From Strategic Forecasting, Inc:
The U.S. War, Five Years On
By George Friedman
It has been five years since the Sept. 11 attacks. In thinking about the course of the war against al Qaeda, two facts emerge pre-eminent. The first is that the war has succeeded far better than anyone would have thought on Sept. 12, 2001. We remember that day clearly, and had anyone told us that there would be no more al Qaeda attacks in the United States for at least five years, we would have been incredulous. Yet there have been no attacks.
The second fact is that the U.S. intervention in the Islamic world has not achieved its operational goals. There are multiple insurgencies under way in Iraq, and the United States does not appear to have sufficient force or strategic intent to suppress them. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has re-emerged as a powerful fighting force. It is possible that the relatively small coalition force -- a force much smaller than that fielded by the defeated Soviets in Afghanistan -- can hold it at bay, but clearly coalition troops cannot annihilate it.
A Strategic Response
The strategic goal of the United States on Sept. 12, 2001, was to prevent any further attacks within the United States. Al Qaeda, defined as the original entity that orchestrated the 1998 attacks against the U.S. embassies in Africa, the USS Cole strike and 9/11, has been thrown into disarray and has been unable to mount a follow-on attack without being detected and disrupted. Other groups, loosely linked to al Qaeda or linked only by name or shared ideology, have carried out attacks, but none have been as daring and successful as 9/11.
In response to 9/11, the United States resorted to direct overt and covert intervention throughout the Islamic world. With the first intervention, in Afghanistan, the United States and coalition forces disrupted al Qaeda's base of operations, destabilized the group and forced it on the defensive. Here also, the stage was set for a long guerrilla war that the United States cannot win with the forces available.
The invasion of Iraq, however incoherent the Bush administration's explanation of it might be, achieved two things. First, it convinced Saudi Arabia of the seriousness of American resolve and caused the Saudis to become much more aggressive in cooperating with U.S. intelligence. Second, it allowed the United States to occupy the most strategic ground in the Middle East -- bordering on Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Iran. From here, the United States was able to pose overt threats and to stage covert operations against al Qaeda. Yet by invading Iraq, the United States also set the stage for the current military crisis.
The U.S. strategy was to disrupt al Qaeda in three ways:
1. Bring the intelligence services of Muslim states -- through persuasion, intimidation or coercion -- to provide intelligence that was available only to them on al Qaeda's operations.
2. By invading Afghanistan and Iraq, use main force to disrupt al Qaeda and to intimidate and coerce Islamic states. In other words, use Operation 2 to achieve Operation 1.
3. Use the intelligence gained by these methods to conduct a range of covert operations throughout the world, including in the United States itself, to disrupt al Qaeda operations.
The problem, however, was this. The means used to compel cooperation with the intelligence services in countries such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia involved actions that, while successful in the immediate intent, left U.S. forces exposed on a battleground where the correlation of forces, over time, ceased to favor the United States. In other words, while the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq did achieve their immediate ends and did result in effective action against al Qaeda, the outcome was to expose the U.S. forces to exhausting counterinsurgency that they were not configured to win.
Hindsight: The Search for an Ideal Strategy
The ideal outcome likely would have been to carry out the first and third operations without the second. As many would argue, an acceptable outcome would have been to carry out the Afghanistan operation without going into Iraq. This is the crux of the debate that has been raging since the Iraq invasion and that really began earlier, during the Afghan war, albeit in muted form. On the one side, the argument is that by invading Muslim countries, the United States has played into al Qaeda's hands and actually contributed to radicalization among Islamists -- and that by refraining from invasion, the Americans would have reduced the threat posed by al Qaeda. On the other side, the argument has been made that without these two invasions -- the one for direct tactical reasons, the other for psychological and political reasons -- al Qaeda would be able to operate securely and without effective interference from U.S. intelligence and that, therefore, these invasions were the price to be paid.
There are three models, then, that have been proposed as ideals:
1. The United States should have invaded neither Afghanistan nor Iraq, but instead should have relied entirely on covert measures (with various levels of restraint suggested) to defeat al Qaeda.
2. The United States should have invaded Afghanistan to drive out al Qaeda and disrupt the organization, but should not have invaded Iraq.
3. The United States needed to invade both Iraq and Afghanistan -- the former for strategic reasons and to intimidate key players, the latter to disrupt al Qaeda operations and its home base.
It is interesting to pause and consider that the argument is rarely this clear-cut. Those arguing for Option 1 rarely explain how U.S. covert operations would be carried out, and frequently oppose those operations as well. Those who make the second argument fail to explain how, given that the command cell of al Qaeda had escaped Afghanistan, the United States would continue the war -- or more precisely, where the Americans would get the intelligence to fight a covert war. Those who argue for the third course -- the Bush administration -- rarely explain precisely what the strategic purpose of the war was.
In fact, 9/11 created a logic that drove the U.S. responses. Before any covert war could be launched, al Qaeda's operational structure had to be disrupted -- at the very least, to buy time before another attack. Therefore, an attack in Afghanistan had to come first (and did, commencing about a month after 9/11). Calling this an invasion, of course, would be an error: The United States borrowed forces from Russian and Iranian allies in Afghanistan -- and that, coupled with U.S. air power, forced the Taliban out of the cities to disperse, regroup and restart the war later.
Covert War and a Logical Progression
The problem that the United States had with commencing covert operations against al Qaeda was weakness in its intelligence system. To conduct a covert war, you must have excellent intelligence -- and U.S. intelligence on al Qaeda in the wake of 9/11 was not good enough to sustain a global covert effort. The best intelligence on al Qaeda, simply given the nature of the group as well as its ideology, was in the hands of the Pakistanis and the Saudis. At the very least, Islamic governments were more likely to have accumulated the needed intelligence than the CIA was.
The issue was in motivating these governments to cooperate with the U.S. effort. The Saudis in particular were dubious about U.S. will, given previous decades of behavior. Officials in Riyadh frankly were more worried about al Qaeda's behavior within Saudi Arabia if they collaborated with the Americans than they were about the United States acting resolutely. Recall that the Saudis asked U.S. forces to leave Saudi Arabia after 9/11. Changing the kingdom's attitude was a necessary precursor to waging the covert war, just as Afghanistan was a precursor to changing attitudes in Pakistan. Invading Iraq was a way for the United States to demonstrate will, while occupying strategic territory to bring further pressure against countries like Syria. It was also a facilitator for a global covert war. The information the Saudis started to provide after the U.S. invasion was critical in disrupting al Qaeda operations.
And the Saudis did, in fact, pay the price for collaboration: Al Qaeda rose up against the regime, staging its first attack in the kingdom in May 2003, and was repressed. In this sense, we can see a logical progression. Invading Afghanistan disrupted al Qaeda operations there and forced Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to step up cooperation with the United States. Invading Iraq reshaped Saudi thinking and put the United States in a position to pressure neighboring countries. The two moves together increased U.S. intelligence capabilities decisively and allowed it to disrupt al Qaeda.
But it also placed U.S. forces in a strategically difficult position. Any U.S. intervention in Asia, it has long been noted, places the United States at a massive disadvantage. U.S. troops inevitably will be outnumbered. They also will be fighting on an enemy's home turf, far away from everything familiar and comfortable. If forced into a political war, in which the enemy combatants use the local populace to hide themselves -- and if that populace is itself hostile to the Americans -- the results can be extraordinarily unpleasant. Thus, the same strategy that allowed the United States to disrupt al Qaeda also placed U.S. forces in strategically difficult positions in two theaters of operation.
Mission Creep and Crisis
The root problem was that the United States did not crisply define the mission in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Obviously, the immediate purpose was to create an environment in which al Qaeda was disrupted and the intelligence services of Muslim states felt compelled to cooperate with the United States. But by revising the mission upward -- from achieving these goals to providing security to rooting out Baathism and the Taliban, then to providing security against insurgents and even to redefining these two societies as democracies -- the United States overreached. The issue was not whether democracy is desirable; the issue was whether the United States had sufficient forces at hand to reshape Iraqi and Afghan societies in the face of resistance.
If the Americans had not at first expected resistance, they certainly discovered that they were facing it shortly after taking control of the major cities of each country. At that moment, they had to make a basic decision between pursuing the United States' own interests or defining the interest as transforming Afghan and Iraqi society. At the moment Washington chose transformation, it had launched into a task it could not fulfill -- or, if it could fulfill it, would be able to do so only with enormously more force than it placed in either country. When we consider that 300,000 Soviet troops could not subdue Afghanistan, we get a sense of how large a force would have been needed.
The point here is this: The means used by the United States to cripple al Qaeda also created a situation that was inherently dangerous to the United States. Unless the mission had been parsed precisely -- with the United States doing what it needed to do to disrupt al Qaeda but not overreaching itself -- the outcome would be what we see now. It is, of course, easy to say that the United States should have intervened, achieved its goals and left each country in chaos; it is harder to do. Nevertheless, the United States intervened, did not leave the countries and still has chaos. That can be said with hindsight. Acting so callously with foresight is more difficult.
There remains the question of whether the United States could have crippled al Qaeda without invading Iraq -- a move that still would have left Afghanistan in its current state, but which would seem to have been better than the situation now at hand. The answer to that question rests on two elements. First, it is simply not clear that the Saudis' appreciation of the situation, prior to March 2003, would have moved them to cooperate, and extensive diplomacy over the subject prior to the invasion had left the Americans reasonably convinced that the Saudis could do more. Advocates of diplomacy would have to answer the question of what more the United States could have done on that score. Now, perhaps, over time the United States could have developed its own intelligence sources within al Qaeda. But time was exactly what the United States did not have.
But most important, the U.S. leadership underestimated the consequences of an invasion. They set their goals as high as they did because they did not believe that the Iraqis would resist -- and when resistance began, they denied that it involved anything more than the ragtag remnants of the old regime. Their misreading of Iraq was compounded with an extraordinary difficulty in adjusting their thinking as reality unfolded. But even without the administration's denial, we can see in hindsight that the current crisis was hardwired into the strategy. If the United States wanted to destroy al Qaeda, it had to do things that would suck it into the current situation -- unless it was enormously skilled and nimble, which it certainly was not. In the end, the primary objective -- defending the homeland -- was won at the cost of trying to achieve goals in Iraq and Afghanistan that cannot be achieved.
In the political debate that is raging today in the United States, our view is that both sides are quite wrong. The administration's argument for building democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan misses the point that the United States cannot be successful in this, because it lacks the force to carry out the mission. The administration's critics, who argue that Iraq particularly diverted attention from fighting al Qaeda, fail to appreciate the complex matrix of relationships the United States was trying to adjust with its invasion of Iraq. The administration is incapable of admitting that it has overreached and led U.S. forces into an impossible position. Its critics fail to understand the intricate connections between the administration's various actions and the failure of al Qaeda to strike inside the United States for five years.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Hide them! Hide Intel reports!
From Secrecy News:
IRAQ INTELLIGENCE REPORTS ARE OVERCLASSIFIED, SENATORS SAY
Two partially declassified reports issued by the Senate IntelligenceCommittee last week that were critical of pre-war intelligence on Iraq remain significantly overclassified, according to Sen. Ron Wyden(D-OR), who said he would seek further disclosure.
Furthermore, portions of the two Intelligence Committee reports that were withheld conceal "certain highly offensive activities" and"deeply disturbing information," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.)."I am very troubled that some information in these reports has been classified even though its release would have no impact on national security," Sen. Wyden said."I am particularly concerned it appears that information may have been classified to shield individuals from accountability," he said September 8.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2006/09/wyden090806.html"
Portions of the report which the intelligence community leaders have determined to keep from public view provide some of the most damaging evidence of this administration's falsehoods and distortions," said Senator Levin in a September 8 statement on the Senate floor. "What remains classified, and therefore covered up, includes deeply disturbing information," he said. "Much of the information redacted from the public report does not jeopardize any intelligence source or method but serves effectively to cover up certain highly offensive activities.""Even the partially released picture is plenty bleak, about the administration's use of falsehoods and distortions to build public support for the war. But the public is entitled to the full picture. Unless this report is further declassified, they won't get it,"Sen. Levin said.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/s090806.html
Senator Wyden announced that he would ask the Public Interest Declassification Board, an advisory board originally created by statute in 2000, to review the two reports and to render a judgment as to whether they were properly declassified. This would be the first time that a Member of Congress has tasked theBoard to perform such a declassification oversight function.
The two Senate Intelligence Committee reports, released last week in redacted form, are: "The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress" (211 pages, 9 MB PDF file):
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_rpt/srpt109-330.pdf
"Postwar Findings About Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments" (151 pages, 7 MB PDFfile):
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_rpt/srpt109-331.pdf
Wrap...
IRAQ INTELLIGENCE REPORTS ARE OVERCLASSIFIED, SENATORS SAY
Two partially declassified reports issued by the Senate IntelligenceCommittee last week that were critical of pre-war intelligence on Iraq remain significantly overclassified, according to Sen. Ron Wyden(D-OR), who said he would seek further disclosure.
Furthermore, portions of the two Intelligence Committee reports that were withheld conceal "certain highly offensive activities" and"deeply disturbing information," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.)."I am very troubled that some information in these reports has been classified even though its release would have no impact on national security," Sen. Wyden said."I am particularly concerned it appears that information may have been classified to shield individuals from accountability," he said September 8.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2006/09/wyden090806.html"
Portions of the report which the intelligence community leaders have determined to keep from public view provide some of the most damaging evidence of this administration's falsehoods and distortions," said Senator Levin in a September 8 statement on the Senate floor. "What remains classified, and therefore covered up, includes deeply disturbing information," he said. "Much of the information redacted from the public report does not jeopardize any intelligence source or method but serves effectively to cover up certain highly offensive activities.""Even the partially released picture is plenty bleak, about the administration's use of falsehoods and distortions to build public support for the war. But the public is entitled to the full picture. Unless this report is further declassified, they won't get it,"Sen. Levin said.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/s090806.html
Senator Wyden announced that he would ask the Public Interest Declassification Board, an advisory board originally created by statute in 2000, to review the two reports and to render a judgment as to whether they were properly declassified. This would be the first time that a Member of Congress has tasked theBoard to perform such a declassification oversight function.
The two Senate Intelligence Committee reports, released last week in redacted form, are: "The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress" (211 pages, 9 MB PDF file):
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_rpt/srpt109-330.pdf
"Postwar Findings About Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments" (151 pages, 7 MB PDFfile):
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_rpt/srpt109-331.pdf
Wrap...
Want to know what 9/11 was like? Read this!!!
Close up and personal...this is what is meant by pure stunned shock:
Written by someone who was there. Read this...
http://www.tomatonation.com/thouart.shtml
Wrap....
Written by someone who was there. Read this...
http://www.tomatonation.com/thouart.shtml
Wrap....
Monday, September 11, 2006
Treasonous BushCo should be brought to justice...
From Capitol Hill Blue:
Capitol Hill Blue is a not-for-profit, non-commercial experiment in on-line journalism published as an information resource for our readers. All material is © 2006 Capitol Hill Blue. For more information, please check out our FAQ. We take your privacy seriously at Capitol Hill Blue.
The real axis of evil that destroyed America
September 11, 2006 12:10 AM Rant 58 Comments
By DOUG THOMPSON
Five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States of America lies beaten, battered and defeated - not by an enemy of extremists who hide in caves in Afghanistan but by its own government and leaders who sold out their nation for power and politics. The America that exists today is a far cry from the one that woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001. It is a rotting corpse of a nation, eaten out by a cancer of power, greed and corruption.
Osama bin Laden and his minions did not destroy America when hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and an empty field. They simply provided the spark to ignite nothing less than a coup to take over the United States government, a coup staged by a group of traitorous men and women who swore to uphold the Constitution but, instead, set about to dismantle that hallowed document and destroy the freedoms that once defined a great nation.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and those who control Congress and support Bush's actions serve as co-conspirators in this coup.
The once-great United States of America is now despised around the world as an international bully, a threat to world peace far greater than Islamic militants or communist dictators, America neither deserves nor gets respect. It lost all chance for any respect when a liar named Bush used manufactured "evidence" to launch an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation. It lost all chance for respect when its leaders sanctioned torture of prisoners, abuse of freedoms and spying on its own citizens. A nation that does not practice democracy at home cannot claim to export it to other nations. A government that lies to its own people cannot expect respect or support.
George W. Bush is a liar, a war monger and a murderer - drenched in the blood of every American soldier and Iraqi civilian who has died in his war launched with falsified evidence and trumped up rationales.
And, as we take a moment today to honor the memories of those who died in New York, Washington and that empty field in Pennsylvania, let's also take time to point the finger of blame at the real enemy of freedom and peace - a madman named Bush and the mad men and women who follow him. Had Bush and his administration acted promptly on warnings that an attack on U.S. soil was coming and coming soon, we might not have needed to remember this day in history. Perhaps, as some suggest, he wanted the attacks to occur in order to justify his war in Iraq. Others believe he and the government played a role. After six years of watching this man in action, I'm no longer predisposed to dismiss any suspicion about him or his actions.
It is George W. Bush who represents the real evil that threatens America. He is a vile, heartless man who deserves nothing but contempt and one who should be led from the White House in shackles and tried as a traitor. Then we should turn him over to the international court so he can be tried as the mass murderer he is, the greatest threat in modern times to freedom in this world.
