From the New York Times:
August 14, 2005
Someone Tell the President the War Is Over
By FRANK RICH
LIKE the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?
A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.'s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.
But our current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Mr. Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout "don't ask, don't tell" and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.
(continue reading article...click link below)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/opinion/14rich.html
Wrap...
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Bush won't see Cindy...
Bush learned from Saddam to get in his hidey hole when threatened, especially by somebody's mom.
Wrap.
Wrap.
Friday, August 12, 2005
BushCo's amazing record!!!
From: http://sheanc.blogspot.com/
•I attacked and took over 2 countries.
•I spent the U.S. surplus and bankrupted the US Treasury.
•I shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history (not easy!).
•I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.
•I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
•I am the first president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
•In my first year in office I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history (tough to beat my dad's, but I did).
•After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.
•I set the record for most campaign fund raising trips by any president in US history.
•In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.
•I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any other president in US history.
•I set the all-time record for most real estate foreclosures in a 12-month period.
•I appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.
•I set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president, since the advent of TV.
•I signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any other US president in history.
•I presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.
•I cut health care benefits for war veterans.
•I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.
•I dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.
•I've made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US history.
•Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.)
•I am the first president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously struggle against bankruptcy.
•I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any market in any country in the history of the world.
•I am the first president in US history to order a US attack AND military occupation of a sovereign nation, and I did so against the will of the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community.
•I have created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States, called the "Bureau of Homeland Security"(only one letter away from BS).
•I set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any other president in US history (Ronnie was tough to beat, but I did it!!).
•I am the first president in US history to compel the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.
•I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board.
•I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.
•I rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant. I withdrew from the World Court of Law.
•I refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.
•I am the first president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors access during the 2002 US elections.
•I am the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.
•The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).
•I spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.
•I am the first president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied, saying the enemy had the code to Air Force 1)
•I am the first US president to establish a secret shadow government.
•I took the world's sympathy for the US after 9/11, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).
•I am the first US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.
•I changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
•I set the all-time record for the number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling their huge investments in corporations bidding for gov't contracts.
•I have removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.
•I entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.
•RECORDS AND REFERENCES: I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).
•I was AWOL from the National Guard and deserted the military during time of war.
•I refuse to take a drug test or even answer any questions about drug use. (wink,wink)
•All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
•All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
•All minutes of meetings of any public corporation for which I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
•Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.
(accomplishments to be continued until Jan, 2007)
Wrap...
•I attacked and took over 2 countries.
•I spent the U.S. surplus and bankrupted the US Treasury.
•I shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history (not easy!).
•I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.
•I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
•I am the first president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
•In my first year in office I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history (tough to beat my dad's, but I did).
•After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.
•I set the record for most campaign fund raising trips by any president in US history.
•In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.
•I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any other president in US history.
•I set the all-time record for most real estate foreclosures in a 12-month period.
•I appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.
•I set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president, since the advent of TV.
•I signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any other US president in history.
•I presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.
•I cut health care benefits for war veterans.
•I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.
•I dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.
•I've made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US history.
•Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.)
•I am the first president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously struggle against bankruptcy.
•I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any market in any country in the history of the world.
•I am the first president in US history to order a US attack AND military occupation of a sovereign nation, and I did so against the will of the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community.
•I have created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States, called the "Bureau of Homeland Security"(only one letter away from BS).
•I set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any other president in US history (Ronnie was tough to beat, but I did it!!).
•I am the first president in US history to compel the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.
•I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board.
•I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.
•I rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant. I withdrew from the World Court of Law.
•I refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.
•I am the first president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors access during the 2002 US elections.
•I am the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.
•The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).
•I spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.
•I am the first president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied, saying the enemy had the code to Air Force 1)
•I am the first US president to establish a secret shadow government.
•I took the world's sympathy for the US after 9/11, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).
•I am the first US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.
•I changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
•I set the all-time record for the number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling their huge investments in corporations bidding for gov't contracts.
•I have removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.
•I entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.
•RECORDS AND REFERENCES: I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).
•I was AWOL from the National Guard and deserted the military during time of war.
•I refuse to take a drug test or even answer any questions about drug use. (wink,wink)
•All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
•All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
•All minutes of meetings of any public corporation for which I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
•Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.
(accomplishments to be continued until Jan, 2007)
Wrap...
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Plame Investigation...
Plame in the Courtroom
Is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act really impossible to prove?
By Elizabeth de la Vega
Pundits right, left, and center have reached a rare unanimous verdict about one aspect of the grand jury investigation into the Valerie Plame leak: They've decided that no charges can be brought under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, because it imposes an impossibly high standard for proof of intent.
Typically, writing for Slate on July 19th, Christopher Hitchens described the 1982 Act as a "silly law" that requires that "you knowingly wish to expose the cover of a CIA officer who you understand may be harmed as a result." Similarly, columnist Richard Cohen, in the July 14 Washington Post, said he thought Rove was a "political opportunist, not a traitor" and that he didn't think Rove "specifically intended to blow the cover of a CIA agent." Such examples could be multiplied many times over.
Shocking as it may seem, however, the pundits are wrong; and their casual summaries of the requirements of the 1982 statute betray a fundamental misunderstanding regarding proof of criminal intent.
Do you have to intend to harm a CIA agent or jeopardize national security in order to violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act? The answer is no.
Before presenting any case, a prosecutor like Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the Plame case has to figure out "the elements of the crime"; in other words, the factors he has to prove under whatever statute he is considering. If a grand jury finds probable cause to believe that each element has been proved, it may then return an indictment. At trial, the judge instructs the jury about these same elements. Parties can argue about whether the elements have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, but neither side can add, delete, or modify the elements even slightly to suit their arguments.
Why can't you change the elements? Because they come from the exact wording of the statute.
This then is what the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 says:
"Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to received classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the U.S. is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent‘s intelligence relationship to the U.S. [shall be guilty of a crime]."
To figure out the elements that must be proved, you simply break this run-on sentence into subparts in the following manner:
A defendant must:
(1) have authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent;
(2) "intentionally disclose" the information;
(3) disclose it to one not authorized to receive classified information;
(4) know the information he is disclosing identifies the covert agent; and
(5) know that the U.S. is taking affirmative measures to conceal the covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States.
Proof of these five elements -- and no others -- is what's required under the 1982 legislation.
(to read the rest, click the link below)
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=11747
Wrap...
Is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act really impossible to prove?
By Elizabeth de la Vega
Pundits right, left, and center have reached a rare unanimous verdict about one aspect of the grand jury investigation into the Valerie Plame leak: They've decided that no charges can be brought under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, because it imposes an impossibly high standard for proof of intent.
Typically, writing for Slate on July 19th, Christopher Hitchens described the 1982 Act as a "silly law" that requires that "you knowingly wish to expose the cover of a CIA officer who you understand may be harmed as a result." Similarly, columnist Richard Cohen, in the July 14 Washington Post, said he thought Rove was a "political opportunist, not a traitor" and that he didn't think Rove "specifically intended to blow the cover of a CIA agent." Such examples could be multiplied many times over.
Shocking as it may seem, however, the pundits are wrong; and their casual summaries of the requirements of the 1982 statute betray a fundamental misunderstanding regarding proof of criminal intent.
Do you have to intend to harm a CIA agent or jeopardize national security in order to violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act? The answer is no.
Before presenting any case, a prosecutor like Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the Plame case has to figure out "the elements of the crime"; in other words, the factors he has to prove under whatever statute he is considering. If a grand jury finds probable cause to believe that each element has been proved, it may then return an indictment. At trial, the judge instructs the jury about these same elements. Parties can argue about whether the elements have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, but neither side can add, delete, or modify the elements even slightly to suit their arguments.
Why can't you change the elements? Because they come from the exact wording of the statute.
This then is what the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 says:
"Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to received classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the U.S. is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent‘s intelligence relationship to the U.S. [shall be guilty of a crime]."
To figure out the elements that must be proved, you simply break this run-on sentence into subparts in the following manner:
A defendant must:
(1) have authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent;
(2) "intentionally disclose" the information;
(3) disclose it to one not authorized to receive classified information;
(4) know the information he is disclosing identifies the covert agent; and
(5) know that the U.S. is taking affirmative measures to conceal the covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States.
Proof of these five elements -- and no others -- is what's required under the 1982 legislation.
(to read the rest, click the link below)
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=11747
Wrap...
Iran & uncertainty...
From Secrecy News:
IRAN'S MISSING ANTI-NUCLEAR FATWA
In a defiant statement to the International Atomic Energy Agency this week, the government of Iran declared that it would resumeuranium enrichment activities but denied that it was pursuing nuclear weapons. As evidence of its peaceful intentions, Iran noted that the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamanei had issued a fatwa (an Islamic religious edict) proscribing such weapons.
But although it has been repeatedly referenced by Iranian officials, there does not seem to be any published text of such a fatwa, leaving its political significance and even its precise meaning in doubt.
"The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued the fatwa that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the IslamicRepublic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons," according to the August 9 statement to the IAEA.
See: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iran/nuke/mehr080905.html
But according to Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, the decree "prohibit[s] the development and use of nuclear weapons"(Los Angeles Times, 11/05/04). A religious prohibition on *development* of nuclear weapons was not mentioned in this week's statement to the IAEA. The reported fatwa was said to have been issued by the Ayatollah in September 2004 "at Friday prayers."
"When the Iranian leader issues such a fatwa, then we have given a political, religious and ideological guarantee that we are not pursuing the production of nuclear weapons," said Hasan Rowhani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, in a February 8, 2005 interview on Iranian TV.
But an Iranian legislative initiative to enact the prohibition on nuclear weapons into statute last year failed. Thus, instead of demonstrating and bolstering the credibility of the reported fatwa, the Iranian government sent sharply mixed signals. Iranian legislator Hojatoleslam Mohammad Taqi Rahbar said last November 9 that the bill to ban nuclear weapons was "not expedient," because Iran is in a region of proliferators. He added, significantly: "There are no Shari'a [religious law] or legal restrictions on having such weapons as a deterrent."
See "Dr. Strangelove in Iran," RFE/RL Iran Report, November 23,2004:
http://www.rferl.org/reports/iran-report/2004/11/41-231104.asp
In short, efforts by Iranian officials to publicly clarify their religious and political views on nuclear weapons have instead generated new confusion about their actual intentions.
CRS ON IRAN
See, relatedly, "Iran's Nuclear Program: Recent Developments" from the Congressional Research Service, updated May 18, 2005:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RS21592.pdf
and "Iran: U.S. Concerns and Policy Responses," updated June 27,2005:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL32048.pdf
Wrap...
IRAN'S MISSING ANTI-NUCLEAR FATWA
In a defiant statement to the International Atomic Energy Agency this week, the government of Iran declared that it would resumeuranium enrichment activities but denied that it was pursuing nuclear weapons. As evidence of its peaceful intentions, Iran noted that the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamanei had issued a fatwa (an Islamic religious edict) proscribing such weapons.
But although it has been repeatedly referenced by Iranian officials, there does not seem to be any published text of such a fatwa, leaving its political significance and even its precise meaning in doubt.
"The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued the fatwa that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the IslamicRepublic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons," according to the August 9 statement to the IAEA.
See: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iran/nuke/mehr080905.html
But according to Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, the decree "prohibit[s] the development and use of nuclear weapons"(Los Angeles Times, 11/05/04). A religious prohibition on *development* of nuclear weapons was not mentioned in this week's statement to the IAEA. The reported fatwa was said to have been issued by the Ayatollah in September 2004 "at Friday prayers."
"When the Iranian leader issues such a fatwa, then we have given a political, religious and ideological guarantee that we are not pursuing the production of nuclear weapons," said Hasan Rowhani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, in a February 8, 2005 interview on Iranian TV.
But an Iranian legislative initiative to enact the prohibition on nuclear weapons into statute last year failed. Thus, instead of demonstrating and bolstering the credibility of the reported fatwa, the Iranian government sent sharply mixed signals. Iranian legislator Hojatoleslam Mohammad Taqi Rahbar said last November 9 that the bill to ban nuclear weapons was "not expedient," because Iran is in a region of proliferators. He added, significantly: "There are no Shari'a [religious law] or legal restrictions on having such weapons as a deterrent."
See "Dr. Strangelove in Iran," RFE/RL Iran Report, November 23,2004:
http://www.rferl.org/reports/iran-report/2004/11/41-231104.asp
In short, efforts by Iranian officials to publicly clarify their religious and political views on nuclear weapons have instead generated new confusion about their actual intentions.
CRS ON IRAN
See, relatedly, "Iran's Nuclear Program: Recent Developments" from the Congressional Research Service, updated May 18, 2005:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RS21592.pdf
and "Iran: U.S. Concerns and Policy Responses," updated June 27,2005:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL32048.pdf
Wrap...
This is not good.
