counted and what gets left out.

When Bush took office in 2001, the nation had experienced a four-year string of budget surpluses. That changed quickly as the economy slowed, tax rates were cut and spending in the war on terrorism skyrocketed.

By July 2003, the president was urging Congress in his weekly radio address "to make spending discipline a priority, so that we can cut the deficit in half over the next five years."

In his State of the Union address Wednesday, Bush said his fiscal 2006 budget, which he will unveil today, "stays on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009."

But students of the budget say that the president will find it nearly impossible to steer the government along the course that the budget will map out between now and 2009.

"It doesn't quite compute," said Isabel V. Sawhill, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution think tank, who foresees a shortfall slightly larger in 2009 than now.

It is the 2004 deficit that Bush is promising to cut in half, but he's not starting with the actual 2004 deficit of $412 billion.

Instead, his benchmark is the projected $521-billion deficit that his Office of Management and Budget estimated a year ago, when the fiscal year was four months old. Using half of that figure, Bush's goal is to reach a deficit of $260.5 billion.

Can you say "mirrors and blue smoke?" Yes, I thought you could.

I read a really cool curse over at pogge's house the other day. "If you want to blow smoke up my ass, let me save you the trouble. I can find a length of tubing and a pack of Camels."

Hurting Ourselves

Stories From the Inside
By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 7, 2005

Mr. Rasul was one of three young men, all friends, from the British town of Tipton who were among thousands of people seized in Afghanistan in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. They had been there, he said, to distribute food and medical supplies to impoverished Afghans.

The three were interviewed soon after their release by Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been in the forefront of efforts to secure legal representation for Guantánamo detainees.

Under extreme duress at Guantánamo, including hundreds of hours of interrogation and long periods of isolation, the three men confessed to having been in a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. They also said they were among a number of men who could be seen in a videotape of Osama bin Laden. The tape had been made in August 2000.

For the better part of two years, Mr. Rasul and his friends, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed, had denied involvement in any terror activity whatsoever. But Mr. Rasul said they eventually succumbed to long months of physical and psychological abuse. Mr. Rasul had been held in isolation for several weeks (his second sustained period of isolation) when an interrogator showed him the video of bin Laden. He said she told him: "I've put detainees here in isolation for 12 months and eventually they've broken. You might as well admit it now."

"I could not bear another day of isolation, let alone the prospect of another year," said Mr. Rasul. He confessed.

The three men, all British citizens, were saved by British intelligence officials, who proved that they had been in England when the video was shot, and during the time they were supposed to have been in Al Qaeda training camps. All three were returned to England, where they were released from custody.

Mr. Rasul has said many times that he and his friends were freed only because their alibis were corroborated. But they continue to worry about the many other Guantánamo detainees who may be innocent but have no way of proving it.

The Bush administration has turned Guantánamo into a place that is devoid of due process and the rule of law. It's a place where human beings can be imprisoned for life without being charged or tried, without ever seeing a lawyer, and without having their cases reviewed by a court. Congress and the courts should be uprooting this evil practice, but freedom and justice in the United States are on a post-9/11 downhill slide.

So we are stuck for the time being with the disgrace of Guantánamo, which will forever be a stain on the history of the United States, like the internment of the Japanese in World War II.

Somebody remind me: why was it that we told the Brits to get out of here in 1776?

Damned Angry

Yes, everybody else is covering this and I'm going to, too, to scream bloody murder. Support the troops, my ass. I never supported this nasty mess we've created, but by damn, you don't make your mess on the backs of the people you sent to make it. This is an abomination.

Bush Budget Raises Prescription Prices for Many Veterans
By ROBERT PEAR and CARL HULSE

Published: February 7, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 - President Bush's budget would more than double the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using government health care, administration officials said Sunday.

The proposals, they said, are in the $2.5 trillion budget that Mr. Bush plans to unveil on Monday. White House officials said the budget advanced his goal of cutting the deficit, which hit a record last year.

"We are being tight," Vice President Dick Cheney said on "Fox News Sunday." "This is the tightest budget that has been submitted since we got here."

The proposals to increase charges to veterans face stiff opposition from veterans organizations, Democratic members of Congress and some Republicans.

Mr. Cheney said the White House had judiciously identified scores of domestic programs to be cut or eliminated. "It's not something we've done with a meat ax, nor are we suddenly turning our backs on the most needy people in our society."

The proposals could provoke months of furious debate on Capitol Hill. Democrats have already indicated that they are poised to pounce on any sign that the Bush administration is stinting on veterans' benefits.

Over all, the president is seeking $70.8 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, say Congressional aides who have seen budget documents from the agency.

The total consists of $33.4 billion in discretionary spending, which is subject to annual appropriation by Congress, and $37.4 billion for entitlements, like disability compensation, survivor benefits and pensions, which are authorized under prior laws.

Health care accounts for almost all of the agency's discretionary spending. Mr. Bush is seeking an increase of 2.7 percent, or $880 million, in such spending.

The president would increase the co-payment for a month's supply of a prescription drug to $15, from the current $7. The administration says the co-payment and the $250 "user fee" would apply mainly to veterans in lower-priority categories, who have higher incomes and do not have service-related disabilities.

The government had no immediate estimate of how many veterans would be affected if the user fee and co-payment proposals were adopted. But veterans' groups said that hundreds of thousands of people would end up paying more and that many would be affected by both changes.

Veterans groups attacked the proposals. Richard B. Fuller, legislative director of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, said: "The proposed increase in health spending is not sufficient at a time when the number of patients is increasing and there has been a huge increase in health care costs. It will not cover the need. The enrollment fee is a health care tax, designed to raise revenue and to discourage people from enrolling."

Mr. Fuller added that the budget would force veterans hospitals and clinics to limit services. "We are already seeing an increase in waiting lists, even for some Iraq veterans," he said.

In Michigan, for example, thousands of veterans are on waiting lists for medical services, and some reservists returning from Iraq say they have been unable to obtain the care they were promised. A veterans clinic in Pontiac, Mich., put a limit on new enrollment. Cutbacks at a veterans hospital in Altoona, Pa., are forcing some veterans to seek treatment elsewhere.

If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.

Speaking Truth to Power

I didn't realize this was going to be a new monthly column. Thanks to our blogmother, Mel for the shout out.

No Returns

By RICHARD A. CLARKE

Last month, the self-appointed head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, railed against ''this evil principle of democracy'' and said he would send his fighters to kill people who tried to vote. Days before, in Washington, President Bush delivered an inaugural address focused almost exclusively on promoting democracy, which he portrayed as an antidote for ''our vulnerability.'' His theory was that ''resentment and tyranny'' simmer in undemocratic nations, breeding violent ideologies that will ''cross the most defended borders'' to pose a ''mortal threat.''

Given these statements by Zarqawi and Bush, Americans might well conclude that Al Qaeda's primary aim is preventing democracy. Following the president's theory, they might assume terrorism cannot grow in democracies and that the best way to deal with it is to create more democracies. Unfortunately, both beliefs may be mistaken.

Zarqawi and his followers do oppose democracy in Iraq, but they do so partly because they believe that the continuing electoral process (a constitutional referendum is planned for October of this year and a national election for December) is an American imposition. In this they are joined by the many Iraqis who simply want an occupying army to leave. In addition, Zarqawi's group seeks support from the Sunni Arab minority, which in any democratic process will lose power as compared with what it had in the decades of Baath Party rule.

Beyond Iraq, in the greater Muslim world, opposing democracy is not uppermost in the mind of Al Qaeda or the larger jihadist network. (In Saudi Arabia, for example, Al Qaeda wants the monarchy replaced by a more democratic government.) Radical Islamists are ultimately seeking to create something orthogonal to our model of democracy. They are fighting to create a theocracy or, in their vernacular, a caliphate (a divinely inspired government administered by a caliph as Allah's viceroy on earth). They are also seeking to evict American influence from nations with a Muslim majority (or even, as in Iraq, a Muslim minority, given their view that Shiites are, as Zarqawi put it, part of a ''wicked sect'' and not true Muslims). In pursuing these goals, today's loosely affiliated Islamic terrorist groups are part of a trend dating back to at least 1928, when the Muslim Brotherhood was founded to promote Islam and fight colonialism.

This trend hasn't abated with the spread of democracy. In Indonesia, which just achieved its third democratic transfer of power since Suharto's rule ended in 1998, the jihadist movement is growing stronger, as it is in other Asian democracies. In Algeria, free elections in 1990 and 1991 resulted in victories for those who advocated a jihadist theocracy. Throughout Western Europe, the jihadists are becoming deeply rooted among disaffected Muslim youth. Free elections, in short, have not dimmed the desire of jihadists to create a caliphate.

Even without jihadists, Western democracies have hardly been immune to terrorism. The Irish Republican Army, the Baader-Meinhof gang of Germany and the Red Brigades of Italy all developed in democracies. Indeed, in the United States, the largest terrorist attack before Sept. 11 was conducted in Oklahoma by fully enfranchised American citizens.

Thus, it is not the lack of democracy that produced jihadist movements, nor will the creation of democracies quell them. To the extent that President Bush's new policy is turned into action, the jihadists may well take it as further provocative American meddling, similar to the reaction to the president's earlier attempt at reform in the region, the Greater Middle East Initiative, which was dead on arrival.

Wow. A truth-teller coming out of the belly of beast.

Sex-Positive Liberalism

You can find the most amazing things on those darn Internets. Via Ellen Dana Nagler at BOP an utterly mesmerizing graphic from The Erotic Museum in LA. The curator notes that people have been known to stare at it for hours.

Bush Spreads AIDS

US cash threat to Aids war

Martin Bright, Home Affairs Editor
Sunday February 6, 2005
The Observer

The United Nations agency responsible for the global fight against drugs has been forced to abandon its campaign to reduce Aids infection by giving clean needles to heroin addicts after threats by America to end its funding, The Observer can reveal.

The Bush administration opposes any programme that appears to condone the continued use of drugs, and wants the UN to seek abstention by users, combined with an end to narcotics production.

Drug experts believe that if the UN shelved its so-called 'harm reduction' strategy in favour of an outright war on drugs, it could contribute to a rise in the rate of infection with HIV/Aids through shared needles and unsafe sex, as well as increasing the number of addicts.

Correspondence seen by The Observer shows that on 10 November 2004, Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) held a meeting with US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles to discuss the Bush administration's concerns about the direction the UN was taking.

A leaked letter sent by Costa the next day shows him agreeing to demands to expunge references about harm reduction from UNODC literature and statements.

'On the the general issue of "harm reduction", I share your concern. Under the guise of "harm reduction", there are people working disingenuously to alter the world's opposition to drugs. These people can misuse our well-intentioned statements for their own agenda, and this we cannot allow.

'Accordingly, as we discussed in our meeting, we are reviewing all our statements, both printed and electronic, and will be even more vigilant in the future.'

Costa goes on to clarify the UN agency's position on needle exchanges, where addicts are given clean injecting equipment to minimise the risk of infection from HIV and and hepatitis. In words that have caused alarm among drug treatment experts, Costa wrote: 'We neither endorse needle exchanges as a solution for drug abuse, nor support public statements advocating such practices.'

That's right, ignore both the science and commonsense. Sounds like the standard Bush ideological program.

Spending Time

The Book TV line-up this afternoon is particularly strong:

3:00 Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

4:30 John McCaslin, Inside the Beltway: Offbeat Stories, Scoops, and Shenanigans from around the Nation's Capital

5:15 Public Lives: Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

6:00 Featured Program: After Words: Essie Mae Washington-Williams interviewed by Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN)

7:00 Joseph Bottum, Dana Gioia, Christopher Hitchens, Tim Kelleher, William Kristol, Mary Eberstadt, Poetry Readings for Children

The last is a particularly interesting line-up. What the hell do Bill Kristol and Chris Hitchens know about poetry for children?

Torture Due Process

Revealed: Britain's role in Guantanamo abduction

Freed detainee tells of horrors in US terror camp

David Rose
Sunday February 6, 2005
The Observer

British intelligence officials played a crucial part in the secret abduction of UK citizen Martin Mubanga to Guantanamo Bay. There, he reveals today in an exclusive interview, he endured 33 months of ill-treatment and often abusive interrogation.

Documents seen by The Observer disclose that even the Pentagon's own lawyers now accept that the intelligence that consigned him to Guantanamo may have been deeply flawed. Mubanga, who was released without charge after his return to Britain on 25 January, now plans to sue the British government.

In his interview today, the first by any of the four Britons who returned from Guantanamo last month, Mubanga, 32, describes a horrifying catalogue of abuse:

· In one interrogation session, he was forced to urinate in the corner of the interview room while chained hand and foot.

· He was treated to a regime known as 'BI [basic item] loss'. This meant his thin mattress, trousers, shirts, towel, blankets, and flipflops were all taken away, leaving him naked except for boxer shorts in an empty metal box.

· Last autumn, while Pentagon lawyers were writing memos suggesting that Mubanga may not have had any involvement in terrorism at all and may not have been given a fair hearing, the Guantanamo authorities subjected him to the harshest treatment in his 33 months in Guantanamo, with three brutal assaults by the 'Instant Reaction Force' riot squad for trivial violations of the camp rules.

· Mubanga's worst moment came last March, when the first five British detainees were sent home. He had at first been told he would be joining them, but was instead confined in a block with prisoners he could not communicate with, and told he would be held there for many more years.

The disclosure that British intelligence was instrumental in consigning Mubanga to Guantanamo raises serious questions about the consistency of British policy towards the controversial US camp. In public, ministers, led by Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, negotiated for months with the Pentagon for the release of British detainees.

Mubanga's solicitor, Louise Christian, said yesterday that she planned to take legal action against the government. His arrest, detention and transfer had clearly breached British, Zambian and international law, she said. 'We are hoping to issue proceedings for the misfeasance of officials who colluded with the Americans in effectively kidnapping him and taking him to Guantanamo.'

UK Bumpers: How do you all feel about Bush/Blair bilaterally repealing the right to due process?

Democracy Now!

Leading Shiite Clerics Pushing Islamic Constitution in Iraq
By EDWARD WONG

Published: February 6, 2005

NAJAF, Iraq, Feb. 4 - With religious Shiite parties poised to take power in the new constitutional assembly, leading Shiite clerics are pushing for Islam to be recognized as the guiding principle of the new constitution.

Exactly how Islamic to make the document is the subject of debate.

At the very least, the clerics say, the constitution should ensure that legal measures overseeing personal matters like marriage, divorce and family inheritance fall under Shariah, or Koranic law. For example, daughters would receive half the inheritances of sons under that law.

On other issues, opinion varies, with the more conservative leaders insisting that Shariah be the foundation for all legislation.

Such a constitution would be a sharp departure from the transitional law that the Americans enacted before appointing the interim Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. American officials pressed Iraqi politicians drafting that law in early 2004 to guarantee equal rights for women and minorities. The Americans also persuaded the authors to designate Islam as just "a source" of legislation.

That irked senior Shiite clerics here, who, confident they now have a popular mandate from the elections, are advocating for Islam to be acknowledged as the underpinning of the government. They also insist that the Americans stay away from the writing of the new constitution.

Many factors could force the clerics to compromise their vision. The alliance of Shiite politicians in the constitutional assembly could splinter as its members vie against one another for power and trade favors with rival politicians like Dr. Allawi. Too strong a push for a Shiite religious state could prompt opposition from the former governing Sunni Arabs, a minority that already has said it feels disenfranchised, or from the Kurds, who can exercise veto power over the new constitution.

And Shiite politicians, recognizing a possible backlash from secular leaders and the Americans, have publicly promised not to install a theocracy similar to that of Iran, or allow clerics to run the country. But the clerics of Najaf, the holiest city of Shiite Islam, have emerged as the greatest power in the new Iraq. They forced the Americans to conform to their timetable for a political process. Their standing was bolstered last Sunday by the high turnout among Shiite voters and a widespread boycott by the Sunni Arabs, and the clerics will now wield considerable behind-the-scenes influence in the writing of the constitution through their coalition built around religious parties.

I'm sure that the families of the fallen are proud that their sons and daughters and fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters fought and died for the founding of an Islamic theocracy.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

It's a funny thing. Americans know a bullshit plan when they hear Bush demolishing Social Security, but they were deaf when he decided to demolish Iraq in their name. Oh, well.

In Montana, Bush Faces a Tough Sell on Social Security

BILLINGS, Montana, Feb. 4 - Nowhere is the challenge facing President Bush on Social Security more apparent than here, at an open meeting held by Senator Max Baucus on Friday, the day after the White House road show rolled through Montana.

Mr. Baucus, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, was sounding the alarm against Mr. Bush's core idea - allowing younger workers to divert part of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts. "All this talk you hear about private accounts," he told a standing-room-only audience of several hundred here, "it really has nothing to do with the solvency of the Social Security trust fund. In fact, it makes the solvency of the Social Security trust fund much worse. Much worse."

The anxiety and confusion were palpable in the crowd, which was composed mostly of retirees - the very group assured by Mr. Bush, again and again, that they would not be affected. Why change the program so fundamentally, several asked. Sylvia Stugelmeyer, a retired courthouse worker, declared: "I'm against the privatization of Social Security. It was put into a trust for us many years ago, and I hope to God it stays that way."

Doris Lundin, 77, asked, "How much money has the government spent from Social Security and put in i.o.u.'s?" As the audience applauded, she added, "And why can't they pay it back?"

Mr. Baucus provided essential support to Mr. Bush on two of his most important domestic initiatives in his first term, the 2001 tax cut and the sweeping overhaul of Medicare. But not this time. "You've got to call them as you see them," Mr. Baucus says, and he seems comfortable in his opposition to the Bush plan, even in a state that Mr. Bush carried by 20 percentage points last fall.

Almost no one underestimates the power of the presidency to go directly to the people and sell a proposal - certainly not Mr. Baucus, who has often felt the heat of presidential persuasion. Mr. Bush's visit to Great Falls on Thursday generated proud and glowing coverage in the local news media and enormous excitement. It was the first presidential visit to Great Falls since October 1982, when President Ronald Reagan campaigned on behalf of Republicans before the midterm elections. (He defended his administration against Democratic charges that he would cut Social Security benefits, the local paper reported.)

More than 4,000 people went to hear Mr. Bush speak on Thursday, and many others wanted to but could not get in. Cheers rocked the convention hall as he described the war against terror and his commitment to national security. They also cheered his jokes, his declaration that he was thrilled to be in a place where there were more cowboy hats than ties. It was, politicians in both parties said, a powerful performance.

But Social Security has a power of its own. Mr. Baucus said his constituents were generally "very nervous" about private investment accounts in Social Security, and retirees, who are most likely to vote on the issue, "are quite opposed." He added, "It's new, it's radical, and it's so different from Social Security as they know it."

In fact, the front page of The Great Falls Tribune that greeted Mr. Bush on Thursday with the headline "Bush Arrives with Bold Plan" also included a statewide poll conducted for the paper, that declared, "Montanans oppose switching to personal Social Security investment accounts by a nearly 2-to-1 margin."

Cognitive Dissonance anyone?

Gone to Hell

f you want to give the snooze-fest which is the Sunday New York Times a pass, I'd hardly blame you. But you shouldn't be shirking reading Frank Rich's weekly column. There is still one honest broker on the cultural scene and he's it.

The Year of Living Indecently

LET us be grateful that Janet Jackson did not bare both breasts.

On the first anniversary of the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction that shook the world, it's clear that just one was big enough to wreak havoc. The ensuing Washington indecency crusade has unleashed a wave of self-censorship on American television unrivaled since the McCarthy era, with everyone from the dying D-Day heroes in "Saving Private Ryan" to cuddly animated animals on daytime television getting the ax. Even NBC's presentation of the Olympics last summer, in which actors donned body suits to simulate "nude" ancient Greek statues, is currently under federal investigation.