And others complicit in the Bush cabal must be brought to justice as well - Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Rice, along with the leadership of Congress. This is no longer simply a case of voting bad leaders out of office. These men and women are despots who have sold out their country and must face swift, brutal justice as traitors.
It is often asked how we can honor those men and women who died on September 11, 2001. We can do so by restoring the country that died along with them. We can do it by restoring honor to a nation that has lost it because of a duplicitous, traitorous government that abandoned its principles, its morality and its values. We can do it by restoring the real America and punishing those who are ultimately responsible - a corrupt Presidential administration and a Congress of co-conspirators who used a national nightmare for political benefit and a way to seize absolute control of a shell-shocked nation.
© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue
Wrap...
Capitol Hill Blue is a not-for-profit, non-commercial experiment in on-line journalism published as an information resource for our readers. All material is © 2006 Capitol Hill Blue. For more information, please check out our FAQ. We take your privacy seriously at Capitol Hill Blue.
The real axis of evil that destroyed America
September 11, 2006 12:10 AM Rant 58 Comments
By DOUG THOMPSON
Five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States of America lies beaten, battered and defeated - not by an enemy of extremists who hide in caves in Afghanistan but by its own government and leaders who sold out their nation for power and politics. The America that exists today is a far cry from the one that woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001. It is a rotting corpse of a nation, eaten out by a cancer of power, greed and corruption.
Osama bin Laden and his minions did not destroy America when hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and an empty field. They simply provided the spark to ignite nothing less than a coup to take over the United States government, a coup staged by a group of traitorous men and women who swore to uphold the Constitution but, instead, set about to dismantle that hallowed document and destroy the freedoms that once defined a great nation.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and those who control Congress and support Bush's actions serve as co-conspirators in this coup.
The once-great United States of America is now despised around the world as an international bully, a threat to world peace far greater than Islamic militants or communist dictators, America neither deserves nor gets respect. It lost all chance for any respect when a liar named Bush used manufactured "evidence" to launch an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation. It lost all chance for respect when its leaders sanctioned torture of prisoners, abuse of freedoms and spying on its own citizens. A nation that does not practice democracy at home cannot claim to export it to other nations. A government that lies to its own people cannot expect respect or support.
George W. Bush is a liar, a war monger and a murderer - drenched in the blood of every American soldier and Iraqi civilian who has died in his war launched with falsified evidence and trumped up rationales.
And, as we take a moment today to honor the memories of those who died in New York, Washington and that empty field in Pennsylvania, let's also take time to point the finger of blame at the real enemy of freedom and peace - a madman named Bush and the mad men and women who follow him. Had Bush and his administration acted promptly on warnings that an attack on U.S. soil was coming and coming soon, we might not have needed to remember this day in history. Perhaps, as some suggest, he wanted the attacks to occur in order to justify his war in Iraq. Others believe he and the government played a role. After six years of watching this man in action, I'm no longer predisposed to dismiss any suspicion about him or his actions.
It is George W. Bush who represents the real evil that threatens America. He is a vile, heartless man who deserves nothing but contempt and one who should be led from the White House in shackles and tried as a traitor. Then we should turn him over to the international court so he can be tried as the mass murderer he is, the greatest threat in modern times to freedom in this world.
And others complicit in the Bush cabal must be brought to justice as well - Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Rice, along with the leadership of Congress. This is no longer simply a case of voting bad leaders out of office. These men and women are despots who have sold out their country and must face swift, brutal justice as traitors.
It is often asked how we can honor those men and women who died on September 11, 2001. We can do so by restoring the country that died along with them. We can do it by restoring honor to a nation that has lost it because of a duplicitous, traitorous government that abandoned its principles, its morality and its values. We can do it by restoring the real America and punishing those who are ultimately responsible - a corrupt Presidential administration and a Congress of co-conspirators who used a national nightmare for political benefit and a way to seize absolute control of a shell-shocked nation.
© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue
Wrap...
Greg Palast in trouble with Homeland Sec/Enron...
From Greg Palast:
Palast Charged with Journalism in the First Degree
September 11, 2006
by Greg Palast
It's true. It's weird. It's nuts. The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, has finally brought charges against … Greg Palast. I kid you not. Send your cakes with files to the Air America wing at Guantanamo. Though not just yet. Fatherland Security has informed me that television producer Matt Pascarella and I have been charged with unauthorized filming of a "critical national security structure" in Louisiana.
On August 22, for LinkTV and Democracy Now! we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held behind a barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It's been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW's (Prisoners of W) are still in this aluminum ghetto in the middle of nowhere.
One resident, Pamela Lewis said, “It is a prison set-up" -- except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes. To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of the place, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is nearly adjacent to the Exxon Oil refinery, the nation's second largest, a chemical-belching behemoth. So we filmed it. Without Big Brother's authorization. Uh, oh. Apparently, the broadcast of these stinking smokestacks tipped off Osama that, if his assassins pose as poor Black folk, they can get a cramped Airstream right next to a "critical infrastructure" asset.
So now Matt and I have a "criminal complaint" lodged against us with the feds.
The positive side for me as a journalist is that I get to see our terror-busters in action. I should note that it took the Maxwell Smarts at Homeland Security a full two weeks to hunt us down. Frankly, we were a bit scared that, given the charges, we wouldn't be allowed on a plane into New York last night. But what scared us more is that we were allowed on the plane.
Once I was traced, I had a bit of an other-worldly conversation with my would-be captors. Detective Frank Pananepinto of Homeland Security told us, "This is a 'Critical Infrastructure' … and they get nervous about unauthorized filming of their property.
Well, me too, Detective. In fact, I'm very nervous that this potential chemical blast-site can be mapped in extreme detail at this Google Map location What also makes me nervous is that the Bush Terror Terriers have kindly indicated on the Internet that this unprotected critical infrastructure can be targeted -- I mean located -- at 30º 29' 11" N Latitude and 91º 11' 39" W Longitude. After I assured Detective Pananepinto, "I can swear to you that I'm not part of Al Qaeda," he confirmed that, "Louisiana is still part of the United States," subject to the first amendment and he was therefore required to divulge my accuser.
Not surprisingly, it was Exxon Corporation, one of a handful of companies not in love with my investigations. [See "A Well-Designed Disaster: the Untold Story of the Exxon Valdez."]
So I rang America's top petroleum pusher-men and asked their media relations honcho in Houston, Marc Boudreaux, a simple question. "Do you want us to go to jail or not? Is it Exxon's position that reporters should go to jail?" Because, all my dumb-ass jokes aside, that is what's at stake.
And Exxon knew we were journalists because we showed our press credential to the Exxon guards at the refinery entrance. The Exxon man was coy: "Well, we'll see what we can find out…. Obviously it's important to national security that we have supplies from that refinery in the event of an emergency." Really?
According to the documents our team uncovered from the offices of Exxon's lawyer, Mr. James Baker, the oil industry is more than happy to see a limit on worldwide crude production. Indeed, the current squeeze has jacked the price of oil from $24 a barrel to $64 and refined products have jumped yet higher -- resulting in a record-busting profit for Exxon of nearly $1 billion per week.
So this silly "criminal complaint" has nothing to do with stopping Al Qaeda or keeping the oil flowing. It has everything to do with obstructing news reports in a way that no one would have dared attempt before the September 11 attack. Dectective Pananepinto, in justifying our impending bust, said, "If you remember, a lot of people were killed on 9/11."
Yes, Detective, I remember that very well: my office was in the World Trade Center. Lucky for me, I was out of town that day. It was not a lucky day for 3,000 others. Yes, I remember "a lot" of people were killed. So I have this suggestion, Detective -- and you can pass it on to Mr. Bush: Go and find the people who killed them.
It's been five years and the Bush regime has not done that. Instead, the War on Terror is reduced to taking off our shoes in airports, hoping we can bomb Muslims into loving America and chasing journalists around the bayou. Meanwhile, King Abdullah, the Gambino of oil, whose princelings funded the murderers, gets a free ride in the President's golf cart at the Crawford ranch. I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, Matt and I look pretty good in orange.
*******
A personal request to readers. Many have written to ask what can be done to protect Matt and me from becoming unwilling guests of the State. First, this ain't no foolin' around: Matt and I are facing these nutty charges. So spread the info. We believe that getting the word out is the best defense.
Second, call Homeland Security and turn us in. They seem to have trouble finding us. If you get a reward, you may choose to donate it to the Palast Investigative Fund, a 501(c)(3) educational foundation which supports our work and pays our legal fees.
Third, ask your local library to order our book, Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf? Homeland Security now reserves the right to read over your shoulder at the library; therefore, the more our agents are forced to read this subversive material, the more likely we can convince them to come in out of the cold.
All kidding aside, we do ask you to request your library order the book: not everyone can afford to purchase this hardbound edition.
Our thanks to Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! and the folks at LinkTV for broadcasting our report from New Orleans and the Exxon refinery. And to Gil Noble, host of the ABC Television's Like It Is, our Courage in Journalism award for broadcasting our report on his network's New York affiliate. Catch Gil on WABC every Sunday at noon. In response to a deluge of requests for a copy of the New Orleans documentary, we are preparing a DVD which you may order at http://www.gregpalast.com/premiums.htm
Wrap...
Palast Charged with Journalism in the First Degree
September 11, 2006
by Greg Palast
It's true. It's weird. It's nuts. The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, has finally brought charges against … Greg Palast. I kid you not. Send your cakes with files to the Air America wing at Guantanamo. Though not just yet. Fatherland Security has informed me that television producer Matt Pascarella and I have been charged with unauthorized filming of a "critical national security structure" in Louisiana.
On August 22, for LinkTV and Democracy Now! we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held behind a barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It's been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW's (Prisoners of W) are still in this aluminum ghetto in the middle of nowhere.
One resident, Pamela Lewis said, “It is a prison set-up" -- except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes. To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of the place, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is nearly adjacent to the Exxon Oil refinery, the nation's second largest, a chemical-belching behemoth. So we filmed it. Without Big Brother's authorization. Uh, oh. Apparently, the broadcast of these stinking smokestacks tipped off Osama that, if his assassins pose as poor Black folk, they can get a cramped Airstream right next to a "critical infrastructure" asset.
So now Matt and I have a "criminal complaint" lodged against us with the feds.
The positive side for me as a journalist is that I get to see our terror-busters in action. I should note that it took the Maxwell Smarts at Homeland Security a full two weeks to hunt us down. Frankly, we were a bit scared that, given the charges, we wouldn't be allowed on a plane into New York last night. But what scared us more is that we were allowed on the plane.
Once I was traced, I had a bit of an other-worldly conversation with my would-be captors. Detective Frank Pananepinto of Homeland Security told us, "This is a 'Critical Infrastructure' … and they get nervous about unauthorized filming of their property.
Well, me too, Detective. In fact, I'm very nervous that this potential chemical blast-site can be mapped in extreme detail at this Google Map location What also makes me nervous is that the Bush Terror Terriers have kindly indicated on the Internet that this unprotected critical infrastructure can be targeted -- I mean located -- at 30º 29' 11" N Latitude and 91º 11' 39" W Longitude. After I assured Detective Pananepinto, "I can swear to you that I'm not part of Al Qaeda," he confirmed that, "Louisiana is still part of the United States," subject to the first amendment and he was therefore required to divulge my accuser.
Not surprisingly, it was Exxon Corporation, one of a handful of companies not in love with my investigations. [See "A Well-Designed Disaster: the Untold Story of the Exxon Valdez."]
So I rang America's top petroleum pusher-men and asked their media relations honcho in Houston, Marc Boudreaux, a simple question. "Do you want us to go to jail or not? Is it Exxon's position that reporters should go to jail?" Because, all my dumb-ass jokes aside, that is what's at stake.
And Exxon knew we were journalists because we showed our press credential to the Exxon guards at the refinery entrance. The Exxon man was coy: "Well, we'll see what we can find out…. Obviously it's important to national security that we have supplies from that refinery in the event of an emergency." Really?
According to the documents our team uncovered from the offices of Exxon's lawyer, Mr. James Baker, the oil industry is more than happy to see a limit on worldwide crude production. Indeed, the current squeeze has jacked the price of oil from $24 a barrel to $64 and refined products have jumped yet higher -- resulting in a record-busting profit for Exxon of nearly $1 billion per week.
So this silly "criminal complaint" has nothing to do with stopping Al Qaeda or keeping the oil flowing. It has everything to do with obstructing news reports in a way that no one would have dared attempt before the September 11 attack. Dectective Pananepinto, in justifying our impending bust, said, "If you remember, a lot of people were killed on 9/11."
Yes, Detective, I remember that very well: my office was in the World Trade Center. Lucky for me, I was out of town that day. It was not a lucky day for 3,000 others. Yes, I remember "a lot" of people were killed. So I have this suggestion, Detective -- and you can pass it on to Mr. Bush: Go and find the people who killed them.
It's been five years and the Bush regime has not done that. Instead, the War on Terror is reduced to taking off our shoes in airports, hoping we can bomb Muslims into loving America and chasing journalists around the bayou. Meanwhile, King Abdullah, the Gambino of oil, whose princelings funded the murderers, gets a free ride in the President's golf cart at the Crawford ranch. I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, Matt and I look pretty good in orange.
*******
A personal request to readers. Many have written to ask what can be done to protect Matt and me from becoming unwilling guests of the State. First, this ain't no foolin' around: Matt and I are facing these nutty charges. So spread the info. We believe that getting the word out is the best defense.
Second, call Homeland Security and turn us in. They seem to have trouble finding us. If you get a reward, you may choose to donate it to the Palast Investigative Fund, a 501(c)(3) educational foundation which supports our work and pays our legal fees.
Third, ask your local library to order our book, Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf? Homeland Security now reserves the right to read over your shoulder at the library; therefore, the more our agents are forced to read this subversive material, the more likely we can convince them to come in out of the cold.
All kidding aside, we do ask you to request your library order the book: not everyone can afford to purchase this hardbound edition.
Our thanks to Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! and the folks at LinkTV for broadcasting our report from New Orleans and the Exxon refinery. And to Gil Noble, host of the ABC Television's Like It Is, our Courage in Journalism award for broadcasting our report on his network's New York affiliate. Catch Gil on WABC every Sunday at noon. In response to a deluge of requests for a copy of the New Orleans documentary, we are preparing a DVD which you may order at http://www.gregpalast.com/premiums.htm
Wrap...
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Norton-Symantec hates me...
First, I'd like to thank Mycos for his most astute comments on two posts on this site:
1) Friday, September 08, 2006
No oversight on Intell...Mark everything SECRET!!!
2) Thursday, September 07, 2006
Watch listener reactions at Bush/Ahmadinejad duel.
I very much appreciated his thinking on both matters.
***********
As for Norton-Symantec, in my humble opinion, their customer service is horrendous! There is no way to email them, no way to contact them, that does the least bit of good...and in fact makes what was bad already, a thousand times worse.
Back in April, my year's subscription ran out, so I renewed....or tried to. Apparently N-S believed the renewal had worked because my credit card was charged...and the charge was paid in full in May.
However, from that moment to this, there has been no time that I've turned on this machine that two balloon warnings haven't popped up informing me that I have no virus protection even though that was part of the renewal ordered. This is not a good thing.
So, in an attempt to get the virus protection downloaded, I found it necessary to get back on their site...and then found that the only way to get to a place where it might be possible to inform them of the problem, I had to go through the renewal process again! Which I did. Which means, of course, that even though renewal #1 was ordered and paid for, I would now be charged for a 2nd renewal as though the first didn't exist.
Thought I'd best try to straighten that out. All I'd need was to speak to a human. Hah. How to speak to a human? On my favorites list I have a sight devoted to that problem. What I ended up with were instructions to phone their world headquarters at 1-800-441-7234, and choose Option 1 twice. So I did. And ended up with a male human whom I could barely understand. His native language was not mine.
His instruction was this: "Here is your case number...I need to do research. Call back in one hour."
Okay. I called back in one hour. A new voice instructed, "Call back in five hours." I didn't. It would have been an exercise in futility due to our different languages. Frustrating for both of us.
Just fumed for a few days. Knew I'd have to do something to try and get the virus protection already paid for and not pay twice for the same service. So I find this site address:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ and on that page there is a place to get a refund.
I'm thinking this is a good thing. Will go there and cancel the 2nd renewal since I'd downloaded only the 1st renewal. Still no virus protection. However, one has to sign what they call an LOD if a refund is agreed to. They agreed to a refund (which means I pay for renewal #2 one month and then they refund that payment the next month). The LOD requires that one agree to uninstall the renewal that's going to be refunded. They load a cookie and if that renewal is not uninstalled, one is liable for $100,000 fine!
I thought about that, but signed the LOD because I had not even downloaded renewal #2 in the first place. Meanwhile...I HAVE NO VIRUS PROTECTION FROM NORTON-SYMANTEC yet, and the balloons pop up faithfully every day telling me so. Thank heavens for Windows firewall.
It's as I said: Norton-Symantec hates me and their customer service is horrendous.
Wrap...
1) Friday, September 08, 2006
No oversight on Intell...Mark everything SECRET!!!
2) Thursday, September 07, 2006
Watch listener reactions at Bush/Ahmadinejad duel.
I very much appreciated his thinking on both matters.
