Well that's a fine state of affairs. Sen Reid, Dem minority leader in the Senate announced he would vote no on Roberts sitting as Chief Justice of the United States, and does Sen Max Baucus of Montana have the decency to support his Dem leader? No. He's voting for Roberts. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Wrap...
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Trying to cover up Able Danger..
NY Times:
September 21, 2005Pentagon Bars Military Officers and Analysts From Testifying
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - The Pentagon said Tuesday that it had blocked several military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified intelligence program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a potential terrorist a year before the attacks.
The officers and intelligence analysts had been scheduled to testify on Wednesday about the program, known as Able Danger, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement that open testimony "would not be appropriate."
"We have expressed our security concerns and believe it is simply not possible to discuss Able Danger in any great detail in an open public forum," Mr. Whitman said.
He offered no other explanation of the Pentagon's reasoning.
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the committee, said he was surprised by the Pentagon's decision because "so much of this has already been in the public domain, and I think that the American people need to know what happened here."
Mr. Specter said in a telephone interview that he intended to go ahead with the hearing on Wednesday and hoped that it "may produce a change of heart by the Department of Defense in answering some very basic questions."
Two military officers - an active-duty captain in the Navy and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve - have recently said publicly that they were involved with Able Danger and that the program's analysts identified Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian-born ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, by name as a potential terrorist by early 2000.
They said they tried to share the information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the summer of 2000, more than a year before the attacks, but were blocked by Defense Department lawyers. F.B.I. officials, who answer to the jurisdiction of Mr. Specter's committee, have confirmed that the Defense Department abruptly canceled meetings in 2000 between the bureau's Washington field office and representatives of the Able Danger team.
The Pentagon had said that it interviewed three other people who were involved with Able Danger and who said that they, too, recalled the identification of Mr. Atta as a terrorist suspect. Mr. Specter said his staff had talked to all five of the potential witnesses and found that "credibility has been established" for all of them.
Wrap...
September 21, 2005Pentagon Bars Military Officers and Analysts From Testifying
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - The Pentagon said Tuesday that it had blocked several military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified intelligence program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a potential terrorist a year before the attacks.
The officers and intelligence analysts had been scheduled to testify on Wednesday about the program, known as Able Danger, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement that open testimony "would not be appropriate."
"We have expressed our security concerns and believe it is simply not possible to discuss Able Danger in any great detail in an open public forum," Mr. Whitman said.
He offered no other explanation of the Pentagon's reasoning.
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the committee, said he was surprised by the Pentagon's decision because "so much of this has already been in the public domain, and I think that the American people need to know what happened here."
Mr. Specter said in a telephone interview that he intended to go ahead with the hearing on Wednesday and hoped that it "may produce a change of heart by the Department of Defense in answering some very basic questions."
Two military officers - an active-duty captain in the Navy and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve - have recently said publicly that they were involved with Able Danger and that the program's analysts identified Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian-born ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, by name as a potential terrorist by early 2000.
They said they tried to share the information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the summer of 2000, more than a year before the attacks, but were blocked by Defense Department lawyers. F.B.I. officials, who answer to the jurisdiction of Mr. Specter's committee, have confirmed that the Defense Department abruptly canceled meetings in 2000 between the bureau's Washington field office and representatives of the Able Danger team.
The Pentagon had said that it interviewed three other people who were involved with Able Danger and who said that they, too, recalled the identification of Mr. Atta as a terrorist suspect. Mr. Specter said his staff had talked to all five of the potential witnesses and found that "credibility has been established" for all of them.
Wrap...
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Crooks yesterday, today and tomorrow..
From American Progress:
HOMELAND SECURITY -- BUSH CONTINUES TO NOMINATE UNQUALIFIED PEOPLE:
President Bush has nominated Julie Myers, whom the Washington Post described as "a lawyer with little immigration or customs experience," to head the troubled U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security. At her Senate hearing last week, Sen. George Voinovich said that her "résumé indicates she is not qualified for the job" and that he would like to speak with DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff "to ask him… why he thinks you’re qualified for the job." Myers does know people in all the right places. She was chief of staff to Chertoff in the Justice Department, associate under Kenneth W. Star, special assistant to Bush on personnel issues, recently married to Chertoff's current chief of staff John F. Wood, and is the niece of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers. Myers largest management experience comes from her time at Commerce, where she oversaw 170 employees and a $25 million budget; ICE has more than 20,000 employees and a budget of approximately $4 billion.
JUDICIARY -- GONZALEZ RECRUITS FBI PORN SQUAD: Taking his cues from former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzalez has decided to make the War on Porn "one of the top priorities" of the AG's office. In early August, the FBI's Washington Field Office sent around a job listing to recruit eight federal agents, a supervisor and support staff to take on "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography. The squad will focus its efforts on those who produce pornography depicting consenting adults. Such porn profiteers include Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., General Motors Corp., Time Warner, and several major hotel chains. The conservative Family Research Council endorsed the move, saying it gave them "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general." Some FBI agents were not so pleased. As one anonymous agent put it sarcastically: "I guess this means we've won the war on terror. We must not need any more resources for espionage."
KATRINA -- ALASKA REFUSES TO GIVE UP PORK TO HELP REBUILD GULF COAST: While Sen. John McCain has raised the idea of "charitable pork" -- lawmakers giving up pet projects to help Hurricane Katrina victims -- and Montana is considering giving up the $4 million it received in a federal bill for a downtown parking garage, Alaska Sen. Don Young is proud to remain a "little oinker." Young, chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has made sure that this year's $295 billion transportation bill is "stuffed like a turkey" with projects for Alaska, including $223 million for a bridge larger than the Brooklyn Bridge and almost as long as the Golden Gate, to connect a town with 8,900 people to a town with 50 people. Another "bridge to nowhere" will cost $200 million, a project which the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce opposes. But in response to calls for giving up these pieces of pork to help efforts for Katrina reconstruction, Young has said, "They can kiss my ear!" and that he has "raised enough money to give back to them voluntarily."
KATRINA - TARNISHED GOLDSTAR GETS BID: First, Halliburton cashed in on Katrina. Now it's the Texas firm GoldStar EM. GoldStar, an ambulance provider company based in Texas, recently faced serious trouble for "billing irregularities and poor ambulance response times." (According to an investigative article by the Houston Press, the company "maximized profits and growth at the expense of the injured.") The FBI raided the GoldStar in April in a Medicaid fraud investigation; the company is currently facing a $1.3 million tax lien from the IRS. That didn't stop the company from landing a lucrative $5.2 million federal contract to rent 50 ambulances to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The company will make $800 per day in pure profit for each of the 45 ambulances it provides.
HOMELAND SECURITY – NATIONAL GUARD FACES EQUIPMENT SHORTAGES: The top general in the National Guard charges a serious shortage of essential equipment hurt the Guard’s response to Hurricane Katrina. "We were underequipped," stated Lt. Gen. Steven Blum. "We don't need tanks and attack helicopters and artillery, but we must have state-of-the-art radios and communications." Today, "only 34 percent of the Guard's equipment is available for use in the USA…with the worst shortages in trucks, night-vision goggles, engineering equipment and communications gear." That left many Guardsmen patrolling the streets of New Orleans with obsolete, 30-year-old radios left over from the Vietnam War.
Wrap...
HOMELAND SECURITY -- BUSH CONTINUES TO NOMINATE UNQUALIFIED PEOPLE:
President Bush has nominated Julie Myers, whom the Washington Post described as "a lawyer with little immigration or customs experience," to head the troubled U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security. At her Senate hearing last week, Sen. George Voinovich said that her "résumé indicates she is not qualified for the job" and that he would like to speak with DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff "to ask him… why he thinks you’re qualified for the job." Myers does know people in all the right places. She was chief of staff to Chertoff in the Justice Department, associate under Kenneth W. Star, special assistant to Bush on personnel issues, recently married to Chertoff's current chief of staff John F. Wood, and is the niece of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers. Myers largest management experience comes from her time at Commerce, where she oversaw 170 employees and a $25 million budget; ICE has more than 20,000 employees and a budget of approximately $4 billion.
JUDICIARY -- GONZALEZ RECRUITS FBI PORN SQUAD: Taking his cues from former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzalez has decided to make the War on Porn "one of the top priorities" of the AG's office. In early August, the FBI's Washington Field Office sent around a job listing to recruit eight federal agents, a supervisor and support staff to take on "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography. The squad will focus its efforts on those who produce pornography depicting consenting adults. Such porn profiteers include Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., General Motors Corp., Time Warner, and several major hotel chains. The conservative Family Research Council endorsed the move, saying it gave them "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general." Some FBI agents were not so pleased. As one anonymous agent put it sarcastically: "I guess this means we've won the war on terror. We must not need any more resources for espionage."
KATRINA -- ALASKA REFUSES TO GIVE UP PORK TO HELP REBUILD GULF COAST: While Sen. John McCain has raised the idea of "charitable pork" -- lawmakers giving up pet projects to help Hurricane Katrina victims -- and Montana is considering giving up the $4 million it received in a federal bill for a downtown parking garage, Alaska Sen. Don Young is proud to remain a "little oinker." Young, chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has made sure that this year's $295 billion transportation bill is "stuffed like a turkey" with projects for Alaska, including $223 million for a bridge larger than the Brooklyn Bridge and almost as long as the Golden Gate, to connect a town with 8,900 people to a town with 50 people. Another "bridge to nowhere" will cost $200 million, a project which the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce opposes. But in response to calls for giving up these pieces of pork to help efforts for Katrina reconstruction, Young has said, "They can kiss my ear!" and that he has "raised enough money to give back to them voluntarily."
KATRINA - TARNISHED GOLDSTAR GETS BID: First, Halliburton cashed in on Katrina. Now it's the Texas firm GoldStar EM. GoldStar, an ambulance provider company based in Texas, recently faced serious trouble for "billing irregularities and poor ambulance response times." (According to an investigative article by the Houston Press, the company "maximized profits and growth at the expense of the injured.") The FBI raided the GoldStar in April in a Medicaid fraud investigation; the company is currently facing a $1.3 million tax lien from the IRS. That didn't stop the company from landing a lucrative $5.2 million federal contract to rent 50 ambulances to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The company will make $800 per day in pure profit for each of the 45 ambulances it provides.
HOMELAND SECURITY – NATIONAL GUARD FACES EQUIPMENT SHORTAGES: The top general in the National Guard charges a serious shortage of essential equipment hurt the Guard’s response to Hurricane Katrina. "We were underequipped," stated Lt. Gen. Steven Blum. "We don't need tanks and attack helicopters and artillery, but we must have state-of-the-art radios and communications." Today, "only 34 percent of the Guard's equipment is available for use in the USA…with the worst shortages in trucks, night-vision goggles, engineering equipment and communications gear." That left many Guardsmen patrolling the streets of New Orleans with obsolete, 30-year-old radios left over from the Vietnam War.
Wrap...
Monday, September 19, 2005
will they EVER get their shit together?!!!!
Tons of British aid to help Hurrican Katrina victioms to be Burned
Ryan Parry New York September 19
Mirror UK - HUNDREDS of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned.
US red tape is stopping it from reaching hungry evacuees.
Instead tons of the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption.
- By Chickadee in USA: Domestic Issues on Mon Sep 19th, 2005 at 01:58:20 PM PDT
And unless the bureaucratic mess is cleared up soon it could be sent for incineration.
One British aid worker last night called the move "sickening senselessness" and said furious colleagues were "spitting blood".
The food, which cost British taxpayers millions, is sitting idle in a huge warehouse after the Food and Drug Agency recalled it when it had already left to be distributed.
Scores of lorries headed back to a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dump it at an FDA incineration plant.
Wrap...
Ryan Parry New York September 19
Mirror UK - HUNDREDS of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned.
US red tape is stopping it from reaching hungry evacuees.
Instead tons of the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption.
- By Chickadee in USA: Domestic Issues on Mon Sep 19th, 2005 at 01:58:20 PM PDT
And unless the bureaucratic mess is cleared up soon it could be sent for incineration.
One British aid worker last night called the move "sickening senselessness" and said furious colleagues were "spitting blood".
The food, which cost British taxpayers millions, is sitting idle in a huge warehouse after the Food and Drug Agency recalled it when it had already left to be distributed.
Scores of lorries headed back to a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dump it at an FDA incineration plant.
Wrap...
NYPD attack Sheehan...
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2005/09/57261.html
By Pete Dolack
The New York City Police Department forcibly broke up this afternoon's rally for Cindy Sheehan, moving in as Cindy was speaking at about 3 p.m. inUnion Square.
The New York City Police Department forcibly broke up this afternoon's rally for Cindy Sheehan, moving in as Cindy was speaking at about 3 p.m. in UnionSquare. The rally had been underway for about an hour, and was about to conclude as Cindy spoke following several other speakers, including a few who are traveling with her on her caravan.
As Cindy was speaking, a large platoon of police massed behind from the interior of the park, then formed a circle behind her, the speakers' area and a few dozen people who were deployed in an arc behind her. Overall, about 200 people were in attendance, with the crowd steadily increasing in size as the rally progressed. As the police formed their arc just behind, the men and women immediately behind Cindy linked arms. A captain made a cutting motion at his throat, signalling he wanted no more free speech. He waited about 30 seconds, then the police moved in. They didn't dare arrest Cindy, but they immediately moved in and grabbed zool, the event's organizer and one of the main organizers of Camp Casey-NYC, pulling him away and arresting him.
I do not believe anyone else was arrested; at least I didn't see any other arrests. I was nearby, and there was no hesitation on the part of the police in specifically targetting zool. The police also took the microphone and sound system. The crowd shouted"Shame! Shame!" at the police and asked what they were so afraid of, but made no response.
There was a moderate press presence, even a bit of corporate media there, although the only television crew covering the rally was RTV from Russia. No warning of any kind was given, and this was a permitted rally. Other than the captain making his cut motion, 30 seconds before forcibly breaking up the rally, there was no warning, verbal or in any other fashion. The police had massed perhaps three or four minutes before moving in.