US loses spy drone as Iraqis make off with wreck
11 Aug 2005 19:34:54 GMT
Source: Reuters
MOSUL, Iraq, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Iraqis in the northern city Mosul have made off with a top secret American spy plane.
The U.S. military in Iraq said in a statement on Thursday that one of its "unmanned aerial vehicles" -- otherwise known as a drone -- had crashed in the town the night before.
"Within the hour, the crash site was investigated by nearby troops who assessed that no civilians or property were harmed or damaged as a result of the accident," it said.
"The UAV was not recovered, however, as the local population carried it away."
AlertNet news
Wrap...
11 Aug 2005 19:34:54 GMT
Source: Reuters
MOSUL, Iraq, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Iraqis in the northern city Mosul have made off with a top secret American spy plane.
The U.S. military in Iraq said in a statement on Thursday that one of its "unmanned aerial vehicles" -- otherwise known as a drone -- had crashed in the town the night before.
"Within the hour, the crash site was investigated by nearby troops who assessed that no civilians or property were harmed or damaged as a result of the accident," it said.
"The UAV was not recovered, however, as the local population carried it away."
AlertNet news
Wrap...
Marvelous...
From the Village Voice:
Bush and 'intelligent design'
Last week, in an interview with Texas reporters, Bush answered a question about "intelligent design" by referring obliquely back to his time as governor, saying, "I felt like both sides ought to be taught." Pressed by a reporter whether both evolution and intelligent design should be taught, Bush indicated yes, adding, "So people can understand what the debate is about." And later, The New York Times reported, he said, "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
In Dover, Pennsylvania, next month the issue will come to a head in what some are calling "Scopes 2." It's an ACLU court challenge to a school district's decision to require "intelligent design" 's being taught as an alternative to evolution.
As for evolution, Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, argued in an interview last week, "Evolution is extraordinary in that it's the most robust theory in the history of science. It's 150 years old and it extended into a world on a molecular level. Darwin had never heard of DNA, but it is precisely what the theory of evolution would have predicted."
Denied an understanding of evolution, said Henry, "students end up not being able to understand natural phenomena, and if they aren't able to come to conclusions and theories supported by evidence, they're going to be at a fantastic disadvantage in a world where using science is the major basis of competition."
H.L. Mencken referred to William Jennings Bryan in the 1925 Scopes monkey trial as a sort of "fundamentalist pope," and that is the way any half-alert school principal will now see Bush. When requesting public funds, the principal should include lessons on "intelligent design" in his curriculum or face political repercussions at the Department of Education and other government agencies.
The Scopes trial was a made-up event to promote the town of Dayton, Tennessee. Townsmen persuaded John Scopes, a high school biology teacher who taught evolution, to stand in a case designed to test the state's law banning the teaching of evolution. At the trial famed lawyer Clarence Darrow represented Scopes, while Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and populist, spoke for the state.
As the trial began, the Bible was entered as evidence. Then, in what The New York Times at the time reported as "the most amazing court scene in Anglo Saxon history," Darrow called Bryan, a self-declared student of the Bible, to the stand and proceeded to grill him on the meaning of the scriptures, asking question after question: the size of the fish that swallowed Jonah, the date of the great flood, Joshua making the sun stand still, and the temptation of Adam in the Garden of Eden, among other things. "Do you think the earth was made in six days?" asked Darrow. Which led to this exchange:
Darrow: Have you ever pondered what would have happened to the earth if it had stood still?
Bryan: No.Q: You have not?A: No; the God I believe in could have taken care of that, Mr.
Darrow.Q: I see. Have you ever pondered what would naturally happen to the earth if it stood still suddenly?
A: No.
Q: Don't you know it would have been converted into a molten mass of matter?
A: You testify to that when you get on the stand, I will give you a chance.
Q: Don't you believe it?
A: I would want to hear expert testimony on that.
Q: You have never investigated that subject?A: I don't think I have ever had the question asked.
Q: Or ever thought of it?
A: I have been too busy on things that I thought were of more importance than that.
"Darrow has lost this case," wrote Mencken at the end of the trial, which gave Bryan a technical victory that was later thrown out. "It was lost long before he came to Dayton. But it seems to me that he has nevertheless performed a great public service by fighting it to a finish and in a perfectly serious way. Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience. Tennessee, challenging him too timorously and too late, now sees its courts converted into camp meetings and its Bill of Rights made a mock of by its sworn officers of the law.
There are other States that had better look to their arsenals before the Hun is at their gates."
Additional reporting: Halley Bondy and Natalie Wittlin
Wrap...
Bush and 'intelligent design'
Last week, in an interview with Texas reporters, Bush answered a question about "intelligent design" by referring obliquely back to his time as governor, saying, "I felt like both sides ought to be taught." Pressed by a reporter whether both evolution and intelligent design should be taught, Bush indicated yes, adding, "So people can understand what the debate is about." And later, The New York Times reported, he said, "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
In Dover, Pennsylvania, next month the issue will come to a head in what some are calling "Scopes 2." It's an ACLU court challenge to a school district's decision to require "intelligent design" 's being taught as an alternative to evolution.
As for evolution, Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, argued in an interview last week, "Evolution is extraordinary in that it's the most robust theory in the history of science. It's 150 years old and it extended into a world on a molecular level. Darwin had never heard of DNA, but it is precisely what the theory of evolution would have predicted."
Denied an understanding of evolution, said Henry, "students end up not being able to understand natural phenomena, and if they aren't able to come to conclusions and theories supported by evidence, they're going to be at a fantastic disadvantage in a world where using science is the major basis of competition."
H.L. Mencken referred to William Jennings Bryan in the 1925 Scopes monkey trial as a sort of "fundamentalist pope," and that is the way any half-alert school principal will now see Bush. When requesting public funds, the principal should include lessons on "intelligent design" in his curriculum or face political repercussions at the Department of Education and other government agencies.
The Scopes trial was a made-up event to promote the town of Dayton, Tennessee. Townsmen persuaded John Scopes, a high school biology teacher who taught evolution, to stand in a case designed to test the state's law banning the teaching of evolution. At the trial famed lawyer Clarence Darrow represented Scopes, while Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and populist, spoke for the state.
As the trial began, the Bible was entered as evidence. Then, in what The New York Times at the time reported as "the most amazing court scene in Anglo Saxon history," Darrow called Bryan, a self-declared student of the Bible, to the stand and proceeded to grill him on the meaning of the scriptures, asking question after question: the size of the fish that swallowed Jonah, the date of the great flood, Joshua making the sun stand still, and the temptation of Adam in the Garden of Eden, among other things. "Do you think the earth was made in six days?" asked Darrow. Which led to this exchange:
Darrow: Have you ever pondered what would have happened to the earth if it had stood still?
Bryan: No.Q: You have not?A: No; the God I believe in could have taken care of that, Mr.
Darrow.Q: I see. Have you ever pondered what would naturally happen to the earth if it stood still suddenly?
A: No.
Q: Don't you know it would have been converted into a molten mass of matter?
A: You testify to that when you get on the stand, I will give you a chance.
Q: Don't you believe it?
A: I would want to hear expert testimony on that.
Q: You have never investigated that subject?A: I don't think I have ever had the question asked.
Q: Or ever thought of it?
A: I have been too busy on things that I thought were of more importance than that.
"Darrow has lost this case," wrote Mencken at the end of the trial, which gave Bryan a technical victory that was later thrown out. "It was lost long before he came to Dayton. But it seems to me that he has nevertheless performed a great public service by fighting it to a finish and in a perfectly serious way. Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience. Tennessee, challenging him too timorously and too late, now sees its courts converted into camp meetings and its Bill of Rights made a mock of by its sworn officers of the law.
There are other States that had better look to their arsenals before the Hun is at their gates."
Additional reporting: Halley Bondy and Natalie Wittlin
Wrap...
...and that's a fact.
No End in Sight in Iraq
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times
Wednesday 10 August 2005
The news coming out of Iraq yesterday was that several more American soldiers had been killed. August's toll so far has been mind-numbing. For American troops, it's been one of the worst periods of the war. And yet there's still no sense of urgency within the Bush administration.
The president is on vacation. He's down at the ranch riding his bicycle and clearing brush. The death toll for Americans has streaked past the 1,800 mark. The Iraqi dead are counted by the tens of thousands. But if Mr. Bush has experienced any regret about the carnage he set in motion when he launched the war, he's not showing it.
Writing about Vietnam in the foreword to David Halberstam's book "The Best and the Brightest," Senator John McCain said:
"It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn't support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay."
That point is no less relevant now. The administration is not willing to commit to an all-out effort to defeat the insurgents in Iraq, and is equally unwilling to reverse course and bring the troops home. Most Americans are abandoning the idea that the war can be "won." Polls are showing that they're tired of the conflict and its relentlessly mounting toll. It's hard to imagine that the population at large will be willing to sacrifice thousands of additional American lives over several more years in pursuit of goals that remain as murky as ever.
Ask a thousand different suits in Washington why we're in Iraq and you'll get a thousand different answers. Ask how we plan to win the war, and you'll get a blank stare.
Administration types and high-ranking members of the military have recently been teasing the media and the public with comments that are designed to give the impression that substantial numbers of American troops could be brought home next year.
Not only are these comments hedged with every imaginable caveat - if the transition to a permanent government goes smoothly, and if the Iraqis prove capable of providing their own security - but they are coming at a time when the U.S. is planning to increase American troop strength in Iraq in anticipation of elections scheduled for December.
I wouldn't schedule any homecoming rallies just yet, not with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warning that the current horrific violence may well escalate as the elections approach. And no one believes that the Iraqi security forces will be up to the task of securing the country any time soon.
When asked on Tuesday about a possible exit strategy for American troops, Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters it depended on many "variables," including:
"What are the Iranians doing? Are they going to be helpful or unhelpful? And if they're increasingly unhelpful, then obviously the conditions on the ground are less advantageous. Same thing with the Syrians."
Got that?
When Lyndon Johnson sent American troops into the flaming disaster of Vietnam he had no real strategy, no plan for winning the war. The idea, more or less, was that our boys, tougher and much better equipped, would beat their boys. Case closed. Fifty-eight thousand American troops succumbed to this schoolyard fantasy.
George W. Bush has no strategy, no real plan, for winning the war in Iraq. So we're stuck in a murderous quagmire without even the suggestion of an end in sight.
The administration has never been straight with the public about the war, and there's no reason to believe it will start being honest now. There is a desperate need for a serious national conversation about alternatives to the Bush approach in Iraq, which is tantamount to a permanent American military presence in that country.
The president, ensconced in a long vacation, exemplifies the vacuum of leadership on this crucial issue, which demands nothing less than the sustained attention of the wisest men and women the U.S. has to offer. They could be politicians, academics, civic or religious leaders, corporate executives - whoever. The longer they remain on the sidelines, the longer the carnage in Iraq will continue.
Wrap...
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times
Wednesday 10 August 2005
The news coming out of Iraq yesterday was that several more American soldiers had been killed. August's toll so far has been mind-numbing. For American troops, it's been one of the worst periods of the war. And yet there's still no sense of urgency within the Bush administration.
The president is on vacation. He's down at the ranch riding his bicycle and clearing brush. The death toll for Americans has streaked past the 1,800 mark. The Iraqi dead are counted by the tens of thousands. But if Mr. Bush has experienced any regret about the carnage he set in motion when he launched the war, he's not showing it.
Writing about Vietnam in the foreword to David Halberstam's book "The Best and the Brightest," Senator John McCain said:
"It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn't support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay."
That point is no less relevant now. The administration is not willing to commit to an all-out effort to defeat the insurgents in Iraq, and is equally unwilling to reverse course and bring the troops home. Most Americans are abandoning the idea that the war can be "won." Polls are showing that they're tired of the conflict and its relentlessly mounting toll. It's hard to imagine that the population at large will be willing to sacrifice thousands of additional American lives over several more years in pursuit of goals that remain as murky as ever.
Ask a thousand different suits in Washington why we're in Iraq and you'll get a thousand different answers. Ask how we plan to win the war, and you'll get a blank stare.
Administration types and high-ranking members of the military have recently been teasing the media and the public with comments that are designed to give the impression that substantial numbers of American troops could be brought home next year.
Not only are these comments hedged with every imaginable caveat - if the transition to a permanent government goes smoothly, and if the Iraqis prove capable of providing their own security - but they are coming at a time when the U.S. is planning to increase American troop strength in Iraq in anticipation of elections scheduled for December.
I wouldn't schedule any homecoming rallies just yet, not with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warning that the current horrific violence may well escalate as the elections approach. And no one believes that the Iraqi security forces will be up to the task of securing the country any time soon.
When asked on Tuesday about a possible exit strategy for American troops, Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters it depended on many "variables," including:
"What are the Iranians doing? Are they going to be helpful or unhelpful? And if they're increasingly unhelpful, then obviously the conditions on the ground are less advantageous. Same thing with the Syrians."
Got that?