***********
As for Norton-Symantec, in my humble opinion, their customer service is horrendous! There is no way to email them, no way to contact them, that does the least bit of good...and in fact makes what was bad already, a thousand times worse.
Back in April, my year's subscription ran out, so I renewed....or tried to. Apparently N-S believed the renewal had worked because my credit card was charged...and the charge was paid in full in May.
However, from that moment to this, there has been no time that I've turned on this machine that two balloon warnings haven't popped up informing me that I have no virus protection even though that was part of the renewal ordered. This is not a good thing.
So, in an attempt to get the virus protection downloaded, I found it necessary to get back on their site...and then found that the only way to get to a place where it might be possible to inform them of the problem, I had to go through the renewal process again! Which I did. Which means, of course, that even though renewal #1 was ordered and paid for, I would now be charged for a 2nd renewal as though the first didn't exist.
Thought I'd best try to straighten that out. All I'd need was to speak to a human. Hah. How to speak to a human? On my favorites list I have a sight devoted to that problem. What I ended up with were instructions to phone their world headquarters at 1-800-441-7234, and choose Option 1 twice. So I did. And ended up with a male human whom I could barely understand. His native language was not mine.
His instruction was this: "Here is your case number...I need to do research. Call back in one hour."
Okay. I called back in one hour. A new voice instructed, "Call back in five hours." I didn't. It would have been an exercise in futility due to our different languages. Frustrating for both of us.
Just fumed for a few days. Knew I'd have to do something to try and get the virus protection already paid for and not pay twice for the same service. So I find this site address:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ and on that page there is a place to get a refund.
I'm thinking this is a good thing. Will go there and cancel the 2nd renewal since I'd downloaded only the 1st renewal. Still no virus protection. However, one has to sign what they call an LOD if a refund is agreed to. They agreed to a refund (which means I pay for renewal #2 one month and then they refund that payment the next month). The LOD requires that one agree to uninstall the renewal that's going to be refunded. They load a cookie and if that renewal is not uninstalled, one is liable for $100,000 fine!
I thought about that, but signed the LOD because I had not even downloaded renewal #2 in the first place. Meanwhile...I HAVE NO VIRUS PROTECTION FROM NORTON-SYMANTEC yet, and the balloons pop up faithfully every day telling me so. Thank heavens for Windows firewall.
It's as I said: Norton-Symantec hates me and their customer service is horrendous.
Wrap...
Friday, September 08, 2006
Rummy: Stop planning or I'll fire you....
From Daily Press :
Eustis chief: Iraq post-war plan muzzled
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, an early planner of the war, tells about challenges of invasion and rebuilding.
BY STEPHANIE HEINATZ
September 8, 2006
FORT EUSTIS -- Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.
In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan.
Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq.
Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustis in Newport News, made his comments in an interview with the Daily Press. He retires in about three weeks. Scheid doesn't go so far as calling for Rumsfeld to resign. He's listened as other retired generals have done so.
"Everybody has a right to their opinion," he said. "But what good did it do?"
Scheid's comments are further confirmation of the version of events reported in "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," the book by New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor.
In 2001, Scheid was a colonel with the Central Command, the unit that oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast.On Sept. 10, 2001, he was selected to be the chief of logistics war plans. On Sept. 11, 2001, he said, "life just went to hell."
That day, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of Central Command, told his planners, including Scheid, to "get ready to go to war." A day or two later, Rumsfeld was "telling us we were going to war in Afghanistan and to start building the war plan. We were going to go fast." Then, just as we were barely into Afghanistan ... Rumsfeld came and told us to get ready for Iraq." Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, "My gosh, we're in the middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can we pull this off? It's just going to be too much."
Planning was kept very hush-hush in those early days." There was only a handful of people, maybe five or six, that were involved with that plan because it had to be kept very, very quiet." There was already an offensive plan in place for Iraq, Scheid said. And in the beginning, the planners were just expanding on it. "Whether we were going to execute it, we had no idea," Scheid said. Eventually other military agencies - like the transportation and Army materiel commands - had to get involved. They couldn't just "keep planning this in the dark," Scheid said.
Planning continued to be a challenge.
"The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."
Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation. Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said. "I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today." He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."
Why did Rumsfeld think that? Scheid doesn't know. "But think back to those times. We had done Bosnia. We said we were going into Bosnia and stop the fighting and come right out. And we stayed. "Was Rumsfeld right or wrong? Scheid said he doesn't know that either. "In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time with it because we were also thinking we can't do this. Once you tear up a country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging."
Even if the people who laid out the initial war plans had fleshed out post-invasion missions, the fighting and insurgent attacks going on today would have been hard to predict, Scheid said. "We really thought that after the collapse of the regime we were going to do all these humanitarian type things," he said. "We thought this would go pretty fast and we'd be able to get out of there. We really didn't anticipate them to continue to fight the way they did or come back the way they are."
Now we're going more toward a civil war. We didn't see that coming." While Scheid, a soldier since 1977, spoke candidly about the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq, he remains concerned about the American public's view of the troops. He's bothered by the nationwide divide over the war and fearful that patriotism among citizens will continue to decline. "We're really hurting right now," he said.
Daily Press researcher Tracy Sorensen contributed to this report.
Wrap...
Eustis chief: Iraq post-war plan muzzled
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, an early planner of the war, tells about challenges of invasion and rebuilding.
BY STEPHANIE HEINATZ
September 8, 2006
FORT EUSTIS -- Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.
In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan.
Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq.
Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustis in Newport News, made his comments in an interview with the Daily Press. He retires in about three weeks. Scheid doesn't go so far as calling for Rumsfeld to resign. He's listened as other retired generals have done so.
"Everybody has a right to their opinion," he said. "But what good did it do?"
Scheid's comments are further confirmation of the version of events reported in "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," the book by New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor.
In 2001, Scheid was a colonel with the Central Command, the unit that oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast.On Sept. 10, 2001, he was selected to be the chief of logistics war plans. On Sept. 11, 2001, he said, "life just went to hell."
That day, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of Central Command, told his planners, including Scheid, to "get ready to go to war." A day or two later, Rumsfeld was "telling us we were going to war in Afghanistan and to start building the war plan. We were going to go fast." Then, just as we were barely into Afghanistan ... Rumsfeld came and told us to get ready for Iraq." Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, "My gosh, we're in the middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can we pull this off? It's just going to be too much."
Planning was kept very hush-hush in those early days." There was only a handful of people, maybe five or six, that were involved with that plan because it had to be kept very, very quiet." There was already an offensive plan in place for Iraq, Scheid said. And in the beginning, the planners were just expanding on it. "Whether we were going to execute it, we had no idea," Scheid said. Eventually other military agencies - like the transportation and Army materiel commands - had to get involved. They couldn't just "keep planning this in the dark," Scheid said.
Planning continued to be a challenge.
"The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."
Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation. Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said. "I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today." He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."
Why did Rumsfeld think that? Scheid doesn't know. "But think back to those times. We had done Bosnia. We said we were going into Bosnia and stop the fighting and come right out. And we stayed. "Was Rumsfeld right or wrong? Scheid said he doesn't know that either. "In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time with it because we were also thinking we can't do this. Once you tear up a country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging."
Even if the people who laid out the initial war plans had fleshed out post-invasion missions, the fighting and insurgent attacks going on today would have been hard to predict, Scheid said. "We really thought that after the collapse of the regime we were going to do all these humanitarian type things," he said. "We thought this would go pretty fast and we'd be able to get out of there. We really didn't anticipate them to continue to fight the way they did or come back the way they are."
Now we're going more toward a civil war. We didn't see that coming." While Scheid, a soldier since 1977, spoke candidly about the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq, he remains concerned about the American public's view of the troops. He's bothered by the nationwide divide over the war and fearful that patriotism among citizens will continue to decline. "We're really hurting right now," he said.
Daily Press researcher Tracy Sorensen contributed to this report.
Wrap...
No oversight on Intell...Mark everything SECRET!!!
From Secrecy News:
2007 INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION BILL STALLED
For the second year in a row, the U.S. Senate may fail to enact an intelligence authorization bill, effectively neutering the intelligence oversight process."The failure of the Senate to pass intelligence authorization for 2 years threatens to erode the ability of the Intelligence Committee to carry out the mission assigned to it by the Senate," said Sen. JayRockefeller (D-WV), the ranking member of the Committee, in a floor statement.
In an effort to compel Senate action on the intelligence bill, Sen.Rockefeller introduced an amendment that would strip out language in the Defense Appropriations bill that provides a nominal authorization for continuing intelligence activities.
See September 6 statements by Sen. Rockefeller and Sen. DianneFeinstein here: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/s090606.html
***********************************
DHS LISTS "SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMATION" TITLES
In an attempt to limit unnecessary controls on unclassified information, Congress last year required the Department of Homeland Security to identify by title all DHS documents that were marked as "Sensitive Security Information" (SSI) that may not be publicly disclosed.
In response, the first DHS report to Congress listed approximately one thousand titles that had been marked as SSI between October 1 and December 31, 2005.
A copy of that report has just been released with minor redactions in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federation of American Scientists.
See "Department of Homeland Security Documents Designated in Their Entirety as Sensitive Security Information (SSI), October 1 ThruDecember 31, 2005" (3.5 MB PDF):
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dhs/ssi-titles.pdf
Wrap...
2007 INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION BILL STALLED
For the second year in a row, the U.S. Senate may fail to enact an intelligence authorization bill, effectively neutering the intelligence oversight process."The failure of the Senate to pass intelligence authorization for 2 years threatens to erode the ability of the Intelligence Committee to carry out the mission assigned to it by the Senate," said Sen. JayRockefeller (D-WV), the ranking member of the Committee, in a floor statement.
In an effort to compel Senate action on the intelligence bill, Sen.Rockefeller introduced an amendment that would strip out language in the Defense Appropriations bill that provides a nominal authorization for continuing intelligence activities.
See September 6 statements by Sen. Rockefeller and Sen. DianneFeinstein here: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/s090606.html
***********************************
DHS LISTS "SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMATION" TITLES
In an attempt to limit unnecessary controls on unclassified information, Congress last year required the Department of Homeland Security to identify by title all DHS documents that were marked as "Sensitive Security Information" (SSI) that may not be publicly disclosed.
In response, the first DHS report to Congress listed approximately one thousand titles that had been marked as SSI between October 1 and December 31, 2005.
A copy of that report has just been released with minor redactions in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federation of American Scientists.
See "Department of Homeland Security Documents Designated in Their Entirety as Sensitive Security Information (SSI), October 1 ThruDecember 31, 2005" (3.5 MB PDF):
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dhs/ssi-titles.pdf
Wrap...
USA elected slimeballs...No question about it.
From truthout.org :
Senate Intel Committee Bloodies Bush's Nose
By Larry C. Johnson
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Friday 08 September 2006
WOW! WOW! and Wow! Message to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney - read it and weep baby.
Cheney's newly appointed biographer, Stephen Hayes, is blown out of the water. Bottomline, Saddam rebuffed cooperation with Bin Laden, tried to capture Zarqawi, and did NOT repeat NOT train foreign terrorists at Salman Pak.
The Senate Intelligence committee today released Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments and The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress as part of its long awaited and long promised Phase II report about the accuracy of the intelligence and it is ugly for the Bushies.
I will do more detailed analysis in the coming days. Here's the down and dirty on the questions about Iraq's links to terrorism:
1. Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qa'ida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Aq'ida to provide material or operational support.
2. Postwar findings have identified only one meeting between representatives of al-Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein's regime reported in prewar intelligence assessments. Postwar findings have identified two occasions, not reported prior to the war, in which Saddam Hussein rebuffed meeting requests from an al-Qa'ida operative.
3. Postwar findings support the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) February 2002 assessment that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was likely intentionally misleading his debriefers when he said that Iraq provided two al-Qa'ida associates with chemical and biological weapons (CBW) training in 2000.... No postwar information has been found that indicates CBW training occurred and the detainee who provided the key prewar reporting about this training recanted his claims after the war.
4. Postwar findings support the April 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that there was no credible reporting on al-Qa'ida training at Salman Pak or anywhere else in Iraq.
5. Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.
6. Postwar information indicates that the Intelligence Community accurately assessed that al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq, an area that Baghdad had not controlled since 1991.
7. Postwar information supports prewar Intelligence community assessments that there was no credible information that Iraq was complicit in or had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks or any other al-Qa'ida strike...
8. No postwar information indicates that Iraq intended to use al-Qa'ida or any other terrorist group to strike the United States homeland before or during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and US State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC's Nightline, NBC's Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world.
Wrap...
Senate Intel Committee Bloodies Bush's Nose
By Larry C. Johnson
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Friday 08 September 2006
WOW! WOW! and Wow! Message to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney - read it and weep baby.
Cheney's newly appointed biographer, Stephen Hayes, is blown out of the water. Bottomline, Saddam rebuffed cooperation with Bin Laden, tried to capture Zarqawi, and did NOT repeat NOT train foreign terrorists at Salman Pak.
The Senate Intelligence committee today released Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments and The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress as part of its long awaited and long promised Phase II report about the accuracy of the intelligence and it is ugly for the Bushies.
I will do more detailed analysis in the coming days. Here's the down and dirty on the questions about Iraq's links to terrorism:
1. Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qa'ida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Aq'ida to provide material or operational support.
2. Postwar findings have identified only one meeting between representatives of al-Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein's regime reported in prewar intelligence assessments. Postwar findings have identified two occasions, not reported prior to the war, in which Saddam Hussein rebuffed meeting requests from an al-Qa'ida operative.
3. Postwar findings support the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) February 2002 assessment that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was likely intentionally misleading his debriefers when he said that Iraq provided two al-Qa'ida associates with chemical and biological weapons (CBW) training in 2000.... No postwar information has been found that indicates CBW training occurred and the detainee who provided the key prewar reporting about this training recanted his claims after the war.
4. Postwar findings support the April 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that there was no credible reporting on al-Qa'ida training at Salman Pak or anywhere else in Iraq.
5. Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.
6. Postwar information indicates that the Intelligence Community accurately assessed that al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq, an area that Baghdad had not controlled since 1991.
7. Postwar information supports prewar Intelligence community assessments that there was no credible information that Iraq was complicit in or had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks or any other al-Qa'ida strike...
8. No postwar information indicates that Iraq intended to use al-Qa'ida or any other terrorist group to strike the United States homeland before or during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and US State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC's Nightline, NBC's Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world.
Wrap...
YAAYYYY, Sen Feingold!!!
From American Progress:
Think Fast
Sources tell the New America Foundation's Steve Clemons that John Bolton's confirmation process "is now dead." "The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is 'highly unlikely' to reconsider Bolton's confirmation again as things now stand."
Yesterday, the Senate unanimously reinstated a special CIA unit dedicated to hunting Osama bin Laden. The CIA received intense criticism after closing the unit in late 2005.
Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer continued to throw personal attacks at his opponent, Janet S. Owens, saying she is "getting fat" and "her husband rules her." He added that she "prissy little miss" who wears "long dresses, looks like Mother Hubbard -- it's sort of like she was a man."
"The Senate passed legislation Thursday night that would create a massive, Google-like searchable database to track federal spending." The bill passed "by a voice vote after both Republican and Democratic senators dropped their objections to it."
Richard Woollam, the former head of pipeline-corrosion at BP Alaska, invoked the Fifth Amendment in testimony before a House subcommittee. The company transferred Woollam to Houston in 2005 "amid concerns that he intimidated potential whistleblowers."
"President Bush's support proved insufficient to push a bill authorizing his warrantless wiretapping program through the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday." The bill stalled after Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) "spoke against the bill for about a quarter of the panel's two-hour meeting and offered four amendments."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose reputation has been badly damaged by his support for the U.S. war in Iraq, promised to step down within a year.
The possibility of compromise on comprehensive immigration reform "is essentially dead." House conservatives, "who have campaigned hard against illegal immigration with few legislative accomplishments to show for it," will "try to cobble together a package of border crackdown measures before their recess next month."
And finally: Congress horses around. Rather than deal with "war in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorism and border problems, high energy prices and health-care costs," the House's first order of business was HR 503, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. "The debate - lasting nearly four hours while horse lover Bo Derek watched from the gallery - quickly degenerated into dueling expressions of equestrian love."
Wrap...
Think Fast
Sources tell the New America Foundation's Steve Clemons that John Bolton's confirmation process "is now dead." "The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is 'highly unlikely' to reconsider Bolton's confirmation again as things now stand."
Yesterday, the Senate unanimously reinstated a special CIA unit dedicated to hunting Osama bin Laden. The CIA received intense criticism after closing the unit in late 2005.
Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer continued to throw personal attacks at his opponent, Janet S. Owens, saying she is "getting fat" and "her husband rules her." He added that she "prissy little miss" who wears "long dresses, looks like Mother Hubbard -- it's sort of like she was a man."
"The Senate passed legislation Thursday night that would create a massive, Google-like searchable database to track federal spending." The bill passed "by a voice vote after both Republican and Democratic senators dropped their objections to it."
Richard Woollam, the former head of pipeline-corrosion at BP Alaska, invoked the Fifth Amendment in testimony before a House subcommittee. The company transferred Woollam to Houston in 2005 "amid concerns that he intimidated potential whistleblowers."