Until then, the rally had gone smoothly, starting just after 2 p.m. as scheduled. Cindy and the rest of the caravan arrived sometime after 2:30; the rest of the rally was comprised of speakers from the caravan. Many groups were in attendence besides Camp Casey-NYC, including Military Families Speak Out, Gold StarFamilies for Peace, the Troops Out Now Coalition, the No Police State Coalition and the Green Party, among others.
As several people confronted the police in the minutes following the arrest of zool and the stealing of the sound equipment, a woman from the caravan said they had done more than 100 events in 51 cities, and nothing like this had ever happened to them. There is no free speech in Crawford, Texas -- Camp Casey has been under attack there -- and there is no free speech in NewYork City. The police have attacked Camp Casey-NYC on at least two previous Mondays, have taken the camps's tents, confiscated banners and made arrests.This is merely the latest example of Bloomberg's contempt for opinions that challenge the authorities, particularly Republican Party authorities. And where are our supposed policital leaders? Nothing but silence.
Free zool now!Defend free speech in New York City!
Wrap....
By Pete Dolack
The New York City Police Department forcibly broke up this afternoon's rally for Cindy Sheehan, moving in as Cindy was speaking at about 3 p.m. inUnion Square.
The New York City Police Department forcibly broke up this afternoon's rally for Cindy Sheehan, moving in as Cindy was speaking at about 3 p.m. in UnionSquare. The rally had been underway for about an hour, and was about to conclude as Cindy spoke following several other speakers, including a few who are traveling with her on her caravan.
As Cindy was speaking, a large platoon of police massed behind from the interior of the park, then formed a circle behind her, the speakers' area and a few dozen people who were deployed in an arc behind her. Overall, about 200 people were in attendance, with the crowd steadily increasing in size as the rally progressed. As the police formed their arc just behind, the men and women immediately behind Cindy linked arms. A captain made a cutting motion at his throat, signalling he wanted no more free speech. He waited about 30 seconds, then the police moved in. They didn't dare arrest Cindy, but they immediately moved in and grabbed zool, the event's organizer and one of the main organizers of Camp Casey-NYC, pulling him away and arresting him.
I do not believe anyone else was arrested; at least I didn't see any other arrests. I was nearby, and there was no hesitation on the part of the police in specifically targetting zool. The police also took the microphone and sound system. The crowd shouted"Shame! Shame!" at the police and asked what they were so afraid of, but made no response.
There was a moderate press presence, even a bit of corporate media there, although the only television crew covering the rally was RTV from Russia. No warning of any kind was given, and this was a permitted rally. Other than the captain making his cut motion, 30 seconds before forcibly breaking up the rally, there was no warning, verbal or in any other fashion. The police had massed perhaps three or four minutes before moving in.
Until then, the rally had gone smoothly, starting just after 2 p.m. as scheduled. Cindy and the rest of the caravan arrived sometime after 2:30; the rest of the rally was comprised of speakers from the caravan. Many groups were in attendence besides Camp Casey-NYC, including Military Families Speak Out, Gold StarFamilies for Peace, the Troops Out Now Coalition, the No Police State Coalition and the Green Party, among others.
As several people confronted the police in the minutes following the arrest of zool and the stealing of the sound equipment, a woman from the caravan said they had done more than 100 events in 51 cities, and nothing like this had ever happened to them. There is no free speech in Crawford, Texas -- Camp Casey has been under attack there -- and there is no free speech in NewYork City. The police have attacked Camp Casey-NYC on at least two previous Mondays, have taken the camps's tents, confiscated banners and made arrests.This is merely the latest example of Bloomberg's contempt for opinions that challenge the authorities, particularly Republican Party authorities. And where are our supposed policital leaders? Nothing but silence.
Free zool now!Defend free speech in New York City!
Wrap....
Kerry has a few things to say too...
Senator John Kerry's Speech at Brown University
Remarks As Prepared for Delivery
Providence, RI - I want to thank you for what the Brown community has done to help and comfort the many victims of Hurricane Katrina. This horrifying disaster has shown Americans at their best -- and their government at its worst.
And that's what I've come to talk with you about today. The incompetence of Katrina's response is not reserved to a hurricane. There's an enormous gap between Americans' daily expectations and government's daily performance. And the gap is growing between the enduring strength of the American people -- their values, their spirit, their imagination, their ingenuity, and their willingness to serve and sacrifice -- and the shocking weakness of the American government in contending with our country's urgent challenges. On the Gulf Coast during the last two weeks, the depth and breadth of that gap has been exposed for all to see and we have to address it now before it is obscured again by hurricane force spin and deception.
Katrina stripped away any image of competence and exposed to all the true heart and nature of this administration. The truth is that for four and a half years, real life choices have been replaced by ideological agenda, substance replaced by spin, governance second place always to politics. Yes, they can run a good campaign -- I can attest to that -- but America needs more than a campaign. If 12 year-old Boy Scouts can be prepared, Americans have a right to expect the same from their 59 year-old President of the United States.
Katrina reminds us that too often the political contests of our time have been described like football games with color commentary: one team of consultants against another, red states against blue states, Democratic money against Republican money; a contest of height versus hair - sometimes. But the truth is democracy is not a game; we are living precious time each day in a different America than the one we can inhabit if we make different choices.
Today, more than ever, when the path taken last year and four years earlier takes us into a wilderness of missed opportunities -- we need to keep defining the critical choices over and over, offering a direction not taken but still open in the future.
I know the President went on national television last week and accepted responsibility for Washington's poor response to Katrina. That's admirable. And it's a first. As they say, the first step towards recovery is to get out of denial. But don't hold your breath hoping acceptance of responsibility will become a habit for this administration. On the other hand, if they are up to another "accountability moment" they ought to start by admitting one or two of the countless mistakes in conceiving, "selling", planning and executing their war of choice in Iraq.
I obviously don't expect that to happen. And indeed, there's every reason to believe the President finally acted on Katrina and admitted a mistake only because he was held accountable by the press, cornered by events, and compelled by the outrage of the American people, who with their own eyes could see a failure of leadership and its consequences. Natural and human calamity stripped away the spin machine, creating a rare accountability moment, not just for the Bush administration, but for all of us to take stock of the direction of our country and do what we can to reverse it. That's our job -- to turn this moment from a frenzied expression of guilt into a national reversal of direction. Some try to minimize the moment by labeling it a "blame game" -- but as I’ve said - this is no game and what is at stake is much larger than the incompetent and negligent response to Katrina.
This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed, and beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. It is about the betrayal of trust and abuse of power. And in all the often horrible and sometimes ennobling sights and sounds we've all witnessed over the last two weeks, there's another sound just under the surface: the steady clucking of Administration chickens coming home to roost.
We wouldn't be hearing that sound if the people in Washington running our government had cared to listen in the past.They didn't listen to the Army Corps of Engineers when they insisted the levees be reinforced.
They didn't listen to the countless experts who warned this exact disaster scenario would happen.They didn't listen to years of urgent pleading by Louisianans about the consequences of wetlands erosion in the region, which exposed New Orleans and surrounding parishes to ever-greater wind damage and flooding in a hurricane. They didn't listen when a disaster simulation just last year showed that hundreds of thousands of people would be trapped and have no way to evacuate New Orleans.
They didn't listen to those of us who have long argued that our insane dependence on oil as our principle energy source, and our refusal to invest in more efficient engines, left us one big supply disruption away from skyrocketing gas prices that would ravage family pocketbooks, stall our economy, bankrupt airlines, and leave us even more dependent on foreign countries with deep pockets of petroleum.
They didn't listen when Katrina approached the Gulf and every newspaper in America warned this could be "The Big One" that Louisianans had long dreaded. They didn't even abandon their vacations.
And the rush now to camouflage their misjudgments and inaction with money doesn’t mean they are suddenly listening. It's still politics as usual. The plan they’re designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right wing ideological experiments. They’re already talking about private school vouchers, abandonment of environmental regulations, abolition of wage standards, subsidies for big industries - and believe it or not yet another big round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us!
The administration is recycling all their failed policies and shipping them to Louisiana. After four years of ideological excess, these Washington Republicans have a bad hangover -- and they can't think of anything to offer the Gulf Coast but the hair of the dog that bit them.
And amazingly -- or perhaps not given who we’re dealing with -- this massive reconstruction project will be overseen not by a team of experienced city planners or developers, but according to the New York Times, by the Chief of Politics in the White House and Republican Party, none other than Karl Rove -- barring of course that he is indicted for "outing" an undercover CIA intelligence officer.
Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job - Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished” and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.
This is the Katrina administration. It has consistently squandered time, tax dollars, political capital, and even risked American lives on sideshow adventures: A war of choice in Iraq against someone who had nothing to do with 9/11; a full scale presidential assault on Social Security when everyone knows the real crisis is in health care - Medicare and Medicaid. And that's before you get to willful denial on global warming; avoidance on competitiveness; complicity in the loss and refusal of health care to millions.
Americans can and will help compensate for government's incompetence with millions of acts of individual enterprise and charity, as Katrina has shown. But that’s not enough. We must ask tough questions: Will this generosity and compassion last in the absence of strong leadership? Will this Administration only ask for sacrifice in a time of crisis? Has dishonesty in politics degraded our national character to the point that we feel our dues have been paid as citizens with a one-time donation to the Red Cross?
Today, let’s you and I acknowledge what’s really going on in this country. The truth is that this week, as a result of Katrina, many children languishing in shelters are getting vaccinations for the first time. Thousands of adults are seeing a doctor after going without a check-up for years. Illnesses lingering long before Katrina will be treated by a healthcare system that just weeks ago was indifferent, and will soon be indifferent again.
For the rest of the year this nation silently tolerates the injustice of 11 million children and over 30 million adults in desperate need of healthcare. We tolerate a chasm of race and class some would rather pretend does not exist. And ironically, right in the middle of this crisis the Administration quietly admitted that since they took office, six million of our fellow citizens have fallen into poverty. That’s over ten times the evacuated population of New Orleans. Their plight is no less tragic - no less worthy of our compassion and attention. We must demand something simple and humane: healthcare for all those in need - in all years at all times.
This is the real test of Katrina. Will we be satisfied to only do the immediate: care for the victims and rebuild the city? Or will we be inspired to tackle the incompetence that left us so unprepared, and the societal injustice that left so many of the least fortunate waiting and praying on those rooftops?
That’s the unmet challenge we have to face together. Katrina is the background of a new picture we must paint of America. For five years our nation's leaders have painted a picture of America where ignoring the poor has no consequences; no nations are catching up to us; and no pensions are destroyed. Every criticism is rendered unpatriotic. And if you say “War on Terror” enough times, Katrina never happens.
Well, Katrina did happen, and it washed away that coat of paint and revealed the true canvas of America with all its imperfections. Now, we must stop this Administration from again whitewashing the true state of our challenges. We have to paint our own picture - an honest picture with all the optimism we deserve - one that gives people a vision where no one is excluded or ignored. Where leaders are honest about the challenges we face as a nation, and never reserve compassion only for disasters.
Rarely has there been a moment more urgent for Americans to step up and define ourselves again. On the line is a fundamental choice. A choice between a view that says “you’re on your own,” “go it alone,” or “every man for himself.” Or a different view - a different philosophy - a different conviction of governance - a belief that says our great American challenge is one of shared endeavor and shared sacrifice.
Over the next weeks I will address some of these choices in detail - choices about national security, the war in Iraq, making our nation more competitive and committing to energy independence. But it boils down to this. I still believe America’s destiny is to become a living testament to what free human beings can accomplish by acting in unity. That’s easy to dismiss by those who seem to have forgotten we can do more together than just waging war.
But for those who still believe in the great tradition of Americans doing great things together, it’s time we started acting like it. We can never compete with the go-it- alone crowd in appeals to selfishness. We can’t afford to be pale imitations of the other side in playing the ‘what’s in it for me’ game. Instead, it’s time we put our appeals where our hearts are - asking the American people to make our country as strong, prosperous, and big-hearted as we know we can be - every day. It’s time we framed every question - every issue -- not in terms of what’s in it for ‘me,’ but what’s in it for all of us?
And when you ask that simple question - what’s in it for all of us? - the direction not taken in America could not be more clear or compelling.
Instead of allowing a few oil companies to drill their way to windfall profits, it means an America that understands we can’t drill our way to energy independence, we have to invent our way there together.
Instead of making a mockery of the words No Child Left Behind when China and India are graduating tens of thousands more engineers and PhDs than we are, it means an America where college education is affordable and accessible for every child willing to work for it.
Instead of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, it means an America that makes smart investments in your future like funding the science and research and development that will assure American technological leadership.
Instead of allowing lobbyists to rewrite our environmental laws, it means an America where lakes and rivers and streams are clean enough that when a family takes the kids fishing, it’s actually safe to eat the fish they catch.
Instead of letting a few ideologues get in the way of progress that can make us a stronger and healthier society, it means an America where the biology students here today will do the groundbreaking stem cell research tomorrow.
And instead of stubbornly disregarding intelligence, using force prematurely and shoving our allies aside, it means an America that restores its leadership in the world. An America that meets its responsibility of creating a world where the plagues of our time and future times - from terror to disease to poverty to weapons of mass destruction to the unknown - are overcome by allies united in common cause, and proud to follow American leadership.
That is the direction not taken but still open to us in the future if we answer that simple question - ‘what’s in it for all of us?’ It comes down to the fact that the job of government is to prepare for your future - not ignore it. It should prepare to solve problems - not create them.
This Administration and the Republicans who control Congress give in to special interests and rob future generations. Real leadership stands up to special interests and sets the course for future generations. And the fact is we do face serious challenges as a nation, and if we don’t address them now, we handicap your future. My generation risks failing its obligation of assuring you inherit a safer, stronger America. To turn this around, the greatest challenges must be the starting point. I hope Katrina gives us the courage to face them and the sense of urgency to beat them.
That’s why the next few months are such a critical time. You’ll read about the Katrina investigations and fact-finding missions. You’ll get constant updates on the progress rebuilding New Orleans and new funding for FEMA. Washington becomes a very efficient town once voters start paying attention.
But we can’t let political maneuvering around the current crisis distract people from the gathering, hidden crises - like energy, environment, poverty, healthcare and innovation - that present the greatest threats to our nation’s competitiveness and character. The effort to rebuild New Orleans cannot obscure the need to also rebuild our country.