Public television is now so fearful of crossing its government patrons that it is flirting with self-immolation. Having disowned lesbians in the children's show "Postcards From Buster" and stripped suspect language from "Prime Suspect" on "Masterpiece Theater," PBS is editing its Feb. 23 broadcast of "Dirty War," the HBO-BBC film about a terrorist attack, to remove a glimpse of female nudity in a scene depicting nuclear detoxification. Next thing you know they'll be snipping lascivious flesh out of a documentary about Auschwitz.

This repressive cultural environment was officially ratified on Nov. 2, when Ms. Jackson's breast pulled off its greatest coup of all: the re-election of President Bush. Or so it was decreed by the media horde that retroactively declared "moral values" the campaign's decisive issue and the Super Bowl the blue states' Waterloo. The political bosses of "family" organizations, well aware that TV's collective wisdom becomes reality whether true or not, have been emboldened ever since. They are spending their political capital like drunken sailors, redoubling their demands that the Bush administration marginalize gay people, stamp out sex education and turn pop culture into a continuous loop of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm."

With Sunday's Super Bowl, their crusade has scored a touchdown. MTV has been replaced as halftime producer by Don Mischer, the go-to guy for a guaranteed snoozefest; his credits include the Tony Awards, the Kennedy Center Honors and the 2004 Democratic National Convention at which the balloons failed to drop. (His subsequent cursing was heard on CNN, but escaped government sanction because no Republicans were watching.) Fox Sports Net has changed the title of its signature program "Best Damn Sports Show Period" to "Best Darn Super Bowl Road Show Period." The commercials, too, will "be careful" and in "good taste," according to the head of marketing for Anheuser-Busch. Fox, which recently pixilated the bottom of a cartoon toddler in a rerun of the series "Family Guy," now has someone on full-time rear-end alert: it rejected a comic spot for Airborne, a cold remedy, showing the backside of the 84-year-old Mickey Rooney as he leaves a sauna.

This might all be laughable were the government not expanding its role as cultural cop. But it is. The departures of Michael Powell, the Savonarola of the Federal Communications Commission, and John Ashcroft, whose parallel right-breast fixation was stimulated by a statue in the Justice Department, are red herrings. "Thank God he's gone, but God help us with what's next," said Howard Stern upon learning of Mr. Powell's imminent exit. He's right. After all, L. Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council condemned Mr. Powell for "four years of failed leadership" in fighting indecency. (Mr. Powell's commission had the temerity to actually reject some Parents Television Council jeremiads, which are distinguished by their inordinate obsession with the penis.) Mr. Bozell, whose organization has been second to none in increasing the number of annual indecency complaints from 111 in 2000 to a million-plus last year, is angling for a tougher successor and may well get one.

His wish has in effect been granted even before Mr. Powell's chair is filled. The second Bush term began with the installation of a powerful new government censor in another big job, Secretary of Education. Margaret Spellings hadn't even been officially sworn into the cabinet when she took on "Postcards From Buster," threatening PBS with decreased financing because one episode had the show's eponymous animated rabbit hobnobbing with actual lesbian moms while visiting Vermont to learn how maple syrup is made. Though Buster had in previous installments visited Muslims, Mormons, Orthodox Jews and Pentecostal Christians, gay couples (even when not identified as such on camera) are verboten to our new Secretary of Education. "Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode," Ms. Spellings wrote in her threatening letter to Pat Mitchell, the C.E.O. of PBS.

The letter, as it happened, was unnecessary: Public broadcasting says that it had decreed on its own only a few hours earlier that it would not distribute the offending show - the most alarming example yet of just how cowardly it has become and how chilling the Janet Jackson effect has been. (Since then, some two dozen member stations out of a total of 349 have rebeled and decided to broadcast the episode anyway.) But the story won't end with this one incident. Ms. Spellings' threats against PBS are only the latest chapter in a continuing saga at an education department that increasingly resembles an authoritarian government's ministry of information.

A month before the election, The Los Angeles Times reported on its front page that the department had quietly destroyed more than 300,000 copies of "a booklet designed for parents to help their children learn history" after Lynne Cheney, who has no official government role, complained about its contents. The booklet burning occurred under the watch of Rod Paige, the education secretary who, we would later learn, was simultaneously complicit in another sub rosa exercise in heavy-handed government information management: the payment of $240,000 in taxpayers' funds to Armstrong Williams, a talking head and columnist, to plug Bush administration policies on radio and TV.

Mr. Paige fled his post last month without adequately explaining what he knew about these scandals. Enter Ms. Spellings, previously a White House aide who by some accounts had been a shadow administrator of the education department during Mr. Paige's out-to-lunch tenure. With all the other troubles in public education, why would she focus on a single episode of a single children's program on her second day in the job? We don't yet know. But her act was nothing if not ideologically synergistic with still another freshly uncovered Bush propaganda effort. Just as Ms. Spellings busted Buster, two more syndicated columnists copped to receiving taxpayers' dollars, this time siphoned through the Department of Health and Human Services, to help craft propaganda for a Bush "healthy marriage initiative" that disdains same-sex couples as fervently as Ms. Spellings did in her letter to PBS.

Unless you can prove to me incontrovertably that we've all died and gone to Hell, I'd say that I think we have a problem on our hands and that the Federal Government has turned into a fascist exercise of power that ought to be resisted, protested and overturned. But that wouldn't be a temperate thing to say, would it?

The National Dialogue

If you do nothing else today, reading Juan Cole's take down of Jonah Goldberg of "The National Review's" weblog The Corner ought to be high on your "to do" list.

Those busy, busy children at TNR don't get spanked often enough. Mind you, I'm not in favor of child abuse, but when those over 30 carry out the kind of monkeyshines that Cornerites favor, it's time for the hand to come out. I don't extend the same kind of tolerance to adults that I'm willing to give to children.

Mardi Gras

What Meat Means

Published: February 6, 2005

Most Americans do not want to know how the meat they eat is produced, if only so they can continue to eat it. Nearly every aspect of meat production in America is disturbing, from the way animals are raised, to inadequate inspection of the final product. When it comes to what happens in the slaughterhouse, most of us mentally avert our eyes. Yet in the past decade, the handling of livestock on their way to the killing floor has actually been one of the parts of the business that has improved most significantly. What is most alarming at the slaughterhouse is not what happens to the animals - they have already met their fate. It is what happens to the humans who work there.

A large slaughterhouse is the truly industrial end of industrial farming. It is a factory for disassembly. Its high line speeds place enormous pressure on the workers hired to take apart the carcasses coming down the line. And because the basic job of the line is cutting flesh - hard, manual labor - the dangers are very high for meat workers, whose flesh is every bit as vulnerable as that of the pork or beef or chicken passing by.

The problem of worker safety is compounded by the fact that meatpackers, driven by the brutal economics of the industry, always try to hire the cheapest labor they can find. That increasingly means immigrants whose language difficulties compound the risks of the job. The result, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, is "extraordinarily high rates of injury" in conditions that systematically violate human rights.

In fact, the report finds, some major players in the American meat industry prey upon a large population of immigrant workers who are either ignorant of their fundamental rights or are undocumented aliens who are afraid of calling attention to themselves. As a result, those workers often receive little or no compensation for injuries, and any attempt to organize is met with hostility.

The industry has little incentive to improve conditions on its own, except a decent regard for human rights. The only reasonable prospect of improvement depends on the enforcement of federal and state law. Unfortunately, those laws at present are too weak and too riddled with loopholes to provide the regulations needed to increase worker safety and improve workers' rights. A systematic regulatory look at the meat industry, with an eye to toughening standards, is desperately needed.

In recent years, Americans have had the habit of thinking of wide-scale workplace abuses as foreign affairs - the kind of thing that turns up in Southeast Asia, for instance. And, in a sense, the abuses found in American slaughterhouses are international matters, because so many of the workers are actually citizens of other countries. But in this case, the abuses are taking place right at home, and as part of our food chain. In a carb-conscious era, the meat processing industry should be a place of opportunity for workers who put all that protein on your plate. Right now, that is hardly the case.

I'll be going meat-free for Lent while I contemplate these abuses and what I should do about them. This should not stand and I'm going to take my custom elsewhere while I decide what to do.

This "carb-conscious era" is mostly about self-absorbtion. I learned to control my weight years ago through portion control. I dropped 60 pounds and have kept them off for ten years.

Lent and the other seasons like it are for getting rid of things, like taking out the trash of spring cleaning. This year, I'll eschew meat while I clean the house.

Light Posting

Sorry for the light afternoon. I'm fighting a migraine. If you have them, you know what I mean, if you don't, just offer sympathy and move along.

Isn't Technology Wonderful?

Stark is first to put video on congressional Web site

Chronicle Washington Bureau

Saturday, February 5, 2005

Washington -- Fremont Rep. Pete Stark [ed. note: D-CA-13] made a little bit of congressional and high- tech history Friday by becoming the first member of Congress to post a video clip on his official Web site.

His 3 1/2-minute blistering response to President Bush's State of the Union speech on Wednesday night is part of a new program devised by Democratic activists to let members of Congress communicate directly with their constituents by video. Republicans are expected to follow suit, and soon.

The effort is headed by Advocacy Inc., a small Washington-based firm that has done work for MoveOn.org, the Berkeley-based organization that became a major force mobilizing anti-Bush sentiment in the 2004 election campaign.

The firm charged Stark's office $100 to tape the segment and post it on his site, www.house.gov/stark/. But Stark was the test case, said Advocacy President Roger Alan Stone. The firm plans to charge future clients a few hundred dollars more.

Visitors to Stark's site can see and hear the 17-term Democrat lambaste Bush. "The state of the union is bad,'' said Stark, citing problems with public schools, health care, jobs, the environment and the budget.

Scroll down Stark's homepage to the Real and Windows Media links near the bottom of the page and watch Stark rip W. This is a fighting Democrat.

Left Untreated

Lovely.

Troops unable to be treated for skin disease in Iraq will be seen by doctors in U.S.

By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Wednesday, February 2, 2005

ARLINGTON, Va. — U.S.-based military doctors are bracing for a wave of servicemembers returning from Iraq this spring whose treatment for a skin disease has been delayed by the dangerous security situation there.

The soldiers who may be infected with cutaneous leishmaniasis are mostly from the 1st Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, the Army’s “Stryker Brigade,” according to Dr. Alan McGill, infectious disease specialist at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md.

“We’ve heard rumors of a couple hundred cases in the Stryker Brigade,” McGill said Friday.

But travel in Iraq is so perilous for U.S. troops that health care staff there are choosing to let suspected cases of the disease go, rather than risk a trip to the large medical facilities for diagnosis, said McGill, the U.S. military’s leading leishmaniasis expert.

“Doctors in the field are making some hard choices, because any movement in Iraq places your life in jeopardy,” he said.

McGill said he agrees with that decision, because the sores caused by cutaneous leishmaniasis eventually go away without treatment.

“If I were over there, I wouldn’t take the risk of sending [a soldier] to [a large medical facility] to treat a skin lesion that’s going to get better anyway,” McGill said.

Although treatment for some may have been delayed, troops whose skin lesions are serious will be accommodated once their deployments are over, McGill promised.

“The security situation may have prevented a timely evaluation by stateside standards, but as soon as these guys get home, we are going to take care of them,” McGill said.

Leishmaniasis takes hold when infected sand flies bite humans who sleep on the ground or work in very dirty, sandy environments.

Human cases of leishmaniasis mostly fall into one of two categories: cutaneous, which causes skin lesions that vary from the size of a pencil head to larger than the bottom of a soda can; and visceral, a far more serious variation which leaves no external marks, instead attacking the internal organs.

Courtesy of the World Health Organization:

Leishmaniasis currently threatens 350 million men, women and children in 88 countries around the world.

* Visceral leishmaniasis - also known as kala azar - is characterized by irregular bouts of fever, substantial weight loss, swelling of the spleen and liver, and anaemia (occasionally serious). If left untreated, the fatality rate can be as high as 100%.
* In mucocutaneous forms of leishmaniasis , lesions can lead to partial or total destruction of the mucose membranes of the nose, mouth and throat cavities and surrounding tissues. These disabling and degrading forms of leishmaniasis can result in victims being humiliated and cast out from society.
* Cutaneous forms of the disease normally produce skin ulcers on the exposed parts of the body such as the face, arms and legs. The disease can produce a large number of lesions - sometimes up to 200 - causing serious disability and invariably leaving the patient permanently scarred, a stigma which can cause serious social prejudice.

So, in addition to risk of life and limbs, the troops get to come home with permanent scarring.

Shooting Self in Foot

Moliere at The Agonist connects the dots:

As SE Asian Farms Boom, Stage Set for a Pandemic
Conditions Ripe for Spread of Bird Flu

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 5, 2005; Page A01

As a result, the prevalence of the infection in birds makes a new, more deadly human outbreak likely. Public health experts say it is only a matter of time before the flu strain remakes itself, unleashing a disease that is both highly lethal and as easy to catch as an ordinary flu bug.

If this occurs, World Health Organization officials predict that, in the most optimistic scenario, 2 million to 7 million people would die worldwide and that the toll could potentially reach 100 million. Health experts say the virus has already exhibited traits similar to those that caused the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which is estimated to have killed about 40 million people.

Tommy G. Thompson, former U.S. secretary of heath and human services, told reporters at his farewell news conference in December that avian flu was his greatest health fear. He called it a "really huge bomb" that concerned him even more than bioterrorism.

When Influenza Takes Flight
By HANS TROEDSSON and ANTON RYCHENER

Published: February 5, 2005

Hanoi, Vietnam — IMAGINE this situation: A sudden outbreak of a little-understood disease in two European countries kills 41 of the 54 people it is known to have infected. In its wake it leaves 150 million chickens dead, some of them killed by the virus causing the outbreak, others slaughtered to stop its spread. At a zoo in one country, rare tigers suddenly begin dying from the disease. Reports from elsewhere in Europe say the virus, which is normally found only in chickens, is now also infecting pigs, cats and ducks.

Scientists sound the alarm. They say that while the disease is primarily attacking poultry, it is undergoing genetic changes that could make it much more dangerous to humans. The possible result, they say, is a pandemic that could have devastating social and economic consequences. They point out that pandemics of this nature normally occur every 30 years - and the last one was more than 35 years ago.

There's no doubt that the international reaction would be swift and efficient. Resources would be poured into controlling the outbreak, with money made available for research into its causes, the virus's transmission routes, associated risk factors and treatment. A vaccine would be a top priority.

Unfortunately, we don't need to imagine all this - it's happening right now in Asia. An outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza - commonly known as bird flu - has swept through Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, killing humans, wiping out entire flocks of chickens and spreading fear.

The only difference between the fictional European situation and what is going on in Asia is the level of response. In the case of Asia, the international community has failed to come forward with enough money to finance desperately needed public health and veterinary measures and research on vaccines.

Bush Budget Calls for Cuts in Health Services
By ROBERT PEAR

Published: February 5, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 - President Bush's budget for 2006 cuts spending for a wide range of public health programs, including several to protect the nation against bioterrorist attacks and to respond to medical emergencies, budget documents show.

Faced with constraints on spending caused by record budget deficits and the demands of the war in Iraq, administration officials said on Friday that they had increased the budget for some health programs but cut many others, including some that address urgent health care needs.

The documents show, for example, that Mr. Bush would cut spending for several programs that deal with epidemics, chronic diseases and obesity. His plan would also cut the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 9 percent, to $6.9 billion, the documents show.

Going Begging

Canadian troops to Iraq?
Bush expected to ask PM for help at upcoming NATO talks

40 soldiers could join team training Iraqi forces in Baghdad

JAMES TRAVERS
NATIONAL AFFAIRS COLUMNIST

OTTAWA—U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to ask Prime Minister Paul Martin to send troops to help with the post-war reconstruction of Iraq when they meet later this month.

No decision has been made, but highly placed sources say Canada is preparing to discuss the sensitive issue during the NATO summit meeting in Brussels on Feb 22.

While the federal government has steadfastly refused to join the so-called coalition of the willing, which helped the U.S. during the Iraq war, the coming appeal is clearly being considered more favourably than in the past.

The Prime Minister's Office would not comment last night.

If Ottawa agrees, an estimated 40 Canadians would join a NATO force of about 300 now helping train Iraqi troops in Baghdad. Their mandate is to stabilize Iraq and help it prepare for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from a war that since the invasion in March, 2003, has claimed 1,446 American lives.

According to the sources, Canada's new openness to contributing troops is due to changing circumstance. They cite Sunday's surprisingly successful elections in Iraq and the urgent need to bring peace to the region as important considerations.

But the Martin government's reluctance to pay the domestic political price of joining the U.S. continental missile defence program is also said to be a factor shaping federal government thinking. Canada is eager to signal to the Bush administration that Ottawa's refusal to make a decision on the missile shield reflects the realities of minority government, not unwillingness to co-operate with Washington.

Canadian Bumpers, what do you think? It sounds to me like Martin's trying to put lipstick on a pig. How are Canadians liable to react when the first Canadian dead and wounded come home?

No Sale

Rice talks language of diplomacy - but it has alarming echoes

By Julian Coman, Colin Brown and Rupert Cornwell

05 February 2005

Asked directly whether the US planned an attack on Iran, Ms Rice said: "The question is simply not on the agenda at this point in time. We have diplomatic missions to do this." It was an answer that had a familiar ring.

Over the coming week, Ms Rice will encounter many who recall hearing such assurances in the recent past. Labour MPs who opposed the war in Iraq said last night that the assurances by Ms Rice were "unconvincing" and they remained deeply concerned that Tony Blair will be dragged into a second Middle East conflict by the Bush administration. "Blair has already announced he is going. We have no sanction against Blair if he goes to war alongside Bush again," said Peter Kilfoyle, the former defence minister. "We had the same assurances before they went to war against Iraq."

The outcome of the elections appears to be making matters worse, not better. Religious parties, backed and financed by Tehran, are sweeping the board in Iraq's first free elections. The first count showed that the United Iraqi Alliance, the largely Shia coalition of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has won more than two-thirds of the 3.3 million votes counted so far.

A secular democracy is not about to be formed in Iraq. Even Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, who Washington hoped would hold the balance of power, saw his coalition trounced. The theocrats of Iran, not the neo-conservatives of Washington, now appear to hold the keys to Iraq's future. For Ms Rice the problem of Iran has become more urgent than ever.

With the US military bogged down in Iraq and no exit strategy in sight, Washington faces an acute dilemma: how to bring about regime change in Tehran without repeating the mistakes of Iraq. The Rice solution, for now, is to seek an old-fashioned coalition with Old Europe.

The focus for her and her hosts was Iran and its race to acquire the nuclear bomb that Saddam Hussein infamously never possessed. Ms Rice criticised the "unelected mullahs" who hold power in Iran and described Tehran's human rights behaviour as loathsome. The prospect of a nuclear Iran was "deeply destabilising" for the region. She said Britain and the US shared a "unity of purpose" on the dangers posed by Iran.

Ms Rice's next stop was Berlin, where Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, one of the staunchest opponents of the Iraq war, agreed "that [Iran] must not have the potential of a nuclear weapon whatsoever".

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who has led British pressure on the White House to allow diplomacy to work, revealed that the International Atomic Energy Agency had found fresh evidence that the Iranians were not complying with an order to suspend its nuclear programme. Yet the limits of US power are manifest. Military action is all but unthinkable. The overstretched US military has its hands more than full in Iraq. If the US acted, moreover, it would do so alone.

In his inauguration speech, President Bush denounced Iran as "an outpost of tyranny". But in the wake of the Iraqi elections and the emergence of a "Shia crescent" of countries, the mullahs' regime looks less of an outpost and more a capital of a remade map of the Middle East.

In Washington, overt (or covert) action is already being taken to help Iranian reformers.

I seriously doubt she's going to have much more success in overcoming doubts anywhere else in Europe. The Sunday papers will be interesting.

Fixing Nick

Social Security Poker: It's Time for Liberals to Ante Up
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: February 5, 2005

Liberals are making a historic mistake by lining up so adamantly against Social Security reform.