"President Bush's support proved insufficient to push a bill authorizing his warrantless wiretapping program through the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday." The bill stalled after Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) "spoke against the bill for about a quarter of the panel's two-hour meeting and offered four amendments."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose reputation has been badly damaged by his support for the U.S. war in Iraq, promised to step down within a year.
The possibility of compromise on comprehensive immigration reform "is essentially dead." House conservatives, "who have campaigned hard against illegal immigration with few legislative accomplishments to show for it," will "try to cobble together a package of border crackdown measures before their recess next month."
And finally: Congress horses around. Rather than deal with "war in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorism and border problems, high energy prices and health-care costs," the House's first order of business was HR 503, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. "The debate - lasting nearly four hours while horse lover Bo Derek watched from the gallery - quickly degenerated into dueling expressions of equestrian love."
Wrap...
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Don't bother BushCo...they will infect & kill you....
From In These Times.com :
Views > September 5, 2006
Sick to Death of Bush
By Terry J. Allen
Trust me, George Bush says, perched on the remains of Geneva Conventions, the Constitution and habeas corpus.
From this moral high ground, the United States is assuring the world that a new facility for researching a horror shop of weaponized infectious diseases will be used purely for defensive purposes. The National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center’s (NBACC) $128 million, 160,000-square-foot facility is under construction at Fort Detrick, Md. There, the United States has already weaponized more than a dozen diseases—including anthrax, plague, botulism and ebola—and bioengineered war-friendly “improvements.” Scientists are also using DNA-synthesizing techniques to fabricate genetically altered or man-made viruses, and to study the feasibility of creating germ weapons targeting particular ethnicities.
“De facto, we are going to make biowarfare pathogens at NBACC in order to study them,” Penrose Albright, former assistant Homeland Security secretary for science and technology, told the Washington Post.
The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention made it illegal under international and U.S. law to make or stockpile bacteriological or viral organisms for use as weapons. The United States is exploiting a loophole: The treaty allows nations to develop small amounts of biological warfare agents for defensive research.
That, according to a NBACC Power Point presentation, briefly posted on the Internet and quickly removed, is what the Fort Detrick lab does—in secret and without meaningful monitoring. The profound secrecy that surrounds the project, as well as CIA and intelligence involvement, raises alarms; these are ratcheted up to red alert in light of the Bush administration’s track record of violating international treaties and lying to the public. And then there is Congress’ history of defining “oversight” as a failure to notice rather than a duty to oversee.
According to the Department of Defense, the secrecy surrounding the Fort Detrick expansion is necessary for national security. The interests of the public, administration officials argue (as they did to defend NSA spying), would be compromised by legislative and judicial meddling—a.k.a. the constitutionally mandated balance of powers.
Odds are the Fort Detrick research exceeds the purely defensive, rendering the CBW treaty as quaint as the Geneva Conventions barring torture. But even if the research conformed to law, what nation would believe that the United States abides by treaty obligations that limit its “war on terror”?
The possibilities for disaster are plentiful. By undermining the treaty, the United States greenlights other nations and groups to similarly “defend” themselves. And compared with making and delivering nukes, creating and distributing biowarfare agents is dead simple. A competent scientist with a good lab can cook up enough to sicken and kill thousands, perhaps millions.
Second, the lesson taught by recent dealings with Iran and North Korea is that possession of weapons of mass destruction tends to inoculate against U.S. attack. Secret expansion of U.S. bioterrorism research—without monitoring through the CBW treaty—could spark a bioarms race.
And then there is the risk of accident. On its Web site, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a lead government agency on bioterrorism, asks: “Has there ever been an accident at a BSL-3 or BSL-4 facility?” (Bio Safety Level-4 labs hold the most dangerous infectious agents.)
NIAD cheerily answers: “No,” although “Rare accidents such as needlesticks may cause exposure of laboratory staff,” but not “to other workers or to the community.”
But according to the Council for Responsible Genetics, “mistakes happen.” Fort Detrick and other Level-3 and -4 facilities have had a number of accidents, including the loss of ebola and anthrax samples; exposure of workers to anthrax; a three hour power failure that compromised containment and led workers (you’re going to love this) to seal the windows with duct tape; a leaking test chamber that infected workers with tuberculosis; a researcher who contracted the ebola-like sabia virus and exposed 75 other workers; and two researchers infected with HIV from defective gloves. And, last but not least, don’t forget that the anthrax spores used in the September 2001 mail attacks traced back to Fort Detrick.
NIAD is equally noncommittal about the safety of shipping bio agents to and from labs: “There are specific Government regulations for transportation of infectious materials. Infectious materials are safely transported worldwide on a daily basis under these regulations.” Feel better? Perhaps you didn’t hear that in 2003 a package containing West Nile virus samples exploded and exposed workers at the Columbus airport.
And then there is the insanity of trusting critical scientific decisions to an administration that gives equal weight to the theory of evolution and the fable of creationism, that undermines stem cell research by confusing a zygote with an infant, and that is waiting until it has to govern in scuba gear before acknowledging global warming.
Trust me, indeed.
Contact Terry J. Allen at
tallen@igc.org.More information about Terry J. Allen
Wrap...
Views > September 5, 2006
Sick to Death of Bush
By Terry J. Allen
Trust me, George Bush says, perched on the remains of Geneva Conventions, the Constitution and habeas corpus.
From this moral high ground, the United States is assuring the world that a new facility for researching a horror shop of weaponized infectious diseases will be used purely for defensive purposes. The National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center’s (NBACC) $128 million, 160,000-square-foot facility is under construction at Fort Detrick, Md. There, the United States has already weaponized more than a dozen diseases—including anthrax, plague, botulism and ebola—and bioengineered war-friendly “improvements.” Scientists are also using DNA-synthesizing techniques to fabricate genetically altered or man-made viruses, and to study the feasibility of creating germ weapons targeting particular ethnicities.
“De facto, we are going to make biowarfare pathogens at NBACC in order to study them,” Penrose Albright, former assistant Homeland Security secretary for science and technology, told the Washington Post.
The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention made it illegal under international and U.S. law to make or stockpile bacteriological or viral organisms for use as weapons. The United States is exploiting a loophole: The treaty allows nations to develop small amounts of biological warfare agents for defensive research.
That, according to a NBACC Power Point presentation, briefly posted on the Internet and quickly removed, is what the Fort Detrick lab does—in secret and without meaningful monitoring. The profound secrecy that surrounds the project, as well as CIA and intelligence involvement, raises alarms; these are ratcheted up to red alert in light of the Bush administration’s track record of violating international treaties and lying to the public. And then there is Congress’ history of defining “oversight” as a failure to notice rather than a duty to oversee.
According to the Department of Defense, the secrecy surrounding the Fort Detrick expansion is necessary for national security. The interests of the public, administration officials argue (as they did to defend NSA spying), would be compromised by legislative and judicial meddling—a.k.a. the constitutionally mandated balance of powers.
Odds are the Fort Detrick research exceeds the purely defensive, rendering the CBW treaty as quaint as the Geneva Conventions barring torture. But even if the research conformed to law, what nation would believe that the United States abides by treaty obligations that limit its “war on terror”?
The possibilities for disaster are plentiful. By undermining the treaty, the United States greenlights other nations and groups to similarly “defend” themselves. And compared with making and delivering nukes, creating and distributing biowarfare agents is dead simple. A competent scientist with a good lab can cook up enough to sicken and kill thousands, perhaps millions.
Second, the lesson taught by recent dealings with Iran and North Korea is that possession of weapons of mass destruction tends to inoculate against U.S. attack. Secret expansion of U.S. bioterrorism research—without monitoring through the CBW treaty—could spark a bioarms race.
And then there is the risk of accident. On its Web site, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a lead government agency on bioterrorism, asks: “Has there ever been an accident at a BSL-3 or BSL-4 facility?” (Bio Safety Level-4 labs hold the most dangerous infectious agents.)
NIAD cheerily answers: “No,” although “Rare accidents such as needlesticks may cause exposure of laboratory staff,” but not “to other workers or to the community.”
But according to the Council for Responsible Genetics, “mistakes happen.” Fort Detrick and other Level-3 and -4 facilities have had a number of accidents, including the loss of ebola and anthrax samples; exposure of workers to anthrax; a three hour power failure that compromised containment and led workers (you’re going to love this) to seal the windows with duct tape; a leaking test chamber that infected workers with tuberculosis; a researcher who contracted the ebola-like sabia virus and exposed 75 other workers; and two researchers infected with HIV from defective gloves. And, last but not least, don’t forget that the anthrax spores used in the September 2001 mail attacks traced back to Fort Detrick.
NIAD is equally noncommittal about the safety of shipping bio agents to and from labs: “There are specific Government regulations for transportation of infectious materials. Infectious materials are safely transported worldwide on a daily basis under these regulations.” Feel better? Perhaps you didn’t hear that in 2003 a package containing West Nile virus samples exploded and exposed workers at the Columbus airport.
And then there is the insanity of trusting critical scientific decisions to an administration that gives equal weight to the theory of evolution and the fable of creationism, that undermines stem cell research by confusing a zygote with an infant, and that is waiting until it has to govern in scuba gear before acknowledging global warming.
Trust me, indeed.
Contact Terry J. Allen at
tallen@igc.org.More information about Terry J. Allen
Wrap...
Boxer to Bush: Fire Rumsfeld!!!
Senator Barbara Boxer
Statement on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
September 5, 2006
Mr. President, I rise today to call for the immediate replacement of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. I understand that Secretary Rumsfeld underwent elective surgery for a torn rotator cuff earlier today. I surely wish him a speedy recovery.
Last week, Secretary Rumsfeld compared critics of the Bush Administration’s failed policies in Iraq to those who wanted to appease fascism and Nazism in the run up to World War II. He also accused them of failing to learn the lessons of history.But it is Secretary Rumsfeld who has failed to learn the lessons of history.
It is Secretary Rumsfeld who fails to understand that it was al Qaeda who struck the United States on September 11, 2001 and not Iraq -- a country that did not have a single al Qaeda cell. The American people know this. Today, 61% of the American people -- nearly two thirds of all Americans -- oppose the Iraq war.
Mr. President, the American people are right, and Secretary Rumsfeld is wrong. Secretary Rumsfeld is wrong because a majority of Americans know that Iraq is not a part of the war on terror -- it is a distraction from the war on terror. President Bush admitted as much on August 21 when he said that Iraq had “nothing” to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Secretary Rumsfeld is wrong because the American people know that -- five years after 9/11 -- Osama bin Laden remains at large while America is bogged down in Iraq -- a war that becomes increasingly costly in terms of both lives and treasure to the people of the United States with each passing month. We should not be surprised. Time and again, Secretary Rumsfeld has been wrong about Iraq, and time and again he has responded to his own mistakes by playing politics and attacking the patriotism of those Americans who oppose his ill-advised decisions.
It was Secretary Rumsfeld who failed to heed the warnings of military planners and experts that the overthrow of the Iraqi regime would be a prolonged and costly undertaking. In fact, he failed to heed even his own advice. I would like to share Secretary Rumsfeld’s own words with you to illustrate this point. In Secretary Rumsfeld’s “Guidelines for Committing Forces” he writes: “U.S. leadership must be brutally honest with itself, the Congress, the public and coalition partners. We must not make the effort sound even marginally easier or less costly than it could become. Preserving U.S. credibility requires that we promise less, or no more, than we are sure we can deliver. It is a great deal easier to get into something than it is to get out of it!”
Yet it was Secretary Rumsfeld who falsely told U.S. troops that the war “could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.” And it was Secretary Rumsfeld who said that the majority of Iraqis would treat American troops as liberators.
I would like to point out a few more of Secretary Rumsfeld’ more glaring failures: It was Secretary Rumsfeld who said on March 30, 2003, “we know where they [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat,” even though we now know those weapons do not exist.
It was Secretary Rumsfeld who said on April 11, 2003 -- in the wake of widespread looting after the fall of Saddam Hussein -- “Stuff happens, and it’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.” We now know that this looting set the stage for the climate of fear and lawlessness that persists to this day in Iraq.
It was Secretary Rumsfeld who sent brave young American men and women into combat without sufficient vehicle or body armor, telling a young soldier on December 8, 2004 who asked why he had been sent to battle ill-equipped that: “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
It was Secretary Rumsfeld who sent in far few troops to secure Iraq, leading to widespread violence, the rise of sectarian militias, and the rapid growth of the insurgency.
And it was Secretary Rumsfeld who presided over the Pentagon during the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal which diminished U.S. standing in the world and caused irreparable harm to the image of the U.S. military.
Mr. President, the American people have had enough of Secretary Rumsfeld and his incompetent and dangerous leadership. It is time for new leadership, new direction, and new vision, because America can do better. In fact, America must do better.
And this is not a view that is held exclusively by Democrats. A number of my friends across the aisle have also raised serious questions about Secretary Rumsfeld’s continued ability to lead. On of my colleagues in particular expressed “no confidence” in Secretary Rumsfeld. And a number of retired Generals who served our country with honor and distinction have called for Secretary Rumsfeld’s resignation over his mishandling of the Iraq war, including General Anthony Zinni, General Wesley Clark, Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, Major General John Batiste, Major General Charles Swannack Jr., Major General John Riggs, and Major General Paul Eaton.
Major General Paul Eaton, who was responsible for training Iraqi Security Forces from 2003 to 2004, wrote in the New York Times on March 19, 2006 that Secretary Rumsfeld “has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.”
Mr. President, the Department of Defense can no longer be lead by a Secretary who refuses to take advice, who refuses to work with those who do not share his false views on the state of affairs in Iraq, who refuses to change course in the face of a policy that becomes a larger failure each and every day, and who insists on spending his time defending the past rather than coming up with innovative ways to move forward.
Time and again we have heard from this Administration that we have turned a corner, or that we have a “strategy for victory” in Iraq. And time and again, we have seen the situation in Iraq get worse, not better. The fact of the matter is that as of September 5, 2,652 troops have lost their lives in Iraq and nearly 20,000 have been wounded. The total cost of the Iraq war will soon reach $318.5 billion. Yet with all of these tremendous expenditures in terms of both lives and treasure, this Administration is still dramatically shortchanging the war on terror, starting with Afghanistan.
Afghanistan -- which should have been the central front in the war on terror -- is spiraling out of control, particularly in the South. The Taliban is making a resurgence, having stepped up attacks in recent months to trigger the deadliest violence since the late-2001 ouster of their regime. According to the New York Times, suicide bombings have doubled. And roadside bomb attacks -- modeled after those carried out in Iraq -- are up by 30 percent. To make matters worse, the United Nations announced Saturday that this year’s opium crop has reached the highest levels ever recorded -- yielding extraordinary profits that we know fall back into the hands of the very people we are trying to defeat.
And tragically, attacks against schools are on the rise. In January, armed men in the Zabul province of Afghanistan beheaded a high school headmaster in front of his children. By March, half of the schools in the province had closed, and attacks reached an average of one a day. It is clear that we are losing ground.
We are also weaker on Homeland Security. Since the halting of the London terror plot, TSA is asking passengers to give up their lip gloss and their Visine, yet TSA isn't examining every piece of cargo loaded on board our passenger planes. DHS is launching a pilot program at San Francisco Airport (SFO) this October to check all commercial cargo for explosives on commercial flights. We ought to be doing it at every airport.
But until that time, at the very least, blast resistant cargo containers need to be installed on passenger airlines that carry cargo, which was one of the 9/11 Commission recommendations. For several years, I have been pushing for a study of blast resistant cargo containers and working to get them on our planes. Currently, TSA is undertaking a pilot project using these containers, some of which are made with Kevlar, for baggage on passenger planes. I believe it is time to move past pilot projects, so I am introducing legislation to ensure that blast resistant cargo containers are mandatory on our planes.
DHS hasn't taken full advantage new liquid explosives detectors provided by the Japanese government. TSA Chief Kip Hawley recently said that the agency is testing equipment at six airports, but Japan has been using these detectors in its Narita International Airport in Tokyo.
I want to talk a minute more about shoulder-fired missiles, because this is another threat that this Administration has failed to move forward on in any meaningful way. We know that at least two dozen terrorist organizations are in possession of shoulder-fired missiles, and since 1970, over 40 civilian aircraft have been hit by MANPADS, causing over 600 deaths.
If this President is serious about aviation security, then he should order DHS to immediately begin equipping our Civilian Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) with countermeasures, and the President should fund this program in his FY2008 budget (DHS has set a goal and believes they can do it for $1 million a plane). Instead they are slow-walking this program.
We are no where near as safe as we should be. There has been a failure of leadership by this President and Republicans in Congress when it comes to Homeland Defense, and that is why it is so important that we have a new direction in this country. And this brings me back to the issue of Secretary Rumsfeld.
Just as Americans understand that we are losing ground in Afghanistan and failing to protect the country here at home, the American people will not be fooled by Secretary Rumsfeld and his rhetoric on Iraq. Staying the course with a failing policy in Iraq has absolutely nothing in common with standing up to the Nazis in the run-up to World War II. Attacking the patriotism of 61% of the American people does not make Secretary Rumsfeld a worthy leader of our brave men and women in uniform -- it makes him a divisive and increasingly isolated failure. How many more Americans have to die in the deserts and cities of Iraq before this President publicly acknowledges that his own Secretary of Defense has let this country down? How many more times must the American people have their senior leaders play the politics of fear instead of offering a new course in Iraq?