When Lyndon Johnson sent American troops into the flaming disaster of Vietnam he had no real strategy, no plan for winning the war. The idea, more or less, was that our boys, tougher and much better equipped, would beat their boys. Case closed. Fifty-eight thousand American troops succumbed to this schoolyard fantasy.
George W. Bush has no strategy, no real plan, for winning the war in Iraq. So we're stuck in a murderous quagmire without even the suggestion of an end in sight.
The administration has never been straight with the public about the war, and there's no reason to believe it will start being honest now. There is a desperate need for a serious national conversation about alternatives to the Bush approach in Iraq, which is tantamount to a permanent American military presence in that country.
The president, ensconced in a long vacation, exemplifies the vacuum of leadership on this crucial issue, which demands nothing less than the sustained attention of the wisest men and women the U.S. has to offer. They could be politicians, academics, civic or religious leaders, corporate executives - whoever. The longer they remain on the sidelines, the longer the carnage in Iraq will continue.
Wrap...
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Egads!
I swear I've never seen chickens that look like these in my life, and I was born and raised on a farm! Take a look: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/11/garden/11fowl.html?hp
Wrap...
Wrap...
Read 'em and ....
Gawd! March 2006 does not seem to be getting any closer. No matter. Soon as TJ Waters' book, Class 11, is available for pre-order at Amazon, I'm on it! Picks from Publishers Lunch Weekly:
Fiction:
Rita Rudner's TURNING THE TABLES, a story of a sting in a Vegas casino, to Shaye Areheart at Shaye Areheart Books, by Alan Nevins at The Firm (world)
.anevins@firmentertainment.net
Debut:
Dan Shapiro's THE WHITE COYOTE, about the world of illegal migration as ranchers and migrants face off in an ongoing fight for survival, to Shaye Areheart at Shaye Areheart Books, by Judith Riven at Judith Riven Literary Agent (world).rivenlit@att.net
Thriller:
Dan Fesperman's THE PRISONER OF GUANTANAMO, to Sonny Mehta at Knopf, in a two-book deal, by Jane Chelius of the Jane Chelius Literary Agency.
UK rights to Nick Sayers at Hodder Headline, moving from Transworld, by Sarah Molloy at AM Heath, on behalf of the Jane Chelius Agency.
jane@janechelius.com
Romance:
Kristin Harmel's THE BLONDE THEORY, about a cerebral female lawyer who tests the waters as a ditsy blonde to see if she can improve her dating life, to Amy Einhorn at Warner, in a nice deal, by Elizabeth Pomada at Larsen/Pomada Literary Agents (world)
.amy.einhorn@twbg.com
[excellent agents, Pomada and Larsen]
History:
David Andress's 1789: The World Turns, the year when cotton was first planted commercially in the southern U.S., when the U.S. Bill of Rights was first published, when the Spinning Jenny went into production, and the year of the French Revolution, to Eric Chinski of Farrar, Straus, in a very nice deal, by Ivan Mulcahy of Mulcahy & Viney (US).
ivanmulcahy@mvagency.com
Humor:
Mark Schiff and Ritch Shydner's STANDUP ROAD STORIES, in which top comedians describe their experiences on the road, including entries by Jerry Seinfeld, Mike Myers, Larry David, Jeff Foxworthy, Jay Leno, Drew Carey, Chris Rock, Colin Quinn, Joan Rivers, and Paul Reiser, to Rick Horgan at Crown, by Dan Strone at Trident Media Group (world).
strone.assistant@tridentmediagroup.com
jmoore@tridentmediagroup.com
Memoir:
Former New Jersey governor James McGreevey's untitled book about "how he wrestled with his sexuality and his faith -- from the expectations he faced as a young man, to the divided persona he created in order to meet them, a story of what happens when the public and political collide with the personal -- and of one man's search for authenticity," to Judith Regan at Regan Books, by Robert Barnett of Williams & Connolly.
Science:
Michael Morwood and Penny van Oosterzee's THE HOBBIT'S TALE: The Discovery of a New Human Species in Indonesia, about the discovery of Homo floresiensis, a diminutive human species nicknamed "the hobbit," to TJ Kelleher at Smithsonian, in a very nice deal, by George Lucas at Inkwell Management (US).
kellehert@si.edu
[now this one should be fascinating!]
Sports:
Journalist and television sports producer Jeff Davis's ROZELLE'S RULE: The Life of Sport's Premier Commissioner, a biography of Pete Rozelle, who built the NFL into the dominant professional sports organization, again to Mark Weinstein at McGraw-Hill, by Paul Bresnick at Paul Bresnick Agency (world).
General:
Cameron Stracher's DINNER WITH DAD, a suburban commuting dad's epic struggle to sit down to dinner nightly with his wife and kids, to Bruce Tracy at Villard, in a pre-empt, by Lisa Bankoff at ICM(NA).
rbernstein@randomhouse.com
Film:
Film rights to A.J. Jacobs' THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY: One Man's Humble Quest to Obey the Bible as Literally as Possible, to Paramount, for Plan B to produce.
[good luck, buddy...]
Wrap....
Fiction:
Rita Rudner's TURNING THE TABLES, a story of a sting in a Vegas casino, to Shaye Areheart at Shaye Areheart Books, by Alan Nevins at The Firm (world)
.anevins@firmentertainment.net
Debut:
Dan Shapiro's THE WHITE COYOTE, about the world of illegal migration as ranchers and migrants face off in an ongoing fight for survival, to Shaye Areheart at Shaye Areheart Books, by Judith Riven at Judith Riven Literary Agent (world).rivenlit@att.net
Thriller:
Dan Fesperman's THE PRISONER OF GUANTANAMO, to Sonny Mehta at Knopf, in a two-book deal, by Jane Chelius of the Jane Chelius Literary Agency.
UK rights to Nick Sayers at Hodder Headline, moving from Transworld, by Sarah Molloy at AM Heath, on behalf of the Jane Chelius Agency.
jane@janechelius.com
Romance:
Kristin Harmel's THE BLONDE THEORY, about a cerebral female lawyer who tests the waters as a ditsy blonde to see if she can improve her dating life, to Amy Einhorn at Warner, in a nice deal, by Elizabeth Pomada at Larsen/Pomada Literary Agents (world)
.amy.einhorn@twbg.com
[excellent agents, Pomada and Larsen]
History:
David Andress's 1789: The World Turns, the year when cotton was first planted commercially in the southern U.S., when the U.S. Bill of Rights was first published, when the Spinning Jenny went into production, and the year of the French Revolution, to Eric Chinski of Farrar, Straus, in a very nice deal, by Ivan Mulcahy of Mulcahy & Viney (US).
ivanmulcahy@mvagency.com
Humor:
Mark Schiff and Ritch Shydner's STANDUP ROAD STORIES, in which top comedians describe their experiences on the road, including entries by Jerry Seinfeld, Mike Myers, Larry David, Jeff Foxworthy, Jay Leno, Drew Carey, Chris Rock, Colin Quinn, Joan Rivers, and Paul Reiser, to Rick Horgan at Crown, by Dan Strone at Trident Media Group (world).
strone.assistant@tridentmediagroup.com
jmoore@tridentmediagroup.com
Memoir:
Former New Jersey governor James McGreevey's untitled book about "how he wrestled with his sexuality and his faith -- from the expectations he faced as a young man, to the divided persona he created in order to meet them, a story of what happens when the public and political collide with the personal -- and of one man's search for authenticity," to Judith Regan at Regan Books, by Robert Barnett of Williams & Connolly.
Science:
Michael Morwood and Penny van Oosterzee's THE HOBBIT'S TALE: The Discovery of a New Human Species in Indonesia, about the discovery of Homo floresiensis, a diminutive human species nicknamed "the hobbit," to TJ Kelleher at Smithsonian, in a very nice deal, by George Lucas at Inkwell Management (US).
kellehert@si.edu
[now this one should be fascinating!]
Sports:
Journalist and television sports producer Jeff Davis's ROZELLE'S RULE: The Life of Sport's Premier Commissioner, a biography of Pete Rozelle, who built the NFL into the dominant professional sports organization, again to Mark Weinstein at McGraw-Hill, by Paul Bresnick at Paul Bresnick Agency (world).
General:
Cameron Stracher's DINNER WITH DAD, a suburban commuting dad's epic struggle to sit down to dinner nightly with his wife and kids, to Bruce Tracy at Villard, in a pre-empt, by Lisa Bankoff at ICM(NA).
rbernstein@randomhouse.com
Film:
Film rights to A.J. Jacobs' THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY: One Man's Humble Quest to Obey the Bible as Literally as Possible, to Paramount, for Plan B to produce.
[good luck, buddy...]
Wrap....
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Troop morale...
August 9, 2005
Air Force Officer Accused Anti - Bush Vandal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:10 p.m. ET
DENVER (AP) -- A full-time Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel could face criminal charges for allegedly vandalizing cars parked at Denver International Airport bearing pro-Bush bumper stickers.
Lt. Col. Alexis Fecteau, director of operations for reserve forces at the National Security Space Institute in Colorado Springs, is believed to be responsible for defacing at least 10 vehicles between December and June, police spokesman Sonny Jackson said Tuesday. A bait car left by a police detective was also defaced and the detective tracked down Fecteau, who turned himself in Friday.
He was released on bond. A message left for a man of the same name in Colorado Springs wasn't immediately returned.
Jackson said Fecteau is suspected of blacking out the Bush bumper stickers and then spray painting an expletive and the president's name on the vehicles.
Fecteau supervises 11 full-time and 30 part-time reservists at the institute, which is part of the Space Warfare Center at Schriever Air Force Base, said base spokesman Staff Sgt. Donald Branum.
''We are working with the local authorities,'' Branum said, reading a statement from the base. ''We will investigate the allegations and let due process take its course.''
The bait vehicle was equipped with a camera which was able to capture an image of the suspect and his car. Then a detective was able to find footage from a camera monitoring cars leaving the parking lot and traced Fecteau using the car's license plate, Jackson said.
Police have referred the case to prosecutors, who are considering filing criminal charges, he said.
Wrap...
Air Force Officer Accused Anti - Bush Vandal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:10 p.m. ET
DENVER (AP) -- A full-time Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel could face criminal charges for allegedly vandalizing cars parked at Denver International Airport bearing pro-Bush bumper stickers.
Lt. Col. Alexis Fecteau, director of operations for reserve forces at the National Security Space Institute in Colorado Springs, is believed to be responsible for defacing at least 10 vehicles between December and June, police spokesman Sonny Jackson said Tuesday. A bait car left by a police detective was also defaced and the detective tracked down Fecteau, who turned himself in Friday.
He was released on bond. A message left for a man of the same name in Colorado Springs wasn't immediately returned.
Jackson said Fecteau is suspected of blacking out the Bush bumper stickers and then spray painting an expletive and the president's name on the vehicles.
Fecteau supervises 11 full-time and 30 part-time reservists at the institute, which is part of the Space Warfare Center at Schriever Air Force Base, said base spokesman Staff Sgt. Donald Branum.
''We are working with the local authorities,'' Branum said, reading a statement from the base. ''We will investigate the allegations and let due process take its course.''
The bait vehicle was equipped with a camera which was able to capture an image of the suspect and his car. Then a detective was able to find footage from a camera monitoring cars leaving the parking lot and traced Fecteau using the car's license plate, Jackson said.
Police have referred the case to prosecutors, who are considering filing criminal charges, he said.
Wrap...
San Diego women join Sheehan.
Local Women To Join Vigil At President's Ranch
Families Of Fallen Soldiers Want Audience With Bush
POSTED: 7:57 am PDT August 9, 2005
UPDATED: 8:17 am PDT August 9, 2005
SAN DIEGO -- Two San Diego women will join the mother of a fallen California soldier in a peace vigil outside President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
IMAGES: San Diegans Join Texas Peace Vigil
Tiffany Strause and Julie Decker arrived at San Diego's Lindbergh field early Tuesday. They said they would to fly to Texas to join Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen U.S. soldier who is holding a roadside peace vigil near President Bush's ranch. Sheehan, 48, of Vacaville, Calif., has vowed to follow the president until she can personally ask him what her son died for.
Neither Strause nor Decker have family members serving in Iraq, but both said they support what Sheehan is doing.
"You don't have to have a personal investment to feel strongly about human life, American, Iraqi, civilian or otherwise," Strause told NBC 7/39. "I really do feel strongly that it's time. It's not early pullout. It's been over two years."
"We're going to support her, to try to get other Americans involved, to get support in Crawford, Texas, for her, and to put a spotlight on that story," Decker said.
Sheehan has been in Crawford hoping to talk to the president since Friday. Her son, Casey, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. Dozens of peace activists and others who have lost loved ones in Iraq have joined her vigil.
Since then, she said, various government and independent commission reports have disputed the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein had mass-killing chemical and biological weapons -- a main justification for the March 2003 invasion.
"All of those reports prove my son died needlessly," said Sheehan. "This proved that every reason George Bush gave us for going to war was wrong."
