http://morialefeka.blogspot.com has questions that need answers on Guckert/Gannon:
"How is it that a gay prostitute with no press credentials or experience was given repeated passes to the White House Press Conference over a period of more than a year? And how is it that he was also given passes to enter the White House on more than thirty occasions when there wasn't even a Press Conference? Like, where was he? What was he doing? Who was he seeing? Who arranged for these occasions? And why?
Why did this potential scandal totally disappear from the MSM? Imagine what would have happened if this had occurred while Clinton was President. If you can't imagine it you are too stupid to exist. If it had occurred on Clinton's watch we would still be hearing about it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on every major news program there is. If you don't think so you are in abject denial (which seems to pretty much characterize all Bush/Cheney supporters).
*****************************
Click the link above to read the rest. I admit I'd forgotten about Guckert/Gannon once the Downing Street Minutes blew wide open.
Wrap...
Monday, June 13, 2005
Air America's Ed Schultz!!!
Go, Ed, Go!!!!
Radio vets purchase Ed Schultz; Liberal talk gains business cred;
By John Byrne
Two radio executives who made Clear Channel and Rush Limbaugh household are to announce today they have purchased The Ed Schultz show, America’s fastest-growing talk show in the country, Raw Story has learned.
Veteran radio execs Randy Michaels and Stu Krane purchased the show from Democracy Radio, a non-profit which helps seed progressive talk radio hosts. Michaels’ and Krane’s new company, P1 will now carry the show. The protracted sale has been in the works since March.
***********************
Hah!
Wrap...
Radio vets purchase Ed Schultz; Liberal talk gains business cred;
By John Byrne
Two radio executives who made Clear Channel and Rush Limbaugh household are to announce today they have purchased The Ed Schultz show, America’s fastest-growing talk show in the country, Raw Story has learned.
Veteran radio execs Randy Michaels and Stu Krane purchased the show from Democracy Radio, a non-profit which helps seed progressive talk radio hosts. Michaels’ and Krane’s new company, P1 will now carry the show. The protracted sale has been in the works since March.
***********************
Hah!
Wrap...
The best General evaluates:
Monday, June 13, 2005
At Manchester Democratic fundraiser Clark says Bush ruining military
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Sunday that the Bush administration's foreign policy is undermining the nation's support for its military.
Clark, who was a candidate for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, said the president's use of the armed forces has hurt recruitment efforts and eroded public support for the military."We have to make our legislators and president understand we believe in a volunteer force, and we expect him to have the leadership to guide our country in the right way in foreign affairs without wrecking the military institutions that keep us safe," Clark said while attending a fundraiser for Manchester Democrats.
He also accused the administration of committing soldiers in Iraq without proper planning and support."(Bush) used fear, the fear of the American people to take us into a war that was purely elective," Clark said.
Clark also voiced strong support for Democratic National Committee head Howard Dean, who has been criticized for comments attacking Republicans."We've got to protect our freedom and our liberty," Clark said. "I'm proud of Howard Dean. I'm proud of the Democratic party. And we're going to stand together as a party."
Clark has not said whether he will make another run for the White House in 2008, but he has said he has not ruled it out.
Wrap...
At Manchester Democratic fundraiser Clark says Bush ruining military
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Sunday that the Bush administration's foreign policy is undermining the nation's support for its military.
Clark, who was a candidate for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, said the president's use of the armed forces has hurt recruitment efforts and eroded public support for the military."We have to make our legislators and president understand we believe in a volunteer force, and we expect him to have the leadership to guide our country in the right way in foreign affairs without wrecking the military institutions that keep us safe," Clark said while attending a fundraiser for Manchester Democrats.
He also accused the administration of committing soldiers in Iraq without proper planning and support."(Bush) used fear, the fear of the American people to take us into a war that was purely elective," Clark said.
Clark also voiced strong support for Democratic National Committee head Howard Dean, who has been criticized for comments attacking Republicans."We've got to protect our freedom and our liberty," Clark said. "I'm proud of Howard Dean. I'm proud of the Democratic party. And we're going to stand together as a party."
Clark has not said whether he will make another run for the White House in 2008, but he has said he has not ruled it out.
Wrap...
Anybody surprised?
Not hardly:
The Sunday Times - World
June 12, 2005
Jackson jurors offered $1m for book of the trial
John Harlow, Los Angeles
JURORS in the Michael Jackson child abuse trial are being offered book and film deals that could be worth as much as $1m (£550,000) each.
After debating the complex case for 28 hours over six days they have gone home for the weekend and it could be days or even weeks before their verdicts are announced. Literary agents are already in contact with the jurors through their relatives.
A 79-year-old grandmother, so far known only as Juror Five, spoke of a desire to write about her experiences in the jury room almost as soon as she was selected four months ago. “She talked about going on the Oprah Winfrey Show,” said her granddaughter Traci Montgomery, a schoolteacher.
One Los Angeles literary agent said the families of at least four others had been offered a combined book, audio tape and TV movie deal.
“The first to produce the book could make $1m, especially if they convict Jackson,” he said. “And even if they clear him, the public will want to know why.”
The singer has been tried on 10 charges, including abusing a child, plying him with alcohol and plotting to hold his family captive.
Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said such offers were a sign of things to come. “We do not know if any jurors have engaged in misconduct by discussing the case with anybody outside the jury room, only that it’s a celebrity case and people will try to make money out of it,” he said.
In Britain, jurors are barred from revealing details of their deliberations. But in California they are obliged to remain silent for only 90 days after the verdict, and even that rule is not always enforced.
There has been speculation that prospective book deals could give some jurors an interest in dragging out proceedings: “One wonders whether this jury is pondering the evidence or their own book advances,” said one of more than 2,000 journalists and cameramen waiting near the courthouse.
OJ Simpson, the American football player, was cleared in less than four hours at his murder trial a decade ago. In a more recent high-profile case, Scott Peterson, a fertiliser salesman, was convicted of killing his wife and unborn child after three days and was sentenced to death.
The authorities are concerned about the reactions of hardcore Jackson fans if he is found guilty. Some supporters blame the media for their idol’s plight, although others have slipped away following evidence of Jackson’s fondness for pornography and secret drinking.
Police have confiscated sacks of stones and rocks stacked in nearby streets. “Some had attached cute little messages for the media,” said Danny R Macagni, the Santa Maria police chief.
Jackson, who spent the weekend at his Neverland ranch, 40 minutes from Santa Maria, is said by a spokesman to be confident of being cleared, although his financial woes continue to attract attention.
On Friday his lease on storage hangars at a Los Angeles airport expired and workers began moving out cars and furniture stored there for up to 20 years.
The vehicles included five Rolls-Royces and a white Chevrolet Blazer 4x4, which acquired notoriety after he lent it to the family of Gavin Arvizo, his current accuser.
The immediate fate of the vehicle remains unknown but, whether Jackson is found guilty or innocent, it is expected to be part of gigantic “house clearing sale” reportedly planned to repair his battered finances.
Wrap...
The Sunday Times - World
June 12, 2005
Jackson jurors offered $1m for book of the trial
John Harlow, Los Angeles
JURORS in the Michael Jackson child abuse trial are being offered book and film deals that could be worth as much as $1m (£550,000) each.
After debating the complex case for 28 hours over six days they have gone home for the weekend and it could be days or even weeks before their verdicts are announced. Literary agents are already in contact with the jurors through their relatives.
A 79-year-old grandmother, so far known only as Juror Five, spoke of a desire to write about her experiences in the jury room almost as soon as she was selected four months ago. “She talked about going on the Oprah Winfrey Show,” said her granddaughter Traci Montgomery, a schoolteacher.
One Los Angeles literary agent said the families of at least four others had been offered a combined book, audio tape and TV movie deal.
“The first to produce the book could make $1m, especially if they convict Jackson,” he said. “And even if they clear him, the public will want to know why.”
The singer has been tried on 10 charges, including abusing a child, plying him with alcohol and plotting to hold his family captive.
Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said such offers were a sign of things to come. “We do not know if any jurors have engaged in misconduct by discussing the case with anybody outside the jury room, only that it’s a celebrity case and people will try to make money out of it,” he said.
In Britain, jurors are barred from revealing details of their deliberations. But in California they are obliged to remain silent for only 90 days after the verdict, and even that rule is not always enforced.
There has been speculation that prospective book deals could give some jurors an interest in dragging out proceedings: “One wonders whether this jury is pondering the evidence or their own book advances,” said one of more than 2,000 journalists and cameramen waiting near the courthouse.
OJ Simpson, the American football player, was cleared in less than four hours at his murder trial a decade ago. In a more recent high-profile case, Scott Peterson, a fertiliser salesman, was convicted of killing his wife and unborn child after three days and was sentenced to death.
The authorities are concerned about the reactions of hardcore Jackson fans if he is found guilty. Some supporters blame the media for their idol’s plight, although others have slipped away following evidence of Jackson’s fondness for pornography and secret drinking.
Police have confiscated sacks of stones and rocks stacked in nearby streets. “Some had attached cute little messages for the media,” said Danny R Macagni, the Santa Maria police chief.
Jackson, who spent the weekend at his Neverland ranch, 40 minutes from Santa Maria, is said by a spokesman to be confident of being cleared, although his financial woes continue to attract attention.
On Friday his lease on storage hangars at a Los Angeles airport expired and workers began moving out cars and furniture stored there for up to 20 years.
The vehicles included five Rolls-Royces and a white Chevrolet Blazer 4x4, which acquired notoriety after he lent it to the family of Gavin Arvizo, his current accuser.
The immediate fate of the vehicle remains unknown but, whether Jackson is found guilty or innocent, it is expected to be part of gigantic “house clearing sale” reportedly planned to repair his battered finances.
Wrap...
Brits want us to know..and act!
Six new secret British documents have been leaked and are provided below. These were retyped from the originals to protect the source. Full Text http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9125.htm
Wrap...
Wrap...
Damn! Shoulda gone!
This just in from one of the long-time workshop leaders at the Southern California Writers Conference...this conference in Palm Springs:
"Sure missed you at the PS conference. Lots of excitement. Cricket can fill you in. Fires, earthquakes, heart attacks....
Otherwise we had a grand time."
************************
Blast! And I missed it all! That's all right. Next SCWC will be in LA. Won't go to that one either, but Feb 2007 it will be here in San Diego and that one I flat do not miss. Will hear all the gory details of Palm Springs tomorrow eve when the writers gather in Old Town. Hah!
"Sure missed you at the PS conference. Lots of excitement. Cricket can fill you in. Fires, earthquakes, heart attacks....
Otherwise we had a grand time."
************************
Blast! And I missed it all! That's all right. Next SCWC will be in LA. Won't go to that one either, but Feb 2007 it will be here in San Diego and that one I flat do not miss. Will hear all the gory details of Palm Springs tomorrow eve when the writers gather in Old Town. Hah!
NY Times reporter, Sanger...
Just amazing what happens when things are taken out of context. Depending, a reporter can make any phrase mean something else. It's a spin of a minor sort. Maybe minor. When it involves something like the Downing Street Minutes, then the purpose of that spin had better be examined. In this particular case it only makes the reporter look ignorant and/or flat out dishonest--in which case he becomes a propagandist and not an honest reporter. Sheesh!
NYT's Downing Street Dissembling
Between the New York Times' reticence to report on the Downing Street Memo and today's article by David Sanger, one has to wonder if the NYT is going beyond self-censorship and "fixing the facts" around its previous reporting.
David Sanger's article, Prewar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn't Made, published today, makes the claim that the newly released Cabinet office memo of July 21, 2002, profiled today on TomPaine.com by Ray McGovern (see, Downing Street II) clears the White House of allegations substantiated by the minutes of the subsequent cabinet meeting on July 23, 2002, in which both the chief of British intelligence and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw assert that Bush had already decided to remove Saddam Hussein by military force.
To do this, Sanger quotes this line, from the July 21 memo:
Although no political decisions have been taken, US military planners have drafted options for the US Government to undertake an invasion of Iraq.
Unfortunately, Sanger is quoting well out of context. "No political decisions have been taken" is directly referencing the type of military option and the time frame for war. It is not in any way contradicting the reporting from July 23rd that Sir Richard Dearlove, the chief of British intelligence (codenamed "C"):
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.
Or from Jack Straw:
The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin.
Sanger, it seems, has mistaken the operational-level decisions regarding how and when to invade with the strategic-level decision to remove Saddam Hussein. On that score, the July 23 memo is clear. By that time, Bush had already decided to invade Iraq.
...And to deceive the American people.
--Patrick Doherty Monday 12:58 PM
Wrap...
NYT's Downing Street Dissembling
Between the New York Times' reticence to report on the Downing Street Memo and today's article by David Sanger, one has to wonder if the NYT is going beyond self-censorship and "fixing the facts" around its previous reporting.
David Sanger's article, Prewar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn't Made, published today, makes the claim that the newly released Cabinet office memo of July 21, 2002, profiled today on TomPaine.com by Ray McGovern (see, Downing Street II) clears the White House of allegations substantiated by the minutes of the subsequent cabinet meeting on July 23, 2002, in which both the chief of British intelligence and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw assert that Bush had already decided to remove Saddam Hussein by military force.
To do this, Sanger quotes this line, from the July 21 memo:
Although no political decisions have been taken, US military planners have drafted options for the US Government to undertake an invasion of Iraq.
Unfortunately, Sanger is quoting well out of context. "No political decisions have been taken" is directly referencing the type of military option and the time frame for war. It is not in any way contradicting the reporting from July 23rd that Sir Richard Dearlove, the chief of British intelligence (codenamed "C"):
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.
Or from Jack Straw:
The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin.
Sanger, it seems, has mistaken the operational-level decisions regarding how and when to invade with the strategic-level decision to remove Saddam Hussein. On that score, the July 23 memo is clear. By that time, Bush had already decided to invade Iraq.
...And to deceive the American people.
--Patrick Doherty Monday 12:58 PM
Wrap...
The Investigative Reporters:
Russ Baker is one fine reporter, always has been, so when he talks we'd better listen:
Tomorrow's Woodwards And Bernsteins
Russ Baker
June 13, 2005
Investigative reporter and essayist Russ Baker (www.russbaker.com )is a longtime contributor to TomPaine.com. He is currently involved with launching a nonprofit organization dedicated to revitalizing investigative journalism. He can be reached at russ@russbaker.com.
Well, wasn’t that some excitement over the unmasking of Deep Throat? Besides resolving a long-standing mystery, the revelation came at an especially auspicious moment. Investigative journalism desperately needs a boost right about now.
With W. Mark Felt’s confession, we now know that Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were not making it up. They had a real, knowledgeable flesh-and-blood insider feeding them information about dark doings in the Republic that proved completely reliable, whatever the motives of the informant. They actually did hold covert meetings in underground parking structures and engage in all manner of classic derring-do. The goings-on came to define the very essence of investigative reporting. A generation of young journalists were thus inspired, and investigative reporting grew and thrived.
But that Golden Age is gone, and we need to figure out why, and what can be done to revive it.
To what extent has investigative reporting dried up? Today, many news organizations have disbanded their investigative units altogether. Others have turned investigative teams into “projects” units that tend more toward unmasking consumer scams, relatively narrow acts of wrongdoing, or perennial injustices than digging for revelations that affront our very notion of how democracy ought to function.
The absence of the latter type of reporting was even apparent at last weekend’s Investigative Reporters and Editors’ annual convention in Denver. The award for best reporting by a large newspaper went to The New York Times for a series exposing how the railroad industry, with government acquiescence, shirks its responsibility for fatal accidents, which rose to 369 at railroad crossings last year. This story, which also won the Pulitzer Prize, was extremely well done and deserving of recognition, as were stories about racial profiling, shoddy highway construction and more. But too few winning entries spotlight the uniquely dangerous violations of the public trust that define the current administration.