It's impolite to say so in a blue state, but President Bush has a point: there is a genuine problem with paying for Social Security, even if it isn't as dire as Mr. Bush suggests.

As Bill Clinton declared in 1998 about Social Security reform: "We all know a demographic crisis is looming. ... If we act now it will be easier and less painful than if we wait until later." Mr. Clinton then made Social Security reform a central theme of his 1999 State of the Union address, saying, "Above all, we must save Social Security for the 21st century."

Figures tossed about these days - such as the system's having to slash benefits in 2042 - are wild guesses that depend in part on longevity. The Social Security Administration estimates that U.S. life expectancy will increase by only six years by 2075. But life spans grew by 30 years in the 20th century, and if you believe (as I do) that biotechnology will greatly raise life expectancy, then we'll face a huge problem paying for long-lived retirees (touch wood, like me).

This kind of claptrap has had me pissed off for the last couple of days and I want to deal with it once and for all. Kristof generally keeps me in a state of high dudgeon because he is one of the laziest pundits around and this article is a symptom.

Nick, we liberals have an alternative to the Bush plan. It's called "Social Security," and it's been chugging along famously for 70 years. Congress has needed to tweak the formula every couple of decades to make sure that the benefits and taxes are a good match for the current and forecast demographics (and will need to do so again shortly), but the program is as sound now as when FDR created it. The future shortfalls predicted by the SSA itself (and the CBO) could be taken care of by removing the salary cap. Period.

But that would increase taxes on the wealthy, and we can't have that, now, can we?

The Ivy Halls

Shrinking Student Pools Force Public Universities to Fish Afar
By GREG WINTER

Published: February 5, 2005

Like many other big public universities, Alabama is plunging into what private colleges have already mastered: scouring the nation in search of students. In swaths of the country, including the northern Plains and the Northeast, the traditional bastion of higher education, the student population promises to decline in the next decade, sometimes precipitously.

So public universities are recruiting far and wide, hoping that out-of-state students will keep enrollments rising, bring in substantial extra money through higher tuition and maintain the caliber of their student bodies.

It is a tricky proposition, not to mention an expensive one, because it often involves persuading students to forsake the bargains of their own state colleges for a public education that may not be any better than one they can get at home. But it is a sales pitch that many public universities are making with vigor, not simply because they feel they have to, but also because they believe they can turn their largely local institutions into much bigger, nationally recognized ones.

"Public universities are casting a much broader net," said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Over all, American colleges are awash in students, stretching some state universities almost to bursting, and the national swell of public high school graduates is not expected to peak until 2009 or so as the children of the baby-boom generation come of age.

But the growth is geographically spotty. For example, New York's pool of public high school graduates is expected to crest in about three years and then dwindle by some 20,000 students over a decade, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. After its own surge, Alabama will see its graduation numbers start to contract sharply by the end of the decade, and then eventually rebound.

In states like Maine and Vermont, the pipeline has already started shriveling, and is ultimately expected to shrink by 16.9 percent and 26.3 percent respectively by 2018.

That future has prompted many public universities to form some particularly bold scouting parties, especially in these tight budgetary times.

When local students attend the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for example, their tuition comes out to a mere $1,714 (not including some substantial fees) and the university is obliged to hand it over to the state. But out-of-state students pay around $9,937 in tuition (again, not including fees), and the university gets to keep it all.

To expand its pool of prospects, the University of Vermont has begun sending recruiters south of the Mason-Dixon line and west of the Mississippi River to plant a flag in states like Georgia and California, where the trajectory of the student population is essentially the opposite of Vermont's.

Making the college "market" more competative is a good thing, but that isn't really what's going on here and the NYT article is duplicitous. What the reporter doesn't tell you is that these public university "salesman" are mostly playing on kids' and family's fears about getting into a "good" school to compete against their local public system. Is 'Bama the right school for your student? Go and take a look. You can figure this out for yourself.

Colleges and universities have turned on the myth-making machinery in order to turn higher education into some sort of impenetrable Oz. In truth, it's not. A student who really wants to learn is going to get a pretty good education almost anywhere. The student's attitude and willingness to work matters far more than the name over the front gate.

If your student intends to penetrate some of the higher circles of power after graduation, the name will matter. Otherwise, a good student, willing to work for their grade, is going to get an adequate education almost anywhere. The competition for teaching slots in colleges and universities is so high right now that schools have their pick of teachers.

Things to look for instead of names and reputations: teacher to student ratios in undergraduate classes; percentage of professors teaching undergrad classes; community service opportunities; RA to dorm student ratios. These are the things that really matter in making up the quality of life for the average undergrad. If you are willing to work hard, you can get a decent Bachelor level degree almost anywhere. Grad school is another matter, but most students aren't headed there.

Things got a little more scary today at recombinomics.com

More cheery news in commentary at www.recombinomics.com. Henry Niman on the subject of the recently discovered, apparently direct contact, human-human H5N1 transmission mechanism. My emphasis in boldface and/or italics ...

Efficient Human to Human Transmission of H5N1 in SE Asia

Recombinomics Commentary
February 4, 2005

>> There have been probable cases of human-to-human transmission before but this is the first in which the person infected - the mother - contracted severe illness and died. It proves the virus can be passed from person to person without losing its lethality. <<

The above comment, with regard to the case cluster in Thailand, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is not true. The current H5N1 pandemic, which began in December, 2003 has generated at least 9 familial clusters of cases, resulting in 11 likely human to human transmissions, and 9 of the 11 have died. Unfortunately, the efficiency of human to human transmission of fatal H5N1 influenza is much higher than transmission of H5N1 from birds to humans.

The misconception quoted above, comes from repeated comments from WHO that human to human transmission of H5N1 is very rare. These comments are supported by a flawed database. Collecting and testing of samples, especially for index cases of familial clusters, is poor. Of the 9 clusters, no sample was collected from the index case in 4 instances, including the cluster published in the New England Journal of Medicine. However, the clinical presentation is quite clear and in each cluster a relative has been laboratory confirmed, so there is little doubt that the fatal cases of children or young adults were due to H5N1. However, WHO excludes these cases, thereby eliminating the cluster. These clusters however, answer many questions about human to human transmission of H5N1 this season and last, in Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia.

The clusters have been described previously. Three are from Vietnam from the beginning of last season. Two are from last summer (one from Thailand and one from Vietnam). Four are from this season (1 from Cambodia and 3 from Vietnam). In all 9 clusters the index cases died with bird flu symptoms and in each cluster there is at least one confirmed H5N1 case. Remarkably, all 9 clusters have a bimodal distribution of disease onset dates, separated by a week or more. The 9 clusters are composed of 21 cases. Of the 21 cases 19 have died and 15 have been laboratory confirmed as H5N1 positive. Of the 12 patients who were not index cases, only 1 developed symptoms on or about the same time as the index case. The other 11 developed symptoms a week or more later, strongly suggesting that they are human to human transmissions.

This transmission is far more efficient than transmission from birds to people. As has been noted previously, such a process is extremely inefficient. Last season over 100 million birds were culled, but there were only 44 official cases in Vietnam and Thailand. Adding in the missed cases as well as those members of a positive cluster keeps the total far below 100, so there were over 1 million birds culled for every reported human H5N1 case. This season, the culling has been limited, but since 1.1 million birds have been culled and there have been only 11 cases not tied to human transmission, the ratio is still 100,000 birds culled for each reported case. Thus, the efficiency of human to human transmission, 11 cases from less than 100 human cases, was over 1000 fold more efficient than bird to human.

Since the virus that is transmitted bird to human is virtually identical to the virus transmitted human to human, the difference in efficiencies is due to interactions between the hosts. Most of the culled birds had limited interactions with people. Many were culled by a limited number of workers, and none of the workers were reported as being infected. In contrast, the infected humans were related to an index case and in general they were caregivers and had unprotected close contact with the infected family member.

The transmission chain was limited because the disease was so severe. Most of the index cases were initially not diagnosed with bird flu so much of the contact with other family members was unprotected. However, after the index case died, the suspicion index was raised significantly when the next family member developed symptoms, so the H5N1 was not transmitted further because family members used more care to avoid infection and / or brought the subsequent case to the hospital where they were put into isolation.

However, the virus was quite lethal. All 10 cluster members infected at the time of the index case died, but 9 of the 11 infected by a family member also died, so the failure to transmit further was limited by better infection control, not by significantly reduced lethality of the transmitted virus.

Thus, it would be useful to issue a warning that H5N1 can be transmitted to close family members quite easily, especially if unprotected care is given. This is quite clear from the cluster data, when analyzed properly.

Lovely. Isn't that just grand??? It makes me feel better already!

The human-human transmissibility is reaching for levels comparable to that of Ebola, and it's ripping through the secondary cases like the very scythe of death. I thought that frequently, a new viruses lethality would taper off some as it passed from one host to another. I guess that's not happening this time, huh.

I would also imagine that in the hospitals used to control the chains of infection, the suggestions to staff to maintain strict barrier nursing techniques when treating the secondary cases woundn't be very subtle, now would they? Given that we have not heard of any tertiary cases from among the staffs of these hospitals. I know that were I in charge, I would put these suggestions in the bluntest possible terms.

I'm sure you noticed that the old bird-human transfer was 10 fold more efficient after passage of a year, too. This influenza is really getting chummier with people all the time!

I still wonder whether transmission was via individual virions or contaminated droplets or what. Exacttly what is the mechanism for this transmission. All we know is that it apparently requires direct physical contact, so maybe full out barrier nursing might not be necessary after all. I wonder what precautions the staffs actually did take, in the event. If they were unmasked, I think we can say with certainty that this transmission mode requires direct physical contact.

Ooooh, it's so exciting waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[Note to self. Should you ever be a party to establishment of a new HTML standard, make sure it includes a "sarcasm" tag.]

Real Food

But I can't leave you without a recipe, one good for a snowy day:

MANHATTAN CLAM CHOWDER
Treat yourself to fresh clams for this recipe — they make all the difference. This dish originated in Rhode Island during the late 19th century, when, as story has it, Portuguese immigrants added tomatoes to their chowder. British New Englanders believed their creamy chowder to be superior and named the Portuguese version after Manhattan, presuming that New Yorkers were the only people crazy enough to add tomatoes.

Makes 1 serving.

If you're neither a Pats or an Iggles fan, this guarantees you both neutrallity and a really good party food.

Other Priorities

Friday cat blogging:

Isn't he cute? Click on the link for the Post's video gallery. It is one of their better ones. I wish I'd taken some of their shots.

Baby cheetahs are spectacular fun.

I'm headed for the Zoo in the morning. This is too good to miss.

Down, Down, Down

Inflation-adjusted wages fell in 2004 despite job growth
The good news is that employment grew in 2004; the bad news is that the rate of wage growth fell.

The year 2004 was the first since 1999 that saw job growth in every single month, and it was also the first year since 2000 that the jobless rate declined. Yet the labor market remained relatively slack, and despite the reversal of job losses, there was little labor market pressure on employers to raise wages. Thus, as the chart below reveals, wages grew more slowly in 2004 than in the previous year. In fact, the 2.1% growth rate for nominal hourly earnings in 2004 is the lowest in the history of this wage series, which began in 1964 (the series is for production, non-supervisory workers, the 80% of the workforce who are either blue-collar manufacturing workers or non-managers in services).

Weakest job recovery on record
Since the start of the recession 46 months ago (March 2001), a negligible 62,000 jobs have been added in the U.S. economy. Private sector jobs are still down by 703,000, a contraction of 0.6%. Both represent the worst job performance since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting monthly jobs data in 1939 (at the end of the Great Depression). To put this performance in historical perspective, in every previous episode of recession and job decline since 1939, the number of jobs had fully recovered to above the pre-recession peak within at least 31 months after the start of the recession. (The average, excluding the 1991 recovery, has been a full recovery of jobs by the 21st month). In the three downturns since the early 1970s, the economy had not only recovered all the jobs lost during the recession but had also generated 5.7% more jobs than existed at the start of the recession. If this historical standard had prevailed, the economy would have had a positive job gain of 7,568,000 by what is now the 46th month of recovery, or 7,502,000 more jobs than we have today.

This economy is a long way from being out of the woods. Equities are flat for the last couple of years, wages are down and long term unemployment is up.

Follow the link above to EPI's Job Watch and look at all the depressing charts. This is Max Sawicky's shop and they do a very nice job presenting data so that non-specialists can understand it.

How to get it wrong with Windows - and how to get it right

Let me preface this with a confession.

I am not only a Unix bigot, I am a confirmed Grand Champion Unix bigot. I haven't had a Windows system I used in a continual way at home until about 18 months ago. I would build my trusted systems out dual boot, with the first partition NT and the second partition Linux .. and then never, ever boot into the NT portion.

My scorn for Microsoft products knew no bounds whatsoever until Windows 2000 arrived on the scene. That, I liked .. at work. But if we hadn't had a policy which required us to run Windows, you know something? That hard drive would have had Mandrake Linux installed on it within the first 24 hours of my access to it.

That preface being said, today, Slashdot referenced this article at sfgate.com.

Why Does Windows Still Suck? Why do PC users put up with so many viruses and worms? Why isn't everyone on a Mac?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, February 4, 2005

So about a year ago, the SO finally upgraded her Net connection to DSL, carefully installed the Yahoo! DSL software into her creaky Sony Vaio PC laptop and ran through all the checks and install verifications and appropriate nasty disclaimers.

And all seemed to go smoothly and reasonably enough considering it was a Windows PC and therefore nothing was really all that smooth or reasonable or elegant, but whatever. She just wanted to get online. Should be easy as 1-2-3, claimed the Yahoo! guide. Painless as tying your shoe, said the phone company.

She got online all right. The DSL worked great. For about four minutes.

Then, something happened. Something attacked. Something swarmed her computer the instant she tried to move around online and the computer slowed and bogged and cluttered and crashed, and multiple restarts and debuggings and what-the-hells only brought up only a flood of nightmarish pop-up windows and terrifying error messages and massive system slowdowns and all manner of inexplicable claims of infestation of this worm and that Trojan horse and did we want to buy McAfee AntiVirus protection for $39.95?

Four minutes. And she was already DOA.

My SO, she is not alone. This exact same scenario, with only slight variation, is happening throughout the nation, right now. Are you using a PC? You probably have spyware. The McAfee site claims a whopping 91 percent of PCs are infected. As every Windows user knows, PCs are ever waging a losing battle with a stunningly vicious array of malware and worms and viruses, all aimed at exploiting one of about ten thousand security flaws and holes in Microsoft Windows.

Here, then, is my big obvious question: Why the hell do people put up with this? Why is there not some massive revolt, some huge insurrection against Microsoft? Why is there not a huge contingent of furious users stomping up to Seattle with torches and scythes and crowbars, demanding the Windows Frankenstein monster be sacrificed at the altar of decent functionality and an elegant user interface?

There is nothing else like this phenomenon in the entire consumer culture. If anything else performed as horribly as Windows, and on such a global scale, consumers would scream bloody murder and demand their money back and there would be some sort of investigation, class-action litigation, a demand for Bill Gates' cute little geeky head on a platter.

There's more. I only quoted the first third of the editorial. But I am sure you all get the general gist by now.

Now for my reply.

Microsoft software is not built by engineers for engineers. The roots of Linux are in Unix, which is. Windows software is built to specs laid down by marketing guys, for a market of consumers. Not by engineers, for engineers. This imposes certain tradeoffs.

The Windows user interface is slick, intuitive and consistent. Control-c means "copy" across the board. Control-v means "paste" across the board. Be it text, files, or whatever.

OTOH, the coding standards do indeed suck. There are indeed numerous security vulnerabilities, and the "Trustworthy Computing" business is pretty clearly nothing more than a marketing ploy. You don't see Linux boxes littered with viruses and spyware. This happens all to easily to Windows boxes.

But wait. Linux boxes are vulnerable to worms if they are misconfigured. I know from personal experience; the first incident I ever responded to as a security professional was a reconnaisance from a root-compromised Linux system. And if you don't know what you are doing during the install process, "new Linux install" == "misconfigured Linux install". That shiny newly installed Washington University ftp server is installed in a turned-on state? That server is ubiquitous in the Linux world, you know. Then I can pretty much guarantee your Linux system is going to get 0wn3d (= "owned", for those of you unfamiliar with blackhat culture). Not right away. Not within 4 minutes. But eventually.

Remember, "by engineers, for engineers". How many of you are hard core IT or security geeks?

Macs are harder targets than generic Linux boxes for two reasons. They are rarer birds, so they are lower profile targets. And they began as consumer systems, so they run few to zero applications which offer services to any system on the network that asks.

A network service is a security risk by definition. Because even those coded to the tightest standards most likely have flaws which will surface eventually.

So what does a Windows user do? How does one avoid getting overrun inside of four minutes of one's first connection to the Internet? Must one simply scrub the system and install an OS which may be more secure, but is also unfamiliar and thus somewhat scary? Buy an expensive Mac?

Let's enumerate the threats to Windows systems.

(1) Viruses propagated by email.

(2) Spyware/Adware.

(3) Worms. Malware that actively seeks out remote systems and attacks them.

(4) Human directed attacks against network services.

Now the mitigations.

(1) Email propagated viruses. Install antivirus software with frequently refreshed signatures. That last cannot be too often stressed. You can have the Enterprise version of Symantec Antivirus, which is one of the best products out there, and still get nailed to the wall if your signatures are out of date.

(2) Spyware/Adware. Most of this comes in through browsing the wrong sites. You cannot really know a "wrong site" in advance. So you do two things.

First, dump Microsoft Internet Explorer. That browser is an acute embarassment to Microsoft; it's the shoddiest thing they market. Where I work, we tend to call it "Internet Exploder". Or things less complimentary. Migrate, instead, to Firefox or, if you like something more heaviweight and multipurpose, Mozilla. These have vulnerabilities too, but they arise much less frequently, and both are free. There are other good choices out there, too. The important thing is to use IE only when you have no choice.

Second, install software that sweeps your system for spyware and adware and preens it. Spyware Search and Destroy is a good choice. So is Ad Aware SE Personal. Both are free. There is absolutely no reason not to use both. In fact that is a good choice; they compliment each other. There are commercial products that do this job too. All are siganture based, just like antivirus software, and the signatures need periodic updating. But this is not necessary as frequently as with antivirus software. Spyware signature updates can wait days to weeks. Antivirus updates should be done at least daily. Oftener is better

(3) and (4) Worms and human directed attacks. These both exploit the same class of vulnerability: programs offering services across a network wire. So they share the same mitigations.

First, if you are tech savvy, turn as many of these off as you can. Try bringing up a command window and type "netstat". Every service whose "Foreign Address" is not "localhost" is a liability. A security hole just waiting for Joe Hacker to attack through.

Second, install a firewall. This is vital, active services or not. My recommendation is a hardware firewall backed up by a second software firewall. The hardware firewall is a separate system sitting between your Windows box and your Internet connection. Deploy it in such a way that the ONLY way your Windows system can connect to the Internet is through that firewall. The software firewall you deploy on your Windows system itself. I have found Zone Alarm to be a good software firewall, but there are other choices out there.

The natural question is "why two firewalls?"

Easy one. Two reasons.

First, no firewall offers perfect protection. All a firewall is, is a mechanism to deny connections. Hardware firewalls can have operating system vulnerabilities. Software firewalls can have application vulnerabilities. Believe me, there were a lot of red faces at Symantec late last year when a gaping security vulnerability was found in Symantec's hardware firewall appliance. And problems have surfaced with their software firewalls too. Other vendors have found themselves in the same fix, trust me. The best practice is to deploy two firewalls of dissimilar types. That, my friends, is how banks do things. I know; I work in one.

Second, hardware and software firewalls compliment each other. The specialty of a hardware firewall is denying connection attempts from outside, from systems out on the Internet. But a software firewall can alert you to connection attempts originating from your own Windows box. Now most of these are going to be legitimate. But if your Windows box has already been compromised and a trojan has been installed, its connection attempts will NOT be legitimate, and should be blocked. This sort of alerting and subsequent trainabilty is where Zone Alarm and similar software firewalls shine.