Sheehan, who formed a group called Gold Star Families For Peace and has spoken out against the war across the nation, talked for about 45 minutes on Saturday with Steve Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, and Joe Hagin, deputy White House chief of staff, who went out to hear her concerns.
Appreciative of their attention, yet undaunted, Sheehan said she planned to continue her protest along the road during Bush's stay through the end of the month.
"If he doesn't come out and talk to me in Crawford, I'll follow him to D.C.," she said. "I'll camp on his lawn in D.C. until he has the courtesy and the integrity and the compassion to talk to somebody whose life he has ruined."
Strause and Decker told NBC 7/39 that they are prepared to stay with Sheehan as long as it takes for her to get her audience with the president.
Copyright 2005 by NBCSandiego.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Wrap...
Families Of Fallen Soldiers Want Audience With Bush
POSTED: 7:57 am PDT August 9, 2005
UPDATED: 8:17 am PDT August 9, 2005
SAN DIEGO -- Two San Diego women will join the mother of a fallen California soldier in a peace vigil outside President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
IMAGES: San Diegans Join Texas Peace Vigil
Tiffany Strause and Julie Decker arrived at San Diego's Lindbergh field early Tuesday. They said they would to fly to Texas to join Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen U.S. soldier who is holding a roadside peace vigil near President Bush's ranch. Sheehan, 48, of Vacaville, Calif., has vowed to follow the president until she can personally ask him what her son died for.
Neither Strause nor Decker have family members serving in Iraq, but both said they support what Sheehan is doing.
"You don't have to have a personal investment to feel strongly about human life, American, Iraqi, civilian or otherwise," Strause told NBC 7/39. "I really do feel strongly that it's time. It's not early pullout. It's been over two years."
"We're going to support her, to try to get other Americans involved, to get support in Crawford, Texas, for her, and to put a spotlight on that story," Decker said.
Sheehan has been in Crawford hoping to talk to the president since Friday. Her son, Casey, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. Dozens of peace activists and others who have lost loved ones in Iraq have joined her vigil.
Since then, she said, various government and independent commission reports have disputed the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein had mass-killing chemical and biological weapons -- a main justification for the March 2003 invasion.
"All of those reports prove my son died needlessly," said Sheehan. "This proved that every reason George Bush gave us for going to war was wrong."
Sheehan, who formed a group called Gold Star Families For Peace and has spoken out against the war across the nation, talked for about 45 minutes on Saturday with Steve Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, and Joe Hagin, deputy White House chief of staff, who went out to hear her concerns.
Appreciative of their attention, yet undaunted, Sheehan said she planned to continue her protest along the road during Bush's stay through the end of the month.
"If he doesn't come out and talk to me in Crawford, I'll follow him to D.C.," she said. "I'll camp on his lawn in D.C. until he has the courtesy and the integrity and the compassion to talk to somebody whose life he has ruined."
Strause and Decker told NBC 7/39 that they are prepared to stay with Sheehan as long as it takes for her to get her audience with the president.
Copyright 2005 by NBCSandiego.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Wrap...
Cindy Sheehan went to war...
Mother of dead soldier vilifies Bush over war
PRESIDENT RIDICULED AT INTERFAITH RALLY
By Frank E. Lockwood
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER
The president of Gold Star Families for Peace, a mother who lost a son in Iraq, criticized the United States' "illegal and unjust war" yesterday during an interfaith rally in Lexington.
Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., accused President Bush of lying to the nation about a war which has consumed tens of billions of dollars and claimed more than 1,700 American lives -- including the life of Army Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan.
Sheehan was one of more than a dozen activists who were scheduled to speak at yesterday's anti-war rally at the Red Mile, which was organized by the Clergy and Laity Network and co-sponsored by dozens of liberal religious organizations.
Sheehan ridiculed Bush for saying that it's "hard work" comforting the widow of a soldier who's been killed in Iraq.
"Hard work is seeing your son's murder on CNN one Sunday evening while you're enjoying the last supper you'll ever truly enjoy again. Hard work is having three military officers come to your house a few hours later to confirm the aforementioned murder of your son, your first-born, your kind and gentle sweet baby. Hard work is burying your child 46 days before his 25th birthday. Hard work is holding your other three children as they lower the body of their big (brother) into the ground. Hard work is not jumping in the grave with him and having the earth cover you both," she said.
Since her son's death, Sheehan has made opposition to the Bush administration a full-time job.
"We're watching you very carefully and we're going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people," she said, quoting a letter she sent to the White House. "Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... ," she said, as the audience of 200 people cheered....
Wrap...
PRESIDENT RIDICULED AT INTERFAITH RALLY
By Frank E. Lockwood
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER
The president of Gold Star Families for Peace, a mother who lost a son in Iraq, criticized the United States' "illegal and unjust war" yesterday during an interfaith rally in Lexington.
Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., accused President Bush of lying to the nation about a war which has consumed tens of billions of dollars and claimed more than 1,700 American lives -- including the life of Army Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan.
Sheehan was one of more than a dozen activists who were scheduled to speak at yesterday's anti-war rally at the Red Mile, which was organized by the Clergy and Laity Network and co-sponsored by dozens of liberal religious organizations.
Sheehan ridiculed Bush for saying that it's "hard work" comforting the widow of a soldier who's been killed in Iraq.
"Hard work is seeing your son's murder on CNN one Sunday evening while you're enjoying the last supper you'll ever truly enjoy again. Hard work is having three military officers come to your house a few hours later to confirm the aforementioned murder of your son, your first-born, your kind and gentle sweet baby. Hard work is burying your child 46 days before his 25th birthday. Hard work is holding your other three children as they lower the body of their big (brother) into the ground. Hard work is not jumping in the grave with him and having the earth cover you both," she said.
Since her son's death, Sheehan has made opposition to the Bush administration a full-time job.
"We're watching you very carefully and we're going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people," she said, quoting a letter she sent to the White House. "Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... ," she said, as the audience of 200 people cheered....
Wrap...
Monday, August 08, 2005
Get this book...
"War Powers: How the Imperial Presidency Hijacked the Constitution" by Peter Irons.
I say get the book because its something we all should investigate and because of the author's credentials for writing it. Take a look:
Peter Irons
University of California at San Diego
Ph.D., M.A., Boston University J.D., Harvard Law School
Peter Irons is Professor of Political Science at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). He received his undergraduate degree from Antioch College and his Masters and Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston University. He earned his Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School in 1978, where he served as senior editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
Prior to taking his position at San Diego, Professor Irons taught at both Boston College Law School and the University of Massachusetts. He has been a visiting professor at several law schools and served as the Raoul Wallenberg Distinguished Visiting Professor of Human Rights at Rutgers University in 1988.
A widely respected authority on the Supreme Court and constitutional litigation, Professor Irons has written and edited 12 books, including, most recently, Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision. His books have won an unprecedented five “Silver Gavel” awards from the American Bar Association for their contributions to “public understanding of the American legal system.”
Professor Irons has received Outstanding Teaching Awards from three of the UCSD colleges. In addition to his work in the field of education, Professor Irons is also an active civil rights and liberties lawyer, and belongs to several state and federal bars, including the United States Supreme Court.
Courses by this professor: History of the Supreme Court >
Wrap...
I say get the book because its something we all should investigate and because of the author's credentials for writing it. Take a look:
Peter Irons
University of California at San Diego
Ph.D., M.A., Boston University J.D., Harvard Law School
Peter Irons is Professor of Political Science at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). He received his undergraduate degree from Antioch College and his Masters and Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston University. He earned his Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School in 1978, where he served as senior editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
Prior to taking his position at San Diego, Professor Irons taught at both Boston College Law School and the University of Massachusetts. He has been a visiting professor at several law schools and served as the Raoul Wallenberg Distinguished Visiting Professor of Human Rights at Rutgers University in 1988.
A widely respected authority on the Supreme Court and constitutional litigation, Professor Irons has written and edited 12 books, including, most recently, Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision. His books have won an unprecedented five “Silver Gavel” awards from the American Bar Association for their contributions to “public understanding of the American legal system.”
Professor Irons has received Outstanding Teaching Awards from three of the UCSD colleges. In addition to his work in the field of education, Professor Irons is also an active civil rights and liberties lawyer, and belongs to several state and federal bars, including the United States Supreme Court.
Courses by this professor: History of the Supreme Court >
Wrap...
More on Sheehan...
This from Raw Story via Daily Kos:
A friend of the mother who lost her son in Iraq and is protesting outside President Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch, says she expects to be arrested Thursday, according to his post on the liberal blog Daily Kos.
"Cindy Sheehan phoned me from Texas a few minutes ago to say that she's been informed that beginning Thursday, she and her companions will be considered a threat to national security and will be arrested," friend David Swanson wrote.
"Coincidentally, Thursday is the day that Rice and Rumsfeld visit the ranch, and Friday is a fundraiser event for the haves and the have mores. Cindy said that she and others plan to be arrested," he adds.
Wrap...
A friend of the mother who lost her son in Iraq and is protesting outside President Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch, says she expects to be arrested Thursday, according to his post on the liberal blog Daily Kos.
"Cindy Sheehan phoned me from Texas a few minutes ago to say that she's been informed that beginning Thursday, she and her companions will be considered a threat to national security and will be arrested," friend David Swanson wrote.
"Coincidentally, Thursday is the day that Rice and Rumsfeld visit the ranch, and Friday is a fundraiser event for the haves and the have mores. Cindy said that she and others plan to be arrested," he adds.
Wrap...
Heads Up, people...
Just heard Ed Schultz on Air America interviewing Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan who was killed in Iraq. Cindy has been standing in the ditch along the road that goes to Bush's ranch, three miles distant, waiting to speak with him. He, of course, refuses. Now Cindy's group has been contacted by a member of the Texas legislature who said that her peaceful group is about to be designated as a threat to the president and she will be arrested on Thursday if she doesn't get out of there.
Apparently BushCo is planning a big BBQ on his ranch and does not want Cindy or her supporters to be seen by his guests. What an asshole.
Also there's a website: www.cindysheehan.org for further info.
Wrap.
Apparently BushCo is planning a big BBQ on his ranch and does not want Cindy or her supporters to be seen by his guests. What an asshole.
Also there's a website: www.cindysheehan.org for further info.
Wrap.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
A good life and a good man...
August 8, 2005
ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings Dies of Cancer
By REUTERS
Filed at 0:12 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Peter Jennings, prime-time anchorman for ABC News for more than two decades, died of lung cancer on Sunday at his home in New York, the network said. He was 67.
The Canadian-born Jennings, host of ABC's ``World News Tonight'' since 1983, announced in April that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer.
``Peter died with his family around him, without pain and in peace. He knew he'd lived a good life,'' his family said in a statement released by the network.
Jennings was the last of a generation of long-serving lead anchors for major U.S. broadcasters.
He is survived by his wife Kayce Freed, his two children Elizabeth, 25 and Christopher, 23 and his sister, Sarah Jennings.
Wrap...
ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings Dies of Cancer
By REUTERS
Filed at 0:12 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Peter Jennings, prime-time anchorman for ABC News for more than two decades, died of lung cancer on Sunday at his home in New York, the network said. He was 67.
The Canadian-born Jennings, host of ABC's ``World News Tonight'' since 1983, announced in April that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer.
``Peter died with his family around him, without pain and in peace. He knew he'd lived a good life,'' his family said in a statement released by the network.
Jennings was the last of a generation of long-serving lead anchors for major U.S. broadcasters.
He is survived by his wife Kayce Freed, his two children Elizabeth, 25 and Christopher, 23 and his sister, Sarah Jennings.
Wrap...
More BushCo corruption...
In an excerpt from Raw Story, it's pretty damned obvious that Fitzgerald is scaring the hell out of BushCo. Be sure not to miss Newsweek tomorrow:
Newsweek's Michael Isikoff will splash a story in tomorrow's Newsweek which reveals that the boss of CIA leak probe prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is likely to be replaced by a former Bush classmate at Yale.
What's more, Newsweek has found that the new boss is a fellow initiate of the Yale secret society, Skull and Bones. Details will appear on the magazine's website early Sunday and on newsstands Monday.
Wrap...
Newsweek's Michael Isikoff will splash a story in tomorrow's Newsweek which reveals that the boss of CIA leak probe prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is likely to be replaced by a former Bush classmate at Yale.
What's more, Newsweek has found that the new boss is a fellow initiate of the Yale secret society, Skull and Bones. Details will appear on the magazine's website early Sunday and on newsstands Monday.
Wrap...
Bunny vs Halliburton/BushCo/Rummy..
Forget job security when you've yelled about pure, filthy corruption at these levels. It's about time for somebody in power to put a screeching halt to this crap:
Army Whistleblower Draws Fire
E-Mail This
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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 7, 2005
Filed at 12:17 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the world as Bunnatine Greenhouse sees it, people do the right thing. They stand up for the greater good and they speak up when things go wrong. She believes God has a purpose for each life and she prays every day for that purpose to be made evident. These days she is praying her heart out, because she is in a great deal of trouble.