True, IRE did honor Ron Suskind for his book, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, and the Center for Public Integrity forOutsourcing the Pentagon, an exhaustive study of no-bid contracting. But Suskind is a solo reporter and the CPI is a nonprofit. Where are the news organizations? There is an immediate need for more resources devoted to exploring and exposing what may prove to be one of the most corrupt, dishonest administrations in American history. Far more important, there is a long-term need for the kind of rigorous journalistic oversight that is the handmaiden to democracy.
The obstacles to serious investigative reporting are many:
Financial: Today, with ownership of the media increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few corporations, everything is about generating larger and larger profit margins and better quarterly corporate reports. Putting a reporter on a six-month project with no guaranteed outcome is less “cost-effective” than having that person crank out a new article every day. Quality and quantity are often natural enemies.
Conflicting Interests : The large media corporations are often part of larger conglomerates with a strong interest in obscuring the most crucial revelations. Obviously NBC, a small unit within the huge military contractor GE, has a hard time doing stories about military contractors who dominate Washington decision-making, help promote unnecessary wars and waste a fortune in taxpayer dollars. Furthermore, the media corporations increasingly find themselves with pending business before the very same administration they ought to be giving fits to—such as when the FCC is considering changes in ownership rules that will benefit the company.
Intimidation: Years of criticism from the right-wing "noise machine" has made news organizations wary of tough, original reporting that could bring accusations of a liberal bias. In addition, this administration has masterfully played up mini-scandals about reporting techniques (including the "60 Minutes" use of improperly-authenticated documents about Bush’s National Guard service, and Newsweek’s reporting on allegations that U.S. interrogators threw copies of the Quran into the toilet.) These small tempests have served to distract the public from the larger questions about official wrongdoing: on the one hand Bush’s dereliction of military duty, and on the other the horrific mismanagement of prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan.
They’ve also intimidated news decision-makers. Tales of pulled punches and initiatives not pursued continue to leak out of this country’s newsrooms. And we’ve seen an unfortunate increase in news executives’ zeal for prematurely confessing error and professing eagerness for self-reform.
Against this backdrop, old-fashioned muckraking appears doomed unless concerned individuals and institutions take bold action.
Here are a few ideas:
1) Mount a public education effort to teach the public about the importance of investigative journalism. Stress the differences between public issue investigations and gossipy exposes—a difference the public seems increasingly unable to comprehend.
2) Protect whistleblowers so that those with the inside information can come forward without imperiling themselves, their families and their careers. Acknowledge the indispensability of anonymous sources (but only real Deep Throats, not “senior government officials” who use the cloak of anonymity to float material sanctioned by their bosses.)
3) Recognize that good journalism and high profits just aren’t a viable fit. Investigative journalism is too essential, too elemental to freedom and self-governance to be left to the vagaries of Wall Street.
4) Support efforts to acknowledge the crucial role of journalism in a free society by finding alternative ways of paying for it.
At a time when public funding of journalism is retrenching—witness the crisis at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—we will almost certainly need to ask foundations and visionary individuals of means to step up to the plate. Thus far, such largesse has been minimal. But it’s getting too late in the day to hold back investing in the truth. The time is now for a Herculean commitment.
*******************************
The above was published in Tom Paine online. It's very good that TP is not afraid of this administration and offers a forum wherein excellent reporters such as Russ Baker can speak. There really aren't all that many in Bushworld.
Wrap...
Tomorrow's Woodwards And Bernsteins
Russ Baker
June 13, 2005
Investigative reporter and essayist Russ Baker (www.russbaker.com )is a longtime contributor to TomPaine.com. He is currently involved with launching a nonprofit organization dedicated to revitalizing investigative journalism. He can be reached at russ@russbaker.com.
Well, wasn’t that some excitement over the unmasking of Deep Throat? Besides resolving a long-standing mystery, the revelation came at an especially auspicious moment. Investigative journalism desperately needs a boost right about now.
With W. Mark Felt’s confession, we now know that Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were not making it up. They had a real, knowledgeable flesh-and-blood insider feeding them information about dark doings in the Republic that proved completely reliable, whatever the motives of the informant. They actually did hold covert meetings in underground parking structures and engage in all manner of classic derring-do. The goings-on came to define the very essence of investigative reporting. A generation of young journalists were thus inspired, and investigative reporting grew and thrived.
But that Golden Age is gone, and we need to figure out why, and what can be done to revive it.
To what extent has investigative reporting dried up? Today, many news organizations have disbanded their investigative units altogether. Others have turned investigative teams into “projects” units that tend more toward unmasking consumer scams, relatively narrow acts of wrongdoing, or perennial injustices than digging for revelations that affront our very notion of how democracy ought to function.
The absence of the latter type of reporting was even apparent at last weekend’s Investigative Reporters and Editors’ annual convention in Denver. The award for best reporting by a large newspaper went to The New York Times for a series exposing how the railroad industry, with government acquiescence, shirks its responsibility for fatal accidents, which rose to 369 at railroad crossings last year. This story, which also won the Pulitzer Prize, was extremely well done and deserving of recognition, as were stories about racial profiling, shoddy highway construction and more. But too few winning entries spotlight the uniquely dangerous violations of the public trust that define the current administration.
True, IRE did honor Ron Suskind for his book, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, and the Center for Public Integrity forOutsourcing the Pentagon, an exhaustive study of no-bid contracting. But Suskind is a solo reporter and the CPI is a nonprofit. Where are the news organizations? There is an immediate need for more resources devoted to exploring and exposing what may prove to be one of the most corrupt, dishonest administrations in American history. Far more important, there is a long-term need for the kind of rigorous journalistic oversight that is the handmaiden to democracy.
The obstacles to serious investigative reporting are many:
Financial: Today, with ownership of the media increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few corporations, everything is about generating larger and larger profit margins and better quarterly corporate reports. Putting a reporter on a six-month project with no guaranteed outcome is less “cost-effective” than having that person crank out a new article every day. Quality and quantity are often natural enemies.
Conflicting Interests : The large media corporations are often part of larger conglomerates with a strong interest in obscuring the most crucial revelations. Obviously NBC, a small unit within the huge military contractor GE, has a hard time doing stories about military contractors who dominate Washington decision-making, help promote unnecessary wars and waste a fortune in taxpayer dollars. Furthermore, the media corporations increasingly find themselves with pending business before the very same administration they ought to be giving fits to—such as when the FCC is considering changes in ownership rules that will benefit the company.
Intimidation: Years of criticism from the right-wing "noise machine" has made news organizations wary of tough, original reporting that could bring accusations of a liberal bias. In addition, this administration has masterfully played up mini-scandals about reporting techniques (including the "60 Minutes" use of improperly-authenticated documents about Bush’s National Guard service, and Newsweek’s reporting on allegations that U.S. interrogators threw copies of the Quran into the toilet.) These small tempests have served to distract the public from the larger questions about official wrongdoing: on the one hand Bush’s dereliction of military duty, and on the other the horrific mismanagement of prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan.
They’ve also intimidated news decision-makers. Tales of pulled punches and initiatives not pursued continue to leak out of this country’s newsrooms. And we’ve seen an unfortunate increase in news executives’ zeal for prematurely confessing error and professing eagerness for self-reform.
Against this backdrop, old-fashioned muckraking appears doomed unless concerned individuals and institutions take bold action.
Here are a few ideas:
1) Mount a public education effort to teach the public about the importance of investigative journalism. Stress the differences between public issue investigations and gossipy exposes—a difference the public seems increasingly unable to comprehend.
2) Protect whistleblowers so that those with the inside information can come forward without imperiling themselves, their families and their careers. Acknowledge the indispensability of anonymous sources (but only real Deep Throats, not “senior government officials” who use the cloak of anonymity to float material sanctioned by their bosses.)
3) Recognize that good journalism and high profits just aren’t a viable fit. Investigative journalism is too essential, too elemental to freedom and self-governance to be left to the vagaries of Wall Street.
4) Support efforts to acknowledge the crucial role of journalism in a free society by finding alternative ways of paying for it.
At a time when public funding of journalism is retrenching—witness the crisis at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—we will almost certainly need to ask foundations and visionary individuals of means to step up to the plate. Thus far, such largesse has been minimal. But it’s getting too late in the day to hold back investing in the truth. The time is now for a Herculean commitment.
*******************************
The above was published in Tom Paine online. It's very good that TP is not afraid of this administration and offers a forum wherein excellent reporters such as Russ Baker can speak. There really aren't all that many in Bushworld.
Wrap...
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Bush Terror: Cookin' the numbers:
There's a new nonfiction book just out. The topic is bullshit. And that's what BushCo continues to try and feed us. Lots of it, and continually. Always doing his best to "catapult the propaganda". And he's been doing pretty well...until a couple of Washington Post reporters began to investigate. Just look at this:
Go to Original
In Terror Cases, Few Convictions
By Dan Eggen and Julie Tate
The Washington Post
Sunday 12 June 2005
US often depends on lesser charges.
First of Two Parts
On Thursday, President Bush stepped to a lectern at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy in Columbus to urge renewal of the USA Patriot Act and to boast of the government's success in prosecuting terrorists.
Flanked by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush said that "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."
Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John D. Ashcroft, to characterize the government's efforts against terrorism.
But the numbers are misleading at best.
An analysis of the Justice Department's list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people - not 200 - have been convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security....
****************************
Scroll up and click on the link to read the rest of the first part of this 2-part article. BushCo doesn't put them in camps...he puts them in jail or deports them. The bullshit just continues to stack and stack and stack. This administration is completely unable to tell the truth...and makes little attempt to bother.
Wrap...
Go to Original
In Terror Cases, Few Convictions
By Dan Eggen and Julie Tate
The Washington Post
Sunday 12 June 2005
US often depends on lesser charges.
First of Two Parts
On Thursday, President Bush stepped to a lectern at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy in Columbus to urge renewal of the USA Patriot Act and to boast of the government's success in prosecuting terrorists.
Flanked by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush said that "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."
Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John D. Ashcroft, to characterize the government's efforts against terrorism.
But the numbers are misleading at best.
An analysis of the Justice Department's list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people - not 200 - have been convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security....
****************************
Scroll up and click on the link to read the rest of the first part of this 2-part article. BushCo doesn't put them in camps...he puts them in jail or deports them. The bullshit just continues to stack and stack and stack. This administration is completely unable to tell the truth...and makes little attempt to bother.
Wrap...
DSMemo-LA Times Kinsley:
It seems that Michael Kinsley takes a somewhat more cynical view than those of us who believe that the Downing Street Memo...which isn't just a memo but the MINUTES of the meeting (a distinction he fails to make) is indeed proof that will stand up in court of BushCo's plans, proof he's a bare-faced liar not only to the citizens of this nation but to the Congress of the United States. Lying to Congress is flat out unconstitutional...and impeachable. As in Watergate, a REAL Congressional investigation of this matter will indeed put members of this administration just where they belong: in jail.
June 12, 2005
latimes.com :
Opinion :
Commentary
Michael Kinsley:
The Left Gets a Memo
After about the 200th e-mail from a stranger demanding that I cease my personal cover-up of something called the Downing Street Memo, I decided to read it. (By mentioning 200 e-mails, I do not intend to brag. I'm sure Tom Friedman got many more.) It's all over the blogosphere and Air America, the left-wing talk-radio network: This is the smoking gun of the Iraq war. It is proof positive that President Bush was determined to invade Iraq a year before he did so. The whole "weapons of mass destruction" concern was phony from the start, and the drama about inspections was just kabuki: going through the motions.Although it is flattering to be thought personally responsible for allowing a proven war criminal to remain in office, in the end I don't buy the fuss. Nevertheless, I am enjoying it, as an encouraging sign of the left's revival.
Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes ideological self-confidence. It takes a critical mass of citizens with extreme views and the time and energy to obsess about them. It takes a promotional infrastructure and the discipline to settle on a story line, disseminate it and stick to it.
It takes, in short, what Hillary Clinton once called a vast conspiracy. The right has had one for years. Even moderate and reasonable right-wingers benefit from a mass of angry people even further right. This overhang of extremists makes the moderates appear more reasonable. It has pulled the center of politics, where the media try to be and where compromises on particular issues end up, in a rightward direction. Listening to extreme views on your own side is soothing even if you would never express them and may not even believe them.
So cheers for the Downing Street Memo. But what does it say? It's a report on a meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and some aides on July 23, 2002. The key passage summarizes "recent talks in Washington" by the head of British foreign intelligence (identified, John le Carre-style, as "C"). C reported that "military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy…. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."C's focus on the dog that didn't bark — the lack of discussion about the aftermath of war — was smart and prescient.
But even on its face, the memo is not proof that Bush had decided on war. It states that war is "now seen as inevitable" by "Washington." That is, people other than Bush had concluded, based on observation, that he was determined to go to war. There is no claim of even fourth-hand knowledge that he had actually declared this intention. Even if "Washington" meant administration decision-makers, rather than the usual freelance chatterboxes, C was only saying that these people believed that war was how events would play out.
Of course, if "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," rather than vice versa, that is pretty good evidence of Bush's intentions, as well as a scandal in its own right. And we know now that this was true. Fixing intelligence and facts to fit a desired policy is the Bush II governing style, especially concerning the Iraq war. But C offered no specifics, or none that made it into the memo. Nor does the memo assert that actual decision-makers told him they were fixing the facts. Although the prose is not exactly crystalline, it seems to be saying only that "Washington" had reached that conclusion.
Of course, you don't need a secret memo to know this. Just look at what was in the newspapers on July 23, 2002, and the day before. Left-wing Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer casually referred to the coming war as "much planned for." The New York Times reported Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's response to a story that "reported preliminary planning on ways the United States might attack Iraq to topple President Saddam Hussein." Rumsfeld effectively confirmed the report by announcing an investigation of the leak. A Wall Street Journal Op-Ed declared that "the drums of war beat louder." A dispatch from Turkey in the New York Times even used the same word, "inevitable," to describe the thinking in Ankara about the thinking in Washington about the decision "to topple President Saddam Hussein of Iraq by force."
Then there's poor Time magazine (cover date July 22 but actually published a week earlier), which had the whole story. "Sometime last spring the President ordered the Pentagon and the CIA to come up with a new plan to invade Iraq and topple its leader." Originally planned for the fall, the war was put off until "at least early next year" (which is when, in fact, it occurred).
Unfortunately, Time went on to speculate that because of a weak economy, the war "may have to wait — some think forever," and concluded that "Washington is engaged more in psy-war than in war itself."
Some people you have to hit over the head. Hey, you folks at Time, what about the Downing Street Memo?
***************
Yes. What about it?
Wrap...
June 12, 2005
latimes.com :
Opinion :
Commentary
Michael Kinsley:
The Left Gets a Memo
After about the 200th e-mail from a stranger demanding that I cease my personal cover-up of something called the Downing Street Memo, I decided to read it. (By mentioning 200 e-mails, I do not intend to brag. I'm sure Tom Friedman got many more.) It's all over the blogosphere and Air America, the left-wing talk-radio network: This is the smoking gun of the Iraq war. It is proof positive that President Bush was determined to invade Iraq a year before he did so. The whole "weapons of mass destruction" concern was phony from the start, and the drama about inspections was just kabuki: going through the motions.Although it is flattering to be thought personally responsible for allowing a proven war criminal to remain in office, in the end I don't buy the fuss. Nevertheless, I am enjoying it, as an encouraging sign of the left's revival.
Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes ideological self-confidence. It takes a critical mass of citizens with extreme views and the time and energy to obsess about them. It takes a promotional infrastructure and the discipline to settle on a story line, disseminate it and stick to it.
It takes, in short, what Hillary Clinton once called a vast conspiracy. The right has had one for years. Even moderate and reasonable right-wingers benefit from a mass of angry people even further right. This overhang of extremists makes the moderates appear more reasonable. It has pulled the center of politics, where the media try to be and where compromises on particular issues end up, in a rightward direction. Listening to extreme views on your own side is soothing even if you would never express them and may not even believe them.
So cheers for the Downing Street Memo. But what does it say? It's a report on a meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and some aides on July 23, 2002. The key passage summarizes "recent talks in Washington" by the head of British foreign intelligence (identified, John le Carre-style, as "C"). C reported that "military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy…. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."C's focus on the dog that didn't bark — the lack of discussion about the aftermath of war — was smart and prescient.