So realistically, I’m sure you’re wondering: How do I change all this? What can I do? The answer is simple: you have to make your issues the voting issues of this nation. You’re not the first generation to face this challenge.
I remember when you couldn’t even mention environmental issues without a snicker. But then in the 70’s people got tired of seeing the Cuyahoga River catch on fire from all the chemicals. So one day millions of Americans marched. Politicians had no choice but to take notice. Twelve Congressmen were dubbed the Dirty Dozen, and soon after seven were kicked out of office. The floodgates were opened. We got the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water. We created the EPA. The quality of life improved because concerned citizens made their issues matter in elections.
You are citizens in the greatest democracy in the world. Moments like Katrina are so difficult - so painful - but they help you define your service to your fellow citizens. I’ll never forget as a teenager standing in a field in October of 1957 watching the first man made spacecraft streak across the night sky. The conquest, of course, was Soviet - and while not everyone got to see the unmanned craft pass overhead at 18,000 miles per hour that night - before long every American knew the name Sputnik. We knew we had been caught unprepared.
In the uncertain years thereafter, President Kennedy challenged Americans to act on that instinct. He said, "This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country...the question we have to decide as Americans," he said, is "are we doing enough today?"
Today, every American knows the name Katrina -- and once again we know our government was undeniably unprepared, even as Americans have shown their willingness to sacrifice to make up for it.
But in these uncertain weeks of Katrina's aftermath, we must ask ourselves not just whether a great country can be made greater -- the sacrifice and generosity of Americans these last weeks answered that question with a resounding yes.
No, our challenge is greater - it’s to speak out so loudly that Washington has no choice but to make choices worthy of this great country - choices worthy of the sacrifice of our neighbors in the Gulf Coast and our troops all around the world.
What's in it for all of us? Nothing less than the character of our country - and your future.
Wrap...
Remarks As Prepared for Delivery
Providence, RI - I want to thank you for what the Brown community has done to help and comfort the many victims of Hurricane Katrina. This horrifying disaster has shown Americans at their best -- and their government at its worst.
And that's what I've come to talk with you about today. The incompetence of Katrina's response is not reserved to a hurricane. There's an enormous gap between Americans' daily expectations and government's daily performance. And the gap is growing between the enduring strength of the American people -- their values, their spirit, their imagination, their ingenuity, and their willingness to serve and sacrifice -- and the shocking weakness of the American government in contending with our country's urgent challenges. On the Gulf Coast during the last two weeks, the depth and breadth of that gap has been exposed for all to see and we have to address it now before it is obscured again by hurricane force spin and deception.
Katrina stripped away any image of competence and exposed to all the true heart and nature of this administration. The truth is that for four and a half years, real life choices have been replaced by ideological agenda, substance replaced by spin, governance second place always to politics. Yes, they can run a good campaign -- I can attest to that -- but America needs more than a campaign. If 12 year-old Boy Scouts can be prepared, Americans have a right to expect the same from their 59 year-old President of the United States.
Katrina reminds us that too often the political contests of our time have been described like football games with color commentary: one team of consultants against another, red states against blue states, Democratic money against Republican money; a contest of height versus hair - sometimes. But the truth is democracy is not a game; we are living precious time each day in a different America than the one we can inhabit if we make different choices.
Today, more than ever, when the path taken last year and four years earlier takes us into a wilderness of missed opportunities -- we need to keep defining the critical choices over and over, offering a direction not taken but still open in the future.
I know the President went on national television last week and accepted responsibility for Washington's poor response to Katrina. That's admirable. And it's a first. As they say, the first step towards recovery is to get out of denial. But don't hold your breath hoping acceptance of responsibility will become a habit for this administration. On the other hand, if they are up to another "accountability moment" they ought to start by admitting one or two of the countless mistakes in conceiving, "selling", planning and executing their war of choice in Iraq.
I obviously don't expect that to happen. And indeed, there's every reason to believe the President finally acted on Katrina and admitted a mistake only because he was held accountable by the press, cornered by events, and compelled by the outrage of the American people, who with their own eyes could see a failure of leadership and its consequences. Natural and human calamity stripped away the spin machine, creating a rare accountability moment, not just for the Bush administration, but for all of us to take stock of the direction of our country and do what we can to reverse it. That's our job -- to turn this moment from a frenzied expression of guilt into a national reversal of direction. Some try to minimize the moment by labeling it a "blame game" -- but as I’ve said - this is no game and what is at stake is much larger than the incompetent and negligent response to Katrina.
This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed, and beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. It is about the betrayal of trust and abuse of power. And in all the often horrible and sometimes ennobling sights and sounds we've all witnessed over the last two weeks, there's another sound just under the surface: the steady clucking of Administration chickens coming home to roost.
We wouldn't be hearing that sound if the people in Washington running our government had cared to listen in the past.They didn't listen to the Army Corps of Engineers when they insisted the levees be reinforced.
They didn't listen to the countless experts who warned this exact disaster scenario would happen.They didn't listen to years of urgent pleading by Louisianans about the consequences of wetlands erosion in the region, which exposed New Orleans and surrounding parishes to ever-greater wind damage and flooding in a hurricane. They didn't listen when a disaster simulation just last year showed that hundreds of thousands of people would be trapped and have no way to evacuate New Orleans.
They didn't listen to those of us who have long argued that our insane dependence on oil as our principle energy source, and our refusal to invest in more efficient engines, left us one big supply disruption away from skyrocketing gas prices that would ravage family pocketbooks, stall our economy, bankrupt airlines, and leave us even more dependent on foreign countries with deep pockets of petroleum.
They didn't listen when Katrina approached the Gulf and every newspaper in America warned this could be "The Big One" that Louisianans had long dreaded. They didn't even abandon their vacations.
And the rush now to camouflage their misjudgments and inaction with money doesn’t mean they are suddenly listening. It's still politics as usual. The plan they’re designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right wing ideological experiments. They’re already talking about private school vouchers, abandonment of environmental regulations, abolition of wage standards, subsidies for big industries - and believe it or not yet another big round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us!
The administration is recycling all their failed policies and shipping them to Louisiana. After four years of ideological excess, these Washington Republicans have a bad hangover -- and they can't think of anything to offer the Gulf Coast but the hair of the dog that bit them.
And amazingly -- or perhaps not given who we’re dealing with -- this massive reconstruction project will be overseen not by a team of experienced city planners or developers, but according to the New York Times, by the Chief of Politics in the White House and Republican Party, none other than Karl Rove -- barring of course that he is indicted for "outing" an undercover CIA intelligence officer.
Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job - Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished” and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.
This is the Katrina administration. It has consistently squandered time, tax dollars, political capital, and even risked American lives on sideshow adventures: A war of choice in Iraq against someone who had nothing to do with 9/11; a full scale presidential assault on Social Security when everyone knows the real crisis is in health care - Medicare and Medicaid. And that's before you get to willful denial on global warming; avoidance on competitiveness; complicity in the loss and refusal of health care to millions.
Americans can and will help compensate for government's incompetence with millions of acts of individual enterprise and charity, as Katrina has shown. But that’s not enough. We must ask tough questions: Will this generosity and compassion last in the absence of strong leadership? Will this Administration only ask for sacrifice in a time of crisis? Has dishonesty in politics degraded our national character to the point that we feel our dues have been paid as citizens with a one-time donation to the Red Cross?
Today, let’s you and I acknowledge what’s really going on in this country. The truth is that this week, as a result of Katrina, many children languishing in shelters are getting vaccinations for the first time. Thousands of adults are seeing a doctor after going without a check-up for years. Illnesses lingering long before Katrina will be treated by a healthcare system that just weeks ago was indifferent, and will soon be indifferent again.
For the rest of the year this nation silently tolerates the injustice of 11 million children and over 30 million adults in desperate need of healthcare. We tolerate a chasm of race and class some would rather pretend does not exist. And ironically, right in the middle of this crisis the Administration quietly admitted that since they took office, six million of our fellow citizens have fallen into poverty. That’s over ten times the evacuated population of New Orleans. Their plight is no less tragic - no less worthy of our compassion and attention. We must demand something simple and humane: healthcare for all those in need - in all years at all times.
This is the real test of Katrina. Will we be satisfied to only do the immediate: care for the victims and rebuild the city? Or will we be inspired to tackle the incompetence that left us so unprepared, and the societal injustice that left so many of the least fortunate waiting and praying on those rooftops?
That’s the unmet challenge we have to face together. Katrina is the background of a new picture we must paint of America. For five years our nation's leaders have painted a picture of America where ignoring the poor has no consequences; no nations are catching up to us; and no pensions are destroyed. Every criticism is rendered unpatriotic. And if you say “War on Terror” enough times, Katrina never happens.
Well, Katrina did happen, and it washed away that coat of paint and revealed the true canvas of America with all its imperfections. Now, we must stop this Administration from again whitewashing the true state of our challenges. We have to paint our own picture - an honest picture with all the optimism we deserve - one that gives people a vision where no one is excluded or ignored. Where leaders are honest about the challenges we face as a nation, and never reserve compassion only for disasters.
Rarely has there been a moment more urgent for Americans to step up and define ourselves again. On the line is a fundamental choice. A choice between a view that says “you’re on your own,” “go it alone,” or “every man for himself.” Or a different view - a different philosophy - a different conviction of governance - a belief that says our great American challenge is one of shared endeavor and shared sacrifice.
Over the next weeks I will address some of these choices in detail - choices about national security, the war in Iraq, making our nation more competitive and committing to energy independence. But it boils down to this. I still believe America’s destiny is to become a living testament to what free human beings can accomplish by acting in unity. That’s easy to dismiss by those who seem to have forgotten we can do more together than just waging war.
But for those who still believe in the great tradition of Americans doing great things together, it’s time we started acting like it. We can never compete with the go-it- alone crowd in appeals to selfishness. We can’t afford to be pale imitations of the other side in playing the ‘what’s in it for me’ game. Instead, it’s time we put our appeals where our hearts are - asking the American people to make our country as strong, prosperous, and big-hearted as we know we can be - every day. It’s time we framed every question - every issue -- not in terms of what’s in it for ‘me,’ but what’s in it for all of us?
And when you ask that simple question - what’s in it for all of us? - the direction not taken in America could not be more clear or compelling.
Instead of allowing a few oil companies to drill their way to windfall profits, it means an America that understands we can’t drill our way to energy independence, we have to invent our way there together.
Instead of making a mockery of the words No Child Left Behind when China and India are graduating tens of thousands more engineers and PhDs than we are, it means an America where college education is affordable and accessible for every child willing to work for it.
Instead of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, it means an America that makes smart investments in your future like funding the science and research and development that will assure American technological leadership.
Instead of allowing lobbyists to rewrite our environmental laws, it means an America where lakes and rivers and streams are clean enough that when a family takes the kids fishing, it’s actually safe to eat the fish they catch.
Instead of letting a few ideologues get in the way of progress that can make us a stronger and healthier society, it means an America where the biology students here today will do the groundbreaking stem cell research tomorrow.
And instead of stubbornly disregarding intelligence, using force prematurely and shoving our allies aside, it means an America that restores its leadership in the world. An America that meets its responsibility of creating a world where the plagues of our time and future times - from terror to disease to poverty to weapons of mass destruction to the unknown - are overcome by allies united in common cause, and proud to follow American leadership.
That is the direction not taken but still open to us in the future if we answer that simple question - ‘what’s in it for all of us?’ It comes down to the fact that the job of government is to prepare for your future - not ignore it. It should prepare to solve problems - not create them.
This Administration and the Republicans who control Congress give in to special interests and rob future generations. Real leadership stands up to special interests and sets the course for future generations. And the fact is we do face serious challenges as a nation, and if we don’t address them now, we handicap your future. My generation risks failing its obligation of assuring you inherit a safer, stronger America. To turn this around, the greatest challenges must be the starting point. I hope Katrina gives us the courage to face them and the sense of urgency to beat them.
That’s why the next few months are such a critical time. You’ll read about the Katrina investigations and fact-finding missions. You’ll get constant updates on the progress rebuilding New Orleans and new funding for FEMA. Washington becomes a very efficient town once voters start paying attention.
But we can’t let political maneuvering around the current crisis distract people from the gathering, hidden crises - like energy, environment, poverty, healthcare and innovation - that present the greatest threats to our nation’s competitiveness and character. The effort to rebuild New Orleans cannot obscure the need to also rebuild our country.
So realistically, I’m sure you’re wondering: How do I change all this? What can I do? The answer is simple: you have to make your issues the voting issues of this nation. You’re not the first generation to face this challenge.
I remember when you couldn’t even mention environmental issues without a snicker. But then in the 70’s people got tired of seeing the Cuyahoga River catch on fire from all the chemicals. So one day millions of Americans marched. Politicians had no choice but to take notice. Twelve Congressmen were dubbed the Dirty Dozen, and soon after seven were kicked out of office. The floodgates were opened. We got the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water. We created the EPA. The quality of life improved because concerned citizens made their issues matter in elections.
You are citizens in the greatest democracy in the world. Moments like Katrina are so difficult - so painful - but they help you define your service to your fellow citizens. I’ll never forget as a teenager standing in a field in October of 1957 watching the first man made spacecraft streak across the night sky. The conquest, of course, was Soviet - and while not everyone got to see the unmanned craft pass overhead at 18,000 miles per hour that night - before long every American knew the name Sputnik. We knew we had been caught unprepared.
In the uncertain years thereafter, President Kennedy challenged Americans to act on that instinct. He said, "This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country...the question we have to decide as Americans," he said, is "are we doing enough today?"
Today, every American knows the name Katrina -- and once again we know our government was undeniably unprepared, even as Americans have shown their willingness to sacrifice to make up for it.
But in these uncertain weeks of Katrina's aftermath, we must ask ourselves not just whether a great country can be made greater -- the sacrifice and generosity of Americans these last weeks answered that question with a resounding yes.
No, our challenge is greater - it’s to speak out so loudly that Washington has no choice but to make choices worthy of this great country - choices worthy of the sacrifice of our neighbors in the Gulf Coast and our troops all around the world.
What's in it for all of us? Nothing less than the character of our country - and your future.
Wrap...
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Breaking News...N Korea...