Bunnatine ''Bunny'' Greenhouse is the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting (''PARC'' in the alphabet soup of military acronyms) in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Lest the title fool, she is responsible for awarding billions upon billions in taxpayers' money to private companies hired to resurrect war-torn Iraq and to feed, clothe, shelter and do the laundry of American troops stationed there.
She has rained a mighty storm upon herself for standing up, before members of Congress and live on C-SPAN to proclaim things are just not right in this staggeringly profitable business.
She has asked many questions: Why is Halliburton -- a giant Texas firm that holds more than 50 percent of all rebuilding efforts in Iraq -- getting billions in contracts without competitive bidding? Do the durations of those contracts make sense? Have there been violations of federal laws regulating how the government can spend its money?
Halliburton denies any wrongdoing. ''These false allegations have been recycled in the media ad nauseam,'' the company said in response to a list of e-mailed questions from The Associated Press.
Now Bunny Greenhouse may lose her job -- and her reputation, which she spent a lifetime building.
She is a black woman in a world of mostly white men; a 60-year-old workaholic who abides neither fools nor frauds. But she is out of her element in this fight, her former boss said.
''What Bunny is caught up in is politics of the highest damn order,'' said retired Gen. Joe Ballard, who hired Greenhouse and headed the Corps until 2000. ''This is real hardball they're playing here. Bunny is a procurement officer, she's not a politician. She's not trained to do this.''
Greenhouse has known for a long time that her days may be numbered. Her needling of contracts awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) predated the war in Iraq, beginning with costs she said were spiraling ''out of control'' from a 2000 Bosnia contract to service U.S. troops. From 1995 to 2000, Halliburton's CEO was Dick Cheney, who left to run for vice president. He maintains his former company has not received preferential treatment from the government.
Since then, she had questioned both the amounts and the reasons for giving KBR tremendous contracts in the buildup to invading Iraq. At first she was ignored, she said. Then she was cut out of the decision-making process.
Last October 6, she was summoned to the office of her boss. Major Gen. Robert Griffin, the Corps' deputy commander, was demoting her, he told her, taking away her Senior Executive Service status and sending her to midlevel management. Not unlike being cast out of the office of bank president into the cubicle of branch manager. Griffin declined to be interviewed by the AP.
Her performance was poor, said a letter he presented. This was a surprise. Her previous job evaluations had been exemplary, she said. The basic theme was that she was ''difficult,'' and ''nobody likes you,'' she said.
If she didn't want the new position, she could always retire with full benefits, the letter noted.
Over my dead body, said Greenhouse.
''I took an oath of office. I took those words that I was going to protect the interests of my government and my country. So help me God,'' she says. ''And nobody. Has the right. To take away my privilege. To serve my government. Nobody.''
She has hired lawyer Michael Kohn, who successfully represented Linda Tripp in her claim that the Pentagon leaked personal information after she secretly taped Monica Lewinsky's confessions of a sexual affair with President Bill Clinton.
Two weeks after Greenhouse's trip to the woodshed, Kohn wrote an 11-page letter to the acting Secretary of the Army, requesting an independent investigation of ''improper action that favored KBR's interests.''
He also asked that his client be protected against retaliation under whistleblower statutes.
Then he reminded the Army secretary of Federal Acquisition Requirement 3.101: ''Government business shall be conducted in a manner above reproach ... with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none.''
The status of an independent investigation by the Defense Department is unclear. ''As a matter of policy, we do not comment on open and ongoing investigations,'' said Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rose-Ann Lynch.
Halliburton is also under federal investigation for alleged favoritism by the Bush administration. FBI agents questioned Greenhouse for nine hours last November about that probe. In March, a former employee was indicted for taking bribes while working for KBR in Iraq.
Company spokeswoman Melissa Norcross said KBR has ''delivered vital services for U.S. troops and the Iraqi people at a fair and reasonable cost, given the circumstances.''
Meanwhile, Greenhouse has been placed under a 3-month performance review ending in September.
When Gen. Ballard hired her in 1997 she was overqualified -- three master's degrees and more than 20 years of contracting experience in private industry, the Army and the Pentagon.
''She is probably the most professional person I've ever met, '' Ballard said. ''And she plays it straight. That created problems for her after I left.''
Ballard used her, he said, to help him revolutionize the Corps -- by ending the old-boys practice of awarding contracts to a favored few, and by imposing private industry standards on a mammoth, 230-year-old government agency with 35,000 workers. He felt the Corps, which had overseen everything from building hydroelectric dams to the Soo Locks to the Manhattan Project, needed a hard boot into the new age of contracting.
''The Corps is a tough organization. And I'll tell you, it's not easy to be a woman in this organization, and a black one at that,'' said Ballard, who was the first black leader of the Corps.
He is not optimistic about her future.
''I think you can put a fork in it,'' he said. ''Her career is done.''
At Corps headquarters, few speak to her, she said, and her bosses write down what she says at departmental meetings.
Sometimes, as she walks down a hall, someone will mutter, ''Go for it, Bunny,'' or ''Give 'em hell,'' she said. ''They pass by saying this while they're looking straight ahead,'' she recounted, and chuckled.
In a city where politics is everything, including blood sport, she refuses to play. Right down to her clothes.
Bunny Greenhouse does not subscribe to the Capitol chic of a dowdy Janet Reno jacket and skirt or a boxy Hillary Clinton suit with buttons the size of quarters. On a sweltering summer day, seated in her lawyer's Georgetown office, Greenhouse wears a vibrant pink-and-black shirt, tight-fitting trousers with creases that could cut butter, and a blazer with a shredded-fabric flower.
Her bag -- overflowing with files, papers, pens, wallet, cell phone -- rivals the weight of a bound copy of the federal budget. Underestimate her at your peril.
''I have never gone along to get along. And I'm willing to suffer the consequences,'' she said.
Her contracting staff was sharply reduced, she said, and her superiors have gone behind her back, most notably in issuing an emergency waiver -- on a day she was out of the office -- that allowed KBR to ignore requests from Department of Defense auditors who issued a draft report in 2003 concluding KBR overcharged the government $61 million for fuel in Iraq.
''They knew I would never have signed it,'' she said.
The Army Corps of Engineers declined to comment on Greenhouse's complaints. ''It's a personnel matter,'' said Corps spokeswoman Carol Sanders. ''We're not going to go point-by-point with Ms. Greenhouse's accusations.
''They want me out,'' Greenhouse said.
In her job, Greenhouse is mandated by Congress to get the best quality at the cheapest price from the most qualified supplier. Over her objections, KBR was awarded three multibillion-dollar war-related contracts, two of them without competitive bidding.
Together, they are worth as much as $20 billion -- the entire cost of the Manhattan Project, adjusted to today's dollars.
Greenhouse's most strenuous complaints were over the Restore Iraqi Oil contract, estimated at $7 billion, originally planned to handle oil field fires that might be started by Saddam Hussein's troops. When that failed to happen, it morphed into an agreement to repair oil fields and import fuel for civilians and soldiers.
The contract was given to KBR in March 2003. In Greenhouse's view, that process violated federal regulations concerning fair and open bidding. Halliburton denies that.
A month before KBR got the contract -- and three weeks before the U.S. invaded Iraq -- she had demanded KBR officials be ejected from a Pentagon meeting attended by high-ranking officials from the Corps and the Defense Department. ''They should not have been there,'' she said. ''We were discussing the terms of the contract.''
Later, she would tell Democratic members of Congress: ''The abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have ever witnessed during the course of my professional career.''
At the Corps, Greenhouse said she was told KBR was the only qualified firm.
With the country on the brink of war, she reluctantly signed the RIO contract. But next to her signature, she boldly wrote an objection to the only thing she felt she could challenge -- the contract's length, five years. One year would have been more than fair, she said. After that, it should have been put out for bid among contractors with top security clearances.
''I caution that extending this sole source contract beyond a one-year period could convey an invalid perception that there is not strong intent for a limited competition,'' she penned in neat cursive.
In June, she was asked to testify before the Democratic Policy Committee -- formed by Democrats who said their efforts to get the Republican-controlled Congress to investigate alleged war profiteering had been repeatedly denied.
She was joined by a former Halliburton employee who said KBR fed spoiled food to American troops and charged the government for thousands of meals it never served.
Halliburton would not specifically address the former employee's claims. Norcross said taking care of troops is ''our priority.''
''I thought she was very courageous to come forward and blow the whistle,'' Rep. Henry Waxman of California said of Greenhouse. ''The administration ran around her and ignored her. We owe her a debt of gratitude.''
And if she is forced out?
''I would find that outrageous,'' Waxman replied. ''They should be promoting her.''
Greenhouse is a registered independent. Her husband, Aloyisus Greenhouse, is retired after a long Army career as a senior procurement officer. They have three grown children.
Bunny grew up in the segregated South, where her parents taught her and her siblings to be proud and hardworking. Her brother is Elvin Hayes, the Hall of Fame basketball player. She followed her husband's military postings, moving and moving and then moving again. In each place she found her own way, and her own job.
Her husband watches what is happening to her and tries to bite his lip.
''Bunny has a lot of faith. She really believes that someone will stand up and say, 'This is wrong.' But I don't think a person exists like that in the Department of Defense.''
But in her world, Bunny Greenhouse's faith still beams.
''I simply believe that we have callings and purposes in this life. I walk through this life for a purpose. I wake up every day for a purpose. And every day I say, 'Here I am. Send me.' ''
Wrap...
Army Whistleblower Draws Fire
E-Mail This
Printer-Friendly
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 7, 2005
Filed at 12:17 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the world as Bunnatine Greenhouse sees it, people do the right thing. They stand up for the greater good and they speak up when things go wrong. She believes God has a purpose for each life and she prays every day for that purpose to be made evident. These days she is praying her heart out, because she is in a great deal of trouble.
Bunnatine ''Bunny'' Greenhouse is the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting (''PARC'' in the alphabet soup of military acronyms) in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Lest the title fool, she is responsible for awarding billions upon billions in taxpayers' money to private companies hired to resurrect war-torn Iraq and to feed, clothe, shelter and do the laundry of American troops stationed there.
She has rained a mighty storm upon herself for standing up, before members of Congress and live on C-SPAN to proclaim things are just not right in this staggeringly profitable business.
She has asked many questions: Why is Halliburton -- a giant Texas firm that holds more than 50 percent of all rebuilding efforts in Iraq -- getting billions in contracts without competitive bidding? Do the durations of those contracts make sense? Have there been violations of federal laws regulating how the government can spend its money?
Halliburton denies any wrongdoing. ''These false allegations have been recycled in the media ad nauseam,'' the company said in response to a list of e-mailed questions from The Associated Press.
Now Bunny Greenhouse may lose her job -- and her reputation, which she spent a lifetime building.
She is a black woman in a world of mostly white men; a 60-year-old workaholic who abides neither fools nor frauds. But she is out of her element in this fight, her former boss said.
''What Bunny is caught up in is politics of the highest damn order,'' said retired Gen. Joe Ballard, who hired Greenhouse and headed the Corps until 2000. ''This is real hardball they're playing here. Bunny is a procurement officer, she's not a politician. She's not trained to do this.''
Greenhouse has known for a long time that her days may be numbered. Her needling of contracts awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) predated the war in Iraq, beginning with costs she said were spiraling ''out of control'' from a 2000 Bosnia contract to service U.S. troops. From 1995 to 2000, Halliburton's CEO was Dick Cheney, who left to run for vice president. He maintains his former company has not received preferential treatment from the government.
Since then, she had questioned both the amounts and the reasons for giving KBR tremendous contracts in the buildup to invading Iraq. At first she was ignored, she said. Then she was cut out of the decision-making process.
Last October 6, she was summoned to the office of her boss. Major Gen. Robert Griffin, the Corps' deputy commander, was demoting her, he told her, taking away her Senior Executive Service status and sending her to midlevel management. Not unlike being cast out of the office of bank president into the cubicle of branch manager. Griffin declined to be interviewed by the AP.
Her performance was poor, said a letter he presented. This was a surprise. Her previous job evaluations had been exemplary, she said. The basic theme was that she was ''difficult,'' and ''nobody likes you,'' she said.
If she didn't want the new position, she could always retire with full benefits, the letter noted.
Over my dead body, said Greenhouse.
''I took an oath of office. I took those words that I was going to protect the interests of my government and my country. So help me God,'' she says. ''And nobody. Has the right. To take away my privilege. To serve my government. Nobody.''
She has hired lawyer Michael Kohn, who successfully represented Linda Tripp in her claim that the Pentagon leaked personal information after she secretly taped Monica Lewinsky's confessions of a sexual affair with President Bill Clinton.
Two weeks after Greenhouse's trip to the woodshed, Kohn wrote an 11-page letter to the acting Secretary of the Army, requesting an independent investigation of ''improper action that favored KBR's interests.''
He also asked that his client be protected against retaliation under whistleblower statutes.