But even on its face, the memo is not proof that Bush had decided on war. It states that war is "now seen as inevitable" by "Washington." That is, people other than Bush had concluded, based on observation, that he was determined to go to war. There is no claim of even fourth-hand knowledge that he had actually declared this intention. Even if "Washington" meant administration decision-makers, rather than the usual freelance chatterboxes, C was only saying that these people believed that war was how events would play out.
Of course, if "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," rather than vice versa, that is pretty good evidence of Bush's intentions, as well as a scandal in its own right. And we know now that this was true. Fixing intelligence and facts to fit a desired policy is the Bush II governing style, especially concerning the Iraq war. But C offered no specifics, or none that made it into the memo. Nor does the memo assert that actual decision-makers told him they were fixing the facts. Although the prose is not exactly crystalline, it seems to be saying only that "Washington" had reached that conclusion.
Of course, you don't need a secret memo to know this. Just look at what was in the newspapers on July 23, 2002, and the day before. Left-wing Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer casually referred to the coming war as "much planned for." The New York Times reported Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's response to a story that "reported preliminary planning on ways the United States might attack Iraq to topple President Saddam Hussein." Rumsfeld effectively confirmed the report by announcing an investigation of the leak. A Wall Street Journal Op-Ed declared that "the drums of war beat louder." A dispatch from Turkey in the New York Times even used the same word, "inevitable," to describe the thinking in Ankara about the thinking in Washington about the decision "to topple President Saddam Hussein of Iraq by force."
Then there's poor Time magazine (cover date July 22 but actually published a week earlier), which had the whole story. "Sometime last spring the President ordered the Pentagon and the CIA to come up with a new plan to invade Iraq and topple its leader." Originally planned for the fall, the war was put off until "at least early next year" (which is when, in fact, it occurred).
Unfortunately, Time went on to speculate that because of a weak economy, the war "may have to wait — some think forever," and concluded that "Washington is engaged more in psy-war than in war itself."
Some people you have to hit over the head. Hey, you folks at Time, what about the Downing Street Memo?
***************
Yes. What about it?
Wrap...
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Left Coaster, Steve Soto: DSM hearings:
"I’d like to suggest that Conyers focus on three issues and call these individuals as possible witnesses next week in his efforts to build a case that the decision had already been made in the summer of 2002. All three of these supporting arguments have already been covered here at the Left Coaster:
First and most damaging to me, as we first reported back in October 2003, why would the White House see a need to build a strategic information campaign using White House staff to manipulate media coverage in favor of a war months in advance of going to the UN, Congress, and the American people if the issue and decision had not already been made? Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner wrote a little-noticed but never disputed paper that outlined the steps the Bush Administration took to build what in essence was a strategic influence and disinformation campaign to manipulate the media and sway public opinion in favor of a war that Bush says he hadn’t yet decided upon. These efforts started with the creation of the Coalition Information Office by none other than Karen Hughes at about the same time the Downing Street Memo said that Bush had made up his mind.
Colonel Gardiner feels that the organization was in fact put together at the time of the memo, and that the “marketing” of the war began in September when Congress returned from summer recess. Since his study came out, Colonel Gardiner has received confirmation from a number of sources including sources inside the Bush Administration that almost all of his initial conclusions were correct. Even though the whole study is chilling, pay particular attention to his material from Page 50 onward to see how the Downing Street Memo can be supported with Gardiner’s work. Perhaps Congressman Conyers can call Colonel Gardiner as a witness next week to lay out the involvement of the White House and outside GOP public relations firms in selling a war to the Congress and the American people through an intimidated and spoon-fed media, a campaign that actually commenced around the same time that the Downing Street Memo indicated a decision had already been made. And yes, I've talked with Gardiner today, and Colonel Gardiner is willing to share his information with Conyers.
Second, none other than Bob Woodward himself in his wet-kiss book “Bush at War” reported that Bush authorized Rumsfeld to move approximately $700 million from Afghanistan reconstruction to the establishment of a logistical infrastructure to support an Iraq invasion, without the required congressional notice and authority. When did this happen, as Woodward notes with a great deal of risk of legal problems for the White House? It happened in July 2002, at about the same time as the Downing Street Memo was written saying the decision had already been made by Bush, within a month of the Downing Street Memo. Perhaps Conyers can call Bob Woodward as a witness to testify about what he found in researching his book on this congressionally-unauthorized transfer of funds from Afghan reconstruction to Iraq war planning during the Summer of 2002.
And lastly, it has been reported that Bush dropped in on a White House meeting in Condi Rice’s office in March 2002, and blurted to the three startled US senators Rice was meeting with “Fuck Saddam, we’re going to take him out.” Perhaps Conyers can call the three senators as well as Michael Elliott and James Carney of Time Magazine to confirm what Bush said and did, three months before the Downing Street Memo said that a decision had already been made.
Again, the key for Conyers is not to get trapped into building his case primarily upon the fixed intelligence claim in the memo, but to build also a circumstantial case as well that supports the bigger claim that the decision had already been made by the White House to go to war in the Summer of 2002, despite what was being told to Congress and the American people."
Wrap.
First and most damaging to me, as we first reported back in October 2003, why would the White House see a need to build a strategic information campaign using White House staff to manipulate media coverage in favor of a war months in advance of going to the UN, Congress, and the American people if the issue and decision had not already been made? Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner wrote a little-noticed but never disputed paper that outlined the steps the Bush Administration took to build what in essence was a strategic influence and disinformation campaign to manipulate the media and sway public opinion in favor of a war that Bush says he hadn’t yet decided upon. These efforts started with the creation of the Coalition Information Office by none other than Karen Hughes at about the same time the Downing Street Memo said that Bush had made up his mind.
Colonel Gardiner feels that the organization was in fact put together at the time of the memo, and that the “marketing” of the war began in September when Congress returned from summer recess. Since his study came out, Colonel Gardiner has received confirmation from a number of sources including sources inside the Bush Administration that almost all of his initial conclusions were correct. Even though the whole study is chilling, pay particular attention to his material from Page 50 onward to see how the Downing Street Memo can be supported with Gardiner’s work. Perhaps Congressman Conyers can call Colonel Gardiner as a witness next week to lay out the involvement of the White House and outside GOP public relations firms in selling a war to the Congress and the American people through an intimidated and spoon-fed media, a campaign that actually commenced around the same time that the Downing Street Memo indicated a decision had already been made. And yes, I've talked with Gardiner today, and Colonel Gardiner is willing to share his information with Conyers.
Second, none other than Bob Woodward himself in his wet-kiss book “Bush at War” reported that Bush authorized Rumsfeld to move approximately $700 million from Afghanistan reconstruction to the establishment of a logistical infrastructure to support an Iraq invasion, without the required congressional notice and authority. When did this happen, as Woodward notes with a great deal of risk of legal problems for the White House? It happened in July 2002, at about the same time as the Downing Street Memo was written saying the decision had already been made by Bush, within a month of the Downing Street Memo. Perhaps Conyers can call Bob Woodward as a witness to testify about what he found in researching his book on this congressionally-unauthorized transfer of funds from Afghan reconstruction to Iraq war planning during the Summer of 2002.
And lastly, it has been reported that Bush dropped in on a White House meeting in Condi Rice’s office in March 2002, and blurted to the three startled US senators Rice was meeting with “Fuck Saddam, we’re going to take him out.” Perhaps Conyers can call the three senators as well as Michael Elliott and James Carney of Time Magazine to confirm what Bush said and did, three months before the Downing Street Memo said that a decision had already been made.
Again, the key for Conyers is not to get trapped into building his case primarily upon the fixed intelligence claim in the memo, but to build also a circumstantial case as well that supports the bigger claim that the decision had already been made by the White House to go to war in the Summer of 2002, despite what was being told to Congress and the American people."
Wrap.
Why Bush Repeats and Repeats and..
"What is a meme?"
Glenn Grant: Meme (pron. meem): A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic.
Tony Lezard: Richard Dawkins, who coined the word in his book The Selfish Gene defines the meme as simply a unit of intellectual or cultural information that survives long enough to be recognized as such, and which can pass from mind to mind. There's not much of a sense of describing thought processes, but nor is it just a model. As Richard Dawkins writes (this is from memory), "God indeed exists, if only as a pattern in brain structures replicated across the minds of billions of people throughout the world." (Of course the patterns aren't physically identical, but they represent the same thing.)
Richard Dawkins: Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain.Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, 'belief in life after death' is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of people all over the world.
***************************
There's a whole lot more on Google, but this much was sufficient for my puposes. Gotta "catapult the propaganda" you know.
Wrap...
Glenn Grant: Meme (pron. meem): A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic.
Tony Lezard: Richard Dawkins, who coined the word in his book The Selfish Gene defines the meme as simply a unit of intellectual or cultural information that survives long enough to be recognized as such, and which can pass from mind to mind. There's not much of a sense of describing thought processes, but nor is it just a model. As Richard Dawkins writes (this is from memory), "God indeed exists, if only as a pattern in brain structures replicated across the minds of billions of people throughout the world." (Of course the patterns aren't physically identical, but they represent the same thing.)
Richard Dawkins: Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain.Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, 'belief in life after death' is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of people all over the world.
***************************
There's a whole lot more on Google, but this much was sufficient for my puposes. Gotta "catapult the propaganda" you know.
Wrap...
Bush help? You're kidding...
From the NY Times....
June 12, 2005
The Illiterate Surgeon
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
Just about the worst thing that can happen to a teenage girl in this world is to develop an obstetric fistula that leaves her trickling bodily wastes, stinking and shunned by everyone around her. That happened four decades ago to Mamitu Gashe.
But the most amazing thing about Ms. Mamitu is not what she endured but what she has become.
Ms. Mamitu's story begins when she was an illiterate 15-year-old in a remote Ethiopian village unreachable by road and with no doctor nearby. She married a local man, became pregnant and after three days of labor, she lapsed into unconsciousness and the baby was stillborn.
"After I woke up, the bed was wet" with urine, she remembers. "I thought I would get better after two or three days, but I didn't."
That's typically how an obstetric fistula arises: a teenage girl, often malnourished and with an immature pelvis, tries to deliver her first baby. The fetus gets stuck, and after several days of labor it is stillborn - but some of the mother's internal tissues have been damaged in that time, and so to her horror she finds herself constantly trickling urine or sometimes feces from her vagina.
Soon she stinks. Her husband normally abandons her, the constant trickle of urine leaves her with terrible sores on her legs, and if she survives at all she is told to build a hut away from the rest of the village and to stay away from the village well. Some girls die of infections or suicide, but many linger for decades as pariahs and hermits - their lives effectively over at the age of about 15.
Fistulas were common in America in the 19th century. But improved medical care means that they are now almost unknown in the West, while the United Nations has estimated that at least two million girls and women live with fistulas in the developing world, mostly in Africa.
This should be an international scandal, because a $300 operation can normally repair the injury. A major effort to improve maternal health in the developing world should be a no-brainer, for it could prevent most fistulas and reduce deaths in childbirth by half within a decade, saving 300,000 lives a year.
But maternal health is woefully neglected, and those suffering fistulas are completely voiceless - young, female, poor, rural and ostracized. They are the 21st century's lepers.
Ms. Mamitu was exceptionally lucky in that she was brought to a hospital here in Addis Ababa that offered free surgery by a saintly husband and wife pair of gynecologists from Australia, Reginald and Catherine Hamlin. Reg is now dead, while Catherine is the Mother Teresa of our time and is long overdue for a Nobel Peace Prize.
After that operation, 42 years ago, Ms. Mamitu was given a job making beds in the hospital. Then she began helping out during surgeries, and after a couple of years of watching she was asked by Dr. Reg Hamlin to cut some stitches. Eventually, Ms. Mamitu was routinely performing the entire fistula repair herself.
Over the decades, Ms. Mamitu has gradually become one of the world's most experienced fistula surgeons. Gynecologists from around the world go to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital to train in fistula repair, and typically their teacher is Ms. Mamitu.
Not bad for an illiterate Ethiopian peasant who as a child never went to a day of school.
A few years ago, Ms. Mamitu tired of being an illiterate master surgeon, and so she began night school. She's now in the third grade.
The Fistula Hospital where Ms. Mamitu works is nicknamed "puddle city" - because patients stroll around dripping urine - but it abounds with joy and hope.
President Bush has increased aid to the developing world generally and to Africa in particular, but a few days ago he rejected Tony Blair's appeal for a further dramatic increase in assistance for Africa. The real stakes in that rejection will be measured in lives like Ms. Mamitu's. I hope that Mr. Bush will reconsider - for the sake of people like those girls with fistula living in huts alone on the edges of hundreds of thousands of villages.
Ms. Mamitu shows us what a tragedy it would be to write them off. A couple of Australians once gave Ms. Mamitu a break, and so today Ms. Mamitu is not a victim at all, but an inspiration.
And, I hope, an inspiration to us to be more generous.
E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com
Wrap.
June 12, 2005
The Illiterate Surgeon
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
Just about the worst thing that can happen to a teenage girl in this world is to develop an obstetric fistula that leaves her trickling bodily wastes, stinking and shunned by everyone around her. That happened four decades ago to Mamitu Gashe.
But the most amazing thing about Ms. Mamitu is not what she endured but what she has become.
Ms. Mamitu's story begins when she was an illiterate 15-year-old in a remote Ethiopian village unreachable by road and with no doctor nearby. She married a local man, became pregnant and after three days of labor, she lapsed into unconsciousness and the baby was stillborn.
"After I woke up, the bed was wet" with urine, she remembers. "I thought I would get better after two or three days, but I didn't."
That's typically how an obstetric fistula arises: a teenage girl, often malnourished and with an immature pelvis, tries to deliver her first baby. The fetus gets stuck, and after several days of labor it is stillborn - but some of the mother's internal tissues have been damaged in that time, and so to her horror she finds herself constantly trickling urine or sometimes feces from her vagina.
Soon she stinks. Her husband normally abandons her, the constant trickle of urine leaves her with terrible sores on her legs, and if she survives at all she is told to build a hut away from the rest of the village and to stay away from the village well. Some girls die of infections or suicide, but many linger for decades as pariahs and hermits - their lives effectively over at the age of about 15.
Fistulas were common in America in the 19th century. But improved medical care means that they are now almost unknown in the West, while the United Nations has estimated that at least two million girls and women live with fistulas in the developing world, mostly in Africa.
This should be an international scandal, because a $300 operation can normally repair the injury. A major effort to improve maternal health in the developing world should be a no-brainer, for it could prevent most fistulas and reduce deaths in childbirth by half within a decade, saving 300,000 lives a year.
But maternal health is woefully neglected, and those suffering fistulas are completely voiceless - young, female, poor, rural and ostracized. They are the 21st century's lepers.
Ms. Mamitu was exceptionally lucky in that she was brought to a hospital here in Addis Ababa that offered free surgery by a saintly husband and wife pair of gynecologists from Australia, Reginald and Catherine Hamlin. Reg is now dead, while Catherine is the Mother Teresa of our time and is long overdue for a Nobel Peace Prize.
After that operation, 42 years ago, Ms. Mamitu was given a job making beds in the hospital. Then she began helping out during surgeries, and after a couple of years of watching she was asked by Dr. Reg Hamlin to cut some stitches. Eventually, Ms. Mamitu was routinely performing the entire fistula repair herself.
Over the decades, Ms. Mamitu has gradually become one of the world's most experienced fistula surgeons. Gynecologists from around the world go to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital to train in fistula repair, and typically their teacher is Ms. Mamitu.
Not bad for an illiterate Ethiopian peasant who as a child never went to a day of school.
A few years ago, Ms. Mamitu tired of being an illiterate master surgeon, and so she began night school. She's now in the third grade.
The Fistula Hospital where Ms. Mamitu works is nicknamed "puddle city" - because patients stroll around dripping urine - but it abounds with joy and hope.