September 19, 2005North Korea Pledges to Give Up Nuclear Weapons Program
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:45 a.m. ET
BEIJING (AP) -- North Korea pledged to drop its nuclear weapons development and rejoin international arms treaties in a unanimous agreement Monday at six-party arms talks. The agreement was the first-ever joint statement after more than two years of negotiations.
The North ''promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programs and to get back to the (Nuclear) Nonproliferation Treaty as soon as possible and to accept inspections'' by the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to the agreement by the six countries at the talks.
The North and the United States also pledged to mutually respect each other's sovereignty and right to peaceful coexistence in the agreement.
''This is the most important result since the six-party talks started more than two years ago,'' said Wu Dawei, China's vice foreign minister.
''All six parties emphasized that to realize the inspectable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the target of the six-party talks,'' the statement said.
The talks, which began in August 2003, include China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Wrap...
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:45 a.m. ET
BEIJING (AP) -- North Korea pledged to drop its nuclear weapons development and rejoin international arms treaties in a unanimous agreement Monday at six-party arms talks. The agreement was the first-ever joint statement after more than two years of negotiations.
The North ''promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programs and to get back to the (Nuclear) Nonproliferation Treaty as soon as possible and to accept inspections'' by the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to the agreement by the six countries at the talks.
The North and the United States also pledged to mutually respect each other's sovereignty and right to peaceful coexistence in the agreement.
''This is the most important result since the six-party talks started more than two years ago,'' said Wu Dawei, China's vice foreign minister.
''All six parties emphasized that to realize the inspectable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the target of the six-party talks,'' the statement said.
The talks, which began in August 2003, include China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Wrap...
The Big Dog growls....
From Agence France Presse via Drudge Report:
Clinton launches withering attack on Bush on Iraq, Katrina, budget
Sun Sep 18, 4:03 PM ET
Former US president Bill Clinton sharply criticised George W. Bush for the Iraq War and the handling of Hurricane Katrina, and voiced alarm at the swelling US budget deficit.
Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction."
The Iraq war diverted US attention from the war on terrorism "and undermined the support that we might have had," Bush said in an interview with an ABC's "This Week" programme.
Clinton said there had been a "heroic but so far unsuccessful" effort to put together an constitution that would be universally supported in Iraq.
The US strategy of trying to develop the Iraqi military and police so that they can cope without US support "I think is the best strategy. The problem is we may not have, in the short run, enough troops to do that," said Clinton.
On Hurricane Katrina, Clinton faulted the authorities' failure to evacuate New Orleans ahead of the storm's strike on August 29.
People with cars were able to heed the evacuation order, but many of those who were poor, disabled or elderly were left behind.
"If we really wanted to do it right, we would have had lots of buses lined up to take them out," Clinton.
He agreed that some responsibility for this lay with the local and state authorities, but pointed the finger, without naming him, at the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
FEMA boss Michael Brown quit in response to criticism of his handling of the Katrina disaster. He was viewed as a political appointee with no experience of disaster management or dealing with government officials.
"When James Lee Witt ran FEMA, because he had been both a local official and a federal official, he was always there early, and we always thought about that," Clinton said, referring to FEMA's head during his 1993-2001 presidency.
"But both of us came out of environments with a disproportionate number of poor people."
On the US budget, Clinton warned that the federal deficit may be coming untenable, driven by foreign wars, the post-hurricane recovery programme and tax cuts that benefitted just the richest one percent of the US population, himself included.
"What Americans need to understand is that ... every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts," he said.
"We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else."
Clinton added: "We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense."
Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse.
Wrap...
Clinton launches withering attack on Bush on Iraq, Katrina, budget
Sun Sep 18, 4:03 PM ET
Former US president Bill Clinton sharply criticised George W. Bush for the Iraq War and the handling of Hurricane Katrina, and voiced alarm at the swelling US budget deficit.
Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction."
The Iraq war diverted US attention from the war on terrorism "and undermined the support that we might have had," Bush said in an interview with an ABC's "This Week" programme.
Clinton said there had been a "heroic but so far unsuccessful" effort to put together an constitution that would be universally supported in Iraq.
The US strategy of trying to develop the Iraqi military and police so that they can cope without US support "I think is the best strategy. The problem is we may not have, in the short run, enough troops to do that," said Clinton.
On Hurricane Katrina, Clinton faulted the authorities' failure to evacuate New Orleans ahead of the storm's strike on August 29.
People with cars were able to heed the evacuation order, but many of those who were poor, disabled or elderly were left behind.
"If we really wanted to do it right, we would have had lots of buses lined up to take them out," Clinton.
He agreed that some responsibility for this lay with the local and state authorities, but pointed the finger, without naming him, at the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
FEMA boss Michael Brown quit in response to criticism of his handling of the Katrina disaster. He was viewed as a political appointee with no experience of disaster management or dealing with government officials.
"When James Lee Witt ran FEMA, because he had been both a local official and a federal official, he was always there early, and we always thought about that," Clinton said, referring to FEMA's head during his 1993-2001 presidency.
"But both of us came out of environments with a disproportionate number of poor people."
On the US budget, Clinton warned that the federal deficit may be coming untenable, driven by foreign wars, the post-hurricane recovery programme and tax cuts that benefitted just the richest one percent of the US population, himself included.
"What Americans need to understand is that ... every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts," he said.
"We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else."
Clinton added: "We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense."
Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse.
Wrap...
Now here's a new book....
...the premise of which just floored me. From: www.signonsandiego.com Take a look:
September 18, 2005
Prayers for the Assassin: A Novel of the Future
Robert Ferrigno (Scribner, $24.95)
Advertisement
The U.S. as an Islamic state – except for the breakaway Christian-nation South. From the author of "The Horse Latitudes."
Wrap....
September 18, 2005
Prayers for the Assassin: A Novel of the Future
Robert Ferrigno (Scribner, $24.95)
Advertisement
The U.S. as an Islamic state – except for the breakaway Christian-nation South. From the author of "The Horse Latitudes."
Wrap....
Confirm Gonzales the torturer? Never!
From www.politicalwire.com:
Reid Warns of Filibuster Over OwenRobert Novak reports Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "has informed" Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) "that Federal Appeals Court Judge Priscilla Owen will be filibustered if President Bush names her to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court."
Republican senators are divided on whether former Texas Supreme Court Justice Owen is vulnerable because she underwent a filibuster for the appellate seat and was confirmed under the compromise agreement. Frist is known to believe Owen can be confirmed in the face of a filibuster."
Republican Senate strategists believe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is the only possible Bush nominee to replace O'Connor who would not face a filibuster."The AP says President Bush "extended invitations Friday to key Senate leaders to meet at the White House next week to discuss" the O'Connor's spot on the bench.
Wrap...
Reid Warns of Filibuster Over OwenRobert Novak reports Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "has informed" Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) "that Federal Appeals Court Judge Priscilla Owen will be filibustered if President Bush names her to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court."
Republican senators are divided on whether former Texas Supreme Court Justice Owen is vulnerable because she underwent a filibuster for the appellate seat and was confirmed under the compromise agreement. Frist is known to believe Owen can be confirmed in the face of a filibuster."
Republican Senate strategists believe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is the only possible Bush nominee to replace O'Connor who would not face a filibuster."The AP says President Bush "extended invitations Friday to key Senate leaders to meet at the White House next week to discuss" the O'Connor's spot on the bench.
Wrap...
Hollywood knows media & $$$$$
From: LA Weekly...
They Shoot News Anchors, Don’t They?
Media moguls, not looters, killed Katrina’s truth tellers
by NIKKI FINKE
At first, only CNN appeared not to have thoroughly read the proverbial memo. It was the only network, on air and on its Web site, to compare and contrast the wildly contradictory statements by federal, state and local officials, sometimes within hours, but often within minutes of each other. It was CNN that posted the first full transcript of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s profanity- and passion-filled September 2 interview on local radio. It was also CNN that first exposed the gruesome nature of the conditions at the Superdome, at the convention center and in the hospital corridors. Its broadcasters were the first to keep a heart-wrenching online blog during Katrina. Even as late as September 6, political correspondent Ed Henry was the first to counter the claims by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that local officials and not the feds were to blame, by reporting that congressional Republicans, in a secret confab, were giving the Bush administration a big fat F.
Then the fix was in.On September 8, CNN anchorette Kyra Phillips was chewing into House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for “continuing to criticize the administration, and criticize the director of FEMA... I think it’s unfair that FEMA is just singled out. There are so many people responsible for what has happened in the state of Louisiana.”Instead of smiling through clenched teeth, the San Francisco Democrat bit back: “I’m sorry that you think it’s unfair. But I don’t . . . If you want to make a case for the White House, you should go on their payroll.”
By September 12, even the White House admitted that FEMA had been its own disaster area by pushing out its Arabian-horseman-turned-jackass head, Michael Brown. (Bush finally admitted on Tuesday that the buck was going to stop with him whether he liked it or not. “To the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” he said.) That same day, CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, announced the hiring of DeLay’s chief of staff as a top Washington lobbyist. This news, and its timing, prompted Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy to tell the L.A. Weekly: “Time Warner aligning itself with the right-wing DeLay machine should send shudders [down] CNN and HBO. Clearly, TW wants DeLay insurance so it won’t have to face cable-ownership safeguards, à la carte rules and broadband non-discrimination policies.”
For the first 120 hours after Hurricane Katrina, TV journalists were let off their leashes by their mogul owners, the result of a rare conjoining of flawless timing (summer’s biggest vacation week) and foulest tragedy (America’s worst natural disaster). All of a sudden, broadcasters narrated disturbing images of the poor, the minority, the aged, the sick and the dead, and discussed complex issues like poverty, race, class, infirmity and ecology that never make it on the air in this swift-boat/anti-gay-marriage/Michael Jackson media-sideshow era. So began a perfect storm of controversy.
Contrary to the scripture so often quoted in these areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, the TV newscasters knew the truth, but the truth did not set them free. Because once the crisis point had passed, most TV journalists went back to business-as-usual, their choke chains yanked by no-longer-inattentive parent-company bosses who, fearful of fallout from fingering Dubya for the FEMA fuckups, decided yet again to sacrifice community need for corporate greed. Too quickly, Katrina’s wake was spun into a web of deceit by the Bush administration, then disseminated by the Big Media boys’ club. (Karl Rove spent the post-hurricane weekend conjuring up ways to shift blame.)
If big media look like they’re propping up W’s presidency, they are. Because doing so is good for corporate coffers — in the form of government contracts, billion-dollar tax breaks, regulatory relaxations and security favors. At least that wily old codger Sumner Redstone, head of Viacom, parent company of CBS, has admitted what everyone already knows is true: that, while he personally may be a Democrat, “It happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one.”
When it comes to NBC’s parent company, GE’s No. 1 and No. 2, Jeffrey Immelt and Bob Wright, are avowed Republicans, as are Time Warner’s Dick Parsons (CNN) and News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch (Fox News Channel). (Forget that Murdoch’s No. 2, Peter Chernin, and Redstone’s co–No. 2, Les Moonves, are avowed Democrats — it’s meaningless because Murdoch and Redstone are the owners.)
Once upon a time, large corporations and their executives typically avoided any public discussion of their politics because partisan positions alienated customers and employees. But all of that changed after GE bought NBC in 1986. For seemingly eons, Immelt’s predecessor, the legendary Jack Welch, was a rabid right-winger who boasted openly about helping turn former liberals Chris Matthews and Tim Russert into neocons. (And Los Angeles Representative Henry Waxman is still waiting for GE to turn over those in-house tapes that would prove once and for all whether Welch, in 2000, ordered his network and cable stations to reverse course and call the election for Bush instead of Gore.)
As for Immelt, he publicly wishes his MSNBC could be a clone of FNC. Not surprising, since he let his network and cable news cheerlead the run-up to the Iraqi war without ever bothering to tell viewers GE had billions in contracts pending. More than half of Iraq’s power grid is GE technology. It was also under Immelt that GE installed a former adviser to W and Condi, who also served as press secretary to former first lady Barbara “Let ’em eat cake” Bush, as NBC Universal’s executive vice president of communications.
And let’s not forget that in October 2004, the Republican-controlled House and Senate and White House okayed a $137 billion corporate-tax bill — dubbed “No Lobbyist Left Behind” — that gave a huge $8 billion tax break to GE, which had bankrolled a record $17 million lobbying effort for it. (Meanwhile, in that same bill, House Republicans at the last minute stripped the movie studios of about $1 billion worth of tax credits because of Hollywood’s near-constant support of the Democratic Party and its candidates.)
Disney, parent company of ABC, has turned most of its extensive radio network and owned-and-operated stations into a 24/7 orgy of right-wing talk. (Sean Hannity is their poster boy.) Disney’s chief lobbyist, Preston Padden, is not only one of Washington, D.C.’s most infamous Republican lobbyists, but he used to work for Rupert Murdoch. Bush even pleaded just days after 9/11 for Americans to “go down to Disney World in Florida.” Meanwhile, Disney World has benefited from special security measures, including extra protection and a federally declared “no-flyover zone.” And let’s not forget that Michael Eisner pulled the distribution plug on Fahrenheit 9/11.
As for Rupert Murdoch, his News Corp. continues to defy a July 2001 FCC order requiring it to divest itself of a TV station in exchange for the agency’s approval to buy 10 TV stations from Chris-Craft Industries Inc. for $5.4 billion. What, Rupert worry? This W cheerleader can rest assured that the FCC will amend its prohibition on owning broadcast outlets and newspapers in the same market.
And lest anyone think there’s no connection between Murdoch’s business and editorial, several news organizations have noticed a détente between the New York Post and Senator Hillary Clinton because Rupert needs congressional Democrats on News Corp.’s side to oppose a change in the Nielsen ratings that could harm its TV stations.
Given all of the above, it comes as no surprise that, as early as that first Saturday, certainly by Sunday, inevitably by Monday, and no later than Tuesday, the post-Katrina images and issues were heavily weighted once again toward the power brokers and the predictable. The angry black guys were gone, and the lying white guys were back, hogging all the TV airtime. So many congressional Republicans were lined up on air to denounce the “blame-Bush game” — all the while decrying the Louisiana Democrats-in-charge — that it could have been conga night at the Chevy Chase Country Club.
And the attitudes of some TV personalities did a dramatic 180.