Mark Morford found peace of mind with a Mac on his desk. But he really doesn't get it. Macs have vulnerabilities, too. And some of them are pretty freaking grave, as you can see if you followed that last link. They just don't get exploited as often or as intensely as Windows vulnerabilities do.

Mark needs a firewall, at minimum. For him, as for Linux users, antivirus software is pretty much optional. But he does need that firewall. He is living with a false sense of security. And Microsoft bashing isn't going to fix his problems.

A Little Fisking

WaPo's Dan Froomkin fisks Bush's Social Security case:

Avoiding the Tough Questions
Friday, Feb 04, 2005; 12:57 PM

And don't forget all the issues raised in yesterday's column.

The print reporters have been doing a decent job with this story, but none of the electronic media are. The coverage has been abysmal to downright misleading.

SOTU--Walk and Talk

Flourishes of freedom

Leader
Friday February 4, 2005
The Guardian

The principal theme was familiar and simple: America will fight, at home and abroad, for "the guiding ideal of liberty for all". The culminating moment of the Capitol Hill appearance - as staged and flashy to some as it was clearly moving and symbolic to many others - was the appearance of an Iraqi woman, her index finger still stained with the purple indelible ink identifying voters in Sunday's elections. To drive home the point, she then embraced the parents of a marine sergeant killed in Falluja. The choreography smacked of the "let freedom reign" message Mr Bush scribbled on the note informing him of the handover of power to Iraq's interim government last June.

But such emotive flourishes offer little guidance to the way ahead. The president's critics argue that he has no strategy for achieving his goals. Instead, in a speech that was more sermon than programme - "yet another feel-good paean to freedom and democracy", the New York Times felt - he uttered some selective words of warning: Iran, a member of his original "axis of evil," was told not to pursue nuclear weapons or sponsor terror. Europeans will have noticed, with qualified relief, his approving reference to their diplomatic efforts with Tehran, a message being repeated by Condoleezza Rice, the new secretary of state, in London and elsewhere in the coming days. Syria, not in the original "axis," was also ordered to end terror and "open the door to freedom". To balance those warnings there were gentler signals to two Arab allies which are not beacons of the values Mr Bush so fervently espouses: Saudi Arabia was urged to "expand the role of its people in determining their future". Egypt - the largest recipient of US aid outside Israel - might "show the way toward democracy". But there was no suggestion that either would face any negative consequences if they did not. Perhaps the president had them in mind when he explained that democracy was an "ultimate" rather than an immediate American goal. If that signals a cooling of his world-changing zeal and the more "consensual" approach Tony Blair says he now expects from Washington, that might be good news.

It bears repeating that democracy and freedom are fine things - the motherhood and apple pie of international discourse; except for those, as Mr Bush reminded us, like the "terrorist Zarqawi", unknown a short time ago but now the odious enemy of us all thanks to the way that Iraq and the "war on terror" have morphed into one titanic struggle. But how they are to be achieved, at what cost, and by whom, remain as controversial as they were before Saddam Hussein fell. Many Arabs and Europeans still suspect American motives as well as questioning the wisdom of deploying "Jeffersonian tanks" to bring democracy along with liberation to "outposts of tyranny".

That the president, so single-mindedly ambitious in the greater Middle East, found nothing to say about China, Russia, Africa or Latin America is worrying. But Mr Bush did repeat his commitment to an independent, democratic Palestinian state. If he were to really achieve that and thus help, in his own eloquent words "to eliminate the conditions that feed radicalism and ideologies of murder", the judgment of history would be a lot kinder than it looks like being right now.

Promoting Democracy in Egypt

Published: February 4, 2005

A few days ago, Mr. Mubarak's police arrested Ayman Nour, an opposition party leader who had been calling for fully democratic presidential elections. Mr. Nour was charged with forging signatures on the petitions that secured legal status for his party last fall. His real offense was acting like a real opposition party leader in a real democracy. The State Department responded with diplomatically phrased words of protest. Some Egyptian democrats called for stronger American pressure, but most worried that too close an embrace of Mr. Nour by the United States would make it easier for Mr. Mubarak to discredit him in Egyptian eyes.

Washington must go beyond raising its voice for select democrats at opportune moments. It must confront Mr. Mubarak and other regional autocrats with consistent calls for political freedom and open multiparty elections.

Not long ago America was automatically equated with freedom and democracy in the minds of most of the world's oppressed and colonized peoples. Over the years, that reputation has been squandered for shortsighted reasons. This would be a fine moment to begin earning it back.

Habits of the Soul

Top Marine General's Blunt Comments Draw Fire

SAN DIEGO -- At a panel discussion in San Diego Tuesday, a top Marine general tells an audience that, among other things, it is "fun to shoot some people."

The comment, made by Lt. Gen. James Mattis, came in reference to fighting insurgents in Iraq. He went on to say, "Actually, its a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. I like brawling."

"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for 5 years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis continued. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

About 200 people gathered for the discussion, held at the San Diego Convention Center. While many military members laughed at the comments, a military expert interviewed by NBC 7/39 in San Diego called the comments "flippant."

"I was a little surprised," said Retired Vice Adm. Edward H. Martin. "I don't think any of us who have ever fought in wars liked to kill anybody."

Mattis also discussed operational tactics of the war, calling on military members not to underestimate the capacity of terrorists.

Mattis leads Camp Pendleton's 1st Marine Division in Iraq. He is in charge of the Marine Corps combat development and is based in Quantico, Va.

Video link.

Text of the Rockford College graduation speech by Chris Hedges

I want to speak to you today about war and empire.

Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now.

We have forfeited the good will, the empathy the world felt for us after 9-11. We have folded in on ourselves, we have severely weakened the delicate international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and promoting peace and we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts of violence. We have become the company we keep.

The censure and perhaps the rage of much of the world, certainly one-fifth of the world's population which is Muslim, most of whom I'll remind you are not Arab, is upon us. Look today at the 14 people killed last night in several explosions in Casablanca. And this rage in a world where almost 50 percent of the planet struggles on less than two dollars a day will see us targeted. Terrorism will become a way of life, and when we are attacked we will, like our allies Putin and Sharon, lash out with greater fury. The circle of violence is a death spiral; no one escapes. We are spinning at a speed that we may not be able to hold. As we revel in our military prowess -- the sophistication of our military hardware and technology, for this is what most of the press coverage consisted of in Iraq -- we lose sight of the fact that just because we have the capacity to wage war it does not give us the right to wage war. This capacity has doomed empires in the past.

Begging for Catastrophe

Ignoring the Smoke

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, February 4, 2005; Page A17

Watching President Bush's speech Wednesday night, I thought of Irwin Allen, Hollywood's master of disaster, the man who gave us "The Towering Inferno," "The Poseidon Adventure" and a host of other films in which calamity follows catastrophe until everybody dies, except the extremely good-looking. And I thought of the beaches of Rio de Janeiro.

In the disaster-flick genre, there are always two crucial moments when characters must commit acts of breathtaking stupidity, or else there would be no imminent danger and thus no movie. One, of course, is when somebody we're meant to care about decides to run toward the erupting volcano, rather than away from it. The other comes earlier in the movie, when some Benighted Authority Figure (B.A.F.) looks out the window at the columns of smoke and brimstone belching from nearby Mount Sinister and snaps, "Problem? I don't see any problem, and I'll tell you one thing: There's not gonna be any evacuation, not on my watch. Now everybody back to work."

Bush is playing the B.A.F. in a movie titled "Heat Wave," and Irwin Allen -- long ago gone to that Lost World in the sky -- would be proud.
....
"The rest of the world is going forward on global warming," said David Doniger, a former Environmental Protection Agency official who now serves as climate center policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group with offices in Washington. "Even some of the states are going forward on their own -- Schwarzenegger in California, Pataki in New York. The black hole on global warming is here inside the Beltway."

This is one of those issues that cause a lot of eyes to glaze over, understandably. For one thing, if you follow press reports, scientists can't seem to agree on just what we should be so worried about. Eminent British researchers, writing in December in the science journal Nature, demonstrated to peer-reviewed satisfaction that the 2003 heat wave in Europe, which killed around 15,000 people, was probably caused by human-induced global warming. At the same time, some equally eminent oceanologists are worried that warming will shut down the Gulf Stream ocean current in the Atlantic, eventually turning green and temperate Europe into another Siberia.

Which is another way of saying, "Americans, this is just too hard to understand, so don't worry your pretty little heads about it. Science is hard."

In 12 days the Kyoto Protocol -- the international treaty designed to cap and reduce carbon emissions -- goes into effect. Other developed nations have spent most of the past decade preparing for Kyoto; British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's staunchest ally in the Iraq war, is one of Kyoto's biggest supporters. The United States declines to have anything to do with the Kyoto agreement, which means the biggest single source of the emissions that apparently are heating up the planet will not participate in the negotiated solution.

Developing industrial powers (and coal-burners) such as China and India are not bound by the treaty, which is one of the reasons the United States has shunned it. Few believe that Kyoto is a panacea. Many other world leaders believe it's a necessary beginning.

Which brings me to those beaches in Rio, where in 1992 I covered the Earth Summit -- the first truly global environmental conference. That meeting, attended by dozens of heads of state, including then-President George H.W. Bush, started the process that led to the Kyoto agreement. The United States wasn't exactly leading the charge, but at least we were there.

And now? Our B.A.F. in chief asks "What volcano?" and tells everybody to get back to work.

Here is what The New Scientist had to say about it yesterday:

Only huge emissions cuts will curb climate change

New Scientist

To have half a chance of curbing global warming to within safe levels, the world's greenhouse gas emissions need to fall dramatically to between 30% and 50% of 1990 levels by 2050, a new study suggests.

He also worked out how the risks were affected if CO2 concentrations first peaked at higher values then fell back to these levels. Because the climate takes time to respond to carbon dioxide concentrations, the maximum temperature can be kept down as long as carbon dioxide levels fall quickly after the peak.

Bush prefers assertion to fact, but facts are stubborn things. Preznit Liar is taking us down a very dangerous course.

Manufacturing Crisis

Feeding the 'Crisis'

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, February 4, 2005; Page A17

Our country could profit from an honest debate about the future of Social Security. Judging from President Bush's State of the Union address, that is not the kind of debate we are about to have.

The president wants to use real but quite solvable problems in Social Security financing as an excuse for radical changes in the program. If Bush were to admit the simple fact that the shortfall in the Social Security trust fund is at most 0.7 percent of gross domestic product over the next 75 years, his alarmism would fall flat. So he has decided to exaggerate and mislead by way of frightening the American people, especially the young. It's bad politics, worse policy and a terrible shame.

That is why you heard that loud chorus of "No's!" on Wednesday night that temporarily made the usually decorous House chamber sound like the more raucous British Parliament. Even Bush's foes and critics could not believe how far he was willing to go. "By the year 2042, the entire system would be exhausted and bankrupt," the president said at one point. Later, he offered a scene from "Nightmare on Independence Avenue" with the following scary thought: "If you've got children in their twenties, as some of us do, the idea of Social Security collapsing before they retire does not seem like a small matter. And it should not be a small matter to the United States Congress."

Bankrupt? Collapsing? That is nonsense. By 2042 (or 2052, according to the Congressional Budget Office), Social Security will still be able to pay between 70 and 80 percent of promised benefits -- which, because of wage indexing, would be higher in real terms than today's benefits.

Moreover, Bush was not willing to say in detail what he would do to solve the problem he kept harping on. Republicans clamoring for Democrats to put forward a Social Security plan might first ask their president, the man who says this matter is so urgent, to put forward a lot more specifics than he has.

Bush never said directly that he would propose cuts in future Social Security benefits. He hid behind past statements by former Democratic members of Congress to suggest that he was offering particulars without actually doing so. And some of those statements were opaque, as in: "Former congressman Tim Penny has raised the possibility of indexing benefits to prices rather than wages." You'd never know that the shift the former representative from Minnesota described would lead to a substantial cut in future benefits.

What Dionne doesn't tell you:

Weapons of Mass Distortion: Bush's New Campaign of Lies About Social Security
By Dave Lindorff, ILCA Associate Member

Like a man shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater, like a charlatan trying to create a run on a bank, the president is trying to create a panicky run from Social Security among younger people with this new WMD-like campaign of lies.

Social Security, the New Deal program that has provided a basic level of economic support for the nation's elderly, disabled and orphaned for 70 years, is in grave danger--not from Baby Boomers, but from a campaign of lies and fear-mongering, led by the president.

The truth? There is no Social Security crisis. None whatsoever.

Yet, in his State of the Union address Wednesday night, President Bush put the campaign to destroy Social Security and its promise of old-age and disability security front and center in his second-term agenda, claiming that the system founded in 1935 is headed for "bankruptcy" in 2042.

Like the mythical weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, this was a flat-out, deliberate lie. First of all, even if the date were correct, all that would happen in 2042 would be that the trust fund used to pay out benefits to workers would be exhausted, but even then current workers taxes would continue to cover 73 percent of promised benefits to retirees. More importantly, that 2042 projection by the increasingly politicized Social Security Administration was just a conservative projection made a few years ago based upon unrealistically low estimates of future economic growth. It has already been pushed back by several years’ good economic performance, and in fact, the Congressional Budget Office and most independent economists say that the trust fund should enable the system to cover all benefits through at least 2052 and perhaps on out through 2080 and beyond.

Not mentioned by the president or right-wing critics of Social Security is the fact that by 2045, the last of the Baby Boom generation will have already shuffled off this mortal coil, taking their outsized claims for benefits with them.

Given that there is no real crisis, the real unasked question is why the president, right-wing politicians and pundits, and corporate leaders and business organizations--and the media--are all calling for "reforms" to "save" the system.

The media is marching in lockstep. I watched Judy Woodbrain on CNN yesterday treating this as if there were genuine difference on the facts and NPR is doing the same this morning. This is just another step on the road to serfdom sponsored by our GOP minders.

The Family Way

Criminal World

By Chris Floyd

02/03/05 "Moscow Times" -- Another day, another accomplice in the construction of the Bush Regime's torture chambers revealed. Nothing new there; the perp walk of top Bushists colluding in torture could stretch a mile. But the remarkable thing about the latest case is that it exposes an even greater depth of official criminality than hitherto suspected -- no mean feat, given the rap sheet of this crew.

The new man on the hot seat is Judge Michael Chertoff, nominated to head the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Chertoff was hip-deep in creating -- and covering up -- the infamous White House "torture memos": carefully detailed guidelines from the desk of President George W. Bush that instigated a global system of documented torture, rape and murder.

Before Bush elevated him to the federal bench, Chertoff headed the Justice Department's criminal division, where he was frequently consulted by the CIA and the White House on ways to weasel around the very clear U.S. laws against torture, The New York Times reports. Bush and his legal staff, then headed by Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales, were openly concerned with "avoiding prosecution for war crimes" under some future administration that might lack the Bushists' finely nuanced view of ramming phosphorous lightsticks up a kidnapped detainee's rectum, or other enlightened methods employed in the administration's crusade to defend civilization from barbarity.

Throughout 2002 and 2003, the CIA sent Chertoff urgent questions asking whether various "interrogation protocols" could get their agents sent to the hoosegow. The questions themselves are revelatory of the tainted mindset at CIA headquarters -- officially known as the George H.W. Bush Center for Intelligence. Beyond methods we already know were used -- such as "water-boarding" and "rendering" detainees to foreign torturers -- the Bush Center boys sought legal cover for such additional refinements as "death threats against family members" and "mind-altering drugs or psychological procedures designed to profoundly disrupt a detainee's personality."

However, the Justice Department could only offer advice; final approval of interrogation techniques -- including the Bush Center's requests -- rested solely with the Bush White House. As one senior intelligence official told The New York Times: "Nothing that was done was not explicitly authorized" by the Oval Office. Thus the chain of responsibility is clearly established for the reams of evidence on torture, rape and murder in the Bush gulag -- cases documented by the FBI and the Pentagon's own investigators, as well as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the Red Crescent, Human Rights Watch and others.

But Chertoff's involvement in Bush's chamber of horrors goes beyond an advisory capacity. He was also instrumental in the earliest cover-up of Bush's torture system: the trial of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" captured in Afghanistan, the Nation reports. In June 2002, Lindh was due to testify about the methods used to extract his confession of terrorist collusion: days of beating, drugging, denial of medical treatment, and other abuses. These were of course standard procedures used -- by presidential order -- from the very beginning of the "war on terror." To stop Lindh from exposing this wide-ranging criminal regimen, Chertoff, overseeing the prosecution, suddenly offered Lindh a deal: The feds would drop all the most serious charges in exchange for a lighter sentence -- and a gag order preventing Lindh from telling anyone about his brutal treatment. Lindh, facing life imprisonment or execution, took the deal. Once again, Bush skirts were kept clean. And the torture system was kept safe for its expansion into Iraq, where thousands of innocent people fell into its maw.

This memo was crafted by Jay Bybee, a long-time Bush Family factotum who originally served as White House aide to George Bush Senior. There, Bybee played a key role in quashing the investigation into BNL, the shady bank used by George I to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam Hussein for weapons purchases, including WMD materials supplied by Bush-backed arms merchants. When the scandal broke, Bush I appointed lawyers from these same arms dealers to top Justice Department posts, where they supervised the "investigation" into their former companies. Meanwhile, Bybee pressured local prosecutors to restrict their probe of the bank's dirty dealings to -- you guessed it -- a few low-ranking "bad apples." Once again, Bush skirts were kept clean -- while Bush blood money kept flowing to Saddam. For his faithful family services, Bybee, like Chertoff, was made a federal judge by Bush II.

The Bush-Bybee torture authorization was in force until January 2005, when it was ostentatiously replaced by a somewhat broader definition of torture just before Gonzales' confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate. But another Bybee-penned memo, detailing specific, Bush-approved "coercive methods," remains classified. Is it still in force? Nobody knows.

Bush pere loved the School of the Americas. Junior seems to be following suit.

Religious Liberals React.

As Senate Votes On Gonzales Nomination, Faith Leaders Seek Forgiveness

Thu Feb 3, 3:07 PM ET

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 /U.S. Newswire/ -- As the United States Senate votes to confirm Judge Alberto Gonzales as the next US Attorney General, religious leaders are seeking forgiveness.

Sister Dianna Ortiz, a US-born survivor of torture in Guatemala, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director of The Shalom Center, and Dr. George Hunsinger, Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and organizer of Church Folks for a Better America, today offered prayers seeking forgiveness for the US government's complicity in torture and for confirming a man who contributed to such an inconsistent policy.

The three were part of a group of more than 225 religious leaders who last month signed an open letter to Gonzales asking him to embrace and advance standards of international law and honor the dignity of all God's creation. Organized by Church Folks for a Better America, the list of signatories to the letter includes Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh leaders from across the United States. The letter and full list of signatories is available at http://www.cfba.info.

Dr. Hunsinger explained the impetus for offering the prayers, "As we continue to lament our government's refusal to abolish torture in all its forms, we pause to ask God to forgive us for our failures." Hunsinger continued, "While we cannot stop his confirmation, we can ask for forgiveness for our inability to stop it and for our leaders' who have in effect endorsed torture by voting for him."

Excerpts from the prayers:

Sister Dianna Ortiz, a US-born survivor of torture in Guatemala.

"In the name of the tortured Christ of yesterday and today, we cry out to our leaders to repent...You who lead us swear to God in solemn oaths, and bow your heads in reverential prayers. How can you gaze upon the tortured Jesus hanging on the cross when you do the same to us? Mark well, our leaders, There is no redemption without forgiveness, but there is no forgiveness without repentance. And so, we, entwined in the sin you have sown, to the tortured Christ of yesterday and today, do say, forgive us for our failure our leaders have imposed."