Then he reminded the Army secretary of Federal Acquisition Requirement 3.101: ''Government business shall be conducted in a manner above reproach ... with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none.''
The status of an independent investigation by the Defense Department is unclear. ''As a matter of policy, we do not comment on open and ongoing investigations,'' said Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rose-Ann Lynch.
Halliburton is also under federal investigation for alleged favoritism by the Bush administration. FBI agents questioned Greenhouse for nine hours last November about that probe. In March, a former employee was indicted for taking bribes while working for KBR in Iraq.
Company spokeswoman Melissa Norcross said KBR has ''delivered vital services for U.S. troops and the Iraqi people at a fair and reasonable cost, given the circumstances.''
Meanwhile, Greenhouse has been placed under a 3-month performance review ending in September.
When Gen. Ballard hired her in 1997 she was overqualified -- three master's degrees and more than 20 years of contracting experience in private industry, the Army and the Pentagon.
''She is probably the most professional person I've ever met, '' Ballard said. ''And she plays it straight. That created problems for her after I left.''
Ballard used her, he said, to help him revolutionize the Corps -- by ending the old-boys practice of awarding contracts to a favored few, and by imposing private industry standards on a mammoth, 230-year-old government agency with 35,000 workers. He felt the Corps, which had overseen everything from building hydroelectric dams to the Soo Locks to the Manhattan Project, needed a hard boot into the new age of contracting.
''The Corps is a tough organization. And I'll tell you, it's not easy to be a woman in this organization, and a black one at that,'' said Ballard, who was the first black leader of the Corps.
He is not optimistic about her future.
''I think you can put a fork in it,'' he said. ''Her career is done.''
At Corps headquarters, few speak to her, she said, and her bosses write down what she says at departmental meetings.
Sometimes, as she walks down a hall, someone will mutter, ''Go for it, Bunny,'' or ''Give 'em hell,'' she said. ''They pass by saying this while they're looking straight ahead,'' she recounted, and chuckled.
In a city where politics is everything, including blood sport, she refuses to play. Right down to her clothes.
Bunny Greenhouse does not subscribe to the Capitol chic of a dowdy Janet Reno jacket and skirt or a boxy Hillary Clinton suit with buttons the size of quarters. On a sweltering summer day, seated in her lawyer's Georgetown office, Greenhouse wears a vibrant pink-and-black shirt, tight-fitting trousers with creases that could cut butter, and a blazer with a shredded-fabric flower.
Her bag -- overflowing with files, papers, pens, wallet, cell phone -- rivals the weight of a bound copy of the federal budget. Underestimate her at your peril.
''I have never gone along to get along. And I'm willing to suffer the consequences,'' she said.
Her contracting staff was sharply reduced, she said, and her superiors have gone behind her back, most notably in issuing an emergency waiver -- on a day she was out of the office -- that allowed KBR to ignore requests from Department of Defense auditors who issued a draft report in 2003 concluding KBR overcharged the government $61 million for fuel in Iraq.
''They knew I would never have signed it,'' she said.
The Army Corps of Engineers declined to comment on Greenhouse's complaints. ''It's a personnel matter,'' said Corps spokeswoman Carol Sanders. ''We're not going to go point-by-point with Ms. Greenhouse's accusations.
''They want me out,'' Greenhouse said.
In her job, Greenhouse is mandated by Congress to get the best quality at the cheapest price from the most qualified supplier. Over her objections, KBR was awarded three multibillion-dollar war-related contracts, two of them without competitive bidding.
Together, they are worth as much as $20 billion -- the entire cost of the Manhattan Project, adjusted to today's dollars.
Greenhouse's most strenuous complaints were over the Restore Iraqi Oil contract, estimated at $7 billion, originally planned to handle oil field fires that might be started by Saddam Hussein's troops. When that failed to happen, it morphed into an agreement to repair oil fields and import fuel for civilians and soldiers.
The contract was given to KBR in March 2003. In Greenhouse's view, that process violated federal regulations concerning fair and open bidding. Halliburton denies that.
A month before KBR got the contract -- and three weeks before the U.S. invaded Iraq -- she had demanded KBR officials be ejected from a Pentagon meeting attended by high-ranking officials from the Corps and the Defense Department. ''They should not have been there,'' she said. ''We were discussing the terms of the contract.''
Later, she would tell Democratic members of Congress: ''The abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have ever witnessed during the course of my professional career.''
At the Corps, Greenhouse said she was told KBR was the only qualified firm.
With the country on the brink of war, she reluctantly signed the RIO contract. But next to her signature, she boldly wrote an objection to the only thing she felt she could challenge -- the contract's length, five years. One year would have been more than fair, she said. After that, it should have been put out for bid among contractors with top security clearances.
''I caution that extending this sole source contract beyond a one-year period could convey an invalid perception that there is not strong intent for a limited competition,'' she penned in neat cursive.
In June, she was asked to testify before the Democratic Policy Committee -- formed by Democrats who said their efforts to get the Republican-controlled Congress to investigate alleged war profiteering had been repeatedly denied.
She was joined by a former Halliburton employee who said KBR fed spoiled food to American troops and charged the government for thousands of meals it never served.
Halliburton would not specifically address the former employee's claims. Norcross said taking care of troops is ''our priority.''
''I thought she was very courageous to come forward and blow the whistle,'' Rep. Henry Waxman of California said of Greenhouse. ''The administration ran around her and ignored her. We owe her a debt of gratitude.''
And if she is forced out?
''I would find that outrageous,'' Waxman replied. ''They should be promoting her.''
Greenhouse is a registered independent. Her husband, Aloyisus Greenhouse, is retired after a long Army career as a senior procurement officer. They have three grown children.
Bunny grew up in the segregated South, where her parents taught her and her siblings to be proud and hardworking. Her brother is Elvin Hayes, the Hall of Fame basketball player. She followed her husband's military postings, moving and moving and then moving again. In each place she found her own way, and her own job.
Her husband watches what is happening to her and tries to bite his lip.
''Bunny has a lot of faith. She really believes that someone will stand up and say, 'This is wrong.' But I don't think a person exists like that in the Department of Defense.''
But in her world, Bunny Greenhouse's faith still beams.
''I simply believe that we have callings and purposes in this life. I walk through this life for a purpose. I wake up every day for a purpose. And every day I say, 'Here I am. Send me.' ''
Wrap...
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Russian crew saved, well...
Huge sigh of relief! The Brits saved the day. Once the cables were cut, the Russian sub lifted to the surface on its own, and the crew opened the hatches themselves. All seven alive and well. Only confusion remaining is just what they were tangled in--a fishing net or the intel grid net. Main thing is, the operation was a roaring success.
And now we wait for the space shuttle to safely reenter earth's atmosphere and land in one piece.
Neither the seas nor space are friendly areas for mankind.
Wrap.
And now we wait for the space shuttle to safely reenter earth's atmosphere and land in one piece.
Neither the seas nor space are friendly areas for mankind.
Wrap.
Let's make a movie...
August 4, 2005
Pentagon's New Goal: Put Science Into Scripts
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 3 - Tucked away in the Hollywood hills, an elite group of scientists from across the country and from a grab bag of disciplines - rocket science, nanotechnology, genetics, even veterinary medicine - has gathered this week to plot a solution to what officials call one of the nation's most vexing long-term national security problems.
Their work is being financed by the Air Force and the Army, but the Manhattan Project it ain't: the 15 scientists are being taught how to write and sell screenplays.
At a cost of roughly $25,000 in Pentagon research grants, the American Film Institute is cramming this eclectic group of midcareer researchers, engineers, chemists and physicists full of pointers on how to find their way in a world that can be a lot lonelier than the loneliest laboratory: the wilderness of story arcs, plot points, pitching and the special circle of hell better known as development.
And no primer on Hollywood would be complete without at least three hours on "Agents & Managers."
Exactly how the national defense could be bolstered by setting a few more people loose in Los Angeles with screenplays to peddle may be a bit of a brainteaser. But officials at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research spell out a straightforward syllogism:
Fewer and fewer students are pursuing science and engineering. While immigrants are taking up the slack in many areas, defense laboratories and industries generally require American citizenship or permanent residency. So a crisis is looming, unless careers in science and engineering suddenly become hugely popular, said Robert J. Barker, an Air Force program manager who approved the grant. And what better way to get a lot of young people interested in science than by producing movies and television shows that depict scientists in flattering ways?
Teaching screenwriting to scientists was the brainstorm of Martin Gundersen, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California and sometime Hollywood technical adviser, whose biggest brush with stardom was bringing a little verisimilitude to Val Kilmer's lasers in the 1985 comedy "Real Genius."
More recently, he was asked to review screenplays by the Sloan Foundation, which awards prizes for scientific accuracy, and found most to be "pretty dismal," as he put it.
"My thought was, since scientists have to write so much, for technical journals and papers, why not consider them as a creative source?" Dr. Gundersen said.
He already had contacts at the American Film Institute, and he quickly persuaded Dr. Barker, who oversees several of his other grants, to endorse what began as a weekend seminar last summer and was expanded to five days this year. The Air Force is providing $100,000 annually for three years; the Army Research Office has added $50,000 this year.
Much of that money will pay for other like-minded efforts: Dr. Gundersen is also starting a workshop for high school students at the film institute, and he plans to get entertainment industry people to lead seminars at scientific conferences and to give seminars to up-and-coming screenwriters on how to reach out to scientists for help with accuracy.
For now, though, the hopes of the Pentagon for a science-friendly cinema seem to be riding on the shoulders of people like Bogdan Marcu, an engineer for Boeing's rocket propulsion division who is nursing an idea for a spy thriller, and Sam Mandegaran, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology who says he wants to become a director of science-friendly movies for young people because "adults are a lost cause."
Around a table at the institute's campus, they and their colleagues, chosen from some 50 applicants, listened this week as Syd Field, author of some of the most popular how-to books on screenwriting, steeped them in the ABC's of three-act structure.
They wrestled with how to reconcile the cinematic suspension of disbelief with the scientific method and with their basic purpose of bringing accuracy to the screen.
And they got feedback for their own script ideas. A disaster movie set at the Olympics, where athletes get a virus that makes them smarter? (Problem: the main character was the virus.) A biopic on the inventor of the Ferris wheel, who died a sad and lonely alcoholic? ("Do I have to like the character?" asked its author, Jeffrey Hoch. Hardly - think "Raging Bull," he was told by Alex Singer, a veteran television director.)
Mr. Hoch was full of searching questions. "When I'm writing for a scientist, I write for my peers," he said. "Who are we writing for? The viewer? The director? The money people?"
"Tell your story for you," Mr. Field urged him. "Then, go back and rewrite it."
Dr. Gundersen chimed in: "It's different from writing for a science journal. That has to be right; you'd better not make a mistake, because people will beat the hell out of you. In a movie, I wouldn't want to say it doesn't have to be right, but it's different."
Added Mr. Singer: "They will not forgive you for being bored. They'll forgive you for anything else."
Later, over meatloaf, the workshop participants batted around their favorite depictions of science and scientists (the television show "Numbers" and the films "Starman" and "Deep Impact," among others) and what they considered the most odious ("The Day After Tomorrow," hands down).
And then there was one they could not agree on: "Falling Down," the 1993 film starring Michael Douglas as a downsized defense-industry engineer who has a violent breakdown in Los Angeles.
"Why'd they have to make him look like that?" said Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, a physics professor at the University of Nebraska, of Mr. Douglas's crew cut, black-rimmed glasses and pocket protector. "He's a good-looking guy. None of my friends look like that."
But Mr. Marcu, who works at a defense-industry plant, begged to differ. "I hate to say it, but people inside those defense plants look like that," he said. "You should see the people at my company."
Where this week's efforts may lead is, at the very least, uphill: out of an estimated 75,000 scripts floating around Hollywood, only 500 or so films are made a year, Mr. Field warned the scientists. But while Dr. Gundersen and Dr. Barker conceded that the odds were stacked against any of their protégés, they are clearly holding out hope.
"I really believe we will be able to point to something that will emerge, maybe 5 or 10 years from now, and say, Gee, that name of that screenwriter is familiar, with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering or something," Dr. Barker said.
Dr. Gundersen, meanwhile, offered Valerie Weiss, a participant in the 2004 workshop, as a potential success story. A film buff at Harvard while she was getting her Ph.D. in biophysics, Ms. Weiss switched careers to film four years ago and is now trying to sell a comedy built around a Bridget Jones-like biochemist who applies the scientific method to her hunt for a mate.
She said she hoped her background would give her film the kind of personal touch that Nia Vardalos brought to "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" as a Greek-American. "To write a film that is going to have impact like that, it needs to be from somebody that has direct experience," she said.
Ms. Weiss said Dr. Gundersen's notion that scientists could make good screenwriters stood the test of reason.
"They're inherently creative, and willing to take more risks than other people," she said. "They're searching for the unknown, they're compensated very minimally, they're going on blind faith that what they're searching for is going to pay off. And filmmaking is exactly the same way."