President Bush has increased aid to the developing world generally and to Africa in particular, but a few days ago he rejected Tony Blair's appeal for a further dramatic increase in assistance for Africa. The real stakes in that rejection will be measured in lives like Ms. Mamitu's. I hope that Mr. Bush will reconsider - for the sake of people like those girls with fistula living in huts alone on the edges of hundreds of thousands of villages.
Ms. Mamitu shows us what a tragedy it would be to write them off. A couple of Australians once gave Ms. Mamitu a break, and so today Ms. Mamitu is not a victim at all, but an inspiration.
And, I hope, an inspiration to us to be more generous.
E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com
Wrap.
Kerry didn't say that I word!
From MSNBC online:
• June 7, 2005 9:15 a.m. ET
Kerry on impeachment
(Keith Olbermann)
SECAUCUS —
Last Wednesday, Senator John Kerry told the editorial board of the newspaper in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the "Standard-Times," that he was amazed at the lack of American media coverage of the so-called "Downing Street Memo" — notes of a July, 2002 British cabinet meeting that suggested the U.S. was making all the evidence fit a pre-planned invasion of Iraq.
The words of the Democrats' 2004 standard-bearer?: "When I go back (to Washington) on Monday, I am going to raise the issue. I think (the memo) is a stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth..."
Now, let's play Blogosphere-Telephone with that statement.
By Saturday, those quotes, and the original New Bedford story, had been transmuted by a series of foreign and conservative websites into an article that included the line: "Failed presidential candidate Kerry advised that he will begin the presentation of his case for President Bush's impeachment to Congress, on Monday."
Blogs and websites pulsated with the news: Kerry was going to call for the impeachment of President Bush! My inbox pulsated with the missives of angry conservatives ("you're covering up Kerry's traitorous comment") and angry liberals ("corporate lapdog! Why didn't you cover this? Do your job!").
Once again, the first law of the Non-Mainstream Media was being ignored. Be suspicious of everything you read on the internet, not just those things with which you most agree, or about which you live in the greatest fear.
The Senator's office told "Countdown" last night that he never said anything about impeachment and asked our reporter where he'd read that line. The answer was: the websites of NewsMax and Al-Jazeera.
The story originated — on Al-Jazeera.
The New Bedford newspaper story, exactly 746 words long, literally does not include the words impeach, or impeachment.
If this detail is still relevant in these super-heated political times, the story is not true. But at places as disparate as Al-Jazeera and NewsMax, they wanted it to be.
Watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann each weeknight at 8 p.m. ET & 12 midnight ET
Wrap...
• June 7, 2005 9:15 a.m. ET
Kerry on impeachment
(Keith Olbermann)
SECAUCUS —
Last Wednesday, Senator John Kerry told the editorial board of the newspaper in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the "Standard-Times," that he was amazed at the lack of American media coverage of the so-called "Downing Street Memo" — notes of a July, 2002 British cabinet meeting that suggested the U.S. was making all the evidence fit a pre-planned invasion of Iraq.
The words of the Democrats' 2004 standard-bearer?: "When I go back (to Washington) on Monday, I am going to raise the issue. I think (the memo) is a stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth..."
Now, let's play Blogosphere-Telephone with that statement.
By Saturday, those quotes, and the original New Bedford story, had been transmuted by a series of foreign and conservative websites into an article that included the line: "Failed presidential candidate Kerry advised that he will begin the presentation of his case for President Bush's impeachment to Congress, on Monday."
Blogs and websites pulsated with the news: Kerry was going to call for the impeachment of President Bush! My inbox pulsated with the missives of angry conservatives ("you're covering up Kerry's traitorous comment") and angry liberals ("corporate lapdog! Why didn't you cover this? Do your job!").
Once again, the first law of the Non-Mainstream Media was being ignored. Be suspicious of everything you read on the internet, not just those things with which you most agree, or about which you live in the greatest fear.
The Senator's office told "Countdown" last night that he never said anything about impeachment and asked our reporter where he'd read that line. The answer was: the websites of NewsMax and Al-Jazeera.
The story originated — on Al-Jazeera.
The New Bedford newspaper story, exactly 746 words long, literally does not include the words impeach, or impeachment.
If this detail is still relevant in these super-heated political times, the story is not true. But at places as disparate as Al-Jazeera and NewsMax, they wanted it to be.
Watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann each weeknight at 8 p.m. ET & 12 midnight ET
Wrap...
Kid in trouble....
Brainwashing Camp for Gay Kids
Mike Ditto writes about a brainwashing summer camp for gay kids in Tennessee. This 16 year old attendee is writing a blog from the camp, and he's none too pleased. He says his parents lied to him and it's worse than boot camp. Go read, before they make him take it down.
Wrap.
Mike Ditto writes about a brainwashing summer camp for gay kids in Tennessee. This 16 year old attendee is writing a blog from the camp, and he's none too pleased. He says his parents lied to him and it's worse than boot camp. Go read, before they make him take it down.
Wrap.
Pastor Ted to flock: "TONE IT DOWN!"
Gonna post a link to some email between Pastor Ted--remember that fundie church in Colorado Springs next to the Air Force Academy?--and one of his church members. It is definitely enlightning. Here it is:
http://nonprophet.typepad.com/nonprophet/2005/06/insiders_perspe.html
Nice guy, that Pastor, huh?
Wrap...
http://nonprophet.typepad.com/nonprophet/2005/06/insiders_perspe.html
Nice guy, that Pastor, huh?
Wrap...
PRESS RELEASE...
Memogate: Americans and Brits Demand Answers
t r u t h o u t Press Release
Saturday 11 June 2005
Military Families Against the War, in Britain, and AfterDowningStreet.org, in the United States, are working together to demand answers to the questions raised by the Downing Street Minutes and related evidence suggesting that the rulers of both nations conspired to deceive the public, Congress, and Parliament with regard to justification for the Iraq War.
Military Families Against the War is an organization of people directly affected by the war in Iraq. Our relatives and loved ones are members of the British Armed Services. We are opposed to the continuing involvement of UK soldiers in a war that is based on lies.
AfterDowningStreet.org is a coalition of organizations, including Gold Star Families for Peace and Veterans for Peace, and many other individual veterans and military families, including members of Military Families Speak Out.
Court Case Being Prepared Against Blair
Military Families Against the War (MFAW) is preparing to take Prime Minister Tony Blair to court to force through the demand for an independent and effective public inquiry into the background and decision to go to war in Iraq. This legal action is being taken in the names of 18 of the families whose sons and husbands have been killed in Iraq.
Memogate Hearings Scheduled for June 16 in Washington
On Thursday June 16, 2005, Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, and other Democratic Members will hold a Democratic hearing to hear testimony concerning the Downing Street Minutes and the efforts to cook the books on pre-war intelligence.
On May 1, 2005 a Sunday London Times article disclosed the details of a classified memo, also known as the Downing Street Minutes, recounting the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair that describes an American President already committed to going to war in the summer of 2002, despite contrary assertions to the public and the Congress. The minutes also describe apparent efforts by the Administration to manipulate intelligence data to justify the war. The June 16th hearing will attempt to answer the serious constitutional questions raised by these revelations and will further investigate the Administration's actions in the lead up to war with new documents that further corroborate the Downing Street memo.
Rally Scheduled for June 16 in Washington
Directly following the hearing, Rep. Conyers, Members of Congress, and concerned citizens plan to hand deliver to the White House the petition and signatures of over a half million Americans that have joined Rep. Conyers in demanding that President Bush answer questions about his secret plan for the Iraq war. For details on time and place and for downloadable flyers promoting the rally, please watch the top of the website AfterDowningStreet.org.
Wrap...
t r u t h o u t Press Release
Saturday 11 June 2005
Military Families Against the War, in Britain, and AfterDowningStreet.org, in the United States, are working together to demand answers to the questions raised by the Downing Street Minutes and related evidence suggesting that the rulers of both nations conspired to deceive the public, Congress, and Parliament with regard to justification for the Iraq War.
Military Families Against the War is an organization of people directly affected by the war in Iraq. Our relatives and loved ones are members of the British Armed Services. We are opposed to the continuing involvement of UK soldiers in a war that is based on lies.
AfterDowningStreet.org is a coalition of organizations, including Gold Star Families for Peace and Veterans for Peace, and many other individual veterans and military families, including members of Military Families Speak Out.
Court Case Being Prepared Against Blair
Military Families Against the War (MFAW) is preparing to take Prime Minister Tony Blair to court to force through the demand for an independent and effective public inquiry into the background and decision to go to war in Iraq. This legal action is being taken in the names of 18 of the families whose sons and husbands have been killed in Iraq.
Memogate Hearings Scheduled for June 16 in Washington
On Thursday June 16, 2005, Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, and other Democratic Members will hold a Democratic hearing to hear testimony concerning the Downing Street Minutes and the efforts to cook the books on pre-war intelligence.
On May 1, 2005 a Sunday London Times article disclosed the details of a classified memo, also known as the Downing Street Minutes, recounting the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair that describes an American President already committed to going to war in the summer of 2002, despite contrary assertions to the public and the Congress. The minutes also describe apparent efforts by the Administration to manipulate intelligence data to justify the war. The June 16th hearing will attempt to answer the serious constitutional questions raised by these revelations and will further investigate the Administration's actions in the lead up to war with new documents that further corroborate the Downing Street memo.
Rally Scheduled for June 16 in Washington
Directly following the hearing, Rep. Conyers, Members of Congress, and concerned citizens plan to hand deliver to the White House the petition and signatures of over a half million Americans that have joined Rep. Conyers in demanding that President Bush answer questions about his secret plan for the Iraq war. For details on time and place and for downloadable flyers promoting the rally, please watch the top of the website AfterDowningStreet.org.
Wrap...
San Francisco Chronicle editor says:
Bush and 'the memo' -
Friday, June 10, 2005
PRESIDENT BUSH apparently thinks he can dismiss the damning "Downing Street memo" with a few glib words.
If he is right, it is a sad commentary on the state of American democracy and values.
The memo, recounting the details of a July 23, 2002, meeting at British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official residence on 10 Downing St., strongly suggested that the message had been sent across the Atlantic that the Bush White House had made the decision to wage war on Iraq. The minutes of the meeting indicated that Blair and his top-level intelligence and foreign-policy aides were given clear signals that military action was "inevitable."
In the most disturbing passage of the minutes, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service, reporting on his recent trip to Washington, told the group that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
Bush was finally asked about the memo directly this week, during a media availability with Blair.
Bush tried to discredit the memo because of the timing of its disclosure -- just days before Blair's re-election. But it is important to note that no one has challenged the authenticity of the memo nor the accuracy of its account of the meeting.
Bush also scoffed at the suggestion that the decision to go to war had been made by July 2002, nearly a year before U.S. bombs began raining on Baghdad. "There's nothing farther from the truth," Bush told reporters. "My conversation with the prime minister was, how can we do this peacefully?"
Americans deserve to have a more intensive investigation and expansive explanation to the extremely serious allegation that their government "fixed" intelligence to justify a pre-emptive war. The White House wants to dismiss it as "old news" and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress assume they can shrug off the demands of a bloc of Democrats -- led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. -- for hearings on the Downing Street memo.
There should be no statute of limitations -- or shortness of public attention span -- on an issue that cuts to the core of this government's integrity and credibility. Congress must fully investigate the actions in Washington that led the highest officials in Great Britain to be convinced that the Bush administration was hell-bent on war and working to concoct a rationalization for it.
*****************************
As the Repubs say, this is old news in the sense that Bob Woodward even had it in his book, Bush At War. However, this is NEW news in that the Downing Street Minutes (Memo) is PROOF that will stand up in court...and that makes it big news now. Impeachable news. Let's get on with it and get BushCo out of DC and back on the ranch where, hopefully, he'll never be heard of again.
Wrap.
Friday, June 10, 2005
PRESIDENT BUSH apparently thinks he can dismiss the damning "Downing Street memo" with a few glib words.
If he is right, it is a sad commentary on the state of American democracy and values.
The memo, recounting the details of a July 23, 2002, meeting at British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official residence on 10 Downing St., strongly suggested that the message had been sent across the Atlantic that the Bush White House had made the decision to wage war on Iraq. The minutes of the meeting indicated that Blair and his top-level intelligence and foreign-policy aides were given clear signals that military action was "inevitable."
In the most disturbing passage of the minutes, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service, reporting on his recent trip to Washington, told the group that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
Bush was finally asked about the memo directly this week, during a media availability with Blair.
Bush tried to discredit the memo because of the timing of its disclosure -- just days before Blair's re-election. But it is important to note that no one has challenged the authenticity of the memo nor the accuracy of its account of the meeting.
Bush also scoffed at the suggestion that the decision to go to war had been made by July 2002, nearly a year before U.S. bombs began raining on Baghdad. "There's nothing farther from the truth," Bush told reporters. "My conversation with the prime minister was, how can we do this peacefully?"
Americans deserve to have a more intensive investigation and expansive explanation to the extremely serious allegation that their government "fixed" intelligence to justify a pre-emptive war. The White House wants to dismiss it as "old news" and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress assume they can shrug off the demands of a bloc of Democrats -- led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. -- for hearings on the Downing Street memo.
There should be no statute of limitations -- or shortness of public attention span -- on an issue that cuts to the core of this government's integrity and credibility. Congress must fully investigate the actions in Washington that led the highest officials in Great Britain to be convinced that the Bush administration was hell-bent on war and working to concoct a rationalization for it.
*****************************
As the Repubs say, this is old news in the sense that Bob Woodward even had it in his book, Bush At War. However, this is NEW news in that the Downing Street Minutes (Memo) is PROOF that will stand up in court...and that makes it big news now. Impeachable news. Let's get on with it and get BushCo out of DC and back on the ranch where, hopefully, he'll never be heard of again.
Wrap.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Finally, the editors are angry...
Turning Point On the War?
This past week, widely scattered newspaper editorialists roused themselves from seeming acceptance of the continuing slaughter in Iraq to voice, for the first time in many cases, outright condemnation of the war.
By Greg Mitchell
NEW YORK (June 06, 2005) --
Suddenly there seems to be something in the air -- the smell of death? Or something in the water -- blood? In any case, this past week, widely scattered newspaper editorialists roused themselves from seeming acceptance of the continuing slaughter in Iraq to voice, for the first time in many cases, outright condemnation of the war. While still refusing to use the "W" word in offering advice to Dubya -- that is, "withdrawal" -- some at least are finally using the "L" word, for lies.
Memorial Day seemed to bring out the anger in some editorial writers, who at that time are normally afraid to say anything about a current conflict that might seem to slight the brave sacrifices of men and women, past and present. Maybe it was the steadily growing Iraqi and American death count, or the increasing examples of White House "disassembling" (to quote the president this week), or the horror stories emerging from Gitmo. Or perhaps it's a hidden trend that might have even more impact than the rest: the writing on the wall spelled out by plunging military recruitment rates. That only adds to the sense that, overall, the Iraq adventure has made America far less safe in this world.
For whatever reason, it's possible that more than a few editorial pages may finally be on the verge of saying "enough is enough." Perhaps they might even catch up with their readers, as the latest Gallup polls find that 57% feel the war is "not worth it," and nearly as many want us to start pulling out troops, not sending more of them.
There were numerous signs of editorial unrest in the past week, too many to cite. The Sun of Baltimore, in its Memorial Day editorial, declared: "If the president truly wished to honor their memory, he would demonstrate to the nation that the government that has botched so much of the war at least has some inkling as to how to draw it to a successful conclusion -- so that the dead will not have died in vain."
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune called Iraq "an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns. ... President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes."
Steve Chapman, syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune (and generally considered a conservative), on Thursday declared: "The dilemma the U.S. faces in fighting the insurgents is that military methods are not enough to solve the problem and may make it worse. If the movement is a reaction to the U.S. military presence, keeping American troops in Iraq amounts to fighting a fire with kerosene."