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director of The Shalom Center

"We confess to you that our rulers have -- by torturing prisoners -- tortured, tormented, and defiled Your Image; have poured forth pain, contempt, humiliation, and death rather than compassion on those who, as prisoners, can do no harm; have inflicted rather than relieving suffering and despair. You Who are the Giver of Law, we confess to you that our rulers have violated the law that all humanity has agreed to in the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, forbidding the use of torture against such prisoners; have violated our own Constitution, which forbids "cruel and unusual punishments"; and have violated laws passed by our own Congress to forbid torture."

Dr. George Hunsinger, Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systemic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and organizer of Church Folks for a Better America.

"Today is a day of national shame in which we have all been made accomplices in torture. Officials tolerating the intolerable have been rewarded, while we ourselves have acquiesced, and no one in high places has been held accountable. We cry out to you, O God, for forgiveness and deliverance -- for our nation, for our leaders, and for ourselves."

OK, secular liberals. How much more do you want from us?

Stories

U.S. to Pull 15,000 Troops Out of Iraq

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 4, 2005; Page A01

Buoyed by a higher turnout and less violence than expected in Sunday's Iraqi elections, Pentagon authorities have decided to start reducing the level of U.S. forces in Iraq next month by about 15,000 troops, down to about 135,000, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said yesterday.

The reduction involves about three brigades of Army soldiers and Marines whose tours were extended last month to bolster security ahead of the elections, and an additional 1,500 airborne soldiers who were rushed to Iraq for a four-month stint.

"I think we'll be able to come down to the level that was projected before this election," Wolfowitz said.

But testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Wolfowitz also warned of "a very difficult road ahead" in defeating Iraqi insurgents and indicated that no further drop in U.S. troops was planned this year. Another senior Pentagon official said after the hearing that the initial decrease did not reflect an improved security situation in Iraq but was simply a recognition that the forces kept specifically for the election were no longer needed and could leave as previously scheduled.

Just when U.S. forces can begin to withdraw from Iraq has generated intense political debate that has accelerated since Sunday's elections. President Bush and other administration officials have said the pace of withdrawal will depend on how quickly Iraqi forces can be trained and equipped to maintain security there.

As a sign this effort continues to lag, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reported at yesterday's hearing that less than one-third of the troops and police that the Pentagon says have been trained and equipped are adequately prepared to handle most threats.

Wolfowitz also disclosed that a decision had been made to make room in the Pentagon budget for a permanent increase in Army forces starting in fiscal 2007. Up to now, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had backed only a temporary, three-year rise of 30,000troops in the size of the Army, to 512,000, to facilitate a restructuring of brigades. Plans have called for this increase to be paid for in supplemental appropriations through 2006.

Anything you hear out of Wolfowitz is coming from the Department of Fiction. It appears that this Department is fairly large at the DoD.

Work to Do

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Depressing Reading

Via Will Bunch

This from the Center for Public Integrity

A Culture of Secrecy?
What has happened to the principle that American democracy should be accessible and transparent?

"Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." –George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

By Charles Lewis

How far has the national security state mentality gone? Consider the issue of political expression. In China last June, the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the government tightened security in the name of "sound, stable social order," and scores of dissidents (potential protesters who might politically embarrass those in power) were harassed, physically detained and removed from Beijing. The U.S. Government, via the State Department at its daily briefing, expressed its concern "about the harassment, house arrest, detention and any other restrictions . . . We call on the Chinese government to respect the right of the citizens to peacefully express their views."

Yet two months later, at the Republican National Convention in New York, more than 1,800 protesters-predominantly non-violent-were arrested during the days of the convention and kept from public view, some held for 60 hours without seeing a judge, prompting a State Supreme Court judge to order hundreds of them released and finding city authorities in contempt. Civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel said at the time, "We believe the city's plan is to keep protesters detained until George Bush leaves the city tonight." Although Siegel's statement was hotly denied by authorities, the incident nevertheless represented the largest number of dissidents arrested at a political convention in U.S. history, more than Chicago 1968 or Miami 1972. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's explanation: "The city did what it was supposed to do: It protected the streets."

Did you read about this in the New York Times. I sure as hell didn't.

The other major section of the report bemoans (and documents) the low estate to which the press in this country has fallen. It's long but it's also a very worthwhile, if somewhat frightening, read. Since the public doesn't demand much from them, they don't get much.

Realpolitik

Utopian cul-de-sac

Bush's take on post-election Iraq was first triumphant, then paralysed. We should be very worried

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday February 3, 2005
The Guardian

The Bush policy consists of paralysis interrupted by fits of sabre-rattling. The responsibility to rein in Iran's development of nuclear weapons has been assumed by the UN and the EU. Led by Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, the EU has negotiated Iran's agreement to inspection of its facilities and to freeze its production of fissionable material. For his good deed and for declaring before the Iraq war that there were no WMD there, the Bush administration has attempted to oust ElBaradei.

Despite their promise these negotiations are unlikely to succeed unless the US enters into them; for only the US can offer the big carrots: lifting the sanctions, recognition, and perhaps entry into the WTO. Iran has not been intimidated by the presence of 150,000 troops next door; that has not prevented it from suppressing its reform movement. Opening Iran to liberalisation, while containing its nuclear ambition, would appear to be an obvious win-win for the west. But some in the administration want the negotiations to fail.

Vice president Cheney fantasises about an Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker reports that there are clandestine, special operations teams inside Iran trying to identify facilities that might be targets of US bombing. Two Republican senators, Rick Santorum and John Cornyn, have introduced a bill that would authorise the funding of Iranian exile groups and stipulate "regime change" as official US policy. Yet the US is overstretched militarily, and it cannot be conclusively known that all Iranian nuclear facilities would be eliminated by an Osirak-like strike. If attacked, Iran could create untold mischief within Iraq. But the dream world of ideology trumps the national interest. Thus, toward the Europeans' greatest diplomatic initiative, on the country whose fate is most closely linked with Iraq, Bush's policy, on the eve of his trip to Europe, is a vacuum.

Blinding bursts of triumphalism are characteristic of a march of folly, and they quicken its pace. True, just as paranoids have real enemies, the euphoric can experience a high from genuine events. But the insistence on euphoria, as those who grapple with reality know, is symptomatic of a disorder that can dangerously swing in mood.

Given that Bushco has given us plenty of things to be worried about, this bi-polar foreign policy (and the hatred it generates) are on the top of the list of things that keep me awake at night.

Here's a symptom, courtesy of The Guardian's Timothy Garton Ash:

If anything, at this year's Davos the Americans seemed more American, the Europeans more European and the British more than ever torn between. At a lunch with the leaders of some of the world's largest multinational firms, the suppressed tension between Americans and Europeans was palpable. When I described worldwide hostility to George Bush at the opening of a BBC World debate, the Republican senator John McCain and the Democrat senator Joseph Biden both jumped on me with acerbity for European "Bush-bashing". Senator McCain insisted that Bush is not "a jerk" - although that was not language I or anyone else had used.

At a discussion towards the end of the forum, another senior American politician poured out an emotional lament. He had "taken his stripes" for three days, he said. The general message he received was that "Americans are barbarians". To hear him talk, you would have thought he had spent three days with street activists from CND or French anti-globalisers, not up the magic mountain with the global business elite. Europeans, he went on, had to understand that diplomacy without the credible threat of military force is a debating society. When Iraqis turned out to vote in large numbers on Sunday, Europeans should understand the good that America was doing in the world.

He emanated a raw sense of hurt at the US never being given credit for anything it did right. To my surprise, a liberal American friend, committed to translatlantic partnership, joined in to say she sometimes felt the same way after conversation with Europeans.

Reflecting on these exchanges, a shrewd American suggested that the danger is no longer US "physical isolationism" but rather "psychological isolationism". Americans, he argued, live increasingly in a different psychological reality to Europeans. No longer bound by the great common enemy - the Soviet Union - we see even those things that threaten us both, such as international terrorism or global warming, differently. Even when we use the same words - "freedom", "democracy", "human rights" - we don't mean the same thing. We may both want to call a spade a spade, but to some of us it looks like a fork. Those who try to translate from American to European and back again, like Tony Blair, find their tongues stretched to breaking point.

Going to Canada

Army Considers Extending Reserve
Move Would Help Meet Iraq Demand

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 3, 2005; Page A22

Massing enough troops for another rotation in Iraq will be "painful" and may eventually require the Pentagon to adopt policies that would extend the two-year limit on the mobilization of reserves, a senior Army leader told Congress yesterday.

Yesterday's testimony underscored a debate brewing in the Pentagon over how to meet the long-term demands of the war on terrorism. The Pentagon now limits reserves to a total of 24 months of active duty, but the Army is considering seeking an extension to allow for longer and more frequent deployments of reservists.

Cody said the Army has not asked for a formal change of policy but made it clear that was under consideration. "We're trying to be very careful before we make these changes" because they would have broad implications, he said after the hearing.

Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, who also testified, told reporters afterward that he believes the Army will keep the current limit. "I don't know that a formal decision has been made; I think, in fact, though, it has," he said. "It will remain cumulative."

The pressure for a broader mobilization comes as demand for troops in Iraq remains unexpectedly high.

Cody acknowledged that shortly after major combat operations in Iraq were declared over on May 1, 2003, the Pentagon projected that the number of brigades required to secure the country would fall from 16 at that time to 11 by December 2003 and four last year. There are now 20 U.S. brigades in Iraq, including an increase of about three brigades deployed only for the period surrounding the Iraqi elections held last Sunday.

The heavy use of combat brigades has severely strained Army Reserve and Guard support units, from truck drivers and quartermaster troops to military police, Cody said. "That's where the stress is," he said. About 48 percent of the Army forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are drawn from the Guard and reserves, a figure that is expected to drop to 40 percent in the next rotation.

This is going to be a complete disaster. Expect the desertion rate to go through the roof.

I'm watching Wolfowitz before the Senate Armed Services Committee right now. What planet is this guy on? He just denied the story above. It's also absolutely clear that Gen. Myers doesn't give a good G*ddam about the troops. If this is leadership, we clearly have a shortage of it.

Voting with $

Robert Reich last night on NPR/MPR's Marketplace on the Bush SS plan:

You see, Wall Street is divided right down the center lane. On the equity side of the street are the buyers and sellers of securities in brokerage firms and mutual fund companies. They’re all for the Bush agenda because it will put more money in their pockets. Not only will they get more tax cuts on unearned income, but they also stand to rake in hundreds of millions in management fees on all those privatized Social Security accounts.

But on the other side of Wall Street are the bond traders, and they think differently. They’re beginning to worry about the size of the deficits likely to result from Bush’s plans, just like they worried about Clinton’s potential deficits. They’ve heard estimates of the trillions of dollars the government will have to borrow over the next decade in order to privatize Social Security, not to mention making Bush’s tax cuts permanent.

All the borrowing will create a deluge of new Treasury securities on the market. This will put extra pressure on interest rates because there’s only a limited amount of savings out there to be borrowed. And push bond prices down.

The White House is telling bond traders not to worry because the extra borrowing will be paid back in 30 to 60 years when Social Security benefits are cut. But that may not convince the bond traders. After all, the extra debt will be added very soon, and it must be repaid. On the other hand, the promise to cut benefits three decades from now is just a promise. Who knows whether it will be kept? Thirty years from now, the politicians who have to impose those painful cuts might just back down.

So watch carefully, folks. If and when bond traders believe the president’s plan is likely to pass, the value of Treasury bonds could plunge and interest rates will skyrocket. Mark my words: Even a hint of panic in the bond markets will be enough to kill the president’s agenda for good.

Reich fails to mention what the potential effect would be on the dollar and on the Japanese and Chinese central banks, which are artificially propping up our economy right now through purchase of T-bills.

Things to Do

DC area Bumpers:

I've just gotten word that the Center for American Progress is having an event tomorrow to announce the publication of a new book on public health and the environment. With avian influenza looming and Antarctica melting, this is a pretty critical topic. I've got an appraisal scheduled in the morning, so I don't think I can make it. If any of you can, send a report and I'll front page it.

The poop:

When:

Friday, Feb. 4, 2005
Program: 9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Admission is free
Breakfast will be provided

Where:

Center for American Progress
1333 H Street NW 10th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005

To RSVP:
Click here to register.
Or call 202.741.6388

Nearest Metro: Blue/Orange Line: McPherson Square
Red Line: Metro Center

Note that CAP debuted their new blog last night during the SOTU with a thorough fisking of Bush's presentation. Welcome to the 'sphere, CAP!

Hiding the Truth

20 killed in new Iraq violence

Staff and agencies
Thursday February 3, 2005

A relative lull in violence in post-election Iraq has come to a bloody end today, with at least 20 people killed in a series of attacks that began last night.

The biggest loss of life came after a minibus carrying new recruits to the Iraqi army was stopped by insurgents south of Kirkuk and the passengers ordered out. The attackers gunned down 12, while two were allowed to go free, with orders to warn others against joining Iraq's US-backed security forces.

The insurgents said they were members of Takfir wa Hijra, a group started in Egypt in the 60s which rejects society as corrupt and seeks to establish a utopian Islamic community.

Elsewhere, a car bomb exploded at a house used by US military snipers in Qaim, near the Syrian border, witnesses said. They said US troops had responded by opening fire and hitting civilians, although a US military spokesman had no further information about the incident. Gunmen also fired on a vehicle carrying Iraqi contractors to jobs at a US military base in Baquba, killing two people, and an Iraqi soldier was killed after gunmen opened fire as he left his home in Baghdad.

The governor of Anbar province, a rebel stronghold west of the capital, escaped injury when a roadside bomb exploded near his car in Ramadi. However, a woman was injured when his guards opened fire.

Last night, two civilians were killed and six injured when militants fired mortar shells at a US base in Tal Afar, west of Mosul. In the south, gunmen overran a police station in the city of Samawa, killing an Iraqi policeman and injuring two others, while two US marines were killed during clashes in Anbar province yesterday.

The upsurge in violence came shortly after the interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, declared that the success of Sunday's elections had dealt a major blow to the insurgency.

Mr Allawi predicted victory over the rebels within months, citing a drop in violence immediately after Sunday's vote, although he admitted it was too early to tell whether a trend had begun. "They might be reorganising themselves and changing their plans," he told Iraqi television. "The coming days and weeks will show whether this trend will continue ... but the final outcome will be failure. They will continue for months, but this [insurgency] will end."

Anything on the front page of the NYT? The WaPo? The LAT? Nope and

Long Winter

For Moderates, A Chance for Subtle Protest

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 3, 2005; Page A13

Pity the Republican moderates who sat in the chamber last night for President Bush's State of the Union address.

On issue after issue -- Social Security, same-sex marriage, energy, taxes and lawsuit restrictions -- Bush's rhetoric split the House chamber between the throaty roars of Republican conservatives and the stony silence and occasionally outright heckling of the Democrats. That left the small number of GOP moderates sprinkled among the Republicans with a difficult choice: Would they swallow their concerns and cheer for ideas they considered objectionable? Or would they sit on their hands when their president proposed policies they oppose?

In a clear warning to Bush, several of the moderates took the latter course last night, with subtle but unmistakable protests as the president spoke.

When Bush told the crowd that personal Social Security accounts are the best way to improve the retirement system, most Republican lawmakers leapt to their feet. But a small band of moderates -- including Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), Susan Collins (Maine), George V. Voinovich (Ohio) and Mike DeWine (Ohio) -- were slow to join the applause. As others felt the pressure to come to their feet, Snowe, who has said she would "certainly not" support Bush's proposal, remained seated without applauding. She smiled uncomfortably and re-crossed her legs.

When the president made his pitch for restrictions on medical malpractice lawsuits, virtually the entire Republican caucus joined a standing ovation. But Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), who has labeled Bush's proposal "one of the worst bills in Congress," was virtually alone on the Republican side in remaining seated. Spotting Graham in his seat, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) slapped his colleague on the shoulder in a playful reprimand. Graham only smiled.

Others made their own silent statements. When Bush opened his speech with praise for "a free and sovereign Iraq," the Republican side erupted and waved ink-stained fingers, showing solidarity with Iraqis whose fingers were marked when they voted last week. But Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.), struggled slowly to his feet and applauded half-heartedly; he has complained about a "whole host of mistakes" made by the administration in Iraq.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), ever the maverick, did not disappoint. When Bush repeated his vow to cut the budget deficit in half over five years, McCain, a deficit hawk who complains about "out of control" spending, seemed skeptical. He put down his pen and applauded politely; only after noticing that all those around him were standing did he whisper to his neighbor and climb to his feet. As Bush continued to speak of his fiscal discipline, McCain's applause was perfunctory. When the subject turned to tax reform, McCain and Graham, seated together, were the last to their feet.

Bush's speech was scheduled to last 40 minutes, not including the applause. But the reactions, which filled 10 or 15 minutes more, were in some ways the most important part -- an applause meter for members of Congress to demonstrate to the country how much, or how little, they support the president's objectives.

By that standard, the speech was unusually contentious even by recent standards. Democrats repeatedly called out "No! No! No!" when Bush portrayed the Social Security program as in crisis. Republicans had their own theatrics: the inky fingers arranged by freshman Rep. Bobby Jindal (La.).

And, of course, there was the preening by the Republican Party's potential 2008 presidential candidates. A few of the would-be presidents -- McCain, Chuck Hagel (Neb.), George Allen (Va.) and Sam Brownback (Kan.) -- sat in the back benches. Not so Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) and Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), who because of their leadership positions were allowed to make two grand entrances, once with other senators and once escorting Bush, shaking the same hands twice. When Frist made his first appearance in the chamber, he let out a "WHOOO!" and performed a little dance step as if he had just taken the field for a sporting event.

Milbank provides no context, and that's a pity. He's been a Hill reporter for more than a decade.

As I told you last night, I was watching a very interesting set of barbecue recipes instead of this set piece. I caught the audio this morning on NPR (still learning all the wonderful things that broadband can do.) There was history made last night.

Traditionally, at least for the last half century, you don't hear dissent in the House at a SOTU. Last night, the grumbling was audible and the gathering took on some of the coloring of British Parliament on Prime Minister's Question Time. I've never heard that kind of grumbling during a SOTU before, and I've been here and Paying Attention for 20 years.

I'll still be waiting for confirmation, but from what I heard last night, the Democrats may have begun to grow some....backbone. And it looks like some of the more principled GOoPers may be joining them. This will be an interesting and complex Congress, badly reported by people like Milbank.

Democracy Now!

Iraq officials admit irregularities in poll

Wednesday 02 February 2005, 3:29 Makka Time, 0:29 GMT

Tens of thousands of Iraqis - mainly Sunni Arabs - may have been denied their right to vote on Sunday because of insufficient ballots and polling centres, Iraqi officials have said.

Officials began compiling election results from around the country on Tuesday, but they said many citizens arrived late on Sunday to find ballot sheets had run out, possibly skewing results.

If true, the allegation that many voters were turned away could further alienate Sunnis who already say that they have been left out of the political process.

Iraq's interim President Ghazi al-Yawir said extra ballots had to be supplied to Iraq's third city of Mosul, which is mainly Sunni Arab, after twice running out on election day.

"Also, tens of thousands were unable to cast their votes because of the lack of ballots in Basra, Baghdad, and Najaf," said al-Yawir.

Deprived from voting

Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission acknowledged that some Iraqis were unable to vote because pre-election intimidation in two Sunni Arab provinces hampered preparations.

Officials admit that many Iraqis
did not vote due to intimidation

"The elections took place under difficult conditions and this undoubtedly deprived a number of citizens in a number of areas from voting," said Husain al-Hindawi, who leads the commission that organised the poll.

"The security situation was difficult in these areas and there may have been a shortage of materials in this area or that... Some centres were opened quickly, at the last moment."

Al-Hindawi said the commission was setting up an external committee made up of three Iraqi lawyers to investigate complaints. Each case would be explained in a detailed report.

Electoral sabotage

Mishaan Jiburi, a candidate and national assembly member, accused the commission of deliberately supplying insufficient materials in some Sunni areas, believing few would vote.