Mr. President, it is time for Secretary Rumsfeld to go.
Wrap...
Statement on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
September 5, 2006
Mr. President, I rise today to call for the immediate replacement of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. I understand that Secretary Rumsfeld underwent elective surgery for a torn rotator cuff earlier today. I surely wish him a speedy recovery.
Last week, Secretary Rumsfeld compared critics of the Bush Administration’s failed policies in Iraq to those who wanted to appease fascism and Nazism in the run up to World War II. He also accused them of failing to learn the lessons of history.But it is Secretary Rumsfeld who has failed to learn the lessons of history.
It is Secretary Rumsfeld who fails to understand that it was al Qaeda who struck the United States on September 11, 2001 and not Iraq -- a country that did not have a single al Qaeda cell. The American people know this. Today, 61% of the American people -- nearly two thirds of all Americans -- oppose the Iraq war.
Mr. President, the American people are right, and Secretary Rumsfeld is wrong. Secretary Rumsfeld is wrong because a majority of Americans know that Iraq is not a part of the war on terror -- it is a distraction from the war on terror. President Bush admitted as much on August 21 when he said that Iraq had “nothing” to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Secretary Rumsfeld is wrong because the American people know that -- five years after 9/11 -- Osama bin Laden remains at large while America is bogged down in Iraq -- a war that becomes increasingly costly in terms of both lives and treasure to the people of the United States with each passing month. We should not be surprised. Time and again, Secretary Rumsfeld has been wrong about Iraq, and time and again he has responded to his own mistakes by playing politics and attacking the patriotism of those Americans who oppose his ill-advised decisions.
It was Secretary Rumsfeld who failed to heed the warnings of military planners and experts that the overthrow of the Iraqi regime would be a prolonged and costly undertaking. In fact, he failed to heed even his own advice. I would like to share Secretary Rumsfeld’s own words with you to illustrate this point. In Secretary Rumsfeld’s “Guidelines for Committing Forces” he writes: “U.S. leadership must be brutally honest with itself, the Congress, the public and coalition partners. We must not make the effort sound even marginally easier or less costly than it could become. Preserving U.S. credibility requires that we promise less, or no more, than we are sure we can deliver. It is a great deal easier to get into something than it is to get out of it!”
Yet it was Secretary Rumsfeld who falsely told U.S. troops that the war “could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.” And it was Secretary Rumsfeld who said that the majority of Iraqis would treat American troops as liberators.
I would like to point out a few more of Secretary Rumsfeld’ more glaring failures: It was Secretary Rumsfeld who said on March 30, 2003, “we know where they [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat,” even though we now know those weapons do not exist.
It was Secretary Rumsfeld who said on April 11, 2003 -- in the wake of widespread looting after the fall of Saddam Hussein -- “Stuff happens, and it’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.” We now know that this looting set the stage for the climate of fear and lawlessness that persists to this day in Iraq.
It was Secretary Rumsfeld who sent brave young American men and women into combat without sufficient vehicle or body armor, telling a young soldier on December 8, 2004 who asked why he had been sent to battle ill-equipped that: “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
It was Secretary Rumsfeld who sent in far few troops to secure Iraq, leading to widespread violence, the rise of sectarian militias, and the rapid growth of the insurgency.
And it was Secretary Rumsfeld who presided over the Pentagon during the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal which diminished U.S. standing in the world and caused irreparable harm to the image of the U.S. military.
Mr. President, the American people have had enough of Secretary Rumsfeld and his incompetent and dangerous leadership. It is time for new leadership, new direction, and new vision, because America can do better. In fact, America must do better.
And this is not a view that is held exclusively by Democrats. A number of my friends across the aisle have also raised serious questions about Secretary Rumsfeld’s continued ability to lead. On of my colleagues in particular expressed “no confidence” in Secretary Rumsfeld. And a number of retired Generals who served our country with honor and distinction have called for Secretary Rumsfeld’s resignation over his mishandling of the Iraq war, including General Anthony Zinni, General Wesley Clark, Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, Major General John Batiste, Major General Charles Swannack Jr., Major General John Riggs, and Major General Paul Eaton.
Major General Paul Eaton, who was responsible for training Iraqi Security Forces from 2003 to 2004, wrote in the New York Times on March 19, 2006 that Secretary Rumsfeld “has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.”
Mr. President, the Department of Defense can no longer be lead by a Secretary who refuses to take advice, who refuses to work with those who do not share his false views on the state of affairs in Iraq, who refuses to change course in the face of a policy that becomes a larger failure each and every day, and who insists on spending his time defending the past rather than coming up with innovative ways to move forward.
Time and again we have heard from this Administration that we have turned a corner, or that we have a “strategy for victory” in Iraq. And time and again, we have seen the situation in Iraq get worse, not better. The fact of the matter is that as of September 5, 2,652 troops have lost their lives in Iraq and nearly 20,000 have been wounded. The total cost of the Iraq war will soon reach $318.5 billion. Yet with all of these tremendous expenditures in terms of both lives and treasure, this Administration is still dramatically shortchanging the war on terror, starting with Afghanistan.
Afghanistan -- which should have been the central front in the war on terror -- is spiraling out of control, particularly in the South. The Taliban is making a resurgence, having stepped up attacks in recent months to trigger the deadliest violence since the late-2001 ouster of their regime. According to the New York Times, suicide bombings have doubled. And roadside bomb attacks -- modeled after those carried out in Iraq -- are up by 30 percent. To make matters worse, the United Nations announced Saturday that this year’s opium crop has reached the highest levels ever recorded -- yielding extraordinary profits that we know fall back into the hands of the very people we are trying to defeat.
And tragically, attacks against schools are on the rise. In January, armed men in the Zabul province of Afghanistan beheaded a high school headmaster in front of his children. By March, half of the schools in the province had closed, and attacks reached an average of one a day. It is clear that we are losing ground.
We are also weaker on Homeland Security. Since the halting of the London terror plot, TSA is asking passengers to give up their lip gloss and their Visine, yet TSA isn't examining every piece of cargo loaded on board our passenger planes. DHS is launching a pilot program at San Francisco Airport (SFO) this October to check all commercial cargo for explosives on commercial flights. We ought to be doing it at every airport.
But until that time, at the very least, blast resistant cargo containers need to be installed on passenger airlines that carry cargo, which was one of the 9/11 Commission recommendations. For several years, I have been pushing for a study of blast resistant cargo containers and working to get them on our planes. Currently, TSA is undertaking a pilot project using these containers, some of which are made with Kevlar, for baggage on passenger planes. I believe it is time to move past pilot projects, so I am introducing legislation to ensure that blast resistant cargo containers are mandatory on our planes.
DHS hasn't taken full advantage new liquid explosives detectors provided by the Japanese government. TSA Chief Kip Hawley recently said that the agency is testing equipment at six airports, but Japan has been using these detectors in its Narita International Airport in Tokyo.
I want to talk a minute more about shoulder-fired missiles, because this is another threat that this Administration has failed to move forward on in any meaningful way. We know that at least two dozen terrorist organizations are in possession of shoulder-fired missiles, and since 1970, over 40 civilian aircraft have been hit by MANPADS, causing over 600 deaths.
If this President is serious about aviation security, then he should order DHS to immediately begin equipping our Civilian Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) with countermeasures, and the President should fund this program in his FY2008 budget (DHS has set a goal and believes they can do it for $1 million a plane). Instead they are slow-walking this program.
We are no where near as safe as we should be. There has been a failure of leadership by this President and Republicans in Congress when it comes to Homeland Defense, and that is why it is so important that we have a new direction in this country. And this brings me back to the issue of Secretary Rumsfeld.
Just as Americans understand that we are losing ground in Afghanistan and failing to protect the country here at home, the American people will not be fooled by Secretary Rumsfeld and his rhetoric on Iraq. Staying the course with a failing policy in Iraq has absolutely nothing in common with standing up to the Nazis in the run-up to World War II. Attacking the patriotism of 61% of the American people does not make Secretary Rumsfeld a worthy leader of our brave men and women in uniform -- it makes him a divisive and increasingly isolated failure. How many more Americans have to die in the deserts and cities of Iraq before this President publicly acknowledges that his own Secretary of Defense has let this country down? How many more times must the American people have their senior leaders play the politics of fear instead of offering a new course in Iraq?
Mr. President, it is time for Secretary Rumsfeld to go.
Wrap...
Watch listener reactions at Bush/Ahmadinejad duel.
From Financial Times:
Bush and Iran's president prepare to duel at UN
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: September 7 2006 03:00 Last updated: September 7 2006 03:00
The scene is set for a clash of the "Great Satan" and the "axis of evil" at the United Nations this month when presidents George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad address the general assembly on the same day, with the US pressing the world body to impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme.
The White House confirmed yesterday that the Iranian president would be granted a US visa to go to New York. "This will be the debate," a US official said, referring to Mr Ahmadi-Nejad's challenge to Mr Bush to hold a televised debate.
According to the UN agenda, Mr Bush is due to speak ahead of the Iranian president on September 19, the official noted.
Mr Ahmadi-Nejad attended the general assembly last year shortly after his election victory but only after US officials raised questions over his visa application following allegations - never substantiated - that he had played a role in the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.
Since then Mr Ahmadi-Nejad has been widely condemned for questioning the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be wiped off the map by Palestinians. However, the White House said that had no bearing on his visa application. The US has never denied a visa to a head of state to attend the UN general assembly, but did once refuse entry to Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader.
The US is pressing the UN to impose sanctions on Iran following its refusal to halt uranium enrichment by last week's UN-imposed deadline. China and Russia appear reluctant to move quickly with punitive measures, however, and this year's general assembly is likely to see intense lobbying by all sides.
Mr Ahmadi-Nejad told a cabinet meeting yesterday that the UN visit was a "good chance" for the debate and that the US side, if it wished, could bring advisers, according to his website.
On Tuesday Mr Bush launched a fierce personal attack on Mr Ahmadi-Nejad in a speech that equated what the US president called Shia Muslim extremists in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon (Hizbollah) with the threats presented by Sunni extremists affiliated to the al-Qaeda network. Iran and Iraq both have Shia majorities.
"We will not bow down to tyrants, and the world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," Mr Bush said, referring to the Iranian president.
Mr Bush first called Iran part of the "axis of evil" in 2002. Iranian leaders habitually refer to the US as the "Great Satan".
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Wrap...
Bush and Iran's president prepare to duel at UN
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: September 7 2006 03:00 Last updated: September 7 2006 03:00
The scene is set for a clash of the "Great Satan" and the "axis of evil" at the United Nations this month when presidents George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad address the general assembly on the same day, with the US pressing the world body to impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme.
The White House confirmed yesterday that the Iranian president would be granted a US visa to go to New York. "This will be the debate," a US official said, referring to Mr Ahmadi-Nejad's challenge to Mr Bush to hold a televised debate.
According to the UN agenda, Mr Bush is due to speak ahead of the Iranian president on September 19, the official noted.
Mr Ahmadi-Nejad attended the general assembly last year shortly after his election victory but only after US officials raised questions over his visa application following allegations - never substantiated - that he had played a role in the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.
Since then Mr Ahmadi-Nejad has been widely condemned for questioning the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be wiped off the map by Palestinians. However, the White House said that had no bearing on his visa application. The US has never denied a visa to a head of state to attend the UN general assembly, but did once refuse entry to Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader.
The US is pressing the UN to impose sanctions on Iran following its refusal to halt uranium enrichment by last week's UN-imposed deadline. China and Russia appear reluctant to move quickly with punitive measures, however, and this year's general assembly is likely to see intense lobbying by all sides.
Mr Ahmadi-Nejad told a cabinet meeting yesterday that the UN visit was a "good chance" for the debate and that the US side, if it wished, could bring advisers, according to his website.
On Tuesday Mr Bush launched a fierce personal attack on Mr Ahmadi-Nejad in a speech that equated what the US president called Shia Muslim extremists in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon (Hizbollah) with the threats presented by Sunni extremists affiliated to the al-Qaeda network. Iran and Iraq both have Shia majorities.
"We will not bow down to tyrants, and the world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," Mr Bush said, referring to the Iranian president.
Mr Bush first called Iran part of the "axis of evil" in 2002. Iranian leaders habitually refer to the US as the "Great Satan".
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Wrap...
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Making a selection...
Very simple.
Wes Clark for President because he's always been a leader...and a damned good one.
Russ Feingold for Vice President because he has both brains and courage.
And that's that.
Wrap...
Wes Clark for President because he's always been a leader...and a damned good one.
Russ Feingold for Vice President because he has both brains and courage.
And that's that.
Wrap...
Iraq: A tough situation...
From Strategic Forecasting Inc:
Iraq: The Policy Dilemma
By George Friedman
U.S. President George W. Bush now has made it clear what his policy on Iraq will be for the immediate future, certainly until Election Day: He does not intend to change U.S. policy in any fundamental way. U.S. troops will continue to be deployed in Iraq, they will continue to carry out counterinsurgency operations, and they will continue to train Iraqi troops to eventually take over the operations.
It is difficult to imagine that Bush believes there will be any military solution to the situation in Iraq; therefore, we must try to understand his reasoning in maintaining this position. Certainly, it is not simply a political decision. Opinion in the United States has turned against the war, and drawing down U.S. forces and abandoning combat operations would appear to be the politically expedient move. Thus, if it is not politics driving him -- and assuming that the more lurid theories on the Internet concerning Bush's motivations are as silly as they appear -- then we have to figure out what he is doing.
Let's consider the military situation first. Bush has said that there is no civil war in Iraq. This is in large measure a semantic debate. In our view, it would be inaccurate to call what is going on a "civil war" simply because that term implies a degree of coherence that simply does not exist. Calling it a free-for-all would be more accurate. It is not simply a conflict of Shi'i versus Sunni. The Sunnis and Shia are fighting each other, and all of them are fighting American forces. It is not altogether clear what the Americans are supposed to be doing.
Counterinsurgency is unlike other warfare. In other warfare, the goal is to defeat an enemy army, and civilian casualties as a result of military operations are expected and acceptable. With counterinsurgency operations in populated areas, however, the goal is to distinguish the insurgents from civilians and destroy them, with minimal civilian casualties. Counterinsurgency in populated areas is more akin to police operations than to military operations; U.S. troops are simultaneously engaging an enemy force while trying to protect the population from both that force and U.S. operations. Add to this the fact that the population is frequently friendly to the insurgents and hostile to the Americans, and the difficulty of the undertaking becomes clear.
Consider the following numbers. The New York Police Department (excluding transit and park police) counts one policeman for every 216 residents. In Iraq, there is one U.S. soldier (not counting other coalition troops) per about 185 people. Thus, numerically speaking, U.S. forces are in a mildly better position than New York City cops -- but then, except for occasional Saturday nights, New York cops are not facing anything like the U.S. military is facing in Iraq.
Given that the United States is facing not one enemy but a series of enemy organizations -- many fighting each other as well as the Americans -- and that the American goal is to defeat these while defending the populace, it is obvious even from these very simplistic numbers that the U.S. force simply isn't there to impose a settlement.
Expectations and a Deal Unwound
A military solution to the U.S. dilemma has not been in the cards for several years. The purpose of military operations was to set the stage for political negotiations. But the Americans had entered Iraq with certain expectations. For one thing, they had believed they would simply be embraced by Iraq's Shiite population. They also had expected the Sunnis to submit to what appeared to be overwhelming political force. What happened was very different. First, the Shia welcomed the fall of Saddam Hussein, but they hardly embraced the Americans -- they sought instead to translate the U.S. victory over Hussein into a Shiite government. Second, the Sunnis, in view of the U.S.-Shiite coalition and the dismemberment of the Sunni-dominated Iraqi Army, saw that they were about to be squeezed out of the political system and potentially crushed by the Shia. They saw an insurgency -- which had been planned by Hussein -- as their only hope of forcing a redefinition of Iraqi politics. The Americans realized that their expectations had not been realistic.
Thus, the Americans went through a series of political cycles. First, they sided with the Shia as they sought to find their balance militarily facing the Sunnis. When they felt they had traction against the Sunnis, following the capture of Hussein -- and fearing Shiite hegemony -- they shifted toward a position between Sunnis and Shia. As military operations were waged in the background, complex repositioning occurred on all sides, with the Americans trying to hold the swing position between Sunnis and Shia. The process of creating a government for Iraq was encapsulated in this multi-sided maneuvering. By spring 2006, the Sunnis appeared to have committed themselves to the political process. And in June, with the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the announcement that the United States would reduce its force in Iraq by two brigades, the stage seemed to be set for a political resolution that would create a Shiite-dominated coalition that included Sunnis and Kurds. It appeared to be a done deal -- and then the deal completely collapsed.
The first sign of the collapse was a sudden outbreak of fighting among Shia in the Basra region. We assumed that this was political positioning among Shiite factions as they prepared for a political settlement. Then Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), traveled to Tehran, and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army commenced an offensive. Shiite death squads struck out at Sunni populations, and Sunni insurgents struck back. From nearly having a political accommodation, the situation in Iraq fell completely apart.