Wrap...
Pentagon's New Goal: Put Science Into Scripts
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 3 - Tucked away in the Hollywood hills, an elite group of scientists from across the country and from a grab bag of disciplines - rocket science, nanotechnology, genetics, even veterinary medicine - has gathered this week to plot a solution to what officials call one of the nation's most vexing long-term national security problems.
Their work is being financed by the Air Force and the Army, but the Manhattan Project it ain't: the 15 scientists are being taught how to write and sell screenplays.
At a cost of roughly $25,000 in Pentagon research grants, the American Film Institute is cramming this eclectic group of midcareer researchers, engineers, chemists and physicists full of pointers on how to find their way in a world that can be a lot lonelier than the loneliest laboratory: the wilderness of story arcs, plot points, pitching and the special circle of hell better known as development.
And no primer on Hollywood would be complete without at least three hours on "Agents & Managers."
Exactly how the national defense could be bolstered by setting a few more people loose in Los Angeles with screenplays to peddle may be a bit of a brainteaser. But officials at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research spell out a straightforward syllogism:
Fewer and fewer students are pursuing science and engineering. While immigrants are taking up the slack in many areas, defense laboratories and industries generally require American citizenship or permanent residency. So a crisis is looming, unless careers in science and engineering suddenly become hugely popular, said Robert J. Barker, an Air Force program manager who approved the grant. And what better way to get a lot of young people interested in science than by producing movies and television shows that depict scientists in flattering ways?
Teaching screenwriting to scientists was the brainstorm of Martin Gundersen, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California and sometime Hollywood technical adviser, whose biggest brush with stardom was bringing a little verisimilitude to Val Kilmer's lasers in the 1985 comedy "Real Genius."
More recently, he was asked to review screenplays by the Sloan Foundation, which awards prizes for scientific accuracy, and found most to be "pretty dismal," as he put it.
"My thought was, since scientists have to write so much, for technical journals and papers, why not consider them as a creative source?" Dr. Gundersen said.
He already had contacts at the American Film Institute, and he quickly persuaded Dr. Barker, who oversees several of his other grants, to endorse what began as a weekend seminar last summer and was expanded to five days this year. The Air Force is providing $100,000 annually for three years; the Army Research Office has added $50,000 this year.
Much of that money will pay for other like-minded efforts: Dr. Gundersen is also starting a workshop for high school students at the film institute, and he plans to get entertainment industry people to lead seminars at scientific conferences and to give seminars to up-and-coming screenwriters on how to reach out to scientists for help with accuracy.
For now, though, the hopes of the Pentagon for a science-friendly cinema seem to be riding on the shoulders of people like Bogdan Marcu, an engineer for Boeing's rocket propulsion division who is nursing an idea for a spy thriller, and Sam Mandegaran, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology who says he wants to become a director of science-friendly movies for young people because "adults are a lost cause."
Around a table at the institute's campus, they and their colleagues, chosen from some 50 applicants, listened this week as Syd Field, author of some of the most popular how-to books on screenwriting, steeped them in the ABC's of three-act structure.
They wrestled with how to reconcile the cinematic suspension of disbelief with the scientific method and with their basic purpose of bringing accuracy to the screen.
And they got feedback for their own script ideas. A disaster movie set at the Olympics, where athletes get a virus that makes them smarter? (Problem: the main character was the virus.) A biopic on the inventor of the Ferris wheel, who died a sad and lonely alcoholic? ("Do I have to like the character?" asked its author, Jeffrey Hoch. Hardly - think "Raging Bull," he was told by Alex Singer, a veteran television director.)
Mr. Hoch was full of searching questions. "When I'm writing for a scientist, I write for my peers," he said. "Who are we writing for? The viewer? The director? The money people?"
"Tell your story for you," Mr. Field urged him. "Then, go back and rewrite it."
Dr. Gundersen chimed in: "It's different from writing for a science journal. That has to be right; you'd better not make a mistake, because people will beat the hell out of you. In a movie, I wouldn't want to say it doesn't have to be right, but it's different."
Added Mr. Singer: "They will not forgive you for being bored. They'll forgive you for anything else."
Later, over meatloaf, the workshop participants batted around their favorite depictions of science and scientists (the television show "Numbers" and the films "Starman" and "Deep Impact," among others) and what they considered the most odious ("The Day After Tomorrow," hands down).
And then there was one they could not agree on: "Falling Down," the 1993 film starring Michael Douglas as a downsized defense-industry engineer who has a violent breakdown in Los Angeles.
"Why'd they have to make him look like that?" said Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, a physics professor at the University of Nebraska, of Mr. Douglas's crew cut, black-rimmed glasses and pocket protector. "He's a good-looking guy. None of my friends look like that."
But Mr. Marcu, who works at a defense-industry plant, begged to differ. "I hate to say it, but people inside those defense plants look like that," he said. "You should see the people at my company."
Where this week's efforts may lead is, at the very least, uphill: out of an estimated 75,000 scripts floating around Hollywood, only 500 or so films are made a year, Mr. Field warned the scientists. But while Dr. Gundersen and Dr. Barker conceded that the odds were stacked against any of their protégés, they are clearly holding out hope.
"I really believe we will be able to point to something that will emerge, maybe 5 or 10 years from now, and say, Gee, that name of that screenwriter is familiar, with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering or something," Dr. Barker said.
Dr. Gundersen, meanwhile, offered Valerie Weiss, a participant in the 2004 workshop, as a potential success story. A film buff at Harvard while she was getting her Ph.D. in biophysics, Ms. Weiss switched careers to film four years ago and is now trying to sell a comedy built around a Bridget Jones-like biochemist who applies the scientific method to her hunt for a mate.
She said she hoped her background would give her film the kind of personal touch that Nia Vardalos brought to "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" as a Greek-American. "To write a film that is going to have impact like that, it needs to be from somebody that has direct experience," she said.
Ms. Weiss said Dr. Gundersen's notion that scientists could make good screenwriters stood the test of reason.
"They're inherently creative, and willing to take more risks than other people," she said. "They're searching for the unknown, they're compensated very minimally, they're going on blind faith that what they're searching for is going to pay off. And filmmaking is exactly the same way."
Wrap...
From Bush...silence...
Russian Navy Hopes to Lift Stranded Sub
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 6, 2005; 2:12 PM
MOSCOW. Aug. 6 -- The Russian Navy has looped cable around a stranded mini-submarine entangled in an underwater antenna system and is hoping to raise both the snared vessel and the material in which it is trapped closer to the surface so that U.S. and British undersea vehicles being raced to the scene have a better chance of freeing it completely, officials said.The 40-foot submarine with a crew of seven and a dwindling air supply is caught in the cables of an antenna system at a depth of around 600 feet. Officials said the antenna is part of Russia's coastal monitoring system and is anchored with a weight of 60 tons.
The navy apparently hopes to jack both the submarine and the entangling cables to a depth of around 165 feet where the U.S. and British remote-controlled vessels will have much better visibility to cut the cables, officials said. They also hope some of the material holding down the submarine will break off in the process of raising it, officials said.
The British vehicle is expected to reach the waters above the stricken craft around 4 p.m. EDT Saturday, with the Americans following a short time later. It may then take the unmanned rescue vehicles several hours to reach and cut through the cables trapping the submarine.
The Western vehicles, called Super Scorpios, are being transported to the area on Russian ships after they were flown into an airport in Russia's Far East earlier Saturday. The United States has also brought in another undersea vehicle, a Deep Drone 8000, as well as a private diving team whose potential deployment will be decided when they reach and assess the site, U.S. officials said.
There is still no certainty that the Russians will be able to raise the mini-sub at all; attempts to drag it have already failed. And if the American and British teams are forced to use their equipment on the sea-floor their task will be much harder because of poor visibility on the cloudy and rocky surface, defense analysts said.
At a depth of 165 feet, however, the Russians, employing divers, might be able to reach the vessel themselves before any international assistance arrives.
"They are desperate to get it out before the Westerners come," said Pavel Felgengauer, a defense analyst in Moscow. "If the Americans and British do the job, it will be mighty embarrassing."
Russian officials continued to assert that the sailors have enough air to survive through the time needed to mount an operation. But they have offered a series of conflicting calculations during the past 24 hours on how much time the trapped men have."By our estimations, we have another 24 hours, and this includes tomorrow's daylight hours and what remains of today's," Fyodorov said on Rossiya television on Saturday, revising up by 24 hours the amount of time estimated at one point on Friday.
"Naturally, we want to pull it from that depths right now, just dive down and lift it up. But so far there is no such possibility," said Fyodorov, noting that the crew reported that they are okay in the cold, dark vessel where power has been switched off to preserve energy and oxygen.
And the shifting information made available to the public has begun to engender some cynicism among the Russian public who were outraged by the lies and secrecy that surrounded the sinking of a nuclear submarine, the Kursk, five years ago. (cont. at link below)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/06/AR2005080600433.html
Wrap...
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 6, 2005; 2:12 PM
MOSCOW. Aug. 6 -- The Russian Navy has looped cable around a stranded mini-submarine entangled in an underwater antenna system and is hoping to raise both the snared vessel and the material in which it is trapped closer to the surface so that U.S. and British undersea vehicles being raced to the scene have a better chance of freeing it completely, officials said.The 40-foot submarine with a crew of seven and a dwindling air supply is caught in the cables of an antenna system at a depth of around 600 feet. Officials said the antenna is part of Russia's coastal monitoring system and is anchored with a weight of 60 tons.
The navy apparently hopes to jack both the submarine and the entangling cables to a depth of around 165 feet where the U.S. and British remote-controlled vessels will have much better visibility to cut the cables, officials said. They also hope some of the material holding down the submarine will break off in the process of raising it, officials said.
The British vehicle is expected to reach the waters above the stricken craft around 4 p.m. EDT Saturday, with the Americans following a short time later. It may then take the unmanned rescue vehicles several hours to reach and cut through the cables trapping the submarine.
The Western vehicles, called Super Scorpios, are being transported to the area on Russian ships after they were flown into an airport in Russia's Far East earlier Saturday. The United States has also brought in another undersea vehicle, a Deep Drone 8000, as well as a private diving team whose potential deployment will be decided when they reach and assess the site, U.S. officials said.
There is still no certainty that the Russians will be able to raise the mini-sub at all; attempts to drag it have already failed. And if the American and British teams are forced to use their equipment on the sea-floor their task will be much harder because of poor visibility on the cloudy and rocky surface, defense analysts said.
At a depth of 165 feet, however, the Russians, employing divers, might be able to reach the vessel themselves before any international assistance arrives.
"They are desperate to get it out before the Westerners come," said Pavel Felgengauer, a defense analyst in Moscow. "If the Americans and British do the job, it will be mighty embarrassing."
Russian officials continued to assert that the sailors have enough air to survive through the time needed to mount an operation. But they have offered a series of conflicting calculations during the past 24 hours on how much time the trapped men have."By our estimations, we have another 24 hours, and this includes tomorrow's daylight hours and what remains of today's," Fyodorov said on Rossiya television on Saturday, revising up by 24 hours the amount of time estimated at one point on Friday.
"Naturally, we want to pull it from that depths right now, just dive down and lift it up. But so far there is no such possibility," said Fyodorov, noting that the crew reported that they are okay in the cold, dark vessel where power has been switched off to preserve energy and oxygen.
And the shifting information made available to the public has begun to engender some cynicism among the Russian public who were outraged by the lies and secrecy that surrounded the sinking of a nuclear submarine, the Kursk, five years ago. (cont. at link below)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/06/AR2005080600433.html
Wrap...
Friday, August 05, 2005
Navy busy here today...
Navy Sends Sub To Rescue Trapped Russian Sailors
The U.S. Navy is racing a robotic submarine from Coronado to Russia to help rescue the crew of a min-sub trapped on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
IMAGES:
Sailors Trapped On Russian Sub <http://treets.nbcsandiego.com/svc/lnk.cfm?l=57836770&t=1>
IMAGES: Super Scorpio <http://treets.nbcsandiego.com/svc/lnk.cfm?l=57836771&t=1>
MORE DETAILS: <http://treets.nbcsandiego.com/svc/lnk.cfm?l=57836772&t=1>
The U.S. Navy is racing a robotic submarine from Coronado to Russia to help rescue the crew of a min-sub trapped on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
IMAGES:
Sailors Trapped On Russian Sub <http://treets.nbcsandiego.com/svc/lnk.cfm?l=57836770&t=1>
IMAGES: Super Scorpio <http://treets.nbcsandiego.com/svc/lnk.cfm?l=57836771&t=1>
MORE DETAILS: <http://treets.nbcsandiego.com/svc/lnk.cfm?l=57836772&t=1>
Thursday, August 04, 2005
This means what it says...
Video: Iraqi Resistance Attacks And Kills U.S. Marines
This video is purported to have been taken on 08/01/05 by a section of the Iraqi resistance and shows an attack in which 6 U.S. marines are killed.