"The elections took place under difficult conditions and this undoubtedly deprived a number of citizens in a number of areas from voting"

Husain al-Hindawi, Independent Electoral Commission

Arab voters who initially intended to boycott the polls in the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk apparently had changed their minds after realising they would lose to Kurds. But by the time they arrived to vote, ballot sheets were gone, he said.

"I think the decision came from Baghdad. They were concerned with keeping Sunnis out of the game," he said.

Jiburi said ballot sheets were 36,000-40,000 short in Hawija, a largely Sunni Arab area southwest of oil-rich Kirkuk.

He estimated a shortfall of 28,000 ballot papers in Baiji, a northern Sunni city, and 6000 in nearby Shirqat.

Poor security

"I had a large number of voters in these areas. I am sure we will be in parliament, but if these people had been able to vote we would have won more seats," Jiburi said.

Of 5244 polling centres planned, 28 did not open, many in western Baghdad, because of poor security, the commission said.

While there were 63,000 polling booths across Iraq, there were just 33,763 independent local monitors and 622 international monitors, it added.

Final results are not expected for up to a week.

Freedom and democracy for some but not for others. Just like back here in the States.

The Few, The Proud

Marines Miss January Goal for Recruits
By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: February 3, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 - For the first time in nearly a decade, the Marine Corps in January missed its monthly recruiting goal, in what military officials said was the latest troubling indicator of the Iraq war's impact on the armed services.

The struggles of the Army, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard to recruit and retain soldiers have received national attention in recent months. But the recent failure of the Marines, who historically have had the luxury of turning away willing recruits, is a potential problem for the service.

The Marines missed their January goal of 3,270 recruits by 84 people, or less than 3 percent. The Marines last missed a monthly goal in July 1995, and 1995 was also the last full year in which the corps fell short of its annual recruiting quota, said Maj. Dave Griesmer, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

Richard H. Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina, said, "It's most troubling because the Marines tend to attract people who are the most macho, seek the most danger and are attracted by the service most likely to put them into combat."

Senior Marine personnel officials say that one month is hardly a trend, that the Marine Corps is slightly ahead of pace for the fiscal year beginning last October and that they fully expect to meet their overall goal for the year. But senior officers acknowledge that the drop in January - and close calls in November and December - could be linked to the widely publicized risks in Iraq.

"Do Iraq and Afghanistan have an impact? Yes," Brig. Gen. Walter E. Gaskin, the head of the Marine Corps Recruiting Command, said in a telephone interview. "But I am very optimistic we will meet our goal over all."

On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, senior Army officers warned of worrisome recruiting trends and told of steps they were taking to address them. Lt. Gen. Roger C. Schultz, the chief of the Army National Guard, told the House Armed Services Committee that the Guard was retaining many of its top soldiers but failing to meet goals for recruits. In January, he said, the Guard met only 56 percent of its quota. Both the National Guard and the Army Reserve are increasing the number of recruiters in the field, officers said.

In a reflection of the difficult market for Marine recruiters, the service offers bonuses of up to $30,000 to retain combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than relying mainly on replenishing its infantry with troops fresh from boot camp. About 75 percent of enlisted marines leave the service after their first tour, requiring a steady stream of recruits moving through training centers in San Diego and Parris Island, S.C.

Even as the Marine Corps strains to meet its recruiting targets, the Air Force and Navy are flush with recruits and are actually shrinking their overall ranks. Military personnel experts say there are indications that young people interested in joining the military may be turning to the Air Force and Navy, which have suffered relatively few casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. In contrast, the Marines make up about 21 percent of the fighting force in Iraq now but have suffered 31 percent of the military deaths there, according to Pentagon statistics.

"It's not surprising that the Navy and Air Force would be doing just fine," said Professor Kohn. "Kids getting a start in the military will migrate to the physically safer services, and it seems to them that they'll get more technical training there."

General Gaskin said that despite missing January's goal, which was first reported by ABC News on Tuesday night, the Marine Corps was in no danger of running out of recruits for boot camp. Because of strong recruiting last year, the Marines entered the current fiscal year having already signed up 52 percent of their 2005 quota, he said. Typically, a recruit is sent to boot camp several months after signing an enlistment contract.

The Marines are devising recruiting strategies and offering signing bonuses of $2,000 to $5,000 for specialized jobs, like linguists and avionics technicians.

The reporter doesn't know the culture of the Marines well enough to tell you how huge this is. The Marines typically take about one out of four potential recruits and have been able to be very selective for the last couple of decades. They haven't missed a recruiting target in the same period.

The kids who elect the Marines are the most gung-ho, not necessarily the best qualified for avionics and linguists. The bonuses may help, but civilian defense companies are looking for the same specialties and they are willing to train.

Mirrors and Blue Smoke

President Plays Up Sunny Side of Plan

By Peter G. Gosselin and Warren Vieth, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Wednesday rolled out the centerpiece of his plan to overhaul the financially troubled Social Security system — an enticing vision of young workers building retirement nest eggs in their own personal accounts.

But senior White House officials acknowledged that private accounts would do nothing to keep the giant retirement system solvent.

Indeed, some independent analysts said the private accounts would make the problems much worse by siphoning tax revenue away from the system and adding hundreds of billions of dollars in transition costs.

When it came to addressing the funding problem, Bush ticked off several possibilities. He attributed each one to a Democrat and embraced none, but he said all such ideas were on the table. All involve substantial cuts in Social Security benefits.

In showcasing private accounts, the White House seemed to be pursuing a political strategy: hoping to build enthusiasm for private accounts before bringing up benefit cuts.

"The administration is working on the theory that [members of Congress] need to see the dessert on the table before they'll eat the green beans," said David C. John, a research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation and longtime advocate of private accounts.

The basic funding problem stems from the fact that the Social Security system will have to pay out more and more in benefits as baby boomers retire, while the number of workers paying into the system per retiree would shrink. Social Security trustees peg the long-term shortfall at $3.7 trillion over the next 75 years.

In touting private accounts, which would be invested in stocks and bonds, Bush said they would deliver higher returns than Social Security and provide the added comfort that "the money in the account is yours and the government can never take it away."

Yet senior administration officials, speaking before the speech had been delivered, said those accounts would come with substantial strings attached.

These officials said that working Americans under age 55 could eventually divert almost one-third of the 12.4% in payroll taxes that they and their employers now pay to Social Security into personal investment accounts. For a worker with annual earnings of $35,000, that would amount to about $1,400 a year.

Workers 55 and over would see no change in their benefits and would not be allowed to enter into the new system of private accounts.

Bush described the private accounts as personal nest eggs that could even be passed on to children or grandchildren.

Officials, describing how the private accounts would work, outlined significant restrictions on individuals' decision-making power to reduce the chance of loss. Individuals would have to choose from half a dozen mutual fund-like investment portfolios that would be overseen by the government. And they would have to accept substantial benefit cuts from the traditional system in exchange for setting up the private accounts.

But senior White House officials acknowledged that private accounts would do nothing to keep the giant retirement system solvent.

That's the truth, the rest of it is three card monte.

Party Food

Want to bring something really different to your Super Bowl party this weekend? I'm giving you a couple of days heads up because this needs some planning. If you don't have an olive pitter, you'll need one, doing this by hand is too painful.

You'll need about a pound of brine-cured kalamata olives for every six to eight people at the party. Plan accordingly.

As above: kalamata brine cured olives
1 lb feta cheese
2 heads of garlic

2 cups of white wine
Fresh rosemary

Peal the garlic cloves but don't crush. This is a pain, but if you separate the cloves and nuke the batch in the microwave for about 10 seconds you can squeeze them right out of their papers. They'll separate from the paper nicely.

Heat the white wine in a small saucepan (those who avoid alcohol can use chicken broth.) When it is just below the simmer (don't let it boil) add the nude garlic cloves and a handfull of rosemary leaves stripped from the branches.

While the garlic is simmering, pit the olives. This is still a pain, but I can't get good pitted kalamata olives around here. You might be able to where you live and save yourself a step. Once pitted, return to the brine.

The garlic/rosemary pot needs to simmer for about 20 minutes over very low heat. When the olives are pitted, the pot is probably done. Strain the garlic and let the rosemary cling to it. Save the liquid. Crumble the feta into a plastic bag. Let the garlic cool. When the cloves are cool enough to handle:

Stuff each pitted olive with a little cheese and a clove of garlic. When you have the lot completely stuffed, pour a little of the wine/rosemary broth (or chicken) over the olives in their transport container, just enough to keep them moist, not enough to wash the cheese out.

Then, enjoy the look of complete surprise on your friends' faces when they think they are grabbing an olive and they are getting something else all together.

If you prefer to use chevre, you will also get an awesome result, but French olives, the big southern ones if you can find them, work better for chevre. Obviously, this has to be a garlic loving crowd. You can also use roasted garlic but I prefer the par-boiled version for this recipe.

So, what are you cooking/bringing for gatherings this week-end, Superbowl or other wise? Please share.

SOTU Open Thread

I apologize for the dearth of posts the last few days. Life has intruded: I have a sick cat, I'm in the middle of document exchanges for a re-fi and working on a book deal (which I can't tell you about just yet.) All of these things are complicated, have fairly serious emotional implications (I'm fried) and take some pretty careful attention to detail. Chances are that posting will remain light until the weekend. No, I will not be live-blogging the SOTU. I will not be watching the SOTU because I can tell you everything that will be in it, and I'm sure most of you can, too. If I'm still up at 9 PM EST, never a sure bet for a blogger who starts at 5 AM, I'll be watching the Food Channel.

For those of you who can choke back your disgust and want to talk about the speech or whatever else is bugging you, here is your open thread.

Reasons for Hope?

Sharon and Abbas Agree to Hold Summit Meeting in Egypt
By STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: February 2, 2005

JERUSALEM, Feb. 2 - The Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to meet next Tuesday in Egypt, providing more regional significance to the highest-level contacts between the two sides in the last four years of low-intensity warfare.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, had been scheduled to meet on Tuesday in Jerusalem, but President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who has been working with Washington to get the two sides talking again, invited them to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik instead.

Mr. Mubarak and the Jordanian king, Abdullah, will also attend the summit meeting, representing the only two Arab countries that have signed peace treaties with Israel and thus adding more weight to the Palestinian voice at the table. Mr. Mubarak in particular has serious interests in Gaza and has pushed the Palestinians to put an end to the chaos there.

The White House welcomed the summit meeting as an "encouraging step" amid speculation that the new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, will also attend. Ms. Rice is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Sunday for talks with both Israelis and Palestinians and was expected to leave on Monday for Europe. But diplomatic analysts here suggested that Ms. Rice would probably alter her schedule to be at the summit meeting on Tuesday to ensure that the Arab world sees the United States pressing for Middle East peace.

Mr. Sharon could hardly refuse the invitation of Mr. Mubarak, who has publicly praised him and warned the Palestinians that Mr. Sharon was the best Israeli peace partner they were likely to get. The Egyptians have also been pressuring Palestinian militants like Hamas and Islamic Jihad to agree to a long-term cease-fire and allow Mr. Abbas to try diplomacy with the Israelis.

But the Israelis and Palestinians have different agendas for the meeting. The Israelis want to put security first, building on the important early steps that Mr. Abbas has already taken to deploy Palestinian forces to stop attacks on Israelis from Gaza. The Israelis, who have been meeting regularly with Mr. Abbas's security aide, Muhammad Dahlan, are insisting that Gaza be quiet before the Israelis hand over security responsibility over some large cities on the West Bank to the Palestinians.

I don't spend much time on I/P news because even I have trouble following it, but this appears to be the most hopeful sign in many years.

Mainstreaming

Once-Conservative Adelphia Adds Hard-Core Porn to Cable

By Sallie Hofmeister, Times Staff Writer

Porn is suddenly sexy to a cable TV company once considered the industry prude.

Adelphia Communications Corp. has quietly become the nation's only leading cable operator to offer the most explicit category of hard-core porn. Come Friday, triple-X-rated programming will be available on cable for the first time in a major media market: Southern California.

"People want it, so we are trying to provide it," Adelphia spokeswoman Erica Stull said. "The more Xs, the more popular."

Stull stressed that the programming, supplied by Playboy Enterprises Inc., would not be advertised and could be blocked to prevent children from watching. It will be delivered through video-on-demand technology, available now to about two-thirds of Adelphia's 1.2 million Southern California subscribers.

The move is a radical departure for Adelphia, the largest cable provider in Southern California and the nation's fifth biggest. Five years ago, Adelphia stirred a local controversy by dropping Spice — a popular soft-porn channel — from newly acquired cable systems here because Adelphia founder John Rigas considered X-rated programming immoral.

Today, the 80-year-old Rigas and one of his sons are facing prison terms after being convicted last summer for looting the company and engaging in fraudulent accounting.

Adelphia, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002, currently is on the block. During the last year, in an effort to bolster Adelphia's bottom line, the company's new management has begun offering softer porn in various areas of the country and, in recent months, has introduced the hardest-core programming in a few markets.

Is it my imagination, or does the profit motive always trump values with conservatives?

Harsh Truths

Iraqi leader: Thousands of people were turned away from polls

By Sally Buzbee
ASSOCIATED PRESS

2:21 p.m. February 1, 2005

.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq's interim president said Tuesday that tens of thousands of people may have been unable to vote in the country's historic weekend election because some polling places – including those in Sunni Arab areas – ran out of ballots.

As clerks pounded vote-count tallies into computers to compile final results, President Ghazi al-Yawer also said chaos and a power vacuum in Iraq mean U.S. forces need to stay for now, even though a new government will be formed after the results are known.

If true, the allegation that many voters were turned away could further alienate minority Sunnis, who already are complaining they have been left out of the political process.

"Tens of thousands were unable to cast their votes because of the lack of ballots in Basra, Baghdad and Najaf," al-Yawer, himself a Sunni Arab, said at a news conference. Najaf is a mostly Shiite city but Basra and Baghdad have substantial Sunni populations.

Elections officials acknowledged that irregularities kept people away – including in the volatile northern and heavily Sunni city of Mosul – and they called the fact unfortunate. Security worries in Sunni areas were partly to blame for the fact that some polls did not open and ballots were too few, they said.

"The elections took place under difficult conditions and this undoubtedly deprived a number of citizens in a number of areas from voting," said Abdul-Hussein al-Hendawi, who heads the Iraqi electoral commission.

Things you won't hear about on CNN.

Cognitive Dissonance

What I Heard about Iraq
Eliot Weinberger

I heard that the Red Cross had to close its offices because it was too dangerous. I heard that General Electric and the Siemens Corporation had to close their offices. I heard that Médecins sans Frontières had to withdraw, and that journalists rarely left their hotels. I heard that, after their headquarters were bombed, most of the United Nations staff had gone. I heard that the cost of life insurance policies for the few remaining Western businessmen was $10,000 a week.

I heard Tom Foley, director of Iraq Private Sector Development, say: ‘The security risks are not as bad as they appear on TV. Western civilians are not the targets themselves. These are acceptable risks.’

I heard the spokesman for Paul Bremer say: ‘We have isolated pockets where we are encountering problems.’

I heard that, no longer able to rely on the military for help, private security firms had banded together to form the largest private army in the world, with its own rescue teams and intelligence. I heard that there were 20,000 mercenary soldiers, now called ‘private contractors’, in Iraq, earning as much as $2000 a day, and not subject to Iraqi or US military law.

I heard that 50,000 Iraqi civilians were dead.

I heard that, on a day when a car bomb killed three Americans, Paul Bremer’s last act as director of the Coalition Provisional Authority was to issue laws making it illegal to drive with only one hand on the steering wheel or to honk a horn when there was no emergency.

I heard that the unemployment rate was now 70 per cent, that less than 1 per cent of the workforce was engaged in reconstruction, and that the US had spent only 2 per cent of the $18.4 billion approved by Congress for reconstruction. I heard that an official audit could not account for $8.8 billion of Iraqi oil money given to Iraqi ministries by the Coalition Provisional Authority.

I heard the president say: ‘Our Coalition is standing with responsible Iraqi leaders as they establish growing authority in their country.’

I heard that, a few days before he became prime minister, Iyad Allawi visited a Baghdad police station where six suspected insurgents, blindfolded and handcuffed, were lined up against a wall. I heard that, as four Americans and a dozen Iraqi policemen watched, Allawi pulled out a pistol and shot each prisoner in the head. I heard that he said that this is how we must deal with insurgents.

On 28 June 2004, with the establishment of an interim government, I heard the vice president say: ‘After decades of rule by a brutal dictator, Iraq has been returned to its rightful owners, the people of Iraq.’

This was the military summary for an ordinary day, 22 July 2004, a day that produced no headlines: ‘Two roadside bombs exploded next to a van and a Mercedes in separate areas of Baghdad, killing four civilians. A gunman in a Toyota opened fire on a police checkpoint and escaped. Police wounded three gunmen at a checkpoint and arrested four men suspected of attempted murder. Seven more roadside bombs exploded in Baghdad and gunmen twice attacked US troops. Police dismantled a car bomb in Mosul and gunmen attacked the Western driver of a gravel truck at Tell Afar. There were three roadside bombings and a rocket attack on US troops in Mosul and another gun attack on US forces near Tell Afar. At Taji, a civilian vehicle collided with a US military vehicle, killing six civilians and injuring seven others. At Bayji, a US vehicle hit a landmine. Gunmen murdered a dentist at the Ad Dwar hospital. There were 17 roadside bomb explosions against US forces in Taji, Baquba, Baqua, Jalula, Tikrit, Paliwoda, Balad, Samarra and Duluiyeh, with attacks by gunmen on US troops in Tikrit and Balad. A headless body in an orange jumpsuit was found in the Tigris; believed to be Bulgarian hostage Ivalyo Kepov. Kirkuk air base attacked. Five roadside bombs on US forces in Rutbah, Kalso and Ramadi. Gunmen attacked Americans in Fallujah and Ramadi. The police chief of Najaf was abducted. Two civilian contractors were attacked by gunmen at Haswah. A roadside bomb exploded near Kerbala and Hillah. International forces were attacked by gunmen at al-Qurnah.’

*

I heard the president say: ‘You can embolden an enemy by sending a mixed message. You can dispirit the Iraqi people by sending mixed messages. That’s why I will continue to lead with clarity and in a resolute way.’

I heard the president say: ‘Today, because the world acted with courage and moral clarity, Iraqi athletes are competing in the Olympic Games.’ Iraq had sent teams to the previous Olympics. And when the president ran a campaign advertisement with the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan and the words ‘at this Olympics there will be two more free nations – and two fewer terrorist regimes,’ I heard the Iraqi coach say: ‘Iraq as a team does not want Mr Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise himself.’ I heard their star midfielder say that if he weren’t playing soccer he’d be fighting for the resistance in Fallujah: ‘Bush has committed so many crimes. How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?’

I heard an unnamed ‘senior British army officer’ invoke the Nazis to describe what he saw: ‘My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans’ use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don’t see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as Untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life. As far as they are concerned, Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them. It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later.’

I heard Makki al-Nazzal, who was managing a clinic in Fallujah, say, in unaccented English: ‘I have been a fool for 47 years. I used to believe in European and American civilisation.’

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: ‘We never believed that we’d just tumble over weapons of mass destruction.’

I heard Condoleezza Rice say: ‘We never expected we were going to open garages and find them.’

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: ‘They may have had time to destroy them, and I don’t know the answer.’

I heard Richard Perle say: ‘We don’t know where to look for them and we never did know where to look for them. I hope this will take less than two hundred years.’

Stuck in the '60s

Assault on Social Security

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, February 2, 2005; Page A23

Tonight the president of the United States will come before Congress and call for the repeal of the New Deal.

Not frontally, of course. Indeed, George W. Bush has taken to invoking Franklin D. Roosevelt as a fellow experimenter-in-arms. That's true as far as it goes, but the goal of Bush's experiment is to negate Roosevelt's.

The roots of Bush's speech tonight go back almost as far as the New Deal itself. Social Security was enacted in 1935, and in 1936 Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon questioned its solvency.