At MSNBC, right-winger Joe Scarborough had looked genuinely disgusted for a few days by the death and destruction that went unrelieved around him in Biloxi, even daring to demand answers from Bush on down. But Scarborough was back to his left-baiting self in short order. Inside FNC’s studio, conservative crank Sean Hannity had been rendered somewhat speechless by the tragedy. Soon, he was back in full voice, barking at Shep Smith (who was still staking out that I-10 bridge and sympathizing with its thousands of refugees) to keep “perspective.” The Mississippi-bred Smith boomed back in his baritone, “This is perspective!”
FNC’s Bill O’Reilly, who spent last month verbally abusing the grieving mother of a dead Iraqi war soldier, then whiled away the early days of Katrina’s aftermath giving lip to New Orleans’ looters and shooters, eventually blamed the hurricane’s poorest victims for creating their situations and for even expecting any government help at all.
On NBC, Meet the Press host Tim Russert cut off Jefferson Parish’s Andre Broussard during one of TV’s most moving and memorable outpourings of emotion. Instead, to fill up airtime, Russert let Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour praise Bush’s response ad nauseam without reading back Barbour’s sharp criticism of the feds days earlier.
On MSNBC, Hardball’s hard-brained Chris Matthews chided viewers and guests alike not to talk about who’s to blame — unless it was Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco or Mayor Nagin. Interesting how Barbour’s state was also dehydrated and starving, but nobody on TV news blamed him, since he just happens to be a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
And Don Imus skewered Dubya’s “disgusting performance” at the start of his MSNBC TV show (simulcast on the Viacom/CBS-owned Infinity radio network) and then turned over just 24 hours later, directing blame at Mayor Nagin.
Meanwhile, the TV news situation is about to get worse. Incoming Disney CEO Bob Iger has tried repeatedly to dismantle Nightline for a mindless celeb talk show. And CBS chairman Les Moonves wants to reinvent TV news to be more like entertainment shows — as if it’s not that way already — hosted by even prettier people.
Of course, no one could have anticipated that, to their immense credit, TV’s prettiest-boy anchors (CNN’s Anderson Cooper and FNC’s Shep Smith and NBC’s Brian Williams) would be boldly and tearfully relating horror whenever and wherever they found it, no matter if the fault lay with Mother Nature or President Dubya. But the real test of pathos vs. profit is still before us: whether the TV newscasters will spend the fresh reservoir of trust earned with the public to not only rattle Bush’s cage but also battle their own bosses. If not, it won’t be long before TV truth telling will be muzzled permanently.
Email at nikkifinke@deadlinehollywood.com
Wrap...
They Shoot News Anchors, Don’t They?
Media moguls, not looters, killed Katrina’s truth tellers
by NIKKI FINKE
At first, only CNN appeared not to have thoroughly read the proverbial memo. It was the only network, on air and on its Web site, to compare and contrast the wildly contradictory statements by federal, state and local officials, sometimes within hours, but often within minutes of each other. It was CNN that posted the first full transcript of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s profanity- and passion-filled September 2 interview on local radio. It was also CNN that first exposed the gruesome nature of the conditions at the Superdome, at the convention center and in the hospital corridors. Its broadcasters were the first to keep a heart-wrenching online blog during Katrina. Even as late as September 6, political correspondent Ed Henry was the first to counter the claims by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that local officials and not the feds were to blame, by reporting that congressional Republicans, in a secret confab, were giving the Bush administration a big fat F.
Then the fix was in.On September 8, CNN anchorette Kyra Phillips was chewing into House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for “continuing to criticize the administration, and criticize the director of FEMA... I think it’s unfair that FEMA is just singled out. There are so many people responsible for what has happened in the state of Louisiana.”Instead of smiling through clenched teeth, the San Francisco Democrat bit back: “I’m sorry that you think it’s unfair. But I don’t . . . If you want to make a case for the White House, you should go on their payroll.”
By September 12, even the White House admitted that FEMA had been its own disaster area by pushing out its Arabian-horseman-turned-jackass head, Michael Brown. (Bush finally admitted on Tuesday that the buck was going to stop with him whether he liked it or not. “To the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” he said.) That same day, CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, announced the hiring of DeLay’s chief of staff as a top Washington lobbyist. This news, and its timing, prompted Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy to tell the L.A. Weekly: “Time Warner aligning itself with the right-wing DeLay machine should send shudders [down] CNN and HBO. Clearly, TW wants DeLay insurance so it won’t have to face cable-ownership safeguards, à la carte rules and broadband non-discrimination policies.”
For the first 120 hours after Hurricane Katrina, TV journalists were let off their leashes by their mogul owners, the result of a rare conjoining of flawless timing (summer’s biggest vacation week) and foulest tragedy (America’s worst natural disaster). All of a sudden, broadcasters narrated disturbing images of the poor, the minority, the aged, the sick and the dead, and discussed complex issues like poverty, race, class, infirmity and ecology that never make it on the air in this swift-boat/anti-gay-marriage/Michael Jackson media-sideshow era. So began a perfect storm of controversy.
Contrary to the scripture so often quoted in these areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, the TV newscasters knew the truth, but the truth did not set them free. Because once the crisis point had passed, most TV journalists went back to business-as-usual, their choke chains yanked by no-longer-inattentive parent-company bosses who, fearful of fallout from fingering Dubya for the FEMA fuckups, decided yet again to sacrifice community need for corporate greed. Too quickly, Katrina’s wake was spun into a web of deceit by the Bush administration, then disseminated by the Big Media boys’ club. (Karl Rove spent the post-hurricane weekend conjuring up ways to shift blame.)
If big media look like they’re propping up W’s presidency, they are. Because doing so is good for corporate coffers — in the form of government contracts, billion-dollar tax breaks, regulatory relaxations and security favors. At least that wily old codger Sumner Redstone, head of Viacom, parent company of CBS, has admitted what everyone already knows is true: that, while he personally may be a Democrat, “It happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one.”
When it comes to NBC’s parent company, GE’s No. 1 and No. 2, Jeffrey Immelt and Bob Wright, are avowed Republicans, as are Time Warner’s Dick Parsons (CNN) and News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch (Fox News Channel). (Forget that Murdoch’s No. 2, Peter Chernin, and Redstone’s co–No. 2, Les Moonves, are avowed Democrats — it’s meaningless because Murdoch and Redstone are the owners.)
Once upon a time, large corporations and their executives typically avoided any public discussion of their politics because partisan positions alienated customers and employees. But all of that changed after GE bought NBC in 1986. For seemingly eons, Immelt’s predecessor, the legendary Jack Welch, was a rabid right-winger who boasted openly about helping turn former liberals Chris Matthews and Tim Russert into neocons. (And Los Angeles Representative Henry Waxman is still waiting for GE to turn over those in-house tapes that would prove once and for all whether Welch, in 2000, ordered his network and cable stations to reverse course and call the election for Bush instead of Gore.)
As for Immelt, he publicly wishes his MSNBC could be a clone of FNC. Not surprising, since he let his network and cable news cheerlead the run-up to the Iraqi war without ever bothering to tell viewers GE had billions in contracts pending. More than half of Iraq’s power grid is GE technology. It was also under Immelt that GE installed a former adviser to W and Condi, who also served as press secretary to former first lady Barbara “Let ’em eat cake” Bush, as NBC Universal’s executive vice president of communications.
And let’s not forget that in October 2004, the Republican-controlled House and Senate and White House okayed a $137 billion corporate-tax bill — dubbed “No Lobbyist Left Behind” — that gave a huge $8 billion tax break to GE, which had bankrolled a record $17 million lobbying effort for it. (Meanwhile, in that same bill, House Republicans at the last minute stripped the movie studios of about $1 billion worth of tax credits because of Hollywood’s near-constant support of the Democratic Party and its candidates.)
Disney, parent company of ABC, has turned most of its extensive radio network and owned-and-operated stations into a 24/7 orgy of right-wing talk. (Sean Hannity is their poster boy.) Disney’s chief lobbyist, Preston Padden, is not only one of Washington, D.C.’s most infamous Republican lobbyists, but he used to work for Rupert Murdoch. Bush even pleaded just days after 9/11 for Americans to “go down to Disney World in Florida.” Meanwhile, Disney World has benefited from special security measures, including extra protection and a federally declared “no-flyover zone.” And let’s not forget that Michael Eisner pulled the distribution plug on Fahrenheit 9/11.
As for Rupert Murdoch, his News Corp. continues to defy a July 2001 FCC order requiring it to divest itself of a TV station in exchange for the agency’s approval to buy 10 TV stations from Chris-Craft Industries Inc. for $5.4 billion. What, Rupert worry? This W cheerleader can rest assured that the FCC will amend its prohibition on owning broadcast outlets and newspapers in the same market.
And lest anyone think there’s no connection between Murdoch’s business and editorial, several news organizations have noticed a détente between the New York Post and Senator Hillary Clinton because Rupert needs congressional Democrats on News Corp.’s side to oppose a change in the Nielsen ratings that could harm its TV stations.
Given all of the above, it comes as no surprise that, as early as that first Saturday, certainly by Sunday, inevitably by Monday, and no later than Tuesday, the post-Katrina images and issues were heavily weighted once again toward the power brokers and the predictable. The angry black guys were gone, and the lying white guys were back, hogging all the TV airtime. So many congressional Republicans were lined up on air to denounce the “blame-Bush game” — all the while decrying the Louisiana Democrats-in-charge — that it could have been conga night at the Chevy Chase Country Club.
And the attitudes of some TV personalities did a dramatic 180.
At MSNBC, right-winger Joe Scarborough had looked genuinely disgusted for a few days by the death and destruction that went unrelieved around him in Biloxi, even daring to demand answers from Bush on down. But Scarborough was back to his left-baiting self in short order. Inside FNC’s studio, conservative crank Sean Hannity had been rendered somewhat speechless by the tragedy. Soon, he was back in full voice, barking at Shep Smith (who was still staking out that I-10 bridge and sympathizing with its thousands of refugees) to keep “perspective.” The Mississippi-bred Smith boomed back in his baritone, “This is perspective!”
FNC’s Bill O’Reilly, who spent last month verbally abusing the grieving mother of a dead Iraqi war soldier, then whiled away the early days of Katrina’s aftermath giving lip to New Orleans’ looters and shooters, eventually blamed the hurricane’s poorest victims for creating their situations and for even expecting any government help at all.
On NBC, Meet the Press host Tim Russert cut off Jefferson Parish’s Andre Broussard during one of TV’s most moving and memorable outpourings of emotion. Instead, to fill up airtime, Russert let Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour praise Bush’s response ad nauseam without reading back Barbour’s sharp criticism of the feds days earlier.
On MSNBC, Hardball’s hard-brained Chris Matthews chided viewers and guests alike not to talk about who’s to blame — unless it was Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco or Mayor Nagin. Interesting how Barbour’s state was also dehydrated and starving, but nobody on TV news blamed him, since he just happens to be a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
And Don Imus skewered Dubya’s “disgusting performance” at the start of his MSNBC TV show (simulcast on the Viacom/CBS-owned Infinity radio network) and then turned over just 24 hours later, directing blame at Mayor Nagin.
Meanwhile, the TV news situation is about to get worse. Incoming Disney CEO Bob Iger has tried repeatedly to dismantle Nightline for a mindless celeb talk show. And CBS chairman Les Moonves wants to reinvent TV news to be more like entertainment shows — as if it’s not that way already — hosted by even prettier people.
Of course, no one could have anticipated that, to their immense credit, TV’s prettiest-boy anchors (CNN’s Anderson Cooper and FNC’s Shep Smith and NBC’s Brian Williams) would be boldly and tearfully relating horror whenever and wherever they found it, no matter if the fault lay with Mother Nature or President Dubya. But the real test of pathos vs. profit is still before us: whether the TV newscasters will spend the fresh reservoir of trust earned with the public to not only rattle Bush’s cage but also battle their own bosses. If not, it won’t be long before TV truth telling will be muzzled permanently.
Email at nikkifinke@deadlinehollywood.com
Wrap...
Privatizing military's duties...
From Boston Globe via Washington Post via NY Times:
Shootings put security contractors under scrutiny in Iraq
Foreign workers firing on civilians, US officials say
By Jonathan Finer, Washington Post
September 18, 2005
ERBIL, Iraq -- The pop of a single rifle shot broke the relative calm of Ali Ismael's morning commute here in one of Iraq's safest cities.
Ismael, his older brother Bayez, and their driver had just pulled into traffic behind a convoy of four Chevrolet Suburbans, which police think belonged to an American security contractor stationed nearby. The backdoor of the last vehicle swung open, the brothers said in interviews, and a man wearing sunglasses and a tan flak jacket leaned out and leveled his rifle.
''I thought he was just trying to scare us, like they usually do, to keep us back. But then he fired," said Ismael, 20. His scalp is marked by a bald patch and a 4-inch purple scar from a bullet that grazed his head and left him bleeding in the back seat of his Toyota Land Cruiser.
''Everything is cloudy after that," he said.
A US investigation of the July 14 shooting concluded that no American contractors were responsible, a finding disputed by the Ismaels, other witnesses, local politicians, and the city's top security official, who termed it a coverup. No one has yet been held responsible.
Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of US, British, and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and US commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians.
Private security companies pervade Iraq's dusty highways, their distinctive sport-utility vehicles packed with men waving rifles to clear traffic in their path. Theirs are among the most dangerous jobs in the country: escorting convoys, guarding dignitaries, and protecting infrastructure from insurgent attacks. But their activities have drawn scrutiny here and in Washington after allegations of indiscriminate shootings and other recklessness have given rise to charges of inadequate oversight.
''These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force," said Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the Third Infantry Division, which is responsible for security in and around Baghdad. ''They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place."
No tally of such activity has been made public, and Aegis, a British security company that helps manage contractors in Baghdad and maintains an operations center in the capital's fortified Green Zone, declined to answer questions. In the rare instances when police reports are filed, the US military is often blamed for the actions of private companies, according to Adnan Asadi, the deputy interior minister responsible for overseeing security companies.
The shootings became so frequent in Baghdad this summer that Horst started keeping his own count. Between May and July, he said, he tracked at least a dozen shootings of civilians by contractors, in which six Iraqis were killed and three wounded. The bloodiest case occurred May 12 in the neighborhood of New Baghdad. A contractor opened fire on an approaching car, which then veered into a crowd. Two days after the shooting, American soldiers patrolling the same block were attacked with a roadside bomb.