That explains why the longer we stay, the more suicide attacks we face. And it suggests that the only feasible strategy is to withdraw from Iraq and turn the fight over to the Iraqi government. The alternative is to stay and keep doing what we've been doing for the last two years. But that approach has shown no signs of fostering success. It only promises to raise the cost of failure."
But perhaps the most powerful denunciation came from an unlikely source, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. An editorial in that Hearst paper this past Wednesday, just after Memorial Day, really thundered, and deserves reprinting here:
"President Bush was among the 260,000 graves at Arlington National Cemetery when he said it. But it was clear Monday that the president was referring to the more than 1,650 Americans killed to date in Iraq when he said, 'We must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives; by defeating the terrorists.'"
Bush insists on clinging to the thoroughly discredited notion that there was any connection between the old Iraqi regime -- no matter how lawless and brutal -- and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."U.S. military action against an Afghan regime that harbored al-Qaida was a legitimate response to the 9/11 attacks. The invasion of Iraq was not."
As of Memorial Day 2003, Bush had declared major combat operations at an end, predicted that weapons of mass destruction would be found and that U.S. forces were in the process of stabilizing Iraq. One hundred sixty U.S. troops had died." The U.S. death toll has grown more than tenfold. No weapons of mass destruction were found. More than 700 Iraqis have been killed since Iraq's new government was formed April 28."
Bush said of the insurgents at a news conference yesterday, 'I believe the Iraqi government is plenty capable of dealing with them.'"
Of course, this is the same president that assured the world that military intervention in Iraq was a last resort and that the United States would make every effort to avoid war through diplomacy. Giving lie to that as well is the so-called Downing Street War Memo, which shows that as early as July 2002, 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD ... the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'"Perhaps all presidents' remarks in military graveyards are by nature self-serving. But few have been so callow as the president's using the deaths of U.S. troops in his unjustified war as justification for its continuance."
At the close of the editorial online, the paper polled readers, asking if they thought it was "time to begin the careful but quick withdrawal of American forces from Iraq?"
These highly unscientific surveys usually should be ignored. But the result in this case, from over 2,600 votes, was so one-sided it deserves mention: Nearly 92% called for the beginning of a pullout.
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is the editor of E&P.
****************************
Enough said. The Editors are right.
Wrap.
This past week, widely scattered newspaper editorialists roused themselves from seeming acceptance of the continuing slaughter in Iraq to voice, for the first time in many cases, outright condemnation of the war.
By Greg Mitchell
NEW YORK (June 06, 2005) --
Suddenly there seems to be something in the air -- the smell of death? Or something in the water -- blood? In any case, this past week, widely scattered newspaper editorialists roused themselves from seeming acceptance of the continuing slaughter in Iraq to voice, for the first time in many cases, outright condemnation of the war. While still refusing to use the "W" word in offering advice to Dubya -- that is, "withdrawal" -- some at least are finally using the "L" word, for lies.
Memorial Day seemed to bring out the anger in some editorial writers, who at that time are normally afraid to say anything about a current conflict that might seem to slight the brave sacrifices of men and women, past and present. Maybe it was the steadily growing Iraqi and American death count, or the increasing examples of White House "disassembling" (to quote the president this week), or the horror stories emerging from Gitmo. Or perhaps it's a hidden trend that might have even more impact than the rest: the writing on the wall spelled out by plunging military recruitment rates. That only adds to the sense that, overall, the Iraq adventure has made America far less safe in this world.
For whatever reason, it's possible that more than a few editorial pages may finally be on the verge of saying "enough is enough." Perhaps they might even catch up with their readers, as the latest Gallup polls find that 57% feel the war is "not worth it," and nearly as many want us to start pulling out troops, not sending more of them.
There were numerous signs of editorial unrest in the past week, too many to cite. The Sun of Baltimore, in its Memorial Day editorial, declared: "If the president truly wished to honor their memory, he would demonstrate to the nation that the government that has botched so much of the war at least has some inkling as to how to draw it to a successful conclusion -- so that the dead will not have died in vain."
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune called Iraq "an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns. ... President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes."
Steve Chapman, syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune (and generally considered a conservative), on Thursday declared: "The dilemma the U.S. faces in fighting the insurgents is that military methods are not enough to solve the problem and may make it worse. If the movement is a reaction to the U.S. military presence, keeping American troops in Iraq amounts to fighting a fire with kerosene."
That explains why the longer we stay, the more suicide attacks we face. And it suggests that the only feasible strategy is to withdraw from Iraq and turn the fight over to the Iraqi government. The alternative is to stay and keep doing what we've been doing for the last two years. But that approach has shown no signs of fostering success. It only promises to raise the cost of failure."
But perhaps the most powerful denunciation came from an unlikely source, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. An editorial in that Hearst paper this past Wednesday, just after Memorial Day, really thundered, and deserves reprinting here:
"President Bush was among the 260,000 graves at Arlington National Cemetery when he said it. But it was clear Monday that the president was referring to the more than 1,650 Americans killed to date in Iraq when he said, 'We must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives; by defeating the terrorists.'"
Bush insists on clinging to the thoroughly discredited notion that there was any connection between the old Iraqi regime -- no matter how lawless and brutal -- and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."U.S. military action against an Afghan regime that harbored al-Qaida was a legitimate response to the 9/11 attacks. The invasion of Iraq was not."
As of Memorial Day 2003, Bush had declared major combat operations at an end, predicted that weapons of mass destruction would be found and that U.S. forces were in the process of stabilizing Iraq. One hundred sixty U.S. troops had died." The U.S. death toll has grown more than tenfold. No weapons of mass destruction were found. More than 700 Iraqis have been killed since Iraq's new government was formed April 28."
Bush said of the insurgents at a news conference yesterday, 'I believe the Iraqi government is plenty capable of dealing with them.'"
Of course, this is the same president that assured the world that military intervention in Iraq was a last resort and that the United States would make every effort to avoid war through diplomacy. Giving lie to that as well is the so-called Downing Street War Memo, which shows that as early as July 2002, 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD ... the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'"Perhaps all presidents' remarks in military graveyards are by nature self-serving. But few have been so callow as the president's using the deaths of U.S. troops in his unjustified war as justification for its continuance."
At the close of the editorial online, the paper polled readers, asking if they thought it was "time to begin the careful but quick withdrawal of American forces from Iraq?"
These highly unscientific surveys usually should be ignored. But the result in this case, from over 2,600 votes, was so one-sided it deserves mention: Nearly 92% called for the beginning of a pullout.
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is the editor of E&P.
****************************
Enough said. The Editors are right.
Wrap.
...and in defense?
About the Downing Street Memo...
US Media Shamed by Brit Journalist
By DAVE LINDORFF
At this stage, it seems almost pointless to say it, but once again, the corporate media in America have been exposed as a cowardly mass of toadies who cannot bring themselves to publish or air anything remotely critical of the administration unless compelled to do so by cattle prods...or a reporter from a foreign news organization doing what reporters are supposed to do routinely. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9109.htm
*******************
OUCH!!!
Wrap...
US Media Shamed by Brit Journalist
By DAVE LINDORFF
At this stage, it seems almost pointless to say it, but once again, the corporate media in America have been exposed as a cowardly mass of toadies who cannot bring themselves to publish or air anything remotely critical of the administration unless compelled to do so by cattle prods...or a reporter from a foreign news organization doing what reporters are supposed to do routinely. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9109.htm
*******************
OUCH!!!
Wrap...
"Memogate" picks up speed...
Here's Dan Froomkin's take in the Washington Post:
Downing Street Memo Watch
A potpourri of Downing Street Memo items:
Philippe Naughton writes from London in the Times Online: "It is not that often, we have to admit, that an item posted one night on Times Online is still getting hundreds of thousands of hits six weeks later, especially when what bloggers like to call 'the mainstream media' have largely ignored its existence.
"But that is what happened to the now infamous secret Downing Street memo, posted on the site on May 1 alongside a story by Michael Smith of The Sunday Times. And if the document has taken on a life of its own it is largely because of the bloggers and their web-savvy allies on the US Left."
A red-state paper that endorsed Bush comes out for disclosure. Here's today's Houston Chronicle editorial : "Intelligence agents' observations can be inaccurate. The head of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, erroneously thought the case for Iraqi WMD was a slam dunk. But the Downing Street memo accurately foresees the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the administration's attempts to link Saddam to al-Qaida and weapons of mass destruction -- links that were found after the invasion not to exist. The memo's observation that U.S. intelligence would be shaped to policy might be mistaken, but the administration did wind up using flawed analysis to justify its war policy to the American people. . . .
"In the interest of the nation and the administration, the source and content of the Downing Street Memo need to be fully explained."
Former New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent tells Terrence Smith on PBS that he is convinced that the American media is pursuing other stories on the memo. "My . . . thought is that something is coming, that it is a story that calls for a great deal of reporting, and sometimes the absence of something in the newspaper doesn't mean that it's not being reported, but they're waiting until they have it right. I hope that's the case.
"TERENCE SMITH: Do you have any evidence that it is?
"DANIEL OKRENT: No."
Allegre , who keeps a diary on the liberal Daily Kos blog, reprints the e-mail she got in reply to her note about the Downing Street memo from John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for Knight Ridder newspapers:
Writes Walcott: "Knight Ridder was, in fact, the first American news organization (more than a week before our local paper here in Washington) to write about the Downing Street memo and the light it shed on the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.
"And almost six months before the memo was written, in early February 2002, we reported that the President had decided to oust Saddam Hussein and ordered his advisors to begin preparing plans for doing so. To read this and all our other Iraq coverage (we were the only news organization to consistently challenge the administration's assertions about Iraq's WMD programs and ties to al Qaida, go to http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/ and click on the Iraq intelligence and preparations for war buttons. Please feel free to share that link with anyone else you think might be interested."
Also on the Daily Kos blog, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), author of this petition , writes: "[O]n Thursday, a week from today, I will be holding a hearing with my Democratic colleagues to begin to hear evidence about the [Downing Street Memo]. We will have a number of witnesses, including Joe Wilson, who frequent readers here already know is a WMD expert and former Ambassador; Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA analyst; Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq; and John Bonifaz, a renowned Constitutional attorney. At the conclusion of the hearing, we will go to Lafayette Park and I will personally deliver your signatures to the White House.
"This hearing is just one step in an investigation that I am commencing that will literally span the Atlantic. I am in touch with British officials and former U.S. intelligence officials and I am determined to get to the truth."
*****************************
And more power to him!
Wrap...
Downing Street Memo Watch
A potpourri of Downing Street Memo items:
Philippe Naughton writes from London in the Times Online: "It is not that often, we have to admit, that an item posted one night on Times Online is still getting hundreds of thousands of hits six weeks later, especially when what bloggers like to call 'the mainstream media' have largely ignored its existence.
"But that is what happened to the now infamous secret Downing Street memo, posted on the site on May 1 alongside a story by Michael Smith of The Sunday Times. And if the document has taken on a life of its own it is largely because of the bloggers and their web-savvy allies on the US Left."
A red-state paper that endorsed Bush comes out for disclosure. Here's today's Houston Chronicle editorial : "Intelligence agents' observations can be inaccurate. The head of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, erroneously thought the case for Iraqi WMD was a slam dunk. But the Downing Street memo accurately foresees the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the administration's attempts to link Saddam to al-Qaida and weapons of mass destruction -- links that were found after the invasion not to exist. The memo's observation that U.S. intelligence would be shaped to policy might be mistaken, but the administration did wind up using flawed analysis to justify its war policy to the American people. . . .
"In the interest of the nation and the administration, the source and content of the Downing Street Memo need to be fully explained."
Former New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent tells Terrence Smith on PBS that he is convinced that the American media is pursuing other stories on the memo. "My . . . thought is that something is coming, that it is a story that calls for a great deal of reporting, and sometimes the absence of something in the newspaper doesn't mean that it's not being reported, but they're waiting until they have it right. I hope that's the case.
"TERENCE SMITH: Do you have any evidence that it is?
"DANIEL OKRENT: No."
Allegre , who keeps a diary on the liberal Daily Kos blog, reprints the e-mail she got in reply to her note about the Downing Street memo from John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for Knight Ridder newspapers:
Writes Walcott: "Knight Ridder was, in fact, the first American news organization (more than a week before our local paper here in Washington) to write about the Downing Street memo and the light it shed on the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.
"And almost six months before the memo was written, in early February 2002, we reported that the President had decided to oust Saddam Hussein and ordered his advisors to begin preparing plans for doing so. To read this and all our other Iraq coverage (we were the only news organization to consistently challenge the administration's assertions about Iraq's WMD programs and ties to al Qaida, go to http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/ and click on the Iraq intelligence and preparations for war buttons. Please feel free to share that link with anyone else you think might be interested."
Also on the Daily Kos blog, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), author of this petition , writes: "[O]n Thursday, a week from today, I will be holding a hearing with my Democratic colleagues to begin to hear evidence about the [Downing Street Memo]. We will have a number of witnesses, including Joe Wilson, who frequent readers here already know is a WMD expert and former Ambassador; Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA analyst; Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq; and John Bonifaz, a renowned Constitutional attorney. At the conclusion of the hearing, we will go to Lafayette Park and I will personally deliver your signatures to the White House.
"This hearing is just one step in an investigation that I am commencing that will literally span the Atlantic. I am in touch with British officials and former U.S. intelligence officials and I am determined to get to the truth."
*****************************
And more power to him!
Wrap...
Sucker punched...
I've decided that when Bush finally comes to be buried--and we all will get to that point--the only thing to do is add some concrete blocks--big ones--and drop him to the bottom of one of Enron's deepest oil wells in Texas, since he loves oil and Enron and all energy companies better than even his fundie God. Got one sick puppy on our hands here....
===== Mark Morford's Notes & Errata =====
SFGate.com -
Friday, June 10, 2005
Global Warmin' Is Fer Idjuts
Exxon writes America's energy policy, BushCo chops up emissions reports. Is there any hope at all?
By Mark Morford
Like anyone is the slightest bit shocked.
Like anyone is the slightest bit appalled anymore by the breathtaking litany of utter BS oozing forth from the White House these days, this time about how one of BushCo's top oil-lovin' henchmen has been hacking away at countless scientific reports for over two years, editing them at will, all to downplay the effects of emissions on global warming.
His name is Philip Cooney, and he has zero scientific training whatsoever and was formerly the "climate-team leader" (read: top flying monkey) and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the oil industry. He is now chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the group that helps devise and set the nation's environmental agenda; Cooney's cuts and edits of scientific emissions and global warming reports often made it into final White House policy.
Isn't that just the cutest thing? Aren't you just, like, yawning with ennui at the bitter repetition of it all? At how savagely and biliously common these stories have become? ...
(click here to read the rest)
(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/06/10/notes061005.DTL&nl=fix)
Wrap...
===== Mark Morford's Notes & Errata =====
SFGate.com -
Friday, June 10, 2005
Global Warmin' Is Fer Idjuts
Exxon writes America's energy policy, BushCo chops up emissions reports. Is there any hope at all?
By Mark Morford
Like anyone is the slightest bit shocked.
Like anyone is the slightest bit appalled anymore by the breathtaking litany of utter BS oozing forth from the White House these days, this time about how one of BushCo's top oil-lovin' henchmen has been hacking away at countless scientific reports for over two years, editing them at will, all to downplay the effects of emissions on global warming.
His name is Philip Cooney, and he has zero scientific training whatsoever and was formerly the "climate-team leader" (read: top flying monkey) and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the oil industry. He is now chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the group that helps devise and set the nation's environmental agenda; Cooney's cuts and edits of scientific emissions and global warming reports often made it into final White House policy.
Isn't that just the cutest thing? Aren't you just, like, yawning with ennui at the bitter repetition of it all? At how savagely and biliously common these stories have become? ...
(click here to read the rest)
(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/06/10/notes061005.DTL&nl=fix)
Wrap...
Choose: Secular or religious?
American Progress Report lays it all out:
Embracing Theocracy?