Since Landon (who carried two states against Roosevelt's 46), right-wing attacks on Social Security have proceeded along two lines: those that doubted its solvency and those that disparaged its ideology.

Bush tonight will probably not delve into matters ideological. The polls may show that the percentage of self-identified conservatives exceeds that of self-identified liberals by two-to-one, but that doesn't mean those conservatives are economic libertarians. (Indeed, many are conservatives out of their quarrel with cultural libertarians.) Besides, at any given moment the number of Americans who are pragmatists dwarfs that of any political tendency. The only way the American people are going to turn against a massive program that clearly works is if they can be convinced that at some point it won't.

And so we will hear tonight that Social Security may be doing fine today, but it will be a toothless geezer of a program by the time today's young people hit 65. There will be so many retirees living so long that only by redirecting young people's money out of the program and into the market will we preserve the solvency of the old.

All this is nonsense, of course. According to the system's actuaries, if we do nothing at all, the system will remain in the black, paying out full benefits, straight through 2042. Beyond then, its liabilities will amount to just a fraction of 1 percent of the national income. The program, like all programs, could use some modest fixes over time, and by such measures as raising revenue through a hike on the employer's payroll tax (by eliminating the cap on taxable employee income), it can be fixed.

But Bush is not seeking to strengthen a strong system; he's seeking to dismantle it. The private (or "personal," in poll-tested Bushese) accounts we'll hear so much about tonight provide the pretext for slashing benefits to future retirees by as much as 40 percent. As with that village in Vietnam, it's become necessary to destroy Social Security in order to save it.

It's a funny thing: the current conservative movement is a reaction to the perceived excesses of the 1960's but finds itself revisiting the Right's over-reach of the period. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history....

The Agenda

Dominance on GOP Agenda
# Depriving Democrats of voters and money is among White House policies' other aims.

By Peter Wallsten and Warren Vieth, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — As the nation's trial lawyers again funneled tens of millions of dollars to Democrats and their causes in the last election, Republicans were crafting a strategy to choke off that money for future campaigns.

President Bush's agenda for the next four years, much of which he will highlight in his State of the Union address tonight, includes many proposals that would not only change public policy but, the GOP hopes, achieve an ambitious political goal: Stripping money and voters from the Democratic Party and cementing Republican dominance for years after he leaves office.

One of the clearest examples is an effort to limit jury awards in lawsuits against doctors and businesses. The caps might not only discourage "frivolous" lawsuits, as Bush argues, but also deprive trial lawyers of income from damage awards that they could then give to Democrats.

"If we could succeed in getting some form of tort reform passed — medical malpractice reform or any of part of that — it would go a long ways toward … taking away the muscle, the financial muscle that they have," said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who ousted Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle last fall despite a heavy flood of trial lawyer money backing the Democrat.

On issue after issue, the White House is staking out positions that achieve a policy goal while expanding the GOP's appeal to new voters or undermining the Democrats' ability to compete. Interviews with Bush advisors, a recent memo drafted by a senior White House strategist and a speech last month by the Republican Party's new chairman show that the political advantages are very much part of the calculation.

Bush's plan to alter Social Security, for example, would allow younger workers to divert some of their payroll taxes into privately owned retirement accounts. GOP strategists hope it would also foster a new "investor class" that would vote Republican.

Republican support for free trade undermines labor unions which, like trial lawyers, are a bedrock of the Democratic Party, strategists say.

The president's faith-based initiative, which encourages government funding for religious social service agencies, and his opposition to legalizing same-sex marriage are popular with socially conservative African Americans, who have for decades leaned Democratic but are increasingly viewed as potential GOP voters.

Many black parents, whose children attend struggling public schools, also agree with Republicans' support for school vouchers. And Bush's call to revamp the nation's immigration laws makes the party more appealing to Latinos, another traditionally Democratic group.

"Are we doing it because it creates more Republicans? Or are we doing it because it's the right thing to do, and by the way, it also happens to create more Republicans?" asked Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and a frequent advisor to Karl Rove, Bush's chief political advisor. "It's both."

"Every one of the ideas for the most part has merits on its own, so … they're defensible," said Stephen Moore, a conservative activist who plans to raise $10 million this year to advertise on behalf of Bush's Social Security plans. "But I think, altogether, this was devised as a Karl Rove grand plan to cement in place a Republican governing coalition that could last for a generation or more."

The pursuit of larger political goals by presidents is nothing new. Advisors to President Clinton once hoped his plan to overhaul healthcare delivery would draw voters to the Democratic Party.

But GOP strategists say the difference this time is the sheer scope of Bush's political ambitions and his willingness to push sweeping ideological changes. The party is aiming for a 21st century political realignment comparable to the Democratic domination spurred by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Bush often refers to his agenda as building an "ownership society," a phrase that strategists compare in political terms to the New Deal: a package of programs that builds loyalty among voters for generations. While Roosevelt expanded the role of government in lifting seniors and workers out of poverty, Bush's domestic agenda stresses the creation of personal wealth and individual responsibility, pure Republican ideology.

In other words, returning seniors and workers to poverty.

Tortured Budgets

Where the missing $9 billion went
By Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON - The US-run administration in Baghdad failed to keep track of nearly US$9 billion of money it transferred to various Iraqi ministries, according to an official audit released Sunday.

The report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says that the now defunct US-lead Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) did not exercise adequate managerial control over funds paid to Iraqi government ministries, which employ hundreds of experts from the US. This resulted in potentially widespread corruption, including paying salaries to "ghost" employees, and led to the eventual disappearance of $8.8 billion between early 2003 and mid-2004.

The CPA was phased out last July to make way for the interim Iraqi government, which will be replaced by an elected body later this year. The report said that although the CPA published reports on the Internet of total disbursements to the Iraqi ministries, it failed to specify what the funds were used for.

The inspector general, Stuart Bowen Jr, who was appointed in January last year, accused the CPA of not exercising enough oversight over the contracting procedures at the Iraqi ministries. In his 53-page report, Bowen acknowledged the difficulties of working under war conditions, but concluded that "we believe the CPA management of Iraq's national budget process and oversight of Iraqi funds was burdened by severe inefficiencies and poor management".

The CPA's Inspector General's office evaluates the effectiveness of CPA management in areas including ministry financial controls, and uses of seized and donated funds in Iraq. It reports directly to the US secretary of state and the secretary of defense.

The Defense Department and the former CPA administrator, L Paul Bremer, both disagreed with the findings. In a statement included in the report itself, Bremer said the audit did not acknowledge the difficult context in which the CPA was operating, and that it contained "many misconceptions and inaccuracies". He said that the report did not recognize the actions taken to improve the weaknesses in Iraqi budgeting and financial management.

The audit referred to an instance in which the CPA paid salaries to 74,000 security guards, although the actual number of employees could not be validated. The report says that in one case some 8,206 guards were listed on a payroll, but only 602 real individuals could be verified. At another ministry, payrolls listed 1,471 security guards when only 642 were actually working.
This is not the first time that US financial conduct in Iraq has come under fire, specifically over funds slated for reconstruction after the US-led attack in March 2003, which then went unaccounted for. Last June, the British charity Christian Aid said that at least $20 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds intended to rebuild the country had disappeared from banks administered by the CPA.

Other watchdog groups have complained before about the opaque nature of the CPA's handling of Iraqi money and the lack of transparency of US and Iraqi officials, especially in dealing with reconstruction contracts, some awarded without a public tendering process.

Iraq Revenue Watch, a group funded by international financier George Soros to monitor the country's reconstruction, said last year that the CPA had engaged in a last-minute spending spree, committing billions of dollars to "ill-conceived projects just before it dissolves", in an apparent attempt to pre-impose those deals on any future Iraqi government.

In a single meeting, the US-controlled body in charge of managing Iraq's finances approved the expenditure of nearly $2 billion in Iraqi funds for reconstruction projects, the group said.

Chertoff's confirmation hearings begin today. Both of his Democratic state senators are supporting him. You might want to give them a call.

Security=Safety?

Infighting Cited at Homeland Security
Squabbles Blamed for Reducing Effectiveness

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 2, 2005; Page A01

As its leadership changes for the first time, the Department of Homeland Security remains hampered by personality conflicts, bureaucratic bottlenecks and an atmosphere of demoralization, undermining its ability to protect the nation against terrorist attack, according to current and former administration officials and independent experts.

Although the 22-month-old department has vast powers over the lives of travelers, immigrants and citizens, it remains a second-tier agency in the clout it commands within President Bush's Cabinet, the officials said. Pockets of dysfunction are scattered throughout the 180,000-employee agency, they said.

There is wide consensus that the agency has made important strides in a number of areas, including establishing high-speed communications links with state and local authorities, researching sensors to detect explosives and biopathogens, and addressing vulnerabilities in the nation's aviation system. Its weaknesses, including scant progress in protecting thousands of U.S. chemical plants, rail yards and other elements of the nation's critical infrastructure, have received considerable public attention as well.

Less well known is the role that turf battles, personal animosities and bureaucratic hesitancy have played in limiting the headway made by the infant department, an amalgam of 22 federal agencies that Congress merged after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said.

• The department made little progress protecting infrastructure because officials spent much of their time on detailed strategic plans for that task and believed they were technically prohibited by law from spending money on most such efforts. Others in government disagreed, and DHS officials did not reword the technical legal language until recent months.

• Two arms of the department gridlocked over efforts to secure hazardous chemicals on trains -- one of Congress's most feared terrorist-attack scenarios.

• Lengthy delays in deciding which agency would take the lead in tracking people and cargo at U.S. ports of entry resulted from similar disputes. Efforts to develop tamper-proof shipping containers were among the initiatives stalled.

• The department's investigative arm, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has operated under severe financial crisis for more than a year -- to the point that use of agency vehicles and photocopying were at times banned. The problem stems from funding disputes with other DHS agencies.

Richard A. Falkenrath, who until last May was Bush's deputy homeland security adviser, said many officials at the department were so inexperienced in grasping the levers of power in Washington, and so bashful about trying, that they failed to make progress on some fronts.

"The department has accomplished a great deal in immensely difficult circumstances, but it could have accomplished even more if it had had more aggressive and experienced staff," said Falkenrath, now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "It would have done better if it had been less timid, less insular and less worried about facing down internal and external opposition."

"This department is immensely powerful in society, given its central role in foreign trade, immigration and transportation," he added. "But it is far less powerful in interagency meetings and the White House situation room."

Michael Chertoff, a federal appeals court judge who is Bush's nominee to succeed the department's first secretary, Tom Ridge, begins confirmation hearings today. He has been described as a no-nonsense administrator who would not hesitate to intercede in turf wars or get tough with recalcitrant bureaucrats.

There is both more and less here than meets the eye. DHS is not under civil service rules, so it isn't at all surprising to find it politicized and fractious. It has recruitment and retention problems. Chertoff is an extremely partisan figure with a checkered past.

Are we safer? I don't think so. All those voters who voted for Bush as a security chief ought to be chewing on the steering wheels of their SUVs.

There and back again

I got an interesting email from Melanie earlier today. As she knows, I was a Republican up until fairly recently. Hell, up until a decade or so ago, I considered myself a conservative. She wondered if I might post about how I turned around, politically. Yeah, I'll do that thing.

You know, I was a leftie, back when I was in my teens and 20s. Very much so. I inherited it from my mom, whose father had been a Socialist, back in the day.

But later, it seemed to me that the left had gone badly astray, and we needed a correction. Especially after LBJ basically perverted American liberalism, in the service of statism and war. And after it became clear how overrated Kennedy had been. He was, you know. We made him into a demigod because he was young and handsome, with a beautiful wife, and had been assassinated. But he was only a fair to middling statesman.

Liberalism was being "championed" by opportunists like Jesse Jackson and cowards like Teddy Kennedy. Not exactly the best spokesmen going.

And, by the late 70's to early 80's, the USSR was clearly painting itself into a corner with only two exits: war or collapse. I remember how I felt back in the '76-'83 time frame.

I had thoroughly revised my notion of the nature of the polity of the USSR, courtesy of a gentleman by the name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who very rapidly convinced me I didn't know diddly about Soviet history, and had better fall to my books. So I did, and I didn't like what I was reading. Back when I was in high school, in the 1960s, the gold standard on Soviet history was works by apologists like Isaac Deutscher. Have you ever read his biography of Stalin??? The word "hogwash" comes rather forcefully to mind. That bloody thing is three inches thick, and doesn't contain the acronym "GULAG" once. Something like that being considered a canonical reference work by liberals disenchants one with liberalism pretty effectively.

Further, the situation in Europe worried the hell out of me. I had some idea of how long NATO would last if things went to pieces with the Warsaw Pact. About as long as a keg of beer at a fraternity party, that's how long. I was scared to death. Because that would leave only one option besides capitulation, followed by a long, dark night. And the odds of civilization surviving said option were minimal to zip.

I can tell you, I studied the possibilities involved in nuclear war every bit as intensely back then as I study bugs today. More so; the bugs are easier to mitigate. You know, I have a copy of the last edition ever published of "The Effects of Thermonuclear Weapons". Not the one at Amazon, but the one that's out of print. This work is about as "sensationalistic" as Jonathan Tucker's book on smallpox. Perhaps even less so. It is quite simply the canonical reference work on the subject.

Well, they collapsed.

So why maintain a Cold War posture in a world that no longer required it? We had been selling our souls to maintain a clutch of third world scumbag dictators and their thug henchmen, in order to contain the Soviets. I knew that. I didn't like it. I simply saw no other viable option. But with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact dead as Nineveh, why keep that up?

I remember how I felt in the mid 80's. I simply could not BELIEVE Gorbachev. He just HAD to be shamming. It had happened so MANY times before. Until he made it pikestaff plain that belief had nothing to do with things; the Wall was coming down, belief or no belief.

Part of it, too, was a result of reading a clutch of history books, back in the late 80's, and having some of the libertarian notions I had picked up in the early 80's quite soundly thrashed, by people who pretty obviously didn't have an agenda. The historical record always weighed with me.

It was probably going to happen sooner or later. I have convictions which go deeper than politics. It became apparent, once I started doing the re-evaluations I do every decade or so, that if the Republicans had ever had a piece of the truth, they'd dropped it somewhere along the way. Where had men like Goldwater gone? Where had these addled and mentally ill neocons come from?

W figured into it too. In a big, big way. It became very apparent, very fast, what a complete and utter disaster he was.

There was the obvious and complete insanity that was the obviously upcoming Iraq war, too.

I remember the difficulty I had believing my ears, hearing the Bush administration beat the war drums. I was a boy back in the days when people dug fallout shelters in their back yards! The air raid sirens would go off in practice runs every Saturday at noon. I grew up in Tucson, which would have been vaporized had war broken out with the Warsaw Pact. There were 18 Titan missile silos surrounding the city. There was a SAC B-52 base on its southern border. We lived through this for 40 years.

Yet we had avoided Armageddon, and where was the USSR?? Gone, that's where. So now we were going to go to war with a two bit punk like Saddam Hussein over weapons which we couldn't verify and which he couldn't afford to even dream of using if he had them?

Madness!

Democracy Now!

Ah, yes. Elections are wonderful. Just ask the people of Ohio.

Iraqis Exercised Right to Vote and Paid With Their Lives
By EDWARD WONG

Published: February 1, 2005

NAJAF, Iraq, Feb. 1 - Salim Yacoubi bent over to kiss the purple ink stain on his twin brother's right index finger, gone cold with death.

"You can see the finger with which he voted," Shukur Jasim, a friend of the dead man, said as he cast a tearful gaze on the corpse, sprawled across a body washer's concrete slab. "He's a martyr now."

The stain marked the hard-won right to vote that the man, Naim Rahim Yacoubi, had exercised on Sunday - and the price he paid.

Mr. Yacoubi, 37, was one of at least 50 Iraqis who died in bomb and mortar attacks as millions of people marched to polling centers in the country's first free elections in decades. At least nine suicide bombs exploded in Baghdad alone. In one of those, the bomber blew himself up outside Kurdis Primary School near the airport, sending dozens of shards of shrapnel into Mr. Yacoubi.

The victims of election day violence are being hailed by many Iraqis as the latest shuhada, or martyrs, in a nearly two-year insurgency that has claimed the lives of thousands. They were policemen who tried to stop suicide bombers from entering polling centers, children who walked with elderly parents to cast votes, or - in the case of Mr. Yacoubi - a simple fishmonger who, after voting, took tea from his house to electoral workers at the school.

At those polling centers wracked by explosions, the survivors refused to go home, steadfastly waiting to cast their votes as policemen swept away bits of flesh.

Shiites Arabs, oppressed under the rule of Saddam Hussein, turned out to vote in large numbers, and those who died in the attacks are being taken now to the sprawling cemetery in this holiest of Shiite cities, for burials considered befitting of their sacrifices.

The official cause of death on Mr. Yacoubi's death certificate reads: "Explosion on the day of elections."

As the body washer sponged Mr. Yacoubi, blood as dark as the ink on his finger ran from cuts in the back of his head. Four wailing brothers clutched at the corpse. A group of women in full-length black gowns keened outside.

"All of us talked about the elections," Hadi Aziz, a 60-year-old neighbor, said. "We were waiting impatiently for this day so we could finally rid ourselves of all our troubles. Naim was just like any Iraqi who hoped for a better future for Iraq, who wanted stability for Iraq. We hoped that after the elections, the American forces would withdraw from our country."

I'd call "getting killed" an "irregularity."

Iraqis Claim Irregularities Kept Many People From Voting
By JAMES GLANZ
and CHRISTINE HAUSER

Published: February 1, 2005

BASRA, Iraq, Feb. 1 - As the national euphoria over the high turnout and seemingly smooth operation of Sunday's elections begins to fade slightly, claims of election irregularities are surfacing around the country.

In northern Iraq, protests have repeatedly broken out over the last few days in several cities, where officials contend that hundreds of thousands of citizens, many of them Kurdish Christians, had not been able to vote because balloting materials had arrived inexplicably late.

A huge crowd of Shiite Muslims returning to southern Iraq from their holy pilgrimage to Mecca charged on Monday that they and hundreds of others like them had been deliberately kept from coming back to their country in time to vote in Sunday's election. "They have wasted our votes," said Jaleel Harran, 41, a pilgrim from the southern city of Nasiriya.

There are also assertions that election workers bent rules to allow unregistered citizens to cast ballots, and one charge that a political party was improperly left off the ballots.

Many of the claims have not yet been lodged as formal complaints with Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission, leading to some confusion over how serious any problems may have been and whether they could threaten the legitimacy of the vote. Election officials were privately concerned about the possible problems in the north, mostly clustered around the provincial capital, Mosul.

A spokesman for the Assyrian Democratic Party, a Christian political organization, said that a formal complaint about the problems in Mosul would be lodged on Wednesday.

Hamdiya Husseini, deputy chairwoman of the election commission, said at a news conference today that "the complaints have been minimal" but added that about 100 had been received so far.

About 40 of them, she said, involved "simple matters, like why was a particular language not used in conjunction with Arabic and Kurdish."

Ms. Husseini did not directly characterize the others, but said that "every complaint is being looked into and will be thoroughly investigated." A special committee will be formed to sift through the complaints, she said. There is also a three-judge panel to hear appeals of the committee's decisions. The panel was put in place last year by the same directive that created the commission itself.

Some of the complaints involve access to the basic tools of voting. "Quite a significant number of Christians in the Mosul area were denied ballot boxes and ballots," Barham Saleh, the Iraqi vice president, a Kurd, said in an interview late today.

Mr. Saleh, who was closely involved in organizing travel for this year's hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, also confirmed that at least one plane carrying returning pilgrims was denied permission to land in Baghdad because of a security lockdown on Saturday and Sunday.

"We tried very hard to get exceptions for the hajj flight, but the security advisers would not budge," Mr. Saleh said.

But like other Iraqi government and elections officials, he characterized the problems as understandable given the task that the nation faced.

"You're talking about an unprecedented operation in the history of Iraq, taking place in a terrible security environment," Mr. Saleh said. "Let's not lose sight of the context."