On May 14, in another part of the city, private security guards working for the US Embassy shot and killed at least one Iraqi civilian while transporting diplomats from the Green Zone, according to an embassy official who spoke on condition that he not be named. Two security contractors were dismissed from their jobs over the shooting.
Employees of private security firms are immune from prosecution in Iraq, under an order adopted into law last year by Iraq's interim government. The most severe punishment that can be applied to them is revocation of their license and dismissal from their job, US officials said. Their heavy presence stems in large part from the Pentagon's attempts to keep troop numbers down by privatizing jobs that would once have been performed by American forces.
There are at least 36 foreign security companies -- most from the United States and Britain -- and 16 Iraqi firms registered to operate here, according to the Interior Ministry, and as many as 50 more are believed to have set up shop illegally. Their total workforce is estimated at 25,000; many are military veterans, though levels of experience vary. As of December, contracts to provide security for US government agencies and reconstruction firms in Iraq had surpassed $766 million, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
Johann R. Jones, director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, a trade organization representing such companies, known as PSCs, disputed Horst's characterization of their performance in an e-mail response.
''Whilst the behavior of a few PSCs is unhelpful, we have to also keep in mind that 'bad apples' are present in all organizations, including the MNF-I," wrote Jones, using the acronym for Multinational Forces-Iraq, the US-led military coalition here.
Security and other contractors working in Iraq have been frequent victims of violence. According to a Defense Department report to Congress last month, 166 contractors were killed and 1,005 wounded between May 1, 2003, and Oct. 28, 2004. The most publicized attack incident came on occurred March 31, 2004, when four employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, a North Carolina-based company, were killed and their bodies dragged through the volatile western city of Fallujah.
The US Embassy official said that he was ''extremely concerned" about shootings involving private security companies but that the vast majority of security contractors were highly professional. Of 122 shootings by contractors protecting embassy officials since July 2004, only three have resulted in disciplinary actions, according to US officials who monitor private security companies.
''Look, we're in a war zone," the official said. ''They are high targets. The insurgents know when they see SUVs rolling down the street. There are people trying to kill them all the time, and sometimes they have to respond."
Horst declined to provide the name of the contractors whose employees were involved in the 12 shootings he documented in the Baghdad area. But he left no doubt that he believed the May 12 shooting, in which three people were killed, led directly to the attack on his soldiers. ''Do you think that's an insurgent action? Hell, no," Horst said. ''That's someone paying us back because their people got killed. And we had absolutely nothing to do with it."
Asadi said Iraqi civilians nevertheless think private security guards are American soldiers. ''They have the same bodies, the same looks," he said. ''The only difference is the Humvees," vehicles used by the military but not by private firms.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Wrap...
Shootings put security contractors under scrutiny in Iraq
Foreign workers firing on civilians, US officials say
By Jonathan Finer, Washington Post
September 18, 2005
ERBIL, Iraq -- The pop of a single rifle shot broke the relative calm of Ali Ismael's morning commute here in one of Iraq's safest cities.
Ismael, his older brother Bayez, and their driver had just pulled into traffic behind a convoy of four Chevrolet Suburbans, which police think belonged to an American security contractor stationed nearby. The backdoor of the last vehicle swung open, the brothers said in interviews, and a man wearing sunglasses and a tan flak jacket leaned out and leveled his rifle.
''I thought he was just trying to scare us, like they usually do, to keep us back. But then he fired," said Ismael, 20. His scalp is marked by a bald patch and a 4-inch purple scar from a bullet that grazed his head and left him bleeding in the back seat of his Toyota Land Cruiser.
''Everything is cloudy after that," he said.
A US investigation of the July 14 shooting concluded that no American contractors were responsible, a finding disputed by the Ismaels, other witnesses, local politicians, and the city's top security official, who termed it a coverup. No one has yet been held responsible.
Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of US, British, and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and US commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians.
Private security companies pervade Iraq's dusty highways, their distinctive sport-utility vehicles packed with men waving rifles to clear traffic in their path. Theirs are among the most dangerous jobs in the country: escorting convoys, guarding dignitaries, and protecting infrastructure from insurgent attacks. But their activities have drawn scrutiny here and in Washington after allegations of indiscriminate shootings and other recklessness have given rise to charges of inadequate oversight.
''These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force," said Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the Third Infantry Division, which is responsible for security in and around Baghdad. ''They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place."
No tally of such activity has been made public, and Aegis, a British security company that helps manage contractors in Baghdad and maintains an operations center in the capital's fortified Green Zone, declined to answer questions. In the rare instances when police reports are filed, the US military is often blamed for the actions of private companies, according to Adnan Asadi, the deputy interior minister responsible for overseeing security companies.
The shootings became so frequent in Baghdad this summer that Horst started keeping his own count. Between May and July, he said, he tracked at least a dozen shootings of civilians by contractors, in which six Iraqis were killed and three wounded. The bloodiest case occurred May 12 in the neighborhood of New Baghdad. A contractor opened fire on an approaching car, which then veered into a crowd. Two days after the shooting, American soldiers patrolling the same block were attacked with a roadside bomb.
On May 14, in another part of the city, private security guards working for the US Embassy shot and killed at least one Iraqi civilian while transporting diplomats from the Green Zone, according to an embassy official who spoke on condition that he not be named. Two security contractors were dismissed from their jobs over the shooting.
Employees of private security firms are immune from prosecution in Iraq, under an order adopted into law last year by Iraq's interim government. The most severe punishment that can be applied to them is revocation of their license and dismissal from their job, US officials said. Their heavy presence stems in large part from the Pentagon's attempts to keep troop numbers down by privatizing jobs that would once have been performed by American forces.
There are at least 36 foreign security companies -- most from the United States and Britain -- and 16 Iraqi firms registered to operate here, according to the Interior Ministry, and as many as 50 more are believed to have set up shop illegally. Their total workforce is estimated at 25,000; many are military veterans, though levels of experience vary. As of December, contracts to provide security for US government agencies and reconstruction firms in Iraq had surpassed $766 million, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
Johann R. Jones, director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, a trade organization representing such companies, known as PSCs, disputed Horst's characterization of their performance in an e-mail response.
''Whilst the behavior of a few PSCs is unhelpful, we have to also keep in mind that 'bad apples' are present in all organizations, including the MNF-I," wrote Jones, using the acronym for Multinational Forces-Iraq, the US-led military coalition here.
Security and other contractors working in Iraq have been frequent victims of violence. According to a Defense Department report to Congress last month, 166 contractors were killed and 1,005 wounded between May 1, 2003, and Oct. 28, 2004. The most publicized attack incident came on occurred March 31, 2004, when four employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, a North Carolina-based company, were killed and their bodies dragged through the volatile western city of Fallujah.
The US Embassy official said that he was ''extremely concerned" about shootings involving private security companies but that the vast majority of security contractors were highly professional. Of 122 shootings by contractors protecting embassy officials since July 2004, only three have resulted in disciplinary actions, according to US officials who monitor private security companies.
''Look, we're in a war zone," the official said. ''They are high targets. The insurgents know when they see SUVs rolling down the street. There are people trying to kill them all the time, and sometimes they have to respond."
Horst declined to provide the name of the contractors whose employees were involved in the 12 shootings he documented in the Baghdad area. But he left no doubt that he believed the May 12 shooting, in which three people were killed, led directly to the attack on his soldiers. ''Do you think that's an insurgent action? Hell, no," Horst said. ''That's someone paying us back because their people got killed. And we had absolutely nothing to do with it."
Asadi said Iraqi civilians nevertheless think private security guards are American soldiers. ''They have the same bodies, the same looks," he said. ''The only difference is the Humvees," vehicles used by the military but not by private firms.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Wrap...
Saturday, September 17, 2005
I KNEW IT!!!
on Headline News just moments ago:
President Bush is spending the weekend at Camp David, his first break since cutting short his vacation at the end of August.
Wrap...
President Bush is spending the weekend at Camp David, his first break since cutting short his vacation at the end of August.
Wrap...
Pay the NO workers, BushCo!!!!
September 14, 2005
Congresswoman Susan Davis Moves to Protect Wages of Hurricane Katrina Victims
Davis Endorses Legislation to Block the Bush Administration from Cutting Wages
Washington, DC — With the total financial and human devastation of Hurricane Katrina still yet to be completely realized, Congresswoman Susan Davis moved to protect the wages of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Davis cosponsored legislation to rescind an order by President Bush that suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires federal contractors to pay employees the local prevailing wage for their job, for counties in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and even Florida.
"Talk about hitting someone when they're down," said Davis, a member of the House Education and Workforce Committee. "While millions of Americans are opening their hearts and their wallets to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Administration acts to undermine the ability for these victims to rebuild their lives. With criticism of racial and class insensitivity regarding the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, it's mind-boggling that the Administration would want to prevent workers from earning the prevailing wage."
The prevailing wage is the amount workers in a certain job classification, such as carpenters, union or non-union, typically make in that geographical area. The foundation behind the Davis-Bacon Act is that when the federal government spends billions of dollars of taxpayer money, that money should not be used to drive down workers’ wages.
A $29.8 million contract has already been awarded to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root for clean-up and repair work in the region. Suspension of Davis-Bacon will allow the company to avoid paying the prevailing wage for that work.
The prevailing wages in the Gulf Coast region are already low. In counties like Orleans, the prevailing wage for a mason tender working in heavy construction is only $7.00 per hour.
The Fair Wages for Hurricane Victims Act will reverse the order of the Bush Administration and reinstate Davis-Bacon for the counties affected by the hurricane.
Wrap...
Congresswoman Susan Davis Moves to Protect Wages of Hurricane Katrina Victims
Davis Endorses Legislation to Block the Bush Administration from Cutting Wages
Washington, DC — With the total financial and human devastation of Hurricane Katrina still yet to be completely realized, Congresswoman Susan Davis moved to protect the wages of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Davis cosponsored legislation to rescind an order by President Bush that suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires federal contractors to pay employees the local prevailing wage for their job, for counties in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and even Florida.
"Talk about hitting someone when they're down," said Davis, a member of the House Education and Workforce Committee. "While millions of Americans are opening their hearts and their wallets to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Administration acts to undermine the ability for these victims to rebuild their lives. With criticism of racial and class insensitivity regarding the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, it's mind-boggling that the Administration would want to prevent workers from earning the prevailing wage."
The prevailing wage is the amount workers in a certain job classification, such as carpenters, union or non-union, typically make in that geographical area. The foundation behind the Davis-Bacon Act is that when the federal government spends billions of dollars of taxpayer money, that money should not be used to drive down workers’ wages.
A $29.8 million contract has already been awarded to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root for clean-up and repair work in the region. Suspension of Davis-Bacon will allow the company to avoid paying the prevailing wage for that work.
The prevailing wages in the Gulf Coast region are already low. In counties like Orleans, the prevailing wage for a mason tender working in heavy construction is only $7.00 per hour.
The Fair Wages for Hurricane Victims Act will reverse the order of the Bush Administration and reinstate Davis-Bacon for the counties affected by the hurricane.
Wrap...
Danger! BushCo messin' with Posse Comitatus!
Military May Play Bigger Relief RoleSep 17 2:59 PM US/Eastern
By ROBERT BURNSAP Military Writer
WASHINGTON
President Bush's push to give the military a bigger role in responding to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina could lead to a loosening of legal limits on the use of federal troops on U.S. soil.
Pentagon officials are reviewing that possibility, and some in Congress agree it needs to be considered.
Bush did not define the wider role he envisions for the military. But in his speech to the nation from New Orleans on Thursday, he alluded to the unmatched ability of federal troops to provide supplies, equipment, communications, transportation and other assets the military lumps under the label of "logistics."
The president called the military "the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice."
At question, however, is how far to push the military role, which by law may not include actions that can be defined as law enforcement _ stopping traffic, searching people, seizing property or making arrests. That prohibition is spelled out in the Posse Comitatus Act of enacted after the Civil War mainly to prevent federal troops from supervising elections in former Confederate states.
Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said, "I believe the time has come that we reflect on the Posse Comitatus Act." He advocated giving the president and the secretary of defense "correct standby authorities" to manage disasters.
Presidents have long been reluctant to deploy U.S. troops domestically, leery of the image of federal troops patrolling in their own country or of embarrassing state and local officials.
The active-duty elements that Bush did send to Louisiana and Mississippi included some Army and Marine Corps helicopters and their crews, plus Navy ships. The main federal ground forces, led by troops of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., arrived late Saturday, five days after Katrina struck.
They helped with evacuations and performed search-and-rescue missions in flooded portions of New Orleans but did not join in law enforcement operations.
The federal troops were led by Lt. Gen. Russel Honore. The governors commanded their National Guard soldiers, sent from dozens of states.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is reviewing a wide range of possible changes in the way the military could be used in domestic emergencies, spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Friday. He said these included possible changes in the relationship between federal and state military authorities.
Under the existing relationship, a state's governor is chiefly responsible for disaster preparedness and response.
Governors can request assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. If federal armed forces are brought in to help, they do so in support of FEMA, through the U.S. Northern Command, which was established in 2002 as part of a military reorganization after the 9/11 attacks.
Di Rita said Rumsfeld has not made recommendations to Bush, but among the issues he is examining is the viability of the Posse Comitatus Act. Di Rita called it one of the "very archaic laws" from a different era in U.S. history that limits the Pentagon's flexibility in responding to 21st century domestic crises.
Another such law, Di Rita said, is the Civil War-era Insurrection Act, which Bush could have invoked to waive the law enforcement restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act. That would have enabled him to use either National Guard soldiers or active-duty troops _ or both _ to quell the looting and other lawlessness that broke out in New Orleans.
The Insurrection Act lets the president call troops into federal action inside the United States whenever "unlawful obstructions, combinations or assemblages _ or rebellion against the authority of the United States _ make it impracticable to enforce the laws" in any state.
The political problem in Katrina was that Bush would have had to impose federal command over the wishes of two governors _ Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana and Haley Barbour of Mississippi _ who made it clear they wanted to retain state control.