America is a deeply religious nation, but it is not a theocracy. Yet, increasingly, the small but powerful assemblage of Christian Right religious organizations are forming overlapping agendas with local, state, and federal conservative politicians. This is both harming religion – threatening to turn "a sanctuary into a political platform," as Rev. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, president of the Chicago Theological Seminary, points out – and pressing our nation closer to what some suggest is a creeping theocracy.
POLITICIZING FAITH: Perhaps the most alarming example is found in the Ohio Restoration Project. Presbyterian Rev. Dr. John Lentz writes that the group "plans to target 2,000 pastors throughout the state to become 'patriot pastors.'" Those patriot pastors will be "briefed on a specific political agenda" and "asked to submit names of their parishioners" to a large database, which will come in handy when the pastors are "asked to place voter guides in their church pews." This plan is being strongly backed by Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), a gubernatorial hopeful, who "will be featured on 30-second radio ads promoting this group's agenda and supporting the 'Ohio for Jesus' rally set for the spring of 2006."
CONSERVATIVES SEE WARNING SIGNS: Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) says his conservative colleagues are embracing a "theocracy." John Danforth, President Bush's former U.N. ambassador, says that conservatives have "gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement." And Christine Todd Whitman, former EPA administrator under President Bush, recently warned of right-wing "fundamentalists": "It's the people who will tell you that they would rather focus on SpongeBob SquarePants holding hands with a starfish than they would about Social Security.... It's about a movement here. And that's why I try and define the term as social fundamentalist."
RELIGIOUS RIGHT HARMING YOUR WAY OF LIFE: Whether it's pressing our government to interfere in the most private and personal medical decisions, like end-of-life decisions or abortion; endangering patients' health and denying their rights by refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception; leading the fight against life-saving scientific research into stem cells; or inciting religious divisiveness by claiming that certain political views mean one is "against people of faith," the result is the same: Americans overwhelming oppose it; right-wing politicians embrace it.
GOOD FOR RELIGIOUS RIGHT, BAD FOR AMERICANS: Even conservatives are turned off by the Bush administration's ideological activism. By a 50 to 37 percent margin, the Wall Street Journal found recently that conservatives think the federal government should be "less active" on social and moral issues. And in this week's ABC/Washington Post poll, nearly 60 percent of Americans said Bush was focusing on issues that weren't important to their lives.
Wrap.
Embracing Theocracy?
America is a deeply religious nation, but it is not a theocracy. Yet, increasingly, the small but powerful assemblage of Christian Right religious organizations are forming overlapping agendas with local, state, and federal conservative politicians. This is both harming religion – threatening to turn "a sanctuary into a political platform," as Rev. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, president of the Chicago Theological Seminary, points out – and pressing our nation closer to what some suggest is a creeping theocracy.
POLITICIZING FAITH: Perhaps the most alarming example is found in the Ohio Restoration Project. Presbyterian Rev. Dr. John Lentz writes that the group "plans to target 2,000 pastors throughout the state to become 'patriot pastors.'" Those patriot pastors will be "briefed on a specific political agenda" and "asked to submit names of their parishioners" to a large database, which will come in handy when the pastors are "asked to place voter guides in their church pews." This plan is being strongly backed by Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), a gubernatorial hopeful, who "will be featured on 30-second radio ads promoting this group's agenda and supporting the 'Ohio for Jesus' rally set for the spring of 2006."
CONSERVATIVES SEE WARNING SIGNS: Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) says his conservative colleagues are embracing a "theocracy." John Danforth, President Bush's former U.N. ambassador, says that conservatives have "gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement." And Christine Todd Whitman, former EPA administrator under President Bush, recently warned of right-wing "fundamentalists": "It's the people who will tell you that they would rather focus on SpongeBob SquarePants holding hands with a starfish than they would about Social Security.... It's about a movement here. And that's why I try and define the term as social fundamentalist."
RELIGIOUS RIGHT HARMING YOUR WAY OF LIFE: Whether it's pressing our government to interfere in the most private and personal medical decisions, like end-of-life decisions or abortion; endangering patients' health and denying their rights by refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception; leading the fight against life-saving scientific research into stem cells; or inciting religious divisiveness by claiming that certain political views mean one is "against people of faith," the result is the same: Americans overwhelming oppose it; right-wing politicians embrace it.
GOOD FOR RELIGIOUS RIGHT, BAD FOR AMERICANS: Even conservatives are turned off by the Bush administration's ideological activism. By a 50 to 37 percent margin, the Wall Street Journal found recently that conservatives think the federal government should be "less active" on social and moral issues. And in this week's ABC/Washington Post poll, nearly 60 percent of Americans said Bush was focusing on issues that weren't important to their lives.
Wrap.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Didn't waste any time, did they?
Just up on the NY Times online (there's more in article online):
June 9, 2005
Senate Approves Judicial Nominee as Filibuster Deal Holds
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, June 9 -
Judge William H. Pryor Jr., one of President Bush's embattled judicial nominees, was confirmed by the Senate today for a seat on the federal appeals court that covers Florida, Georgia and Alabama.
The Senate voted, 53-45, to confirm Judge Pryor for a lifetime appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta. He has been sitting on the tribunal since early 2004 under a temporary presidential appointment that would have expired late this year without the Senate confirmation.
Three Republicans voted against confirmation - Senator Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine, and Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island. Two Democrats voted in favor - Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Ken Salazar of Colorado. Two senators did not vote - James Jeffords, Independent of Vermont, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska.
Judge Pryor, 43, is the last of three controversial Bush court nominees to win confirmation after many months of filibusters, or threats of filibusters, by Senate Democrats. The other two, Judges Priscilla R. Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, have already been confirmed, for seats on the Fifth Circuit and District of Columbia Circuit, respectively. (cont. online NY Times)
Wrap...
June 9, 2005
Senate Approves Judicial Nominee as Filibuster Deal Holds
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, June 9 -
Judge William H. Pryor Jr., one of President Bush's embattled judicial nominees, was confirmed by the Senate today for a seat on the federal appeals court that covers Florida, Georgia and Alabama.
The Senate voted, 53-45, to confirm Judge Pryor for a lifetime appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta. He has been sitting on the tribunal since early 2004 under a temporary presidential appointment that would have expired late this year without the Senate confirmation.
Three Republicans voted against confirmation - Senator Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine, and Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island. Two Democrats voted in favor - Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Ken Salazar of Colorado. Two senators did not vote - James Jeffords, Independent of Vermont, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska.
Judge Pryor, 43, is the last of three controversial Bush court nominees to win confirmation after many months of filibusters, or threats of filibusters, by Senate Democrats. The other two, Judges Priscilla R. Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, have already been confirmed, for seats on the Fifth Circuit and District of Columbia Circuit, respectively. (cont. online NY Times)
Wrap...
Non-Christian TX Gov Perry...asshole!
From .washblade.com comes this disgusting item:
Texas governor suggests gay veterans should leave state
Gay groups demand Perry apologize
By STEVE KOVAL Jun 8, 10:55 AM
Texas Gov. Rick Perry suggested that gay veterans unhappy with the proposed anti-gay constitutional amendment should move elsewhere.
"I'm going to say Texas has made a decision on marriage and if there's a state with more lenient views than Texas, then maybe that's where they should live," the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Perry said Sunday.
Perry's comments were in response to a question during a news conference about what he would tell gay war veterans returning from Iraq.
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group for gays in the military, today joined calls by the Lesbian & Gay Rights Lobby of Texas for Perry to apologize.
SLDN's Sharra Greer demanded an immediate apology from Texas Gov. Perry.
"More than 66,000 lesbian and gay veterans make their home in Texas," said Sharra E. Greer, SLDN’s director of law and policy. "Their service has defended the freedom of every Texan, including Governor Perry. The governor’s remarks dishonor their service and he should immediately apologize. We should be thanking these brave men and women, not asking them to leave."
Col. Paul W. Dodd, a retired Army Chaplain and SLDN honorary board member who now lives in Texas, said in a statement, "Gays and lesbians have defended our country since the American Revolution."
"Governor Perry’s remarks were outrageous and offensive and do not reflect the views of fair-minded Texans who value the service of our men and women in uniform. It is past time that those who fight for freedom abroad be afforded those same liberties here at home," Dodd said.
****************************
What the hell is wrong with that Texas governor, Perry? Think he's trying to do a Bush...play to their religious base of non-Christians. In fact, from now on, those fanatical evangelists will be referred to, by me, as "non-Christians"...the ones with no compassion for anybody.
Wrap...
Texas governor suggests gay veterans should leave state
Gay groups demand Perry apologize
By STEVE KOVAL Jun 8, 10:55 AM
Texas Gov. Rick Perry suggested that gay veterans unhappy with the proposed anti-gay constitutional amendment should move elsewhere.
"I'm going to say Texas has made a decision on marriage and if there's a state with more lenient views than Texas, then maybe that's where they should live," the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Perry said Sunday.
Perry's comments were in response to a question during a news conference about what he would tell gay war veterans returning from Iraq.
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group for gays in the military, today joined calls by the Lesbian & Gay Rights Lobby of Texas for Perry to apologize.
SLDN's Sharra Greer demanded an immediate apology from Texas Gov. Perry.
"More than 66,000 lesbian and gay veterans make their home in Texas," said Sharra E. Greer, SLDN’s director of law and policy. "Their service has defended the freedom of every Texan, including Governor Perry. The governor’s remarks dishonor their service and he should immediately apologize. We should be thanking these brave men and women, not asking them to leave."
Col. Paul W. Dodd, a retired Army Chaplain and SLDN honorary board member who now lives in Texas, said in a statement, "Gays and lesbians have defended our country since the American Revolution."
"Governor Perry’s remarks were outrageous and offensive and do not reflect the views of fair-minded Texans who value the service of our men and women in uniform. It is past time that those who fight for freedom abroad be afforded those same liberties here at home," Dodd said.
****************************
What the hell is wrong with that Texas governor, Perry? Think he's trying to do a Bush...play to their religious base of non-Christians. In fact, from now on, those fanatical evangelists will be referred to, by me, as "non-Christians"...the ones with no compassion for anybody.
Wrap...
Judiciary: Hearings on Downing St Memo, June 16!
Raw Story has the news about this great step forward! Here it is:
House Judiciary Democrats to hold hearings on Downing Street minutes
John Byrne
The ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has scheduled hearings on the 2002 minutes between senior British and American officials which asserted that intelligence was "being fixed" to support the case for war in Iraq, Raw Story has learned.
The hearings, which will be held next Thursday, will bring renewed attention to what is being called the "Downing Street memo," actually official minutes of a secret 2002 meeting.
Conyers office has revealed that they will introduce new documents that corroborate the Downing Street Memo at the hearings June 16.
“We expect to release new documents that corroborate the Downing Street memo," a Judiciary aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Raw Story Thursday afternoon. "None of the documents are as earth-shattering as the Downing Street minutes but all of them corroborate the accuracy of what it says.”
Among those scheduled to testify are Joe Wilson, former ambassador and weapons of mass destruction expert; Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA analyst, used to do presidential daily briefings for Ronald Reagan; Cindy Sheehan, a mother who lost her son in Iraq combat; and John Bonifaz, the Boston constitutional lawyer who has called for a resolution of inquiry into what he sees as impeachable offenses in the president's false pretenses for war.
The Democratic Judiciary staffer said the overwhelming online response to Conyers' push on the Downing Minutes has further proven that pressure on issues can be built outside the mainstream press.
“We learned a lesson from the Ohio election investigation that frankly a lot of people on Capitol Hill haven’t learned, is that you can’t rely on mainstream media to be your validation as to whether you’re doing the right thing," the aide quipped. "When you talk straight to the people, if you’re doing the right thing, they’ll let you know."
“So much politics in this town is people putting out press releases, waiting to see if the press covers it, and if the press doesn’t cover it, then they move on,” the aide added.
Others are also expected to speak at the hearings. The aide said that other Democrats have expressed interest, including Reps. Barbara Lee (R-CA), Jim McDermott (D-WA) and John Lewis (D-GA).
*************************************
Conyers has definitely shown courage and the sense of what the right thing to do is, both in the Ohio election frauds and now in the case of the Downing Street Memo. Perhaps this man is the one we should be supporting for President in 2008....and if he doesn't want to be Pres, then we have an obligation to support him when he runs again for office. A good man is hard to find...especially these days.
Wrap...
House Judiciary Democrats to hold hearings on Downing Street minutes
John Byrne
The ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has scheduled hearings on the 2002 minutes between senior British and American officials which asserted that intelligence was "being fixed" to support the case for war in Iraq, Raw Story has learned.
The hearings, which will be held next Thursday, will bring renewed attention to what is being called the "Downing Street memo," actually official minutes of a secret 2002 meeting.
Conyers office has revealed that they will introduce new documents that corroborate the Downing Street Memo at the hearings June 16.
“We expect to release new documents that corroborate the Downing Street memo," a Judiciary aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Raw Story Thursday afternoon. "None of the documents are as earth-shattering as the Downing Street minutes but all of them corroborate the accuracy of what it says.”
Among those scheduled to testify are Joe Wilson, former ambassador and weapons of mass destruction expert; Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA analyst, used to do presidential daily briefings for Ronald Reagan; Cindy Sheehan, a mother who lost her son in Iraq combat; and John Bonifaz, the Boston constitutional lawyer who has called for a resolution of inquiry into what he sees as impeachable offenses in the president's false pretenses for war.
The Democratic Judiciary staffer said the overwhelming online response to Conyers' push on the Downing Minutes has further proven that pressure on issues can be built outside the mainstream press.
“We learned a lesson from the Ohio election investigation that frankly a lot of people on Capitol Hill haven’t learned, is that you can’t rely on mainstream media to be your validation as to whether you’re doing the right thing," the aide quipped. "When you talk straight to the people, if you’re doing the right thing, they’ll let you know."
“So much politics in this town is people putting out press releases, waiting to see if the press covers it, and if the press doesn’t cover it, then they move on,” the aide added.
Others are also expected to speak at the hearings. The aide said that other Democrats have expressed interest, including Reps. Barbara Lee (R-CA), Jim McDermott (D-WA) and John Lewis (D-GA).
*************************************
Conyers has definitely shown courage and the sense of what the right thing to do is, both in the Ohio election frauds and now in the case of the Downing Street Memo. Perhaps this man is the one we should be supporting for President in 2008....and if he doesn't want to be Pres, then we have an obligation to support him when he runs again for office. A good man is hard to find...especially these days.
Wrap...
Answer this one!
From Publishers Lunch:
Here's the question:
What Does It Mean When Veteran Republican Officials Are Using Regnery to Take on the CIA?
Wrap....
Here's the question:
What Does It Mean When Veteran Republican Officials Are Using Regnery to Take on the CIA?
Wrap....
Man, they just don't give a damn.
Couple of items on DeLay from the American Progress Report:
DOC NEEDS AN EYE DOC: The ethics committee is paralyzed again because chairman Doc Hastings insists that he be able to appoint his own personal chief of staff, Ed Cassidy, to oversee committee operations. Hastings needs to re-read the ethics committee rules. The rules explicitly call for the hiring of "a professional, nonpartisan staff." This is no "dispute" -- just a transparent stall tactic.
HASTINGS MUST STEP DOWN: No wonder Delay says he "welcomes" a House Ethics Committee investigation into the charges against him. The New York Times yesterday revealed that chairman Hastings is closely tied to the lobbying firm at the very heart of the ethics scandals involving DeLay. The firm, Preston Gates & Ellis, was home to shady lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who allegedly teamed up with DeLay in the 1990s in a scheme to help the Marianas Islands avoid U.S. labor laws. (The Marianas Islands run brutal sweatshops where workers are "paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage," are forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing," and report having been forced into prostitution.) Hastings has received $14,000 from the firm over the past 10 years; in 1996, he stood on the House floor denouncing stricter labor laws for the Marianas shortly after a meeting with Preston Gates. Today, Hastings' home-state paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, called on Hastings "to step back and turn the DeLay investigation over to a congressionally appointed special prosecutor." We agree entirely.
*********************************
And the Repubs reply, Tough. Whatcha gonna do about it?