Hussein Hindawi, the election commission's chairman, said at the news conference today that 5,216 polling centers that opened on Sunday had been monitored by nearly 100,000 observers, mainly from Iraqi political parties and local organizations. Indeed, observers were commonly seen sitting as they watched intently from chairs within polling stations.

Reality-based

The Vietnam turnout was good as well

No amount of spin can conceal Iraqis' hostility to US occupation

Sami Ramadani
Tuesday February 1, 2005
The Guardian

On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of the Vietnam war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper reported that the Americans had been "surprised and heartened" by the size of the turnout "despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting". A successful election, it went on, "has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam". The echoes of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as to be uncanny.

With the past few days' avalanche of spin, you could be forgiven for thinking that on January 30 2005 the US-led occupation of Iraq ended and the people won their freedom and democratic rights. This has been a multi-layered campaign, reminiscent of the pre-war WMD frenzy and fantasies about the flowers Iraqis were collecting to throw at the invasion forces. How you could square the words democracy, free and fair with the brutal reality of occupation, martial law, a US-appointed election commission and secret candidates has rarely been allowed to get in the way of the hype.
....
In the run-up to the poll, much of the western media presented it as a high-noon shootout between the terrorist Zarqawi and the Iraqi people, with the occupation forces doing their best to enable the people to defeat the fiendish, one-legged Jordanian murderer. In reality, Zarqawi-style sectarian violence is not only condemned by Iraqis across the political spectrum, including supporters of the resistance, but is widely seen as having had a blind eye turned to it by the occupation authorities. Such attitudes are dismissed by outsiders, but the record of John Negroponte, the US ambassador in Baghdad, of backing terror gangs in central America in the 80s has fuelled these fears, as has Seymour Hirsh's reports on the Pentagon's assassination squads and enthusiasm for the "Salvador option".

An honest analysis of the social and political map of Iraq reveals that Iraqis are increasingly united in their determination to end the occupation. Whether they participated in or boycotted Sunday's exercise, this political bond will soon reassert itself - just as it did in Vietnam - despite tactical differences, and despite the US-led occupation's attempts to dominate Iraqis by inflaming sectarian and ethnic divisions.

God, the chat shows on Sunday were so filled with Republican triumphalism that they made me nauseous. The flight from reality that constitutes CNN is an embarrassment

Twisted Logic

Senate Rift Deep in Debate Over Attorney General Nominee
By DAVID STOUT

Published: February 1, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 - The Senate debated today whether to confirm Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general, with Republicans describing him as supremely qualified and Democrats countering that his role in devising new policies on prisoner interrogations rendered him unfit to be the nation's chief law enforcement officer despite his intelligence and compelling life story.

"Judge Gonzales is the wrong man for this job," Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, declared, using the title Mr. Gonzales acquired as a member of the Texas Supreme Court.

Leading Republicans countered that the confirmation of Mr. Gonzales, now President Bush's White House counsel, would mark a great day in American history, since he would be the first person of Hispanic descent to head the Justice Department.

"Every Hispanic-American in the country is watching," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which voted, 10 to 8, along party lines last week to endorse Mr. Gonzales's nomination.

I'm listening to Hatch trying to justify torture on C-Span right now. Talk about your tortured argument. He's making an ass out of himself.

It Ain't Over

Keep the Euphoria in Check

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, February 1, 2005; Page A17

In fact, the president's critics might take heart in the fact that while Bush was, in the end, immovable about Sunday's election date, the voting took place despite the earlier desire to postpone it. Only pressure from the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the Shiite community he leads forced the balloting before Iraqis wrote their constitution.

Yes, Sistani wanted quick elections because Shiites are the majority in Iraq and a democratic election was the most practical way for his community to demonstrate its numerical power. But there is a lesson here: When in doubt, the United States should prefer the risk of ceding power to Iraqis over the larger risk of holding fast to its own influence. Millions of Iraqis now have a palpable stake in a peaceful and democratic outcome.

But not all Iraqis, and here is why euphoria should be held in check. The Sunni Muslim minority, which has ruled over the Shiite majority and the Kurds concentrated in the north, did not, on the whole, take to these elections.

Some Sunnis voted, especially in mixed population areas. But polling places in the Sunni heartland were often desolate because of intimidation by insurgents -- a reminder that this war is far from settled -- and because many Sunnis are worried about their role in the future Iraq. Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democrat who has supported the war so far, noted after the polls closed that constitutional democracy has two parts: majority rule and minority rights. Preventing civil war means paying attention to the second half of the equation.

And a single, imperfect election does not mean that democracy has won. In the January issue of the Journal of Democracy, Larry Diamond, who served as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, makes the essential point. Under the wrong circumstances, he writes, elections "may only enhance the power of actors who mobilize coercion, fear and prejudice, thereby reviving autocracy and even precipitating large-scale violent strife." He cites elections in Angola, Bosnia and Liberia during the 1990s as cautionary tales.

Democracies also have to deliver the goods. Germany's Weimar Republic fell to Hitler in the 1930s because of severe economic problems combined with a sense among many Germans that democracy was a foreign imposition. Sound eerily familiar?

With admirable candor, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) acknowledged that he was "pleasantly surprised" at how well the elections went. But he is correct to note that the voting "doesn't change the reality of the insurgency -- the attacks will continue. It doesn't change the fact that the government cannot defend itself. It doesn't change the fact that the economy cannot support its own people."

Thus a modest proposal: Bush's critics should have no qualms about celebrating the outpouring in Iraq on behalf of democratic rule. Bush, in turn, should not pretend that the election means his policy has succeeded. This is exactly the right time for the administration to pay attention to its critics so that the joy of Sunday is not a one-night diversion.

Dionne hits exactly the right note, I think. This is a long way from over. I continue to be impressed by his quiet common sense.

Breakout News

Henry Niman at Recombinomics offers the following commentary on this LAT story:

Bird Flu Spate Signals Easier Transmission
# Outbreaks that killed 12 in Southeast Asia raise fears of a mutated virus spread by humans.

By Charles Piller, Times Staff Writer

After smoldering through the summer and fall, avian flu has erupted again in Southeast Asia with 12 confirmed deaths since late December, the latest a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl who died Sunday.

Thailand has reported widespread outbreaks among farm poultry, and Vietnam, where all the fatalities have occurred in the last month, now counts bird or human infections in nearly half of its provinces.

The growing number of cases suggests that the virus may be mutating into a form that is more easily transmitted to and among humans, increasing the possibility of a pandemic.

"The situation in Southeast Asia right now is the most significant setup for a very serious public health crisis that I've seen in my 30 years in this business," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "We're sitting on a time bomb."

Vietnamese officials have struggled to contain the virus, deploying riot police at some checkpoints around Ho Chi Minh City to prevent an influx of infected birds during this month's Lunar New Year celebrations.

The government has destroyed more than 1 million domestic poultry in an effort to control the outbreak. But the virus has become so widespread that the mass slaughter of birds has been abandoned in some infected areas.

Since July, about 1 million birds have died or been culled in Thailand, compared with about 40 million culled during the first few months of last year.

Authorities believe the virus has a natural reservoir in wild fowl, which continually reinfect domesticated flocks.

Fear of avian flu has become pervasive in the region. People in China, including Hong Kong, as well as in Japan and Thailand have begun to snap up supplies of Tamiflu, the one drug that is effective in suppressing the virus.

If Switzerland's Hoffman-La Roche, Tamiflu's only supplier, tripled production, it would still take it six months to make enough to supply 1 million people for five weeks, said Dr. Klaus Stohr, head of the World Health Organization's global influenza program.

Niman's commentary:

The numbers are not just artificially low, they represent a scandalous failure to monitor and test the most obvious bird flu cases. The most important concern regarding the current pandemic is the ability of H5N1 to acquire efficient human to human transmission. This is hard to evaluate because many patients do not get tested.

They need not wait any longer. Testing of patients and contacts for H5N1 avian influenza transmission in Cambodia and border towns is long overdue.

Moral? Order your Tamiflu and nanomasks now. This is going to break fast.

Use it or Lose it

If this doesn't scare the crap out of you, you aren't paying attention. My perception, as a teacher, is that US education has gone to hell in the years since I finished college. The objective data seem to confirm.

First Amendment no big deal, students say
Study shows American teenagers indifferent to freedoms
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:20 a.m. ET Jan. 31, 2005

WASHINGTON - The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech.

“Schools don’t do enough to teach the First Amendment. Students often don’t know the rights it protects,” Linda Puntney, executive director of the Journalism Education Association, said in the report. “This all comes at a time when there is decreasing passion for much of anything. And, you have to be passionate about the First Amendment.”

This is a passionate, First Amendment weblog. For that reason, I do not delete comments or ban commentors unless they break the rules of ordinary social discourse: ad hominem attacks, needlessly foul language or spam. I encourage lively dialogue and welcome it.

The Wonders of Broadband

Bumpers, I'm still admiring the speed and all for all of the normal things I do, setting up the papers in my taskbar and the like. What are the other wonderful things I can do now that I've got 3 mbps thru-put? I need to be edumacated. I'm not interested in games, but I know that there are a bunch of things available on those darn Internets that I don't know anything about. I await your suggestions.

Now, I gotta go refill those bookmarks....

Junk Mail

Law Barring Junk E-Mail Allows a Flood Instead
By TOM ZELLER Jr.

Published: February 1, 2005

A year after a sweeping federal antispam law went into effect, there is more junk e-mail on the Internet than ever, and Levon Gillespie, according to Microsoft, is one reason.

Lawyers for the company seemed well on the way to shutting down Mr. Gillespie last September after he agreed to meet them at a Starbucks in Los Angeles near the University of Southern California. There they served him a court summons and a lawsuit accusing him, his Web site and 50 unnamed customers of violating state and federal law - including the year-old federal Can Spam Act - by flooding Microsoft's internal and customer e-mail networks with illegal spam, among other charges.

But that was the last the company saw of the young entrepreneur.

Mr. Gillespie, who operated a service that gives bulk advertisers off-shore shelter from the antispam crusade, did not show up last month for a court hearing in King County, Wash. The judge issued a default judgment against him in the amount of $1.4 million.

In a telephone interview yesterday from his home in Los Angeles, Mr. Gillespie, 21, said he was unaware of the judgment and that no one from Microsoft or the court had yet followed up. But he insisted that he had done nothing wrong and vowed that lawsuits would not stop him - nor any of the other players in the lucrative spam chain.

"There's way too much money involved," Mr. Gillespie said, noting that his service, which is currently down, provided him with a six-figure income at its peak. "And if there's money to be made, people are going to go out and get it."

Since the Can Spam Act went into effect in January 2004, unsolicited junk e-mail on the Internet has come to total perhaps 80 percent or more of all e-mail sent, according to most measures. That is up from 50 percent to 60 percent of all e-mail before the law went into effect.

To some antispam crusaders, the surge comes as no surprise. They had long argued that the law would make the spam problem worse by effectively giving bulk advertisers permission to send junk e-mail as long as they followed certain rules.

"Can Spam legalized spamming itself," said Steve Linford, the founder of the Spamhaus Project, a London organization that is one of the leading groups intent on eliminating junk e-mail. And in making spam legal, he said, the new rules also invited flouting by those intent on being outlaws.

Not everyone agrees that the Can Spam law is to blame, and lawsuits invoking the new legislation - along with other suits using state laws - have been mounted in the name of combating the problem. Besides Microsoft, other large Internet companies like AOL and Yahoo have used the federal law as the basis for suits.

Two prolific spam distributors, Jeremy D. Jaynes and Jessica DeGroot, were convicted under a Virginia antispam law in November, and a $1 billion judgment was issued in an Iowa federal court against three spam marketers in December.

I don't know what your "Inbox" looks like, but my spam filter doesn't catch it all.

Strict Constructionism

Judge slams U.S. for holding Guantanamo detainees without legal rights

Associated Press
Posted January 31 2005, 10:33 AM EST

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge ruled Monday that some foreign terror suspects held in Cuba can challenge their confinement in U.S. courts and she criticized the Bush administration for holding hundreds of people without legal rights.

Judge Joyce Hens Green, handling claims filed by more than 50 detainees, said the Supreme Court made clear last year that they have constitutional rights that lower courts should enforce.

The war on terror ``cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over 200 years,'' she wrote.

The decision conflicts with a ruling two weeks ago by another federal judge based in Washington. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon found that last year's landmark Supreme Court ruling did not provide detainees at Guantanamo Bay the legal basis to win their freedom.

About 550 detainees are being held at the U.S. Navy base, accused of being enemy combatants.

Most Americans can't even identify the Bill of Rights, much less defend it. Thank God for judges like Joyce Hens Green.

Les Animaux Don't Vote

A Sneaky Bid for Arctic Oil

Drill for oil in Yosemite Valley? A geothermal steam plant near Old Faithful? A hydroelectric dam on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon? Even the Bush administration would not go that far in search of energy sources because law bans such exploitation in the national parks. But its zeal for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is nearly as dumb. The refuge should have been made a national park in 1980, when Congress considered the designation. But for the oil industry, it would have been.

For the fifth consecutive year, the administration is seeking congressional approval to industrialize parts of the Alaskan North Slope — for only enough oil to meet the nation's needs for, at most, six months. Thwarted in the past in up-or-down votes in the Senate, the administration now is attempting to win approval by slipping a rider into the budget bill. The thinking is that no one would risk the wrath of voters by trying to kill the budget just because it contained the refuge rider. Think again. Polls show that most Americans oppose drilling and production in the refuge and disruption of its amazing variety of birds, fish and other animal life.

Bush aides and their industry friends are pulling out all the old tricks, promising that drilling will be done from ice pads and only over 2,000 acres of the refuge, with no widespread wreckage of the wilderness.

Don't believe it. If oil is found, it can be gotten out only through pumping stations and pipelines to Prudhoe Bay. These facilities have to be maintained year-round, meaning access roads and places for workers to live. In any case, it would take as long as 10 years for the oil to reach the market.

The administration has already thrown open millions of acres of the American West to energy exploitation and more millions in the former national petroleum reserve west of the Arctic plain and Prudhoe Bay. Some of the openings make sense, others don't. The latest ruckus is over allowing oil and gas wells on desert grassland in New Mexico, putting water supplies at risk. State officials solidly opposed the drilling but got a brushoff at the Interior Department.

If the administration was serious about a comprehensive energy policy, it would at least raise gasoline mileage standards on cars, light trucks and sport utility vehicles, helping to clean up the air in the process.

It's blood simple. Nobody lives there=no representation in the House. ANWAR isn't a constituent.

For the Fallen

Pentagon to Raise Death Benefits
Plan Could Double, to $500,000, Pay for Combat Victims' Survivors

By Bradley Graham and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 1, 2005; Page A01

Under pressure from Congress, the Pentagon yesterday announced plans to increase death payments by nearly $250,000 to families of U.S. troops killed in combat zones.

The proposed rise, which defense officials are asking be made retroactive to October 2001 for relatives of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, would effectively double, to $500,000, the cash that survivors can receive in immediate government payments and life insurance proceeds.
Iraq War Deaths.

"This increase is a recognition that in certain areas of benefit compensation, the support packages for survivors have not been kept up to date," said Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman.

The initiative follows a mounting effort on Capitol Hill to correct what some lawmakers have decried as paltry compensation at present for survivors of U.S. troops killed in combat. The political concern has reflected growing public distress over the deaths, injuries and long hours of duty being endured by U.S. forces in Iraq.

Both Republicans and Democrats have introduced legislation to raise military death payments, part of a broader effort in Congress to improve conditions for those who serve in the armed forces, their families and veterans.

Iraq War Deaths

Total number of U.S. military deaths and names of the U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war as announced by the Pentagon yesterday: 1,415 Fatalities

In hostile actions: 1,089

In non-hostile actions: 326

Spec. Taylor J. Burk, 21, of Amarillo, Tex.; 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex. Killed Jan. 26 in Baghdad.

Cpl. Timothy A. Knight, 22, of Brooklyn, Ohio. 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Killed Jan. 26 in helicopter crash near Rutbah, Anbar province.

Cpl. Jonathan S. Beatty, 22, of Streator, Ill. 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Killed Jan. 27 in Babil province.

Sgt. Andrew K. Farrar Jr., 31, of Weymouth, Mass. Headquarters and Service Battalion, 2nd Force Service Support Group, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Killed Jan. 28 in noncombat incident in Anbar.

All troops were killed in action unless otherwise indicated.

Total fatalities include three civilian employees of the Defense Department.

A full list of casualties is available online at www.washingtonpost.com/nation

SOURCE: Defense Department's www.defenselink.mil/newsThe Washington Post

Dr. Krugman in the House

Many Unhappy Returns
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 1, 2005

The fight over Social Security is, above all, about what kind of society we want to have. But it's also about numbers. And the numbers the privatizers use just don't add up.

Let me inflict some of those numbers on you. Sorry, but this is important.

Schemes for Social Security privatization, like the one described in the 2004 Economic Report of the President, invariably assume that investing in stocks will yield a high annual rate of return, 6.5 or 7 percent after inflation, for at least the next 75 years. Without that assumption, these schemes can't deliver on their promises. Yet a rate of return that high is mathematically impossible unless the economy grows much faster than anyone is now expecting.

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To explain why, I need to talk about stock returns. The yield on a stock comes from two components: cash that the company pays out in the form of dividends and stock buybacks, and capital gains. Right now, if dividends and buybacks were the whole story, the rate of return on stocks would be only 3 percent.

To get a 6.5 percent rate of return, you need capital gains: if dividends yield 3 percent, stock prices have to rise 3.5 percent per year after inflation. That doesn't sound too unreasonable if you're thinking only a few years ahead.

But privatizers need that high rate of return for 75 years or more. And the economic assumptions underlying most projections for Social Security make that impossible.

The Social Security projections that say the trust fund will be exhausted by 2042 assume that economic growth will slow as baby boomers leave the work force. The actuaries predict that economic growth, which averaged 3.4 percent per year over the last 75 years, will average only 1.9 percent over the next 75 years.

In the long run, profits grow at the same rate as the economy. So to get that 6.5 percent rate of return, stock prices would have to keep rising faster than profits, decade after decade.

The price-earnings ratio - the value of a company's stock, divided by its profits - is widely used to assess whether a stock is overvalued or undervalued. Historically, that ratio averaged about 14. Today it's about 20. Where would it have to go to yield a 6.5 percent rate of return?

I asked Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to help me out with that calculation (there are some technical details I won't get into). Here's what we found: by 2050, the price-earnings ratio would have to rise to about 70. By 2060, it would have to be more than 100.

In other words, to believe in a privatization-friendly rate of return, you have to believe that half a century from now, the average stock will be priced like technology stocks at the height of the Internet bubble - and that stock prices will nonetheless keep on rising.

Social Security privatizers usually defend their bullishness by saying that stock investors earned high returns in the past. But stocks are much more expensive than they used to be, relative to corporate profits; that means lower dividends per dollar of share value. And economic growth is expected to be slower.

Which brings us to the privatizers' Catch-22.

They can rescue their happy vision for stock returns by claiming that the Social Security actuaries are vastly underestimating future economic growth. But in that case, we don't need to worry about Social Security's future: if the economy grows fast enough to generate a rate of return that makes privatization work, it will also yield a bonanza of payroll tax revenue that will keep the current system sound for generations to come.

Alternatively, privatizers can unhappily admit that future stock returns will be much lower than they have been claiming. But without those high returns, the arithmetic of their schemes collapses.

It really is that stark: any growth projection that would permit the stock returns the privatizers need to make their schemes work would put Social Security solidly in the black.

And I suspect that at least some privatizers know that. Mr. Baker has devised a test he calls "no economist left behind": he challenges economists to make a projection of economic growth, dividends and capital gains that will yield a 6.5 percent rate of return over 75 years. Not one economist who supports privatization has been willing to take the test.

But the offer still stands. Ladies and gentlemen, would you care to explain your position?

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