The last time the Insurrection Act was invoked was in 1992 when it was requested by California Gov. Pete Wilson after the outbreak of race riots in Los Angeles. President George H.W. Bush dispatched about 4,000 soldiers and Marines.
Di Rita cautioned against expecting quick answers to tough questions like whether Congress should define when to trigger the president's authority to send federal troops to take charge of an emergency, regardless of whether a governor agreed.
"Is there a way to define a threshold, or an anticipated threshold, above which a different set of relationships would kick in?" Di Rita asked. "That's a good question. It's only been two weeks, so don't expect us to have the answers. But those are the kinds of questions we need to be asking."
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.
Wrap...
By ROBERT BURNSAP Military Writer
WASHINGTON
President Bush's push to give the military a bigger role in responding to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina could lead to a loosening of legal limits on the use of federal troops on U.S. soil.
Pentagon officials are reviewing that possibility, and some in Congress agree it needs to be considered.
Bush did not define the wider role he envisions for the military. But in his speech to the nation from New Orleans on Thursday, he alluded to the unmatched ability of federal troops to provide supplies, equipment, communications, transportation and other assets the military lumps under the label of "logistics."
The president called the military "the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice."
At question, however, is how far to push the military role, which by law may not include actions that can be defined as law enforcement _ stopping traffic, searching people, seizing property or making arrests. That prohibition is spelled out in the Posse Comitatus Act of enacted after the Civil War mainly to prevent federal troops from supervising elections in former Confederate states.
Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said, "I believe the time has come that we reflect on the Posse Comitatus Act." He advocated giving the president and the secretary of defense "correct standby authorities" to manage disasters.
Presidents have long been reluctant to deploy U.S. troops domestically, leery of the image of federal troops patrolling in their own country or of embarrassing state and local officials.
The active-duty elements that Bush did send to Louisiana and Mississippi included some Army and Marine Corps helicopters and their crews, plus Navy ships. The main federal ground forces, led by troops of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., arrived late Saturday, five days after Katrina struck.
They helped with evacuations and performed search-and-rescue missions in flooded portions of New Orleans but did not join in law enforcement operations.
The federal troops were led by Lt. Gen. Russel Honore. The governors commanded their National Guard soldiers, sent from dozens of states.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is reviewing a wide range of possible changes in the way the military could be used in domestic emergencies, spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Friday. He said these included possible changes in the relationship between federal and state military authorities.
Under the existing relationship, a state's governor is chiefly responsible for disaster preparedness and response.
Governors can request assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. If federal armed forces are brought in to help, they do so in support of FEMA, through the U.S. Northern Command, which was established in 2002 as part of a military reorganization after the 9/11 attacks.
Di Rita said Rumsfeld has not made recommendations to Bush, but among the issues he is examining is the viability of the Posse Comitatus Act. Di Rita called it one of the "very archaic laws" from a different era in U.S. history that limits the Pentagon's flexibility in responding to 21st century domestic crises.
Another such law, Di Rita said, is the Civil War-era Insurrection Act, which Bush could have invoked to waive the law enforcement restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act. That would have enabled him to use either National Guard soldiers or active-duty troops _ or both _ to quell the looting and other lawlessness that broke out in New Orleans.
The Insurrection Act lets the president call troops into federal action inside the United States whenever "unlawful obstructions, combinations or assemblages _ or rebellion against the authority of the United States _ make it impracticable to enforce the laws" in any state.
The political problem in Katrina was that Bush would have had to impose federal command over the wishes of two governors _ Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana and Haley Barbour of Mississippi _ who made it clear they wanted to retain state control.
The last time the Insurrection Act was invoked was in 1992 when it was requested by California Gov. Pete Wilson after the outbreak of race riots in Los Angeles. President George H.W. Bush dispatched about 4,000 soldiers and Marines.
Di Rita cautioned against expecting quick answers to tough questions like whether Congress should define when to trigger the president's authority to send federal troops to take charge of an emergency, regardless of whether a governor agreed.
"Is there a way to define a threshold, or an anticipated threshold, above which a different set of relationships would kick in?" Di Rita asked. "That's a good question. It's only been two weeks, so don't expect us to have the answers. But those are the kinds of questions we need to be asking."
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.
Wrap...
Cindy Sheehan & the "noble cause"...
What Noble Cause?
By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Saturday 17 September 2005
It has been one month, one week, and 4 days since I sat in a ditch in Crawford, Texas. My request was very simple: I wanted to speak to the man who has sent over a million of our young people over to fight, kill, and die in a country that was absolutely no threat to the United States of America. I wanted to ask him: "What is the Noble Cause that you keep talking about?"
Well, we all know now that George Bush never came down the road to talk to me. Thank God!
Many people have been saying that I am the "spark," "catalyst," "face of the anti-war movement," etc. I beg to differ. George Bush and his arrogant advisers are the spark that lit the prairie fire of peace activism that has swept over America and the entire world. If he had met with me that fateful day in August it would not have been good for him (because I knew he was going to lie and I would have advertised that fact) but it would have had less of an impact on the peace movement if he had.
Upon reflection on the events of this past August, I have come up with two reasons why George could not meet with me: He is a coward and there is no Noble Cause. If George had as much courage and integrity in his entire body as Casey had in his pinky, he would have met with me. But, ironically, if George had that much courage and integrity he never would have preemptively invaded a practically defenseless country. His syncophantic cabinet and hangers-on are also incontrovertible evidence that he is a coward. No one had better dare disagree with him. How dare a mom from Vacaville, California, have the nerve to contradict the emperor of Prairie Chapel Road!!??
All of the "Noble Cause" reasons that George has variously given for the invasion and continued illegal occupation of a sovereign nation are also patently false and ridiculous. He has been claiming recently (since he admitted a long time ago that Iraq had no WMDs or links to 9/11) that this occupation of Iraq is spreading "freedom and democracy" in the Middle East.
Really? Does he have any idea that the constitution that the Iraqi governing body is working on is based on Sharia and that it undermines the freedoms of women? Does he realize that for over 50 years women had equal rights with men in Iraq? Does George realize (of course he does) that the puppet government the US put in place in Iraq is comprised of the very same people who encouraged the invasion to line their own pockets? What kind of freedom and democracy is this?
If George is so hell bent on freedom and democracy for Iraq, then why doesn't he practice it here in America? Up to 62 percent of Americans believe that what George has done in Iraq is a mistake and we should begin to bring our troops home. Well, George, 62 percent is a clear majority and you should begin to listen to the people who pay your salary.
He has also claimed that what we are doing in Iraq is "making America safer." Another statement that is easier to disprove than the "freedom and democracy" baloney. To disprove this little bit of deception, all we have to do is look at the Gulf States. Ask the people of New Orleans, especially, if they feel safer. By misappropriating all of our personnel, equipment and pouring billions of dollars into the sands of Iraq, George has made our country more vulnerable to attack by outside forces. Also, from the cold and callous statements of people like Michael Chertoff and George's own mama, the people of New Orleans seem to be "acceptable" collateral damage to the ruling elite of this country. It is my humble opinion that the only thing that will make America safer is to get George and his unfeeling and dangerously incompetent supporters out of our White House.
We all now know the reason that we are in Iraq. George told us so from a break he was taking from Crawford in San Diego on the same day that Katrina was hitting the Gulf States: it is for oil. It is so George, Dick, and their evil buddies can rape more profits from our children's flesh and blood.
This is not a Noble Cause - as a matter of fact, it is the most ignoble cause for any war that has ever been waged. We as Americans knew either in the front of our brains, or in the back of our consciousness, that this war was to feed the corporations. 15 brave young Americans have been killed so far this month while our attention has been focused, and rightfully so, on the Gulf States. Over 200 innocent and unfortunate Iraqis have been killed in this week alone. How much more blood are we as Americans going to allow George, Congress, and the corporations to spill before we demand an end to this war and an accounting for the lives that have been needlessly ruined?
It is also time to stop hemorrhaging money in Iraq. I witnessed the abject poverty and sense of abandoment the less fortunate people of New Orleans were living in even before the levees broke. It is time to start pumping hope back into our own communities. It is time to start taking care of Americans. How many millions of our tax dollars are we going to allow George, Congress and the corporations to misuse and waste in Iraq?
Not one more drop of blood. Not one more life. Not one more penny for killing.
If you love our country and want to see a change for the better, come to DC on the 24th of this month and stand up and be counted for peace. The entire world is counting on you.
Wrap...
By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Saturday 17 September 2005
It has been one month, one week, and 4 days since I sat in a ditch in Crawford, Texas. My request was very simple: I wanted to speak to the man who has sent over a million of our young people over to fight, kill, and die in a country that was absolutely no threat to the United States of America. I wanted to ask him: "What is the Noble Cause that you keep talking about?"
Well, we all know now that George Bush never came down the road to talk to me. Thank God!
Many people have been saying that I am the "spark," "catalyst," "face of the anti-war movement," etc. I beg to differ. George Bush and his arrogant advisers are the spark that lit the prairie fire of peace activism that has swept over America and the entire world. If he had met with me that fateful day in August it would not have been good for him (because I knew he was going to lie and I would have advertised that fact) but it would have had less of an impact on the peace movement if he had.
Upon reflection on the events of this past August, I have come up with two reasons why George could not meet with me: He is a coward and there is no Noble Cause. If George had as much courage and integrity in his entire body as Casey had in his pinky, he would have met with me. But, ironically, if George had that much courage and integrity he never would have preemptively invaded a practically defenseless country. His syncophantic cabinet and hangers-on are also incontrovertible evidence that he is a coward. No one had better dare disagree with him. How dare a mom from Vacaville, California, have the nerve to contradict the emperor of Prairie Chapel Road!!??
All of the "Noble Cause" reasons that George has variously given for the invasion and continued illegal occupation of a sovereign nation are also patently false and ridiculous. He has been claiming recently (since he admitted a long time ago that Iraq had no WMDs or links to 9/11) that this occupation of Iraq is spreading "freedom and democracy" in the Middle East.
Really? Does he have any idea that the constitution that the Iraqi governing body is working on is based on Sharia and that it undermines the freedoms of women? Does he realize that for over 50 years women had equal rights with men in Iraq? Does George realize (of course he does) that the puppet government the US put in place in Iraq is comprised of the very same people who encouraged the invasion to line their own pockets? What kind of freedom and democracy is this?
If George is so hell bent on freedom and democracy for Iraq, then why doesn't he practice it here in America? Up to 62 percent of Americans believe that what George has done in Iraq is a mistake and we should begin to bring our troops home. Well, George, 62 percent is a clear majority and you should begin to listen to the people who pay your salary.
He has also claimed that what we are doing in Iraq is "making America safer." Another statement that is easier to disprove than the "freedom and democracy" baloney. To disprove this little bit of deception, all we have to do is look at the Gulf States. Ask the people of New Orleans, especially, if they feel safer. By misappropriating all of our personnel, equipment and pouring billions of dollars into the sands of Iraq, George has made our country more vulnerable to attack by outside forces. Also, from the cold and callous statements of people like Michael Chertoff and George's own mama, the people of New Orleans seem to be "acceptable" collateral damage to the ruling elite of this country. It is my humble opinion that the only thing that will make America safer is to get George and his unfeeling and dangerously incompetent supporters out of our White House.
We all now know the reason that we are in Iraq. George told us so from a break he was taking from Crawford in San Diego on the same day that Katrina was hitting the Gulf States: it is for oil. It is so George, Dick, and their evil buddies can rape more profits from our children's flesh and blood.
This is not a Noble Cause - as a matter of fact, it is the most ignoble cause for any war that has ever been waged. We as Americans knew either in the front of our brains, or in the back of our consciousness, that this war was to feed the corporations. 15 brave young Americans have been killed so far this month while our attention has been focused, and rightfully so, on the Gulf States. Over 200 innocent and unfortunate Iraqis have been killed in this week alone. How much more blood are we as Americans going to allow George, Congress, and the corporations to spill before we demand an end to this war and an accounting for the lives that have been needlessly ruined?
It is also time to stop hemorrhaging money in Iraq. I witnessed the abject poverty and sense of abandoment the less fortunate people of New Orleans were living in even before the levees broke. It is time to start pumping hope back into our own communities. It is time to start taking care of Americans. How many millions of our tax dollars are we going to allow George, Congress and the corporations to misuse and waste in Iraq?
Not one more drop of blood. Not one more life. Not one more penny for killing.
If you love our country and want to see a change for the better, come to DC on the 24th of this month and stand up and be counted for peace. The entire world is counting on you.
Wrap...
The Galloway con...ugh!
GALLOWAY: DEADLY ANTI-ABORTION THREATS FROM REPUBLICAN'S FAVORITE "LEFTIST"
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Note: Palast and Cindy Sheehan will be speaking at the Operation Ceasefire concert sponsored by DC Anti-War Network and United for Peace and Justice -- all day and night at the Washington Monument.
by Greg Palast
During his debate with Salman Rushdie at the recent Edinburgh TV Festival, someone asked George Galloway if television should broadcast an adaptation of Rushdie's novel, "Satanic Verses." According to Rushdie, Galloway replied, "If you don't respect religion, you have to suffer the consequences."
Holy Jesus! This was, unmistakably, an endorsement of the death-sentence fatwa issued against Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Add this endorsement of killing for God to Galloway's notorious opposition in Parliament to a woman's right to choose abortion, and you get yourself a British Pat Robertson. What next? Will he be "saluting the courage, strength and indefatigability" of abortion clinic bombers, as he saluted Saddam?
The Honorable Member of Britain's House of Commons has become the new love-child of American progressives for his in-your-face accusations about our own government's mendacity in sending our troops to war in Iraq. I myself quoted Galloway with admiration.
But the man who saluted the "courage" of Saddam Hussein in 1994, who today can't and won't account for nearly a million dollars in income and expenditures for a charity he founded to buy medicine for Iraqi children is not, friends, the best choice as our anti-war spokesman.
Where did this guy come from? Who invited him here? The answer: US Senate REPUBLICANS.
As Cindy Sheehan was gathering public sympathy as the Gold Star mom against the killing in Iraq, the Republican party decided to import an easier target to pummel. So they brought over the "I-salute-your-courage, Saddam" religious fundamentalist crack-pot who can't tell us where the money went.