Wrap.
DOC NEEDS AN EYE DOC: The ethics committee is paralyzed again because chairman Doc Hastings insists that he be able to appoint his own personal chief of staff, Ed Cassidy, to oversee committee operations. Hastings needs to re-read the ethics committee rules. The rules explicitly call for the hiring of "a professional, nonpartisan staff." This is no "dispute" -- just a transparent stall tactic.
HASTINGS MUST STEP DOWN: No wonder Delay says he "welcomes" a House Ethics Committee investigation into the charges against him. The New York Times yesterday revealed that chairman Hastings is closely tied to the lobbying firm at the very heart of the ethics scandals involving DeLay. The firm, Preston Gates & Ellis, was home to shady lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who allegedly teamed up with DeLay in the 1990s in a scheme to help the Marianas Islands avoid U.S. labor laws. (The Marianas Islands run brutal sweatshops where workers are "paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage," are forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing," and report having been forced into prostitution.) Hastings has received $14,000 from the firm over the past 10 years; in 1996, he stood on the House floor denouncing stricter labor laws for the Marianas shortly after a meeting with Preston Gates. Today, Hastings' home-state paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, called on Hastings "to step back and turn the DeLay investigation over to a congressionally appointed special prosecutor." We agree entirely.
*********************************
And the Repubs reply, Tough. Whatcha gonna do about it?
Wrap.
Downing St Minutes...every day...
After Downing Street
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Thursday 09 June 2005
As to US assertions that Iraq possessed bombs, rockets and shells for poison agents, unmanned aerial vehicles for delivering biological and chemical weapons, nuclear weapon materials, sarin, tabun, mustard agent, precursor chemicals, VX nerve agent, anthrax, aflotoxins, ricin and surface-to-surface Al Hussein missiles, not one has so far been found. One vial of Strain B Botulinum toxin is found in the domestic refrigerator of an Iraqi scientist. It is ten years old. Hans Blix comments, "They wanted to come to the conclusion that there were weapons. Like the former days of the witch hunt, they are convinced that they exist. And if you see a black cat, well, that's evidence of the witch."
-- From David Hale's new play, Stuff Happens
Intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. Bush had already made the decision to invade. That's what the leaked secret British intelligence document now known as the Downing Street Minutes tells us from back in time to July of 2002, before discussion of an Iraq invasion had made its way anywhere near public discussion. The decision to invade Iraq had already been made in the summer of 2002, and in order to make that decision a reality, intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of invasion.
It is interesting. The occupation of Iraq has lasted more than 800 days, and debate over the invasion has been going on for more than a thousand days. In that time, revelation after revelation has been put forth exposing the lies and manipulation used by the Bush administration to make this war happen. The first accusations of Bush administration mendacity on this issue were revealed six months before the invasion took place, in an October 8, 2002, article by Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay titled "Some Administration Officials Expressing Misgivings on Iraq."
"While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq," reads the article, "a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war. These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses - including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network - have overstated the amount of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East."
"They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views," continues the article, "and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary. 'Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books,' said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews. No one who was interviewed disagreed. None of the dissenting officials, who work in a number of different agencies, would agree to speak publicly, out of fear of retribution. But many of them have long experience in the Middle East and South Asia, and all spoke in similar terms about their unease with the way US political leaders are dealing with Iraq."
Since the publication of that article, we have learned about the Project for the New American Century, about its powerful advocates in Washington - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Bolton among them - and about their plans from 2000 that centered around an invasion and occupation of Iraq, based upon whatever pretext was available, to establish a permanent military presence in the Mideast and to gain ultimate control of petroleum management in the region.
We have learned about the secretive Office of Special Plans and its deliberate manipulation of Iraq weapons intelligence, about deliberate pressure put on analysts in the CIA by powerful men like Dick Cheney to manufacture reports of an Iraqi threat that did not match the facts, we have heard the details of this deliberate manipulation from government insiders like Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, Tom Maertens, Roger Cressey, Donald Kerrick, Greg Thielmann, Karen Kwiatkowski, Rand Beers and Joseph Wilson, whose wife's CIA career was shattered by the White House through the very breed of retribution those anonymous sources from the October 2002 article were worried about.
We have watched our government use the attacks of September 11 to terrorize the American people into supporting the invasion of Iraq, we wrapped ourselves in plastic sheeting and duct tape while handling our mail with oven mitts so as not to be infected with the anthrax we were told was in the hands of Saddam Hussein, we were told that they knew the weapons were there, that they knew where the weapons were, we were told by Bush himself his January 2003 State of the Union address that the 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, one million pounds of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program were waiting in Iraq to be given to terrorists for use against us, and that this was the main reason, the central reason, the absolute fact which required immediate action.
We have seen all this and more, we have seen torture, we have seen murder, we have seen the grinding of a civilian population in Iraq that was no threat to us or anyone else, we have seen hundreds of billions of dollars funneled into the bank accounts of administration cronies under the camouflage of this "War on Terror," we have seen one thousand six hundred and eighty-four American soldiers die and be returned home in transfer tubes, we have seen ten times that number wounded grievously, and we have seen more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed in their homes and on their streets, the uncounted dead whose innocent blood stains us all.
And now, after all that, it comes down to these Downing Street Minutes, to this small document released at the beginning of May by a British official looking to throw sand in Tony Blair's election hopes. After a roomful of Deep Throats and a dozen different kinds of Pentagon Papers were exposed before withering on the media vine, the Minutes now stand as irrefutable proof that the road to war in Iraq was paved, with absolute intent, with lies and deceit and misdirection and fraud.
For a time, it seemed as though these Minutes would join the rest of the Iraq revelations, discarded in the media gutter, run off the road by earth-shattering stories about Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton and Robert Blake and Martha Stewart and American Idol. Lately, and with a concerted push by activists and a number of members of the House of Representatives, the Downing Street Minutes are beginning to garner deserved and focused attention.
Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post wrote on June 8th that "After six weeks in the political wilderness, the Downing Street Memo yesterday finally burst into the White House - and into the headlines." USA Today reported on the same day that, "A simmering controversy over whether American media have ignored a secret British memo about how President Bush built his case for war with Iraq bubbled over into the White House on Tuesday."
Descriptions and condemnations of the Minutes have begun appearing in most of the major newspapers, and the document has become contentious fodder for debate on the cable and network news stations. White House apologists are out in force, and the spinners are spinning, but the simple facts of the matter dwarf the flaccid excuses and explanations petering out of the administration.
The Minutes were thrown into the faces of Bush and Blair during a joint press conference on June 7th. The two leaders were asked, "On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? Could both of you respond?"
Bush replied, "Well, I - you know, I read kind of the characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out in the middle of his race. I'm not sure who 'they dropped it out' is, but - I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there. And somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth." The rest of his answer was a lame rehash of the old lies, that the decision wasn't made before the facts were in, that the facts weren't manipulated, that war was the last option. Bush was visibly angered by the question, and not long after, brought the press conference to an abrupt end.
The record is clear, the evidence piled before us, treachery after stacked treachery. Plenty of powerful people would like this document to go away, not excepting the folks in the news media, because the document provides a capstone exposure of just how flawed, biased, shabby and ultimately deadly their coverage of this issue has been. Don't doubt for a second that the scions of our journalistic realm would like the Minutes to fade, because as long as the document stands in the light, their complicity in this catastrophe is all too clear.
It isn't going away. A massive coalition of activist groups have come together to form the After Downing Street Coalition, which seeks coverage of this issue in the media and accountability on this issue from Congress and the administration. Rep. John Conyers and 88 other House members have delivered a letter to Bush demanding answers, and nearly 200,000 Americans have signed their support for this letter. The number of signatures grows by the day.
This moment is described as the tipping point. Large majorities of Americans, in every poll, believe the Iraq invasion was unnecessary and the casualties thus far inflicted to be unacceptable. For the first time, the poll numbers show that a clear majority of the American people no longer believe that George W. Bush is keeping them safe. Bi-partisan coalitions are forming in Congress to demand that the US withdraw from Iraq and give that nation back to the people who live there, and those coalitions are edging towards majority-sized numbers. Legislation has been presented demanding withdrawal, and more is in the offing.
And now, the Minutes. Tomorrow, the Minutes. Every day, the Minutes, until there is a reckoning.
****************************
The sword of justice needs to strike this administration down...and the sooner the better.
Wrap.
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Thursday 09 June 2005
As to US assertions that Iraq possessed bombs, rockets and shells for poison agents, unmanned aerial vehicles for delivering biological and chemical weapons, nuclear weapon materials, sarin, tabun, mustard agent, precursor chemicals, VX nerve agent, anthrax, aflotoxins, ricin and surface-to-surface Al Hussein missiles, not one has so far been found. One vial of Strain B Botulinum toxin is found in the domestic refrigerator of an Iraqi scientist. It is ten years old. Hans Blix comments, "They wanted to come to the conclusion that there were weapons. Like the former days of the witch hunt, they are convinced that they exist. And if you see a black cat, well, that's evidence of the witch."
-- From David Hale's new play, Stuff Happens
Intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. Bush had already made the decision to invade. That's what the leaked secret British intelligence document now known as the Downing Street Minutes tells us from back in time to July of 2002, before discussion of an Iraq invasion had made its way anywhere near public discussion. The decision to invade Iraq had already been made in the summer of 2002, and in order to make that decision a reality, intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of invasion.
It is interesting. The occupation of Iraq has lasted more than 800 days, and debate over the invasion has been going on for more than a thousand days. In that time, revelation after revelation has been put forth exposing the lies and manipulation used by the Bush administration to make this war happen. The first accusations of Bush administration mendacity on this issue were revealed six months before the invasion took place, in an October 8, 2002, article by Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay titled "Some Administration Officials Expressing Misgivings on Iraq."
"While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq," reads the article, "a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war. These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses - including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network - have overstated the amount of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East."
"They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views," continues the article, "and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary. 'Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books,' said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews. No one who was interviewed disagreed. None of the dissenting officials, who work in a number of different agencies, would agree to speak publicly, out of fear of retribution. But many of them have long experience in the Middle East and South Asia, and all spoke in similar terms about their unease with the way US political leaders are dealing with Iraq."
Since the publication of that article, we have learned about the Project for the New American Century, about its powerful advocates in Washington - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Bolton among them - and about their plans from 2000 that centered around an invasion and occupation of Iraq, based upon whatever pretext was available, to establish a permanent military presence in the Mideast and to gain ultimate control of petroleum management in the region.
We have learned about the secretive Office of Special Plans and its deliberate manipulation of Iraq weapons intelligence, about deliberate pressure put on analysts in the CIA by powerful men like Dick Cheney to manufacture reports of an Iraqi threat that did not match the facts, we have heard the details of this deliberate manipulation from government insiders like Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, Tom Maertens, Roger Cressey, Donald Kerrick, Greg Thielmann, Karen Kwiatkowski, Rand Beers and Joseph Wilson, whose wife's CIA career was shattered by the White House through the very breed of retribution those anonymous sources from the October 2002 article were worried about.
We have watched our government use the attacks of September 11 to terrorize the American people into supporting the invasion of Iraq, we wrapped ourselves in plastic sheeting and duct tape while handling our mail with oven mitts so as not to be infected with the anthrax we were told was in the hands of Saddam Hussein, we were told that they knew the weapons were there, that they knew where the weapons were, we were told by Bush himself his January 2003 State of the Union address that the 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, one million pounds of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program were waiting in Iraq to be given to terrorists for use against us, and that this was the main reason, the central reason, the absolute fact which required immediate action.
We have seen all this and more, we have seen torture, we have seen murder, we have seen the grinding of a civilian population in Iraq that was no threat to us or anyone else, we have seen hundreds of billions of dollars funneled into the bank accounts of administration cronies under the camouflage of this "War on Terror," we have seen one thousand six hundred and eighty-four American soldiers die and be returned home in transfer tubes, we have seen ten times that number wounded grievously, and we have seen more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed in their homes and on their streets, the uncounted dead whose innocent blood stains us all.
And now, after all that, it comes down to these Downing Street Minutes, to this small document released at the beginning of May by a British official looking to throw sand in Tony Blair's election hopes. After a roomful of Deep Throats and a dozen different kinds of Pentagon Papers were exposed before withering on the media vine, the Minutes now stand as irrefutable proof that the road to war in Iraq was paved, with absolute intent, with lies and deceit and misdirection and fraud.
For a time, it seemed as though these Minutes would join the rest of the Iraq revelations, discarded in the media gutter, run off the road by earth-shattering stories about Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton and Robert Blake and Martha Stewart and American Idol. Lately, and with a concerted push by activists and a number of members of the House of Representatives, the Downing Street Minutes are beginning to garner deserved and focused attention.
Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post wrote on June 8th that "After six weeks in the political wilderness, the Downing Street Memo yesterday finally burst into the White House - and into the headlines." USA Today reported on the same day that, "A simmering controversy over whether American media have ignored a secret British memo about how President Bush built his case for war with Iraq bubbled over into the White House on Tuesday."
Descriptions and condemnations of the Minutes have begun appearing in most of the major newspapers, and the document has become contentious fodder for debate on the cable and network news stations. White House apologists are out in force, and the spinners are spinning, but the simple facts of the matter dwarf the flaccid excuses and explanations petering out of the administration.
The Minutes were thrown into the faces of Bush and Blair during a joint press conference on June 7th. The two leaders were asked, "On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? Could both of you respond?"
Bush replied, "Well, I - you know, I read kind of the characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out in the middle of his race. I'm not sure who 'they dropped it out' is, but - I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there. And somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth." The rest of his answer was a lame rehash of the old lies, that the decision wasn't made before the facts were in, that the facts weren't manipulated, that war was the last option. Bush was visibly angered by the question, and not long after, brought the press conference to an abrupt end.
The record is clear, the evidence piled before us, treachery after stacked treachery. Plenty of powerful people would like this document to go away, not excepting the folks in the news media, because the document provides a capstone exposure of just how flawed, biased, shabby and ultimately deadly their coverage of this issue has been. Don't doubt for a second that the scions of our journalistic realm would like the Minutes to fade, because as long as the document stands in the light, their complicity in this catastrophe is all too clear.
It isn't going away. A massive coalition of activist groups have come together to form the After Downing Street Coalition, which seeks coverage of this issue in the media and accountability on this issue from Congress and the administration. Rep. John Conyers and 88 other House members have delivered a letter to Bush demanding answers, and nearly 200,000 Americans have signed their support for this letter. The number of signatures grows by the day.
This moment is described as the tipping point. Large majorities of Americans, in every poll, believe the Iraq invasion was unnecessary and the casualties thus far inflicted to be unacceptable. For the first time, the poll numbers show that a clear majority of the American people no longer believe that George W. Bush is keeping them safe. Bi-partisan coalitions are forming in Congress to demand that the US withdraw from Iraq and give that nation back to the people who live there, and those coalitions are edging towards majority-sized numbers. Legislation has been presented demanding withdrawal, and more is in the offing.
And now, the Minutes. Tomorrow, the Minutes. Every day, the Minutes, until there is a reckoning.
****************************
The sword of justice needs to strike this administration down...and the sooner the better.
Wrap.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Memo: How times have changed...
In the current issue of Newsweek magazine, Jonathon Alter has written an article entitled, If Watergate Happened Now. .. A brilliant comparison and, I think, a too-accurate description of how it would go down. Read it and weep....
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
June 13 issue -
From a distance, Watergate seems like a partisan affair. But that's because we tend to look at it nowadays through red- and blue-tinted glasses. In truth, President Nixon was forced to resign in 1974 by Republicans in Congress like Barry Goldwater, who realized from the so-called smoking-gun tape that he was a crook. This was after the Supreme Court—led by a Nixon appointee—unanimously ruled against him in the tapes case.
But imagine if Nixon were president in this era. After he completed his successful second term, I'd have to write a retrospective column like this:
President Nixon left office in 2005 having proved me and the other "nattering nabobs of negativism" wrong. We thought that his administration was sleazy but we were never able to nail him. Those of us who hoped it would end differently knew we were in trouble when former Nixon media adviser Roger Ailes banned the word "Watergate" from Fox News's coverage and went with the logo "Assault on the Presidency" instead. By that time, the American people figured both sides were just spinning, and a tie always goes to the incumbent.