The key was Iran. The Iranians had always wanted an Iraqi satellite state, as protection against another Iraq-Iran war. That was a basic national security concept for them. In order to have this, the Iranians needed an overwhelmingly Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, and to have overwhelming control of the Shia. It seemed to us that there could be a Shiite-dominated government but not an overwhelmingly Shiite government. In other words, Iraq could be neutral toward, but not a satellite of, Iran. In our view, Iraq's leading Shia -- fearing a civil war and also being wary of domination by Iran -- would accept this settlement. We may have been correct on the sentiment of leading Shia, but we were wrong about Iran's intentions. Tehran did not see a neutral Iraq as being either in Iran's interests or necessary. Clearly, the Iranians did not trust a neutral Iraq still under American occupation to remain neutral. Second -- and this is the most important -- they saw the Americans as militarily weak and incapable of either containing a civil war in Iraq or of taking significant military action against Iran. In other words, the Iranians didn't like the deal they had been offered, they felt that they could do better, and they felt that the time had come to strike.
A Two-Pronged Offensive
When we look back through Iranian eyes, we can now see what they saw: a golden opportunity to deal the United States a blow, redefine the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf and reposition the Shia in the Muslim world. Iran had, for example, been revivifying Hezbollah in Lebanon for several months. We had seen this as a routine response to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. It is now apparent, however, that it was part of a two-pronged offensive.
First, in Iraq, the Iranians encouraged a variety of factions to both resist the newly formed government and to strike out against the Sunnis. This created an uncontainable cycle of violence that rendered the Iraqi government impotent and the Americans irrelevant. The tempo of operations was now in the hands of those Shiite groups among which the Iranians had extensive influence -- and this included some of the leading Shiite parties, such as SCIRI.
Second, in Lebanon, Iran encouraged Hezbollah to launch an offensive. There is debate over whether the Israelis or Hezbollah ignited the conflict in Lebanon. Part of this is ideological gibberish, but part of it concerns intention. It is clear that Hezbollah was fully deployed for combat. Its positions were manned in the south, and its rockets were ready. The capture of two Israeli soldiers was intended to trigger Israeli airstrikes, which were as predictable as sunrise, and Hezbollah was ready to fire on Haifa. Once Haifa was hit, Israel floundered in trying to deploy troops (the Golani and Givati brigades were in the south, near Gaza). This would not have been the case if the Israelis had planned for war with Hezbollah.
Now, this discussion has nothing to do with who to blame for what. It has everything to do with the fact that Hezbollah was ready to fight, triggered the fight, and came out ahead because it wasn't defeated.The end result is that, suddenly, the Iranians held the whip hand in Iraq, had dealt Israel a psychological blow, had repositioned themselves in the Muslim world and had generally redefined the dynamics of the region. Moreover, they had moved to the threshold of redefining the geopolitics to the Persian Gulf. This was by far their most important achievement.
A New Look at the Region
At this point, except for the United States, Iran has by far the most powerful military force in the Persian Gulf. This has nothing to do with its nuclear capability, which is still years away from realization. Its ground forces are simply more numerous and more capable than all the forces of the Arabian Peninsula combined. There is another aspect to this: The countries of the Arabian Peninsula are governed by Sunnis, but many are home to substantial Shiite populations as well. Between the Iranian military and the possibility of unrest among Shia in the region, the situation in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Peninsula is uneasy, to say the least. The rise of Hezbollah well might psychologically empower the generally quiescent Shia to become more assertive. This is one of the reasons that the Saudis were so angry at Hezbollah, and why they now are so anxious over events in Iraq.
If Iraq were to break into three regions, the southern region would be Shiite -- and the Iranians clearly believe that they could dominate southern Iraq. This not only would give them control of the Basra oil fields, but also would theoretically open the road to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. From a strictly military point of view, and not including the Shiite insurgencies at all, Iran could move far down the western littoral of the Persian Gulf if American forces were absent. Put another way, there would be a possibility that the Iranians could seize control of the bulk of the region's oil reserves. They could do the same thing if Iraq were to be united as an Iranian satellite, but that would be far more difficult to achieve and would require active U.S. cooperation in withdrawing.
We can now see why Bush cannot begin withdrawing forces. If he did that, the entire region would destabilize. The countries of the Arabian Peninsula, seeing the withdrawal, would realize that the Iranians were now the dominant power. Shia in the Gulf region might act, or they might simply wait until the Americans had withdrawn and the Iranians arrived. Israel, shaken to the core by its fight with Hezbollah, would have neither the force nor the inclination to act. Therefore, the United States has little choice, from Bush's perspective, but to remain in Iraq.
The Iranians undoubtedly anticipated this response. They have planned carefully. They are therefore shifting their rhetoric somewhat to be more accommodating. They understand that to get the United States out of Iraq -- and out of Kuwait --they will have to engage in a complex set of negotiations. They will promise anything -- but in the end, they will be the largest military force in the region, and nothing else matters. Ultimately, they are counting on the Americans to be sufficiently exhausted by their experience of Iraq to rationalize their withdrawal -- leaving, as in Vietnam, a graceful interval for what follows.
Options
Iran will do everything it can, of course, to assure that the Americans are as exhausted as possible. The Iranians have no incentive to allow the chaos to wind down, until at least a political settlement with the United States is achieved. The United States cannot permit Iranian hegemony over the Persian Gulf, nor can it sustain its forces in Iraq indefinitely under these circumstances. The United States has four choices, apart from the status quo:
1. Reach a political accommodation that cedes the status of regional hegemon to Iran, and withdraw from Iraq.
2. Withdraw forces from Iraq and maintain a presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia -- something the Saudis would hate but would have little choice about -- while remembering that an American military presence is highly offensive to many Muslims and was a significant factor in the rise of al Qaeda.
3. Halt counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and redeploy its forces in the south (west of Kuwait), to block any Iranian moves in the region.
4. Assume that Iran relies solely on its psychological pre-eminence to force a regional realignment and, thus, use Sunni proxies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in attempts to outmaneuver Tehran.
None of these are attractive choices. Each cedes much of Iraq to Shiite and Iranian power and represents some degree of a psychological defeat for the United States, or else rests on a risky assumption. While No. 3 might be the most attractive, it would leave U.S. forces in highly exposed, dangerous and difficult-to-sustain postures. Iran has set a clever trap, and the United States has walked into it. Rather than a functioning government in Iraq, it has chaos and a triumphant Shiite community. The Americans cannot contain the chaos, and they cannot simply withdraw. Therefore, we can understand why Bush insists on holding his position indefinitely. He has been maneuvered in such a manner that he -- or a successor -- has no real alternatives. There is one counter to this: a massive American buildup, including a major buildup of ground forces that requires a large expansion of the Army, geared for the invasion of Iran and destruction of its military force. The idea that this could readily be done through air power has evaporated, we would think, with the Israeli air force's failure in Lebanon. An invasion of Iran would be enormously expensive, take a very long time and create a problem of occupation that would dwarf the problem faced in Iraq. But it is the other option. It would stabilize the geopolitics of the Arabian Peninsula and drain American military power for a generation.
Sometimes there are no good choices. For the United States, the options are to negotiate a settlement that is acceptable to Iran and live with the consequences, raise a massive army and invade Iran, or live in the current twilight world between Iranian hegemony and war with Iran. Bush appears to be choosing an indecisive twilight. Given the options, it is understandable why.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
Iraq: The Policy Dilemma
By George Friedman
U.S. President George W. Bush now has made it clear what his policy on Iraq will be for the immediate future, certainly until Election Day: He does not intend to change U.S. policy in any fundamental way. U.S. troops will continue to be deployed in Iraq, they will continue to carry out counterinsurgency operations, and they will continue to train Iraqi troops to eventually take over the operations.
It is difficult to imagine that Bush believes there will be any military solution to the situation in Iraq; therefore, we must try to understand his reasoning in maintaining this position. Certainly, it is not simply a political decision. Opinion in the United States has turned against the war, and drawing down U.S. forces and abandoning combat operations would appear to be the politically expedient move. Thus, if it is not politics driving him -- and assuming that the more lurid theories on the Internet concerning Bush's motivations are as silly as they appear -- then we have to figure out what he is doing.
Let's consider the military situation first. Bush has said that there is no civil war in Iraq. This is in large measure a semantic debate. In our view, it would be inaccurate to call what is going on a "civil war" simply because that term implies a degree of coherence that simply does not exist. Calling it a free-for-all would be more accurate. It is not simply a conflict of Shi'i versus Sunni. The Sunnis and Shia are fighting each other, and all of them are fighting American forces. It is not altogether clear what the Americans are supposed to be doing.
Counterinsurgency is unlike other warfare. In other warfare, the goal is to defeat an enemy army, and civilian casualties as a result of military operations are expected and acceptable. With counterinsurgency operations in populated areas, however, the goal is to distinguish the insurgents from civilians and destroy them, with minimal civilian casualties. Counterinsurgency in populated areas is more akin to police operations than to military operations; U.S. troops are simultaneously engaging an enemy force while trying to protect the population from both that force and U.S. operations. Add to this the fact that the population is frequently friendly to the insurgents and hostile to the Americans, and the difficulty of the undertaking becomes clear.
Consider the following numbers. The New York Police Department (excluding transit and park police) counts one policeman for every 216 residents. In Iraq, there is one U.S. soldier (not counting other coalition troops) per about 185 people. Thus, numerically speaking, U.S. forces are in a mildly better position than New York City cops -- but then, except for occasional Saturday nights, New York cops are not facing anything like the U.S. military is facing in Iraq.
Given that the United States is facing not one enemy but a series of enemy organizations -- many fighting each other as well as the Americans -- and that the American goal is to defeat these while defending the populace, it is obvious even from these very simplistic numbers that the U.S. force simply isn't there to impose a settlement.
Expectations and a Deal Unwound
A military solution to the U.S. dilemma has not been in the cards for several years. The purpose of military operations was to set the stage for political negotiations. But the Americans had entered Iraq with certain expectations. For one thing, they had believed they would simply be embraced by Iraq's Shiite population. They also had expected the Sunnis to submit to what appeared to be overwhelming political force. What happened was very different. First, the Shia welcomed the fall of Saddam Hussein, but they hardly embraced the Americans -- they sought instead to translate the U.S. victory over Hussein into a Shiite government. Second, the Sunnis, in view of the U.S.-Shiite coalition and the dismemberment of the Sunni-dominated Iraqi Army, saw that they were about to be squeezed out of the political system and potentially crushed by the Shia. They saw an insurgency -- which had been planned by Hussein -- as their only hope of forcing a redefinition of Iraqi politics. The Americans realized that their expectations had not been realistic.
Thus, the Americans went through a series of political cycles. First, they sided with the Shia as they sought to find their balance militarily facing the Sunnis. When they felt they had traction against the Sunnis, following the capture of Hussein -- and fearing Shiite hegemony -- they shifted toward a position between Sunnis and Shia. As military operations were waged in the background, complex repositioning occurred on all sides, with the Americans trying to hold the swing position between Sunnis and Shia. The process of creating a government for Iraq was encapsulated in this multi-sided maneuvering. By spring 2006, the Sunnis appeared to have committed themselves to the political process. And in June, with the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the announcement that the United States would reduce its force in Iraq by two brigades, the stage seemed to be set for a political resolution that would create a Shiite-dominated coalition that included Sunnis and Kurds. It appeared to be a done deal -- and then the deal completely collapsed.
The first sign of the collapse was a sudden outbreak of fighting among Shia in the Basra region. We assumed that this was political positioning among Shiite factions as they prepared for a political settlement. Then Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), traveled to Tehran, and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army commenced an offensive. Shiite death squads struck out at Sunni populations, and Sunni insurgents struck back. From nearly having a political accommodation, the situation in Iraq fell completely apart.
The key was Iran. The Iranians had always wanted an Iraqi satellite state, as protection against another Iraq-Iran war. That was a basic national security concept for them. In order to have this, the Iranians needed an overwhelmingly Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, and to have overwhelming control of the Shia. It seemed to us that there could be a Shiite-dominated government but not an overwhelmingly Shiite government. In other words, Iraq could be neutral toward, but not a satellite of, Iran. In our view, Iraq's leading Shia -- fearing a civil war and also being wary of domination by Iran -- would accept this settlement. We may have been correct on the sentiment of leading Shia, but we were wrong about Iran's intentions. Tehran did not see a neutral Iraq as being either in Iran's interests or necessary. Clearly, the Iranians did not trust a neutral Iraq still under American occupation to remain neutral. Second -- and this is the most important -- they saw the Americans as militarily weak and incapable of either containing a civil war in Iraq or of taking significant military action against Iran. In other words, the Iranians didn't like the deal they had been offered, they felt that they could do better, and they felt that the time had come to strike.
A Two-Pronged Offensive
When we look back through Iranian eyes, we can now see what they saw: a golden opportunity to deal the United States a blow, redefine the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf and reposition the Shia in the Muslim world. Iran had, for example, been revivifying Hezbollah in Lebanon for several months. We had seen this as a routine response to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. It is now apparent, however, that it was part of a two-pronged offensive.
First, in Iraq, the Iranians encouraged a variety of factions to both resist the newly formed government and to strike out against the Sunnis. This created an uncontainable cycle of violence that rendered the Iraqi government impotent and the Americans irrelevant. The tempo of operations was now in the hands of those Shiite groups among which the Iranians had extensive influence -- and this included some of the leading Shiite parties, such as SCIRI.
Second, in Lebanon, Iran encouraged Hezbollah to launch an offensive. There is debate over whether the Israelis or Hezbollah ignited the conflict in Lebanon. Part of this is ideological gibberish, but part of it concerns intention. It is clear that Hezbollah was fully deployed for combat. Its positions were manned in the south, and its rockets were ready. The capture of two Israeli soldiers was intended to trigger Israeli airstrikes, which were as predictable as sunrise, and Hezbollah was ready to fire on Haifa. Once Haifa was hit, Israel floundered in trying to deploy troops (the Golani and Givati brigades were in the south, near Gaza). This would not have been the case if the Israelis had planned for war with Hezbollah.
Now, this discussion has nothing to do with who to blame for what. It has everything to do with the fact that Hezbollah was ready to fight, triggered the fight, and came out ahead because it wasn't defeated.The end result is that, suddenly, the Iranians held the whip hand in Iraq, had dealt Israel a psychological blow, had repositioned themselves in the Muslim world and had generally redefined the dynamics of the region. Moreover, they had moved to the threshold of redefining the geopolitics to the Persian Gulf. This was by far their most important achievement.
A New Look at the Region
At this point, except for the United States, Iran has by far the most powerful military force in the Persian Gulf. This has nothing to do with its nuclear capability, which is still years away from realization. Its ground forces are simply more numerous and more capable than all the forces of the Arabian Peninsula combined. There is another aspect to this: The countries of the Arabian Peninsula are governed by Sunnis, but many are home to substantial Shiite populations as well. Between the Iranian military and the possibility of unrest among Shia in the region, the situation in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Peninsula is uneasy, to say the least. The rise of Hezbollah well might psychologically empower the generally quiescent Shia to become more assertive. This is one of the reasons that the Saudis were so angry at Hezbollah, and why they now are so anxious over events in Iraq.
If Iraq were to break into three regions, the southern region would be Shiite -- and the Iranians clearly believe that they could dominate southern Iraq. This not only would give them control of the Basra oil fields, but also would theoretically open the road to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. From a strictly military point of view, and not including the Shiite insurgencies at all, Iran could move far down the western littoral of the Persian Gulf if American forces were absent. Put another way, there would be a possibility that the Iranians could seize control of the bulk of the region's oil reserves. They could do the same thing if Iraq were to be united as an Iranian satellite, but that would be far more difficult to achieve and would require active U.S. cooperation in withdrawing.
We can now see why Bush cannot begin withdrawing forces. If he did that, the entire region would destabilize. The countries of the Arabian Peninsula, seeing the withdrawal, would realize that the Iranians were now the dominant power. Shia in the Gulf region might act, or they might simply wait until the Americans had withdrawn and the Iranians arrived. Israel, shaken to the core by its fight with Hezbollah, would have neither the force nor the inclination to act. Therefore, the United States has little choice, from Bush's perspective, but to remain in Iraq.
The Iranians undoubtedly anticipated this response. They have planned carefully. They are therefore shifting their rhetoric somewhat to be more accommodating. They understand that to get the United States out of Iraq -- and out of Kuwait --they will have to engage in a complex set of negotiations. They will promise anything -- but in the end, they will be the largest military force in the region, and nothing else matters. Ultimately, they are counting on the Americans to be sufficiently exhausted by their experience of Iraq to rationalize their withdrawal -- leaving, as in Vietnam, a graceful interval for what follows.
Options
Iran will do everything it can, of course, to assure that the Americans are as exhausted as possible. The Iranians have no incentive to allow the chaos to wind down, until at least a political settlement with the United States is achieved. The United States cannot permit Iranian hegemony over the Persian Gulf, nor can it sustain its forces in Iraq indefinitely under these circumstances. The United States has four choices, apart from the status quo:
1. Reach a political accommodation that cedes the status of regional hegemon to Iran, and withdraw from Iraq.
2. Withdraw forces from Iraq and maintain a presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia -- something the Saudis would hate but would have little choice about -- while remembering that an American military presence is highly offensive to many Muslims and was a significant factor in the rise of al Qaeda.
3. Halt counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and redeploy its forces in the south (west of Kuwait), to block any Iranian moves in the region.
4. Assume that Iran relies solely on its psychological pre-eminence to force a regional realignment and, thus, use Sunni proxies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in attempts to outmaneuver Tehran.