That's why the Republicans chose him for us. This gross cartoon from abroad whose "charity" is stuffed with loot from an Oil-for-Food profiteer is the image they prefer on TV to Cindy Sheehan whom they dare not confront.
Yes, Galloway was the punching bag that punched back, and for that we are appreciative. Now GO HOME, George.
We need to repudiate this guy -- before the warmongers do, with glee.
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to let Karl Rove or some sick GOP Senator pick my heroes for me.
Some well-meaning progressives have said that my exposing Galloway plays into the hands of the "other side." Friends, this isn't a World Cup match, with sides; it's a World War, with too many dead bodies piling up.
Galloway says, "I have religious beliefs and try to live by them. I have all my life been against abortion and against euthanasia."
Well, Mr. Galloway, you may live by your beliefs -- anti-choice, fatwas, Saddam's "courage" -- but too many are DYING by your beliefs.
I admit, I was suckered by Galloway. I was the first journalist in the UK to rush to his defense on television when he was accused of wrong-doing. I wanted to believe in him, but the hard facts condemn him -- and us, if we don't act true to our moral imperative.
Mr. Galloway told the Independent newspaper, "I'm not as Left-wing as you think." Indeed, he isn't.
Next Saturday, September 24, Cindy Sheehan and I will be speaking at the Operation Ceasefire gathering in Washington DC, sponsored by the DC Anti-War Network and United for Peace and Justice. Please join us.
Hopefully, our voices won't be drowned out by George Galloway's antics.
Wrap...
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Note: Palast and Cindy Sheehan will be speaking at the Operation Ceasefire concert sponsored by DC Anti-War Network and United for Peace and Justice -- all day and night at the Washington Monument.
by Greg Palast
During his debate with Salman Rushdie at the recent Edinburgh TV Festival, someone asked George Galloway if television should broadcast an adaptation of Rushdie's novel, "Satanic Verses." According to Rushdie, Galloway replied, "If you don't respect religion, you have to suffer the consequences."
Holy Jesus! This was, unmistakably, an endorsement of the death-sentence fatwa issued against Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Add this endorsement of killing for God to Galloway's notorious opposition in Parliament to a woman's right to choose abortion, and you get yourself a British Pat Robertson. What next? Will he be "saluting the courage, strength and indefatigability" of abortion clinic bombers, as he saluted Saddam?
The Honorable Member of Britain's House of Commons has become the new love-child of American progressives for his in-your-face accusations about our own government's mendacity in sending our troops to war in Iraq. I myself quoted Galloway with admiration.
But the man who saluted the "courage" of Saddam Hussein in 1994, who today can't and won't account for nearly a million dollars in income and expenditures for a charity he founded to buy medicine for Iraqi children is not, friends, the best choice as our anti-war spokesman.
Where did this guy come from? Who invited him here? The answer: US Senate REPUBLICANS.
As Cindy Sheehan was gathering public sympathy as the Gold Star mom against the killing in Iraq, the Republican party decided to import an easier target to pummel. So they brought over the "I-salute-your-courage, Saddam" religious fundamentalist crack-pot who can't tell us where the money went.
That's why the Republicans chose him for us. This gross cartoon from abroad whose "charity" is stuffed with loot from an Oil-for-Food profiteer is the image they prefer on TV to Cindy Sheehan whom they dare not confront.
Yes, Galloway was the punching bag that punched back, and for that we are appreciative. Now GO HOME, George.
We need to repudiate this guy -- before the warmongers do, with glee.
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to let Karl Rove or some sick GOP Senator pick my heroes for me.
Some well-meaning progressives have said that my exposing Galloway plays into the hands of the "other side." Friends, this isn't a World Cup match, with sides; it's a World War, with too many dead bodies piling up.
Galloway says, "I have religious beliefs and try to live by them. I have all my life been against abortion and against euthanasia."
Well, Mr. Galloway, you may live by your beliefs -- anti-choice, fatwas, Saddam's "courage" -- but too many are DYING by your beliefs.
I admit, I was suckered by Galloway. I was the first journalist in the UK to rush to his defense on television when he was accused of wrong-doing. I wanted to believe in him, but the hard facts condemn him -- and us, if we don't act true to our moral imperative.
Mr. Galloway told the Independent newspaper, "I'm not as Left-wing as you think." Indeed, he isn't.
Next Saturday, September 24, Cindy Sheehan and I will be speaking at the Operation Ceasefire gathering in Washington DC, sponsored by the DC Anti-War Network and United for Peace and Justice. Please join us.
Hopefully, our voices won't be drowned out by George Galloway's antics.
Wrap...
Friday, September 16, 2005
Dems: Read 'em and weep....
From www.politicalwire.com :
In a must-read Los Angeles Times piece, Glengarry Glen Ross author David Mamet argues that Democrats can learn an important lesson by playing cards.
"In poker, one must have courage: the courage to bet, to back one's convictions, one's intuitions, one's understanding. There can be no victory without courage. The successful player must be willing to wager on likelihoods. Should he wait for absolutely risk-free certainty, he will win nothing, regardless of the cards he is dealt."
"For example, take a player who has never acted with initiative -- he has never raised, merely called. Now, at the end of the evening, he is dealt a royal flush. The hand, per se, is unbeatable, but the passive player has never acted aggressively; his current bet (on the sure thing) will signal to the other players that his hand is unbeatable, and they will fold."His patient, passive quest for certainty has won nothing."
The Democrats, similarly, in their quest for a strategy that would alienate no voters, have given away the store, and they have given away the country."
Wrap...
In a must-read Los Angeles Times piece, Glengarry Glen Ross author David Mamet argues that Democrats can learn an important lesson by playing cards.
"In poker, one must have courage: the courage to bet, to back one's convictions, one's intuitions, one's understanding. There can be no victory without courage. The successful player must be willing to wager on likelihoods. Should he wait for absolutely risk-free certainty, he will win nothing, regardless of the cards he is dealt."
"For example, take a player who has never acted with initiative -- he has never raised, merely called. Now, at the end of the evening, he is dealt a royal flush. The hand, per se, is unbeatable, but the passive player has never acted aggressively; his current bet (on the sure thing) will signal to the other players that his hand is unbeatable, and they will fold."His patient, passive quest for certainty has won nothing."
The Democrats, similarly, in their quest for a strategy that would alienate no voters, have given away the store, and they have given away the country."
Wrap...
FEMA...both rigid and stupid...
September 17, 2005
Going (Down) by the Book
By JOHN TIERNEY
NEW ORLEANS
When President Bush spoke from Jackson Square on Thursday night, across the Mississippi River a few men sitting next to a trailer watched him on a television powered by a generator. They listened respectfully, but they were not exactly dazzled.
"Intentions and results are two different things," said one of them, Wayne Savoy, who knows something about results from his work at this makeshift command post of the Acadian Ambulance company. During the flood, it was a lonely island of competence.
The city's communications system was wiped out, but Acadian dispatchers kept working, thanks to a backup power system and a portable antenna rushed here the day after the hurricane. As stranded patients wondered what had happened to the city's medics and ambulances, Acadian medics filled in at the Superdome and evacuated thousands from six hospitals.
While Louisiana officials debated how to accept outside help, Acadian was directing rescues by helicopters from the military and other states. When the Federal Emergency Management Agency's paperwork slowed the evacuation of patients from the airport, Acadian's frustrated medics waited with empty helicopters.
The company sent in outside doctors and nurses to the airport, where patients were dying and medical care was in short supply. FEMA rejected the help because the doctors and nurses weren't certified members of a National Disaster Medical Team.
President Bush has promised to find out what went wrong and make sure the government has a better plan for the next disaster. But plans can do only so much. As the Acadian workers demonstrated, coping with a disaster requires the ability to improvise and break the rules - talents notably absent in most bureaucrats.
After Sept. 11, federal officials vowed to make sure that cities' communications systems would survive a disaster. Improving them was a priority of the new Homeland Security Department. But when a predictable disaster struck New Orleans, city officials couldn't talk to their rescue workers on the street and had a hard time even calling leaders in the state capital.
No government planners expected the only working radio network in New Orleans to be run by a private company, but Acadian had the flexibility to take on the job. It also had better equipment than city agencies - its chief executive, Richard Zuschlag, is a fanatic for state-of-the-art gear and backup systems.
When the phone system failed, his medics were ready with satellite phones. When the hurricane winds knocked over both of the company's antennas in the New Orleans area, Acadian quickly located a mobile antenna and communications trailer owned by Iberia, a rural parish west of New Orleans. The sheriff, fortunately, didn't ask FEMA for permission to move it to Acadian's command post, across the river from the city.
Thanks to their network, Acadian's dispatchers quickly learned before anyone else how bad the flooding was throughout New Orleans. Mr. Zuschlag tried alerting city and state officials, as Gardiner Harris reported in The New York Times. But the city and state communications systems were so bad that nothing got done.
So Acadian directed the evacuation of hospitals and dispatched help to local officials. Its medics improvised as they went along. Trees and light posts were cut down so helicopters could land. Medics commandeered three tractor-trailers to move patients out of a hospital. They packed newborns in cardboard boxes to squeeze more of them into the helicopter.
But when they tried to speed the evacuation of hundreds of patients at the New Orleans airport, the medics were no match for FEMA officials determined to get clearance from their supervisors in Baton Rouge.
"At one point I had 10 helicopters on the ground waiting to go," said Marc Creswell, an Acadian medic, "but FEMA kept stonewalling us with paperwork. Meanwhile, every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying."
Mr. Creswell said he had ferried in more than a dozen doctors and nurses to help at the airport, but they weren't allowed to work because they weren't certified. This was explained with a line Mr. Bush might keep in mind as he contemplates expanding Washington's role in the next disaster.
"When the doctors asked why they couldn't help these critically ill people lying there unattended," Mr. Creswell recalled, "the FEMA people kept saying, 'You're not federalized.' "
E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com
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Going (Down) by the Book
By JOHN TIERNEY
NEW ORLEANS
When President Bush spoke from Jackson Square on Thursday night, across the Mississippi River a few men sitting next to a trailer watched him on a television powered by a generator. They listened respectfully, but they were not exactly dazzled.
"Intentions and results are two different things," said one of them, Wayne Savoy, who knows something about results from his work at this makeshift command post of the Acadian Ambulance company. During the flood, it was a lonely island of competence.
The city's communications system was wiped out, but Acadian dispatchers kept working, thanks to a backup power system and a portable antenna rushed here the day after the hurricane. As stranded patients wondered what had happened to the city's medics and ambulances, Acadian medics filled in at the Superdome and evacuated thousands from six hospitals.
While Louisiana officials debated how to accept outside help, Acadian was directing rescues by helicopters from the military and other states. When the Federal Emergency Management Agency's paperwork slowed the evacuation of patients from the airport, Acadian's frustrated medics waited with empty helicopters.
The company sent in outside doctors and nurses to the airport, where patients were dying and medical care was in short supply. FEMA rejected the help because the doctors and nurses weren't certified members of a National Disaster Medical Team.
President Bush has promised to find out what went wrong and make sure the government has a better plan for the next disaster. But plans can do only so much. As the Acadian workers demonstrated, coping with a disaster requires the ability to improvise and break the rules - talents notably absent in most bureaucrats.
After Sept. 11, federal officials vowed to make sure that cities' communications systems would survive a disaster. Improving them was a priority of the new Homeland Security Department. But when a predictable disaster struck New Orleans, city officials couldn't talk to their rescue workers on the street and had a hard time even calling leaders in the state capital.
No government planners expected the only working radio network in New Orleans to be run by a private company, but Acadian had the flexibility to take on the job. It also had better equipment than city agencies - its chief executive, Richard Zuschlag, is a fanatic for state-of-the-art gear and backup systems.
When the phone system failed, his medics were ready with satellite phones. When the hurricane winds knocked over both of the company's antennas in the New Orleans area, Acadian quickly located a mobile antenna and communications trailer owned by Iberia, a rural parish west of New Orleans. The sheriff, fortunately, didn't ask FEMA for permission to move it to Acadian's command post, across the river from the city.
Thanks to their network, Acadian's dispatchers quickly learned before anyone else how bad the flooding was throughout New Orleans. Mr. Zuschlag tried alerting city and state officials, as Gardiner Harris reported in The New York Times. But the city and state communications systems were so bad that nothing got done.
So Acadian directed the evacuation of hospitals and dispatched help to local officials. Its medics improvised as they went along. Trees and light posts were cut down so helicopters could land. Medics commandeered three tractor-trailers to move patients out of a hospital. They packed newborns in cardboard boxes to squeeze more of them into the helicopter.
But when they tried to speed the evacuation of hundreds of patients at the New Orleans airport, the medics were no match for FEMA officials determined to get clearance from their supervisors in Baton Rouge.
"At one point I had 10 helicopters on the ground waiting to go," said Marc Creswell, an Acadian medic, "but FEMA kept stonewalling us with paperwork. Meanwhile, every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying."
Mr. Creswell said he had ferried in more than a dozen doctors and nurses to help at the airport, but they weren't allowed to work because they weren't certified. This was explained with a line Mr. Bush might keep in mind as he contemplates expanding Washington's role in the next disaster.
"When the doctors asked why they couldn't help these critically ill people lying there unattended," Mr. Creswell recalled, "the FEMA people kept saying, 'You're not federalized.' "
E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com
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DOD terms...gives me chills...
DOD DICTIONARY OF MILITARY TERMS
The Department of Defense has updated and substantially expandedits Dictionary of Military Terms.
The Dictionary is useful for students of military policy and also provides some striking adaptations of ordinary language to military needs."
Space," picking an example at random, is defined as "A medium like the land, sea, and air within which military activities shall be conducted to achieve US national security objectives."
See "Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and AssociatedTerms," Joint Publication 1-02, amended 31 August 2005 [746 pages,2 MB PDF file]:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp1_02.pdf
Wrap...
The Department of Defense has updated and substantially expandedits Dictionary of Military Terms.
The Dictionary is useful for students of military policy and also provides some striking adaptations of ordinary language to military needs."
Space," picking an example at random, is defined as "A medium like the land, sea, and air within which military activities shall be conducted to achieve US national security objectives."
See "Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and AssociatedTerms," Joint Publication 1-02, amended 31 August 2005 [746 pages,2 MB PDF file]:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp1_02.pdf
Wrap...
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