The big reason Nixon didn't have to resign: the rise of Conservative Media, which features Fox, talk radio and a bunch of noisy partisans on the Internet and best-sellers list who almost never admit their side does anything wrong. (Liberals, bycontrast, are always eating their own.) This solidarity came in handy when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post began snooping around after the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Once they scored a few scoops with the help of anonymous sources, Sean Hannity et al. went on a rampage. When the young reporters printed an article about grand jury testimony that turned out to be wrong, Drudge and the bloggers had a field day, even though none of them had lifted a finger to try to advance the story. After that, the Silent Majority wouldn't shut up.
Some argue the Watergate story died right there, but Nixon's attorney general wasn't taking any chances. Just as in the Valerie Plame case, the Justice Department subpoenaed Woodward and Bernstein to testify before the grand jury about their sources. When they declined, they were jailed for 18 months on contempt charges. Talkingpointsmemo.com and a few other liberal bloggers complained that it was hypocritical—top White House aides were suspected of shredding documents, suborning perjury and paying hush money to burglars—but to no avail. Public support for the media had hit rock bottom.
Whistle-blowers didn't fare much better. With Woodward and Bernstein out of business, the No. 2 man at the FBI, W. Mark Felt, held a press conference to air complaints that the White House and his own boss were impeding the FBI probe. Of course it was only a one-day story, with Ann Coulter predictably screaming that Felt was a "traitor." Rush Limbaugh dubbed Felt "Special Agent Sour Grapes" because he'd been passed over for the top FBI job. Within hours, the media had moved on to the tale of a runaway bride. And because both houses of Congress are controlled by the GOP, there were no "Watergate" hearings to keep the probe going. John Dean and other disgruntled former aides had no place to go.
For a while, I hoped that the Nixon tapes might bring some justice. But soon the tapes just became more fodder for those legal shows on cable. The Supreme Court split 5-4, along largely partisan lines, as it did in Bush vs. Gore. That allowed Nixon to keep control of the tapes. When he burned them, the bipartisan outcry you would have heard in the old days over destruction of evidence was muffled by a ferocious counterattack from the GOP's legion of spinners. A group calling itself "Watergate Burglars for Truth" set up a 527 to argue that Bill Clinton and other Democratic presidents had ordered more black-bag jobs than Nixon. There was nothing to prove them wrong. Reports of a tape showing that Nixon directly ordered the cover-up were just rumors, not anything that could be posted on smokinggun.com.
Nixon gave a TV interview to the British journalist David Frost in which he said, "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." This explained why he felt comfortable approving the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Ken Duberstein and a few other principled Republicans weighed in that Nixon was bad news, but they were drowned out by former aides like Pat Buchanan and G. Gordon Liddy, who wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institution. When "Firebombing Brookings: Good Idea or Not?" became the "Question of the Day" on MSNBC, Liddy's radio show got a nice ratings boost. After Ralph Reed disclosed that Nixon and Henry Kissinger had been on their knees praying in the Oval Office, Nixon went up 15 points in the Gallup, double among "people of faith." Our long national nightmare was just beginning.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc
***************************
Think about that....
Wrap.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
June 13 issue -
From a distance, Watergate seems like a partisan affair. But that's because we tend to look at it nowadays through red- and blue-tinted glasses. In truth, President Nixon was forced to resign in 1974 by Republicans in Congress like Barry Goldwater, who realized from the so-called smoking-gun tape that he was a crook. This was after the Supreme Court—led by a Nixon appointee—unanimously ruled against him in the tapes case.
But imagine if Nixon were president in this era. After he completed his successful second term, I'd have to write a retrospective column like this:
President Nixon left office in 2005 having proved me and the other "nattering nabobs of negativism" wrong. We thought that his administration was sleazy but we were never able to nail him. Those of us who hoped it would end differently knew we were in trouble when former Nixon media adviser Roger Ailes banned the word "Watergate" from Fox News's coverage and went with the logo "Assault on the Presidency" instead. By that time, the American people figured both sides were just spinning, and a tie always goes to the incumbent.
The big reason Nixon didn't have to resign: the rise of Conservative Media, which features Fox, talk radio and a bunch of noisy partisans on the Internet and best-sellers list who almost never admit their side does anything wrong. (Liberals, bycontrast, are always eating their own.) This solidarity came in handy when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post began snooping around after the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Once they scored a few scoops with the help of anonymous sources, Sean Hannity et al. went on a rampage. When the young reporters printed an article about grand jury testimony that turned out to be wrong, Drudge and the bloggers had a field day, even though none of them had lifted a finger to try to advance the story. After that, the Silent Majority wouldn't shut up.
Some argue the Watergate story died right there, but Nixon's attorney general wasn't taking any chances. Just as in the Valerie Plame case, the Justice Department subpoenaed Woodward and Bernstein to testify before the grand jury about their sources. When they declined, they were jailed for 18 months on contempt charges. Talkingpointsmemo.com and a few other liberal bloggers complained that it was hypocritical—top White House aides were suspected of shredding documents, suborning perjury and paying hush money to burglars—but to no avail. Public support for the media had hit rock bottom.
Whistle-blowers didn't fare much better. With Woodward and Bernstein out of business, the No. 2 man at the FBI, W. Mark Felt, held a press conference to air complaints that the White House and his own boss were impeding the FBI probe. Of course it was only a one-day story, with Ann Coulter predictably screaming that Felt was a "traitor." Rush Limbaugh dubbed Felt "Special Agent Sour Grapes" because he'd been passed over for the top FBI job. Within hours, the media had moved on to the tale of a runaway bride. And because both houses of Congress are controlled by the GOP, there were no "Watergate" hearings to keep the probe going. John Dean and other disgruntled former aides had no place to go.
For a while, I hoped that the Nixon tapes might bring some justice. But soon the tapes just became more fodder for those legal shows on cable. The Supreme Court split 5-4, along largely partisan lines, as it did in Bush vs. Gore. That allowed Nixon to keep control of the tapes. When he burned them, the bipartisan outcry you would have heard in the old days over destruction of evidence was muffled by a ferocious counterattack from the GOP's legion of spinners. A group calling itself "Watergate Burglars for Truth" set up a 527 to argue that Bill Clinton and other Democratic presidents had ordered more black-bag jobs than Nixon. There was nothing to prove them wrong. Reports of a tape showing that Nixon directly ordered the cover-up were just rumors, not anything that could be posted on smokinggun.com.
Nixon gave a TV interview to the British journalist David Frost in which he said, "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." This explained why he felt comfortable approving the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Ken Duberstein and a few other principled Republicans weighed in that Nixon was bad news, but they were drowned out by former aides like Pat Buchanan and G. Gordon Liddy, who wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institution. When "Firebombing Brookings: Good Idea or Not?" became the "Question of the Day" on MSNBC, Liddy's radio show got a nice ratings boost. After Ralph Reed disclosed that Nixon and Henry Kissinger had been on their knees praying in the Oval Office, Nixon went up 15 points in the Gallup, double among "people of faith." Our long national nightmare was just beginning.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc
***************************
Think about that....
Wrap.
Books 'n Films...Upcoming...
Debut
30-year-old Thomas Mullen's first novel THE LAST TOWN ON EARTH, set in 1918 against the backdrop of both the influenza pandemic and WWI, about a teenaged boy, the son of a progressive mill owner, standing guard as the town tries to isolate itself from the spreading flu, when an exhausted, hungry American soldier approaches begging for help, to Jennifer Hershey at Random House, at auction, by Susan Golomb of the Susan Golomb Agency (NA).
Film rights were optioned to Dreamworks last week, by Rich Green at CAA.Domestic rights: rbernstein@randomhouse.comsusan@sgolombagency.com
Mystery/Crime
Ira Berkowitz's FAMILY MATTERS, a debut crime novel about a police officer torn between his duty to the law and his loyalty to his brother and their father, who share a chilling secret about a series of deaths 30 years apart, to Steve Hull at Justin, Charles & Co., in a nice deal, by Gina Panettieri at Talcott Notch Literary Services (world English).gpanettieri@talcottnotch.net
BiographyMark Ribowsky's HE'S A REBE: Phil Spector -- Rock & Roll's Legendary Producer, an updated version of this biography of the music producer about to stand trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, Ben Schafer at Da Capo, for publication in spring 2006, by Michael Dorr (world).lissa.warren@perseusbooks.com
Illustrated/ArtFormer vice presidential candidate and Senator John Edwards' BLUEPRINTS: The Architecture of Our Lives, the story of America's common values and American's common dreams through pictures of the childhood homes of a diverse and notable group of people and stories from those people, to Joe Tessitore at Collins, with Kathy Huck editing, by Robert Barnett at Williams & Connolly (world). Edwards will donate his royalties to charity.
Parenting
Journalist Regan McMahon's REVOLUTION IN THE BLEACHERS, for parents who spend their lives shuttling their kids from one organized sports practice to the next, losing valuable family time and contributing to the all-or-nothing attitude in youth sports today, based on McMahon's controversial cover story for the San Francisco Chronicle, to Erin Moore at Gotham, in a pre-empt, by Betsy Lerner at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency.
FilmFilm rights to BACK IN ACTION: The Captain David Rozelle story, about his recovery after losing his right foot in combat Iraq -- strong enough to compete in triathlons with a prosthetic foot, and recently returned to Iraq to lead his mean again, to producers Braunstein/Jaffe and A&E for a dramatic movie, on behalf of Alexander Hoyt Associates and Regnery Publishing, by Hotchkiss and Associates.
Film rights to Robert Kurson's forthcoming INTO THE LIGHT, about a blind man who "had the chance to regain his sight thanks to advancements in stem cell surgery," again to Fox 2000 (which is producing SHADOW DIVERS), in a major deal, reportedly for almost $1 million, following an article by the author in the current Esquire, by ICM.
Wrap...
30-year-old Thomas Mullen's first novel THE LAST TOWN ON EARTH, set in 1918 against the backdrop of both the influenza pandemic and WWI, about a teenaged boy, the son of a progressive mill owner, standing guard as the town tries to isolate itself from the spreading flu, when an exhausted, hungry American soldier approaches begging for help, to Jennifer Hershey at Random House, at auction, by Susan Golomb of the Susan Golomb Agency (NA).
Film rights were optioned to Dreamworks last week, by Rich Green at CAA.Domestic rights: rbernstein@randomhouse.comsusan@sgolombagency.com
Mystery/Crime
Ira Berkowitz's FAMILY MATTERS, a debut crime novel about a police officer torn between his duty to the law and his loyalty to his brother and their father, who share a chilling secret about a series of deaths 30 years apart, to Steve Hull at Justin, Charles & Co., in a nice deal, by Gina Panettieri at Talcott Notch Literary Services (world English).gpanettieri@talcottnotch.net
BiographyMark Ribowsky's HE'S A REBE: Phil Spector -- Rock & Roll's Legendary Producer, an updated version of this biography of the music producer about to stand trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, Ben Schafer at Da Capo, for publication in spring 2006, by Michael Dorr (world).lissa.warren@perseusbooks.com
Illustrated/ArtFormer vice presidential candidate and Senator John Edwards' BLUEPRINTS: The Architecture of Our Lives, the story of America's common values and American's common dreams through pictures of the childhood homes of a diverse and notable group of people and stories from those people, to Joe Tessitore at Collins, with Kathy Huck editing, by Robert Barnett at Williams & Connolly (world). Edwards will donate his royalties to charity.
Parenting
Journalist Regan McMahon's REVOLUTION IN THE BLEACHERS, for parents who spend their lives shuttling their kids from one organized sports practice to the next, losing valuable family time and contributing to the all-or-nothing attitude in youth sports today, based on McMahon's controversial cover story for the San Francisco Chronicle, to Erin Moore at Gotham, in a pre-empt, by Betsy Lerner at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency.
FilmFilm rights to BACK IN ACTION: The Captain David Rozelle story, about his recovery after losing his right foot in combat Iraq -- strong enough to compete in triathlons with a prosthetic foot, and recently returned to Iraq to lead his mean again, to producers Braunstein/Jaffe and A&E for a dramatic movie, on behalf of Alexander Hoyt Associates and Regnery Publishing, by Hotchkiss and Associates.
Film rights to Robert Kurson's forthcoming INTO THE LIGHT, about a blind man who "had the chance to regain his sight thanks to advancements in stem cell surgery," again to Fox 2000 (which is producing SHADOW DIVERS), in a major deal, reportedly for almost $1 million, following an article by the author in the current Esquire, by ICM.
Wrap...
To report or not report..the D St Memo...
USA Today's article on the Downing Street Memo lays out who published what and when:
The Sunday Times' May 1 memo story, which broke just four days before Britain's national elections, caused a sensation in Europe.
American media reacted more cautiously.
The New York Times wrote about the memo May 2, but didn't mention until its 15th paragraph that the memo stated U.S. officials had "fixed" intelligence and facts.
Knight Ridder Newspapers distributed a story May 6 that said the memo "claims President Bush ... was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy."
The Los Angeles Times wrote about the memo May 12, The Washington Post followed on May 15 and The New York Times revisited the news on May 20.
None of the stories appeared on the newspapers' front pages.
Several other major media outlets, including the evening news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC, had not said a word about the document before Tuesday.
Today marks USA TODAY's first mention.
Some activists who opposed Bush's decision to attack Iraq have been peppering editors with letters and e-mails to push the media into more aggressive coverage. Last week, a group known as Democrats.com offered $1,000 to anyone who can get Bush to answer "yes or no" to this question: Did he or his administration "fix the intelligence" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to terrorism?
"We want what the Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton and Star Wars stories have gotten: endless repetition until people have heard about it," says David Swanson, one of Democrats.com's organizers.
Robin Niblett of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, says it would be easy for Americans to misunderstand the reference to intelligence being "fixed around" Iraq policy. " 'Fixed around' in British English means 'bolted on' rather than altered to fit the policy," he says.
Ombudsmen at both The New York Times and The Washington Post have been critical of their newspapers for not covering the story more aggressively.
USA TODAY chose not to publish anything about the memo before today for several reasons, says Jim Cox, the newspaper's senior assignment editor for foreign news. "We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source," Cox says. "There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing."
Wrap...
The Sunday Times' May 1 memo story, which broke just four days before Britain's national elections, caused a sensation in Europe.
American media reacted more cautiously.
The New York Times wrote about the memo May 2, but didn't mention until its 15th paragraph that the memo stated U.S. officials had "fixed" intelligence and facts.
Knight Ridder Newspapers distributed a story May 6 that said the memo "claims President Bush ... was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy."
The Los Angeles Times wrote about the memo May 12, The Washington Post followed on May 15 and The New York Times revisited the news on May 20.
None of the stories appeared on the newspapers' front pages.
Several other major media outlets, including the evening news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC, had not said a word about the document before Tuesday.
Today marks USA TODAY's first mention.
Some activists who opposed Bush's decision to attack Iraq have been peppering editors with letters and e-mails to push the media into more aggressive coverage. Last week, a group known as Democrats.com offered $1,000 to anyone who can get Bush to answer "yes or no" to this question: Did he or his administration "fix the intelligence" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to terrorism?
"We want what the Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton and Star Wars stories have gotten: endless repetition until people have heard about it," says David Swanson, one of Democrats.com's organizers.
Robin Niblett of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, says it would be easy for Americans to misunderstand the reference to intelligence being "fixed around" Iraq policy. " 'Fixed around' in British English means 'bolted on' rather than altered to fit the policy," he says.
Ombudsmen at both The New York Times and The Washington Post have been critical of their newspapers for not covering the story more aggressively.
USA TODAY chose not to publish anything about the memo before today for several reasons, says Jim Cox, the newspaper's senior assignment editor for foreign news. "We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source," Cox says. "There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing."
Wrap...
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