None of these are attractive choices. Each cedes much of Iraq to Shiite and Iranian power and represents some degree of a psychological defeat for the United States, or else rests on a risky assumption. While No. 3 might be the most attractive, it would leave U.S. forces in highly exposed, dangerous and difficult-to-sustain postures. Iran has set a clever trap, and the United States has walked into it. Rather than a functioning government in Iraq, it has chaos and a triumphant Shiite community. The Americans cannot contain the chaos, and they cannot simply withdraw. Therefore, we can understand why Bush insists on holding his position indefinitely. He has been maneuvered in such a manner that he -- or a successor -- has no real alternatives. There is one counter to this: a massive American buildup, including a major buildup of ground forces that requires a large expansion of the Army, geared for the invasion of Iran and destruction of its military force. The idea that this could readily be done through air power has evaporated, we would think, with the Israeli air force's failure in Lebanon. An invasion of Iran would be enormously expensive, take a very long time and create a problem of occupation that would dwarf the problem faced in Iraq. But it is the other option. It would stabilize the geopolitics of the Arabian Peninsula and drain American military power for a generation.
Sometimes there are no good choices. For the United States, the options are to negotiate a settlement that is acceptable to Iran and live with the consequences, raise a massive army and invade Iran, or live in the current twilight world between Iranian hegemony and war with Iran. Bush appears to be choosing an indecisive twilight. Given the options, it is understandable why.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
No, Mr Olbermann...no sense of decency there...
From MSNBC via truthout.org:
"Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?"
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Tuesday 05 September 2006
It is to our deep national shame-and ultimately it will be to the President's deep personal regret - that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies - or even question their effectiveness or execution - to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.
Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 - without ever actually saying so - the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, "a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government."
Make no mistake here - the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the "media."
The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.
Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:
The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word - "media" - the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.
That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.
Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.
We will not drink again.
And the President's re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.
"In the 1920's a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews," President Bush said today, "the world ignored Hitler's words, and paid a terrible price."
Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.
More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek - a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.
It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration's recent Nazi "kick" is an awful and cynical thing.
And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:
"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
Wrap...
"Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?"
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Tuesday 05 September 2006
It is to our deep national shame-and ultimately it will be to the President's deep personal regret - that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies - or even question their effectiveness or execution - to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.
Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 - without ever actually saying so - the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, "a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government."
Make no mistake here - the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the "media."
The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.
Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:
The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word - "media" - the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.
That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.
Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.
We will not drink again.
And the President's re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.
"In the 1920's a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews," President Bush said today, "the world ignored Hitler's words, and paid a terrible price."
Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.
More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek - a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.
It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration's recent Nazi "kick" is an awful and cynical thing.
And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:
"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
Wrap...
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Hah! Latest news on TJ Waters' "Class 11"....
From TV Guide blogs & from Spy Talk Bookshelf:
Entertainment News Back to Blog
In the Works: A 9/11-Themed Drama Series
ABC has ordered a script for Class 11, based on T.J. Waters' upcoming book Class 11: Inside the CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class, which chronicles the lives of the first class of students — the agency's largest and most diverse ever — recruited by the spook group immediately following the 9/11 terror attacks.... Also per the Hollywood Reporter, Fox has ordered a drama pilot titled Bait that concerns undercover agents hired to entrap criminals.
Posted by: Matt Mitovich 08/22/2006 11:17 AM
New and notable on the SpyTalk Bookshelf: An advance bound galley of “Class 11: Inside the CIA’s First Post-9/11 Spy Class,” a memoir by former CIA trainee T.J. Waters. Last spring the CIA’s publishing review board decided to reclassify information in Waters’ manuscript that it had already approved. Waters went to court, but evidently he and his publisher (Dutton) are tired of waiting for a decision. Pub date is now Oct. 19.
Wrap...
Entertainment News Back to Blog
In the Works: A 9/11-Themed Drama Series
ABC has ordered a script for Class 11, based on T.J. Waters' upcoming book Class 11: Inside the CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class, which chronicles the lives of the first class of students — the agency's largest and most diverse ever — recruited by the spook group immediately following the 9/11 terror attacks.... Also per the Hollywood Reporter, Fox has ordered a drama pilot titled Bait that concerns undercover agents hired to entrap criminals.
Posted by: Matt Mitovich 08/22/2006 11:17 AM
New and notable on the SpyTalk Bookshelf: An advance bound galley of “Class 11: Inside the CIA’s First Post-9/11 Spy Class,” a memoir by former CIA trainee T.J. Waters. Last spring the CIA’s publishing review board decided to reclassify information in Waters’ manuscript that it had already approved. Waters went to court, but evidently he and his publisher (Dutton) are tired of waiting for a decision. Pub date is now Oct. 19.
Wrap...
Congress had better kill this one...
From Information Clearing House:
Bush Aims to Kill War Crimes Act
By Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith
09/05/06
"The Nation"
The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act.
Observers on The Hill say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority--perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all "anti-terrorism" package.
Why are they doing it, and how can they be stopped?
[continue reading here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14857.htm
Wrap....
Bush Aims to Kill War Crimes Act
By Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith
09/05/06
"The Nation"
The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act.
Observers on The Hill say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority--perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all "anti-terrorism" package.
Why are they doing it, and how can they be stopped?
[continue reading here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14857.htm
Wrap....
Debt Collectors get 24% of your owed Income Tax!
From USA Today via Tom Paine:
IRS sends collection agencies calling for back taxes
Posted 9/4/2006 11:43 PM ET
By Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY
Beginning this week, thousands of Americans who owe taxes to the federal government will start getting phone calls to pay up — from private collection agencies, not the IRS.
Despite congressional opposition and criticism from a federal employee union and a taxpayer advisory panel, the IRS is giving three collection agencies information on 12,500 taxpayers who owe less than $25,000 and have not disputed the debt.
The IRS has moved to reassure taxpayers about the plan, even outlining steps to guard against potential scam artists posing as private collectors.
"We are working hard to protect taxpayer privacy and taxpayer rights," IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said last month announcing the plan.
Critics argue that privatizing any part of the IRS' traditional collection role would increase the agency's costs and raise privacy issues, as well as create potential for fraud.
"We're continuing to do all we can to shine a light on this program," says Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees. "When taxpayers hear about what the government is doing, they are outraged."
The IRS national taxpayer advocate and the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel, an advisory board chosen by the IRS, have questioned parts of the plan.
The House passed a budget bill that, if approved by the Senate, could block the IRS from funding the effort. Kelley's union plans to start contacting senators when Congress reconvenes this week.
IRS officials say the plan involves smaller cases that federal agents wouldn't otherwise have time to pursue. The profit potential is large. The collection companies will keep up to 24% of what they recover. That amounts to as much as $336 million of the $1.4 billion the IRS projects the program will recover during the next decade.
The IRS chose three firms for the initial cases: The CBE Group of Waterloo, Iowa; Pioneer Credit Recovery of Arcade, N.Y.; and Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, an Austin, Texas, law firm.
The IRS says taxpayers targeted by the program will receive written notification from the agency that includes the name of the collection company that will contact them. They will also get a separate letter from the firm.
Payment checks should be written to the U.S. Treasury, not to an individual or company, the IRS says.
Taxpayers with questions can call 800-829-1040.
Wrap...
IRS sends collection agencies calling for back taxes
Posted 9/4/2006 11:43 PM ET
By Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY
Beginning this week, thousands of Americans who owe taxes to the federal government will start getting phone calls to pay up — from private collection agencies, not the IRS.
Despite congressional opposition and criticism from a federal employee union and a taxpayer advisory panel, the IRS is giving three collection agencies information on 12,500 taxpayers who owe less than $25,000 and have not disputed the debt.
The IRS has moved to reassure taxpayers about the plan, even outlining steps to guard against potential scam artists posing as private collectors.
"We are working hard to protect taxpayer privacy and taxpayer rights," IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said last month announcing the plan.
Critics argue that privatizing any part of the IRS' traditional collection role would increase the agency's costs and raise privacy issues, as well as create potential for fraud.
"We're continuing to do all we can to shine a light on this program," says Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees. "When taxpayers hear about what the government is doing, they are outraged."
The IRS national taxpayer advocate and the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel, an advisory board chosen by the IRS, have questioned parts of the plan.
The House passed a budget bill that, if approved by the Senate, could block the IRS from funding the effort. Kelley's union plans to start contacting senators when Congress reconvenes this week.
IRS officials say the plan involves smaller cases that federal agents wouldn't otherwise have time to pursue. The profit potential is large. The collection companies will keep up to 24% of what they recover. That amounts to as much as $336 million of the $1.4 billion the IRS projects the program will recover during the next decade.
The IRS chose three firms for the initial cases: The CBE Group of Waterloo, Iowa; Pioneer Credit Recovery of Arcade, N.Y.; and Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, an Austin, Texas, law firm.
The IRS says taxpayers targeted by the program will receive written notification from the agency that includes the name of the collection company that will contact them. They will also get a separate letter from the firm.
Payment checks should be written to the U.S. Treasury, not to an individual or company, the IRS says.
Taxpayers with questions can call 800-829-1040.
Wrap...
Monday, September 04, 2006
Voting made an absolute nightmare!!!
FOCUS 11 of America's Worst Places to Vote (or Try)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090406Z.shtml
We used to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws - a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system. As it turns out, except for a rudimentary federal framework, US elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions, various technology choices, and partisan trickery. Mother Jones provides a list - partial, but emblematic - of American democracy's more glaring weak spots.
[cont reading at URL above]
Wrap...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090406Z.shtml
We used to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws - a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system. As it turns out, except for a rudimentary federal framework, US elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions, various technology choices, and partisan trickery. Mother Jones provides a list - partial, but emblematic - of American democracy's more glaring weak spots.
[cont reading at URL above]
Wrap...
We'll decide what's good for you & MAKE $$$$$$!!!
From Associated Press:
Nutritionist: Tax Sugary Drinks To Fight Obesity
Drinks Should Be Taxed Like Cigarettes, Alcohol, Popkin Says
POSTED: 4:46 am PDT September 4, 2006
SYDNEY, Australia -- A leading nutritionist said we're "drinking ourselves into obesity" and sugary drinks should be taxed like cigarettes and alcohol.
The University of North Carolina's Barry Popkin said Americans are gulping down more sodas, fruit juices and sugar-laden energy drinks than ever before.
But he added, people aren't cutting their food intake to compensate for the extra calories.
Popkin thinks one way to slow that trend is to put a high tax on the high-calorie sweeteners used in soft drinks.
He said if those drinks were more expensive, people might drink more milk, juice or water.
Another researcher at the international obesity conference in Australia said sugar's just one factor in weight gain.
He said the key to a healthy lifestyle is "balance and variety and moderation."
Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press.
Wrap...
Nutritionist: Tax Sugary Drinks To Fight Obesity
Drinks Should Be Taxed Like Cigarettes, Alcohol, Popkin Says
POSTED: 4:46 am PDT September 4, 2006
SYDNEY, Australia -- A leading nutritionist said we're "drinking ourselves into obesity" and sugary drinks should be taxed like cigarettes and alcohol.
The University of North Carolina's Barry Popkin said Americans are gulping down more sodas, fruit juices and sugar-laden energy drinks than ever before.
But he added, people aren't cutting their food intake to compensate for the extra calories.
Popkin thinks one way to slow that trend is to put a high tax on the high-calorie sweeteners used in soft drinks.
He said if those drinks were more expensive, people might drink more milk, juice or water.
Another researcher at the international obesity conference in Australia said sugar's just one factor in weight gain.
He said the key to a healthy lifestyle is "balance and variety and moderation."
Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press.
Wrap...
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Farewell Sistani....
From OpEdNews.com
Original Article at
www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_full_060903_sistani_led_his_foll.htm
September 3, 2006
Sistani Led His Followers to Elect Iraq's New Regime. Today He Walked Away
By Ron Fullwood
The new Iraqi regime's most important link to its Shiite population is walking away from the political role he assumed in the wake of our invasion and occupation, and, presumably, will take his thousands of Iraqi followers with him.
The Telegraph is reporting that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has "abandoned attempts to restrain his followers" and no longer believes he can stand in the way of the growing civil war. "I will not be a political leader any more," he reportedly told aides. "I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."
Sistani's departure from Iraq's political scene and his return to his religious role signals an end to the Maliki regime's attempt to consolidate power and sell his reconciliation plan to the myriad of warring factions who are engaged in armed and deadly struggles against his regime, and against each other as well. It was Sistani who brought the thousands of his followers to the polls, forcing Bush to make good on his promise of early elections.
It was Sistani who forged an alliance with former militant, Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr allowing the elections to proceed. It's no exaggeration that, without Sistani's participation there may never have been elections in Iraq, or a Maliki government.
It's also clear that, without Sistani's involvement in Iraq's political future, Sadr's political influence will be elevated in the short term. It remains to be seen, though, if Sadr, who is arguably more prone to lead his followers to armed and active resistance, and, whose followers are already engaging government troops in street battles, will follow Sistani and lead his congregation away from the political sweet spot he's carved out for himself in the Iraqi legislature.
One thing that's certain, however, is that Iraq is indeed poised for a complete breakdown along sectarian lines, whatever you want to call it, and a devolution into a full-scale battle for each faction's political and material survival. In an ominous sign of things to come, the Kurds have replaced the Iraqi flag they were flying with one of their own. Iraq is splitting apart.
The Pentagon's mandatory, quarterly report to Congress, entitled, "Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq," was released to the public this week. One of its primary conclusions is that, "death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife, with Sunni and Shia extremists each portraying themselves as the defenders of their respective sectarian groups."
The Pentagon report also states that the sectarian violence is escalating, "gradually expanding north to Kirkuk and Diyala Province." The report documented over 800 attacks a week."
"During the period from the establishment of the new Iraqi government on May 20 until Aug. 11," the report reads, "the average number of weekly attacks jumped to almost 800. That was a substantial increase from earlier this year and almost double the number of the first part of 2004."
Yet, Bush today, in his radio address, lied about the report and told the American people that they (the Pentagon) "report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, while the overwhelming majority want peace and a normal life in a unified country."
This has got to be one of the biggest lies Bush has told since the original lies he used to take our nation to war against Iraq. He's trying to cover up what is clearly a civil war in Iraq, with our forces on one side of a multi-front conflict which is escalating around them. Bush downplays all of this to maintain his party's political campaign with our soldiers at the point of his politics. It's practically treasonous; at the least, criminally negligent, for him to ignore the conclusions of his own Pentagon's report and continue to tell the American people that everything is going swimmingly in Iraq.
On one hand he warns that leaving Iraq will cause it to become a 'terrorist's haven', and, on the other hand, he wants us to believe the U.S. supported Iraqi regime is somewhere close to assuming control over the violence there.
But, Iraq is a casualty of Bush's false ideology of dominance, of U.S. hegemony in the region, and projection of American military power. The 'democracy' he says he's brought to Iraq revealed a markedly different impetus from the residents there than Bush intended. The Shiite-dominated government that emerged has no intention at all (save Bush's puppets at the top) in fostering a U.S. satellite in Iraq. Rather than provide a U.S. compliant buffer against Bush's nemesis, Iran, the legislature has generated more opposition to their U.S. benefactors than to their Shiite Iranian neighbors.
Now, Sistani's departure from Iraq's political arena threatens to pull more of his resident followers away from the crumbling junta and into the ocean of recriminations and militia-driven, violent resistance to the U.S. occupation.Things couldn't be any worse in Iraq.
Authors Bio: Ron Fullwood, is an activist from Columbia, Md. and the author of the book 'Power of Mischief' : Military Industry Executives are Making Bush Policy and the Country is Paying the Price
Wrap...
Original Article at
www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_full_060903_sistani_led_his_foll.htm
September 3, 2006
Sistani Led His Followers to Elect Iraq's New Regime. Today He Walked Away
By Ron Fullwood
The new Iraqi regime's most important link to its Shiite population is walking away from the political role he assumed in the wake of our invasion and occupation, and, presumably, will take his thousands of Iraqi followers with him.
The Telegraph is reporting that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has "abandoned attempts to restrain his followers" and no longer believes he can stand in the way of the growing civil war. "I will not be a political leader any more," he reportedly told aides. "I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."
Sistani's departure from Iraq's political scene and his return to his religious role signals an end to the Maliki regime's attempt to consolidate power and sell his reconciliation plan to the myriad of warring factions who are engaged in armed and deadly struggles against his regime, and against each other as well. It was Sistani who brought the thousands of his followers to the polls, forcing Bush to make good on his promise of early elections.
It was Sistani who forged an alliance with former militant, Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr allowing the elections to proceed. It's no exaggeration that, without Sistani's participation there may never have been elections in Iraq, or a Maliki government.
It's also clear that, without Sistani's involvement in Iraq's political future, Sadr's political influence will be elevated in the short term. It remains to be seen, though, if Sadr, who is arguably more prone to lead his followers to armed and active resistance, and, whose followers are already engaging government troops in street battles, will follow Sistani and lead his congregation away from the political sweet spot he's carved out for himself in the Iraqi legislature.
One thing that's certain, however, is that Iraq is indeed poised for a complete breakdown along sectarian lines, whatever you want to call it, and a devolution into a full-scale battle for each faction's political and material survival. In an ominous sign of things to come, the Kurds have replaced the Iraqi flag they were flying with one of their own. Iraq is splitting apart.
The Pentagon's mandatory, quarterly report to Congress, entitled, "Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq," was released to the public this week. One of its primary conclusions is that, "death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife, with Sunni and Shia extremists each portraying themselves as the defenders of their respective sectarian groups."
The Pentagon report also states that the sectarian violence is escalating, "gradually expanding north to Kirkuk and Diyala Province." The report documented over 800 attacks a week."
"During the period from the establishment of the new Iraqi government on May 20 until Aug. 11," the report reads, "the average number of weekly attacks jumped to almost 800. That was a substantial increase from earlier this year and almost double the number of the first part of 2004."
Yet, Bush today, in his radio address, lied about the report and told the American people that they (the Pentagon) "report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, while the overwhelming majority want peace and a normal life in a unified country."
This has got to be one of the biggest lies Bush has told since the original lies he used to take our nation to war against Iraq. He's trying to cover up what is clearly a civil war in Iraq, with our forces on one side of a multi-front conflict which is escalating around them. Bush downplays all of this to maintain his party's political campaign with our soldiers at the point of his politics. It's practically treasonous; at the least, criminally negligent, for him to ignore the conclusions of his own Pentagon's report and continue to tell the American people that everything is going swimmingly in Iraq.
On one hand he warns that leaving Iraq will cause it to become a 'terrorist's haven', and, on the other hand, he wants us to believe the U.S. supported Iraqi regime is somewhere close to assuming control over the violence there.
But, Iraq is a casualty of Bush's false ideology of dominance, of U.S. hegemony in the region, and projection of American military power. The 'democracy' he says he's brought to Iraq revealed a markedly different impetus from the residents there than Bush intended. The Shiite-dominated government that emerged has no intention at all (save Bush's puppets at the top) in fostering a U.S. satellite in Iraq. Rather than provide a U.S. compliant buffer against Bush's nemesis, Iran, the legislature has generated more opposition to their U.S. benefactors than to their Shiite Iranian neighbors.
Now, Sistani's departure from Iraq's political arena threatens to pull more of his resident followers away from the crumbling junta and into the ocean of recriminations and militia-driven, violent resistance to the U.S. occupation.Things couldn't be any worse in Iraq.
Authors Bio: Ron Fullwood, is an activist from Columbia, Md. and the author of the book 'Power of Mischief' : Military Industry Executives are Making Bush Policy and the Country is Paying the Price
Wrap...
Thank you to M80....
Just a personal note to thank M80 for the totally unexpected, but much appreciated surprise gift of the "Brotherhood" T-shirt, cap, folder and DVD that arrived in the mail on Friday.
All arrived in great shape in a large padded envelope.
Again...many thanks to some thoughtful folks...
Wrap...
All arrived in great shape in a large padded envelope.
Again...many thanks to some thoughtful folks...
Wrap...
Where our money goes...to BushCo's "friends"...
From Greg Palast:
TODAY'S PIG IS TOMORROW'S BACON (a Labor Day recipe)
By Greg Palast
September, 3 2006
Some years from now, in an economic refugee relocation "Enterprise Zone," your kids will ask you, "What did you do in the Class War, Daddy?"The trick of class war is not to let the victims know they're under attack. That's how, little by little, the owners of the planet take away what little we have.
This week, Dupont, the chemical giant, slashed employee pension benefits by two-thirds. Furthermore, new Dupont workers won't get a guaranteed pension at all -- and no health care after retirement. It's part of Dupont's new "Die Young" program, I hear. Dupont is not in financial straits. Rather, the slash attack on its workers' pensions was aimed at adding a crucial three cents a share to company earnings, from $3.11 per share to $3.14.
So Happy Labor Day.
And this week, the government made it official: For the first time since the Labor Department began measuring how the American pie is sliced, those in the top fifth of the wealth scale are now gobbling up over half (50.4%) of our nation's annual income.
So Happy Labor Day.
We don't even get to lick the plates. While 15.9% of us don't have health insurance (a record, Mr. President!), even those of us who have it, don't have it: we're spending 36% more per family out of pocket on medical costs since the new regime took power in Washington. If you've actually tried to collect from your insurance company, you know what I mean.
So Happy Labor Day.
But if you think I have nothing nice to say about George W. Bush, let me report that the USA now has more millionaires than ever -- 7.4 million! And over the past decade, the number of billionaires has more than tripled, 341 of them!
If that doesn't make you feel like you're missing out, this should: You, Mr. Median, are earning, after inflation, a little less than you earned when Richard Nixon reigned. Median household income -- and most of us are "median" -- is down. Way down.Since the Bush Putsch in 2000, median income has fallen 5.9%.
Mr. Bush and friends are offering us an "ownership" society. But he didn't mention who already owns it. The richest fifth of America owns 83% of all shares in the stock market. But that's a bit misleading because most of that, 53% of all the stock, is owned by just one percent of American households.
And what does the Wealthy One Percent want? Answer: more wealth. Where will they get it? As with a tube of toothpaste, they're squeezing it from the bottom. Median paychecks have gone down by 5.9% during the current regime, but Americans in the bottom fifth have seen their incomes sliced by 20%.
At the other end, CEO pay at the Fortune 500 has bloated by 51% during the first four years of the Bush regime to an average of $8.1 million per annum.
So who's winning? It's a crude indicator, but let's take a peek at the Class War body count. When Reagan took power in 1980, the One Percent possessed 33% of America's wealth as measured by capital income. By 2006, the One Percent has swallowed over half of all America's assets, from sea to shining sea. One hundred fifty million Americans altogether own less than 3% of all private assets.
Yes, American middle-class house values are up, but we're blowing that gain to stay alive. Edward Wolff, the New York University expert on income, explained to me that, "The middle class is mortgaging itself to death." As a result of mortgaging our new equity, 60% of all households have seen a decline in net worth.
Is America getting poorer? No, just its people, We the Median. In fact, we are producing an astonishing amount of new wealth in the USA. We are a lean, mean production machine. Output per worker in BushAmerica zoomed by 15% over four years through 2004. Problem is, although worker productivity keeps rising, the producers are getting less and less of it.
The gap between what we produce and what we get is widening like an alligator's jaw. The more you work, the less you get. It used to be that as the economic pie got bigger, everyone's slice got bigger too. No more. The One Percent have swallowed your share before you can get your fork in.
The loot Dupont sucked from its employees' retirement funds will be put to good use. It will more than cover the cost of the company directors' decision to hike the pension set aside for CEO Charles Holliday to $2.1 million a year. And that's fair, I suppose: Holliday's a winning general in the class war. And shouldn't the winners of war get the spoils?
Of course, there are killjoys who cling to that Calvinist-Marxist belief that a system forever fattening the richest cannot continue without end. Professor Michael Zweig, Director of the State University of New York's Center for Study of Working Class Life, put it in culinary terms: "Today's pig is tomorrow's bacon."
******
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War," just released from Penguin/Dutton, from which this is adapted.
And go to www.GregPalast.com for a special Labor Day treat: an excerpt from Air America Radio's Thom Hartmann's new book, "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- and What We Can Do About It."
Wrap...
TODAY'S PIG IS TOMORROW'S BACON (a Labor Day recipe)
By Greg Palast
September, 3 2006
Some years from now, in an economic refugee relocation "Enterprise Zone," your kids will ask you, "What did you do in the Class War, Daddy?"The trick of class war is not to let the victims know they're under attack. That's how, little by little, the owners of the planet take away what little we have.
This week, Dupont, the chemical giant, slashed employee pension benefits by two-thirds. Furthermore, new Dupont workers won't get a guaranteed pension at all -- and no health care after retirement. It's part of Dupont's new "Die Young" program, I hear. Dupont is not in financial straits. Rather, the slash attack on its workers' pensions was aimed at adding a crucial three cents a share to company earnings, from $3.11 per share to $3.14.
So Happy Labor Day.
And this week, the government made it official: For the first time since the Labor Department began measuring how the American pie is sliced, those in the top fifth of the wealth scale are now gobbling up over half (50.4%) of our nation's annual income.
So Happy Labor Day.
We don't even get to lick the plates. While 15.9% of us don't have health insurance (a record, Mr. President!), even those of us who have it, don't have it: we're spending 36% more per family out of pocket on medical costs since the new regime took power in Washington. If you've actually tried to collect from your insurance company, you know what I mean.
So Happy Labor Day.
But if you think I have nothing nice to say about George W. Bush, let me report that the USA now has more millionaires than ever -- 7.4 million! And over the past decade, the number of billionaires has more than tripled, 341 of them!
If that doesn't make you feel like you're missing out, this should: You, Mr. Median, are earning, after inflation, a little less than you earned when Richard Nixon reigned. Median household income -- and most of us are "median" -- is down. Way down.Since the Bush Putsch in 2000, median income has fallen 5.9%.
Mr. Bush and friends are offering us an "ownership" society. But he didn't mention who already owns it. The richest fifth of America owns 83% of all shares in the stock market. But that's a bit misleading because most of that, 53% of all the stock, is owned by just one percent of American households.
And what does the Wealthy One Percent want? Answer: more wealth. Where will they get it? As with a tube of toothpaste, they're squeezing it from the bottom. Median paychecks have gone down by 5.9% during the current regime, but Americans in the bottom fifth have seen their incomes sliced by 20%.
At the other end, CEO pay at the Fortune 500 has bloated by 51% during the first four years of the Bush regime to an average of $8.1 million per annum.
So who's winning? It's a crude indicator, but let's take a peek at the Class War body count. When Reagan took power in 1980, the One Percent possessed 33% of America's wealth as measured by capital income. By 2006, the One Percent has swallowed over half of all America's assets, from sea to shining sea. One hundred fifty million Americans altogether own less than 3% of all private assets.
Yes, American middle-class house values are up, but we're blowing that gain to stay alive. Edward Wolff, the New York University expert on income, explained to me that, "The middle class is mortgaging itself to death." As a result of mortgaging our new equity, 60% of all households have seen a decline in net worth.
Is America getting poorer? No, just its people, We the Median. In fact, we are producing an astonishing amount of new wealth in the USA. We are a lean, mean production machine. Output per worker in BushAmerica zoomed by 15% over four years through 2004. Problem is, although worker productivity keeps rising, the producers are getting less and less of it.
The gap between what we produce and what we get is widening like an alligator's jaw. The more you work, the less you get. It used to be that as the economic pie got bigger, everyone's slice got bigger too. No more. The One Percent have swallowed your share before you can get your fork in.
The loot Dupont sucked from its employees' retirement funds will be put to good use. It will more than cover the cost of the company directors' decision to hike the pension set aside for CEO Charles Holliday to $2.1 million a year. And that's fair, I suppose: Holliday's a winning general in the class war. And shouldn't the winners of war get the spoils?
Of course, there are killjoys who cling to that Calvinist-Marxist belief that a system forever fattening the richest cannot continue without end. Professor Michael Zweig, Director of the State University of New York's Center for Study of Working Class Life, put it in culinary terms: "Today's pig is tomorrow's bacon."
******
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War," just released from Penguin/Dutton, from which this is adapted.
And go to www.GregPalast.com for a special Labor Day treat: an excerpt from Air America Radio's Thom Hartmann's new book, "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- and What We Can Do About It."
Wrap...
Friday, September 01, 2006
Last sentence tells it all...
From Cagle Newsletter:
Terrorists Follow Us Home
Raging Moderate, by Will Durst
A lot of trees died in vain as newsprint this week, reporting details of President Bush's wasted, desperate attempt to float a new trial balloon in his tortured six-year war against logic, reason, gravity and physics. Apparently he's in need of a new sack of gas to tie his failed Iraqi war plan to. Due to the fact his most recent verbal bag of helium - "stay the course" - has been tossed onto the same discarded pile of shriveled rubber as "dead or alive," "smoking gun as a mushroom cloud" and "welcomed with flowers and candy."
He held an hour-long press conference in an elastic attempt to sound reasonable, having about as much success as a rabid, flatulent weasel trying to hide in a half-empty bin of spinach fettuccine at Whole Foods. Trotting out a series of mantras, the president courted the opinion of average Americans who, recent polls say, still retain their admiration for the man for his stick-to-itiveness, though they remain a bit skeptical of his synaptic activity. Much like a man intent on breaking through a brick wall using only his forehead. While you have to admire his persistence you probably don't want him doing much math.
Experimenting with the calibrated residue of Karl Rove's extensive hot-air polling of focus groups, Dubyah introduced the new official buzz phrase of the Iraqi occupation: the word "wrong." Cutting and running is "wrong." The Democrats are patriotic but "wrong." Spandex on NFL linemen. Screw Kappa Napa. It's all just "wrong." He went on to say if we don't finish the job in Iraq, the world will see us as quitters and you know what they say about quitters. "Quitters bruise their shins and winners never evacuate and are destined to bloat up like poisoned toads," or something like that. He wasn't really clear. As usual.
"There's a lot of people - good, decent people - saying, 'Withdraw now.' They're wrong," Bush said. "There are a lot of people in the Democrat Party who believe that the best course of action is to leave Iraq before the job is done, period. And they're wrong." Unfortunately, he steadfastly refuses to tell us exactly what job he is talking about. I'm thinking it has to do with developing a falafel-based oil substitute.
He further explained if we leave, the terrorists will follow us home. And if they follow us home, we'll have to walk them twice a day and feed them and brush them and they'll need shots and let me tell you right now, they're sleeping outside, mister. Oh sure, they're cute when they're young, but when terrorists grow up, they're just like animals. Constantly begging for scraps and whimpering because they're afraid to be left alone. "Allah is watching." Chewing shoes. Peeing on their prayer rug.
At the end, he waxed weirdly poetic and at the same time loopy. "Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I'm happy, you know. But war is not a time of joy. These aren't joyous times. These are challenging times and they're straining the psyche of our country." And as one who's had my psyche strained, I have to admit, he's right. "We're not leaving so long as I'm the president." Okay, Mr. President, whatever it takes.
Comic, writer, actor, radio talk show host, social outcast Will Durst is willing to help out the president any way he can.
©2006 Will Durst. Will Durst is a political comedian who has performed around the world. He is a familiar pundit on television and radio. See www.willdurst.com for additional information on Will's performance schedule. His two CDs are available at laugh.com. Email Will at durst@willdurst.com.
Wrap...
Terrorists Follow Us Home
Raging Moderate, by Will Durst
A lot of trees died in vain as newsprint this week, reporting details of President Bush's wasted, desperate attempt to float a new trial balloon in his tortured six-year war against logic, reason, gravity and physics. Apparently he's in need of a new sack of gas to tie his failed Iraqi war plan to. Due to the fact his most recent verbal bag of helium - "stay the course" - has been tossed onto the same discarded pile of shriveled rubber as "dead or alive," "smoking gun as a mushroom cloud" and "welcomed with flowers and candy."
He held an hour-long press conference in an elastic attempt to sound reasonable, having about as much success as a rabid, flatulent weasel trying to hide in a half-empty bin of spinach fettuccine at Whole Foods. Trotting out a series of mantras, the president courted the opinion of average Americans who, recent polls say, still retain their admiration for the man for his stick-to-itiveness, though they remain a bit skeptical of his synaptic activity. Much like a man intent on breaking through a brick wall using only his forehead. While you have to admire his persistence you probably don't want him doing much math.
Experimenting with the calibrated residue of Karl Rove's extensive hot-air polling of focus groups, Dubyah introduced the new official buzz phrase of the Iraqi occupation: the word "wrong." Cutting and running is "wrong." The Democrats are patriotic but "wrong." Spandex on NFL linemen. Screw Kappa Napa. It's all just "wrong." He went on to say if we don't finish the job in Iraq, the world will see us as quitters and you know what they say about quitters. "Quitters bruise their shins and winners never evacuate and are destined to bloat up like poisoned toads," or something like that. He wasn't really clear. As usual.
"There's a lot of people - good, decent people - saying, 'Withdraw now.' They're wrong," Bush said. "There are a lot of people in the Democrat Party who believe that the best course of action is to leave Iraq before the job is done, period. And they're wrong." Unfortunately, he steadfastly refuses to tell us exactly what job he is talking about. I'm thinking it has to do with developing a falafel-based oil substitute.
He further explained if we leave, the terrorists will follow us home. And if they follow us home, we'll have to walk them twice a day and feed them and brush them and they'll need shots and let me tell you right now, they're sleeping outside, mister. Oh sure, they're cute when they're young, but when terrorists grow up, they're just like animals. Constantly begging for scraps and whimpering because they're afraid to be left alone. "Allah is watching." Chewing shoes. Peeing on their prayer rug.
At the end, he waxed weirdly poetic and at the same time loopy. "Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I'm happy, you know. But war is not a time of joy. These aren't joyous times. These are challenging times and they're straining the psyche of our country." And as one who's had my psyche strained, I have to admit, he's right. "We're not leaving so long as I'm the president." Okay, Mr. President, whatever it takes.
Comic, writer, actor, radio talk show host, social outcast Will Durst is willing to help out the president any way he can.
©2006 Will Durst. Will Durst is a political comedian who has performed around the world. He is a familiar pundit on television and radio. See www.willdurst.com for additional information on Will's performance schedule. His two CDs are available at laugh.com. Email Will at durst@willdurst.com.
Wrap...
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