- WARNING -
This video shows the reality and horror of war and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Click here to view. Windows Media.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9668.htm
http://snipurl.com/gq1v
Wrap...
This video is purported to have been taken on 08/01/05 by a section of the Iraqi resistance and shows an attack in which 6 U.S. marines are killed.
- WARNING -
This video shows the reality and horror of war and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Click here to view. Windows Media.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9668.htm
http://snipurl.com/gq1v
Wrap...
One way or the other...
Peace Corps Option for Military Recruits Sparks Concerns
By Alan Cooperman
The Washington Post
Tuesday 02 August 2005
The US military, struggling to fill its voluntary ranks, is offering to allow recruits to meet part of their military obligations by serving in the Peace Corps, which has resisted any ties to the Defense Department or US intelligence agencies since its founding in 1961.
The recruitment program has sparked debate and rising opposition among current and former Peace Corps officials. Some welcome it as a way to expand the cadre of idealistic volunteers created by President John F. Kennedy. But many say it could lead to suspicions abroad that the Peace Corps, which has 7,733 workers in 73 countries, is working together with the US armed forces.
"Does this raise red flags for the Peace Corps community? I'd say yes - emphatically so," said Kevin Quigley, president of the National Peace Corps Association, an organization of returned volunteers, staff and supporters. "We think a real or perceived linkage between the Peace Corps and military service could damage the Peace Corps and potentially put the safety of Peace Corps volunteers at risk."
Congress authorized the recruitment program three years ago in legislation that drew little attention at the time but is stirring controversy now, for two reasons: The military has begun to promote it, and the day is drawing closer when the first batch of about 4,300 recruits will be eligible to apply to the Peace Corps, after having spent 3 1/2 years in the armed forces. That could happen as early as 2007.
Two longtime proponents of national service programs, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), devised the legislation "to provide Americans with more opportunities to serve their country," said Bayh's spokeswoman, Meghan Keck. When it stalled as a separate bill, aides to the senators said, they folded it into a 306-page defense budget bill, where it did not attract opposition.
Peace Corps Director Gaddi H. Vasquez, who was appointed in 2002 by President Bush, said in a recent interview that the Peace Corps was unaware of the provision until after it became law. Vasquez declined to say whether he would have opposed the legislation, had he known about it in time.
"There might have been a discussion, there could have been some dialogue on this, but obviously that didn't happen," he said.
Several former Peace Corps leaders said they hope that Congress and the Bush administration will reverse course and scuttle the program. They include former senator Harris Wofford (D-Pa.), who helped found the Peace Corps as a young aide in the Kennedy White House; Carol Bellamy, the former New York City Council president who headed the Peace Corps from 1993 to 1995; and Mark L. Schneider, who was a volunteer in El Salvador in the late 1960s and headed the Peace Corps during the last two years of the Clinton administration.
"Democratic and Republican administrations alike have kept a bright line separating the Peace Corps from short-term foreign and security policies," Schneider said. "Blurring that sharp line is a bad idea, particularly now, given the unfortunate rise in anti-American sentiment following the Iraq war."
After the law went into effect in 2003, the Defense Department was slow to promote the option of combining military and Peace Corps service, but it is now energetically flogging the "National Call to Service" program, recruiters said. The Army, which began a pilot project in 10 of its 41 recruiting districts in October 2003, expanded it into a nationwide effort this year. The Air Force, Navy and Marines offer identical programs, said Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
In all of the services, recruits are eligible for a $5,000 cash bonus or repayment of $18,000 in student loans if they agree to spend three months in boot camp, 15 months on active duty and two years in the Reserves or National Guard.
After that, they can fulfill the remainder of their eight-year military obligation in the Individual Ready Reserves - available for call-up, but without regular drilling duties - or by serving in the Peace Corps or Americorps, the domestic national service program created in 1993.
Vasquez emphasized that recruits have no guarantee that they will be accepted into the Peace Corps. Once they complete their active duty and Reserve or National Guard service, they can apply to the Corps. But they will not receive any preferential treatment, and the Peace Corps is not changing its admission standards, he said.
"Ultimately, the impact to Peace Corps in terms of how we recruit, who we accept into service, remains very much intact and consistent with what we've done for 40-plus years," the Peace Corps director said. "I am an individual who embraces a very important facet of Peace Corps, and that is the Peace Corps' independence as an agency within the executive branch."
Wofford, who worked in the White House with Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy brother-in-law who became the Peace Corps' first director, said the Corps historically has shown "passionate determination" to maintain that independence. At the outset in 1961, Shriver appealed to Kennedy to keep the Peace Corps from being placed under the Agency for International Development. Later, the Corps fought to uphold rules barring intelligence officers from joining the Peace Corps and prohibiting former Peace Corps volunteers from working for US intelligence agencies.
Several current Peace Corps volunteers said they opposed the military recruitment option but were reluctant to speak out publicly, because the Peace Corps forbids volunteers from talking to the media without permission.
"We are already accused on a daily basis of being CIA agents so I don't see how this [link to the US military] could help," a volunteer in Burkina Faso said by e-mail.
"It is hard enough trying to integrate yourself into a completely different culture, convincing people that . . . Americans are not these gun-toting sex maniacs . . . without having a connection to the US military," another volunteer in Africa wrote.
Former volunteers expressed a variety of reservations. Pat Reilly, a former chairwoman of the National Peace Corps Association who served in Liberia from 1972 to 1975 and spent several years as a full-time Peace Corps recruiter, said she worries about the motivation of people who enter the Peace Corps to fulfill a military service obligation.
"The magic that makes the Peace Corps work is motivation, and when you tinker with that, then it won't work for the applicant and it won't work for the people it serves," she said.
John Coyne, who served in Ethiopia during the 1960s and was a regional director in the Corps' New York office from 1996 to 2001, said numerous military veterans have joined the Peace Corps and been superb volunteers. But he said there has always been a "clear separation" between the two kinds of service. The new recruitment program "eats away at the purity of the Peace Corps as designed by Kennedy, which is that it was not going to be military," he said.
So far, the number of enlistees is tiny compared with the 1.4 million men and women serving in the military, but large compared with the Peace Corps, which receives about 12,000 applications to fill about 4,000 openings each year.
In 2004 and the first five months of this year, 4,301 people entered the armed services under the National Call to Service program. Of those, 2,935 enlisted in the Navy, 614 in the Air Force, 444 in the Army and 308 in the Marines. Pentagon and Peace Corps officials said they have no way of knowing how many will apply to the Peace Corps when they become eligible to do so in 2007 or 2008.
In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush called for doubling the size of the Peace Corps, from 7,000 to 14,000 volunteers, within five years. That same year, the administration named a career Navy officer with 12 years of experience in military recruiting to head the Peace Corps' recruitment and selection office.
Since then, however, the Corps has grown by little more than 10 percent. Barbara Daly, a spokeswoman for the Corps, said that tight budgets - rather than a shortage of qualified candidates - were the reason.
"The president has been very supportive of the Peace Corps and has requested budget increases each fiscal year that would allow for this" gradual doubling, she said. "Congress has not approved our budget at the levels requested by the president."
Wrap...
By Alan Cooperman
The Washington Post
Tuesday 02 August 2005
The US military, struggling to fill its voluntary ranks, is offering to allow recruits to meet part of their military obligations by serving in the Peace Corps, which has resisted any ties to the Defense Department or US intelligence agencies since its founding in 1961.
The recruitment program has sparked debate and rising opposition among current and former Peace Corps officials. Some welcome it as a way to expand the cadre of idealistic volunteers created by President John F. Kennedy. But many say it could lead to suspicions abroad that the Peace Corps, which has 7,733 workers in 73 countries, is working together with the US armed forces.
"Does this raise red flags for the Peace Corps community? I'd say yes - emphatically so," said Kevin Quigley, president of the National Peace Corps Association, an organization of returned volunteers, staff and supporters. "We think a real or perceived linkage between the Peace Corps and military service could damage the Peace Corps and potentially put the safety of Peace Corps volunteers at risk."
Congress authorized the recruitment program three years ago in legislation that drew little attention at the time but is stirring controversy now, for two reasons: The military has begun to promote it, and the day is drawing closer when the first batch of about 4,300 recruits will be eligible to apply to the Peace Corps, after having spent 3 1/2 years in the armed forces. That could happen as early as 2007.
Two longtime proponents of national service programs, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), devised the legislation "to provide Americans with more opportunities to serve their country," said Bayh's spokeswoman, Meghan Keck. When it stalled as a separate bill, aides to the senators said, they folded it into a 306-page defense budget bill, where it did not attract opposition.
Peace Corps Director Gaddi H. Vasquez, who was appointed in 2002 by President Bush, said in a recent interview that the Peace Corps was unaware of the provision until after it became law. Vasquez declined to say whether he would have opposed the legislation, had he known about it in time.
"There might have been a discussion, there could have been some dialogue on this, but obviously that didn't happen," he said.
Several former Peace Corps leaders said they hope that Congress and the Bush administration will reverse course and scuttle the program. They include former senator Harris Wofford (D-Pa.), who helped found the Peace Corps as a young aide in the Kennedy White House; Carol Bellamy, the former New York City Council president who headed the Peace Corps from 1993 to 1995; and Mark L. Schneider, who was a volunteer in El Salvador in the late 1960s and headed the Peace Corps during the last two years of the Clinton administration.
"Democratic and Republican administrations alike have kept a bright line separating the Peace Corps from short-term foreign and security policies," Schneider said. "Blurring that sharp line is a bad idea, particularly now, given the unfortunate rise in anti-American sentiment following the Iraq war."
After the law went into effect in 2003, the Defense Department was slow to promote the option of combining military and Peace Corps service, but it is now energetically flogging the "National Call to Service" program, recruiters said. The Army, which began a pilot project in 10 of its 41 recruiting districts in October 2003, expanded it into a nationwide effort this year. The Air Force, Navy and Marines offer identical programs, said Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
In all of the services, recruits are eligible for a $5,000 cash bonus or repayment of $18,000 in student loans if they agree to spend three months in boot camp, 15 months on active duty and two years in the Reserves or National Guard.
After that, they can fulfill the remainder of their eight-year military obligation in the Individual Ready Reserves - available for call-up, but without regular drilling duties - or by serving in the Peace Corps or Americorps, the domestic national service program created in 1993.
Vasquez emphasized that recruits have no guarantee that they will be accepted into the Peace Corps. Once they complete their active duty and Reserve or National Guard service, they can apply to the Corps. But they will not receive any preferential treatment, and the Peace Corps is not changing its admission standards, he said.
"Ultimately, the impact to Peace Corps in terms of how we recruit, who we accept into service, remains very much intact and consistent with what we've done for 40-plus years," the Peace Corps director said. "I am an individual who embraces a very important facet of Peace Corps, and that is the Peace Corps' independence as an agency within the executive branch."
Wofford, who worked in the White House with Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy brother-in-law who became the Peace Corps' first director, said the Corps historically has shown "passionate determination" to maintain that independence. At the outset in 1961, Shriver appealed to Kennedy to keep the Peace Corps from being placed under the Agency for International Development. Later, the Corps fought to uphold rules barring intelligence officers from joining the Peace Corps and prohibiting former Peace Corps volunteers from working for US intelligence agencies.
Several current Peace Corps volunteers said they opposed the military recruitment option but were reluctant to speak out publicly, because the Peace Corps forbids volunteers from talking to the media without permission.
"We are already accused on a daily basis of being CIA agents so I don't see how this [link to the US military] could help," a volunteer in Burkina Faso said by e-mail.
"It is hard enough trying to integrate yourself into a completely different culture, convincing people that . . . Americans are not these gun-toting sex maniacs . . . without having a connection to the US military," another volunteer in Africa wrote.
Former volunteers expressed a variety of reservations. Pat Reilly, a former chairwoman of the National Peace Corps Association who served in Liberia from 1972 to 1975 and spent several years as a full-time Peace Corps recruiter, said she worries about the motivation of people who enter the Peace Corps to fulfill a military service obligation.
"The magic that makes the Peace Corps work is motivation, and when you tinker with that, then it won't work for the applicant and it won't work for the people it serves," she said.
John Coyne, who served in Ethiopia during the 1960s and was a regional director in the Corps' New York office from 1996 to 2001, said numerous military veterans have joined the Peace Corps and been superb volunteers. But he said there has always been a "clear separation" between the two kinds of service. The new recruitment program "eats away at the purity of the Peace Corps as designed by Kennedy, which is that it was not going to be military," he said.
So far, the number of enlistees is tiny compared with the 1.4 million men and women serving in the military, but large compared with the Peace Corps, which receives about 12,000 applications to fill about 4,000 openings each year.
In 2004 and the first five months of this year, 4,301 people entered the armed services under the National Call to Service program. Of those, 2,935 enlisted in the Navy, 614 in the Air Force, 444 in the Army and 308 in the Marines. Pentagon and Peace Corps officials said they have no way of knowing how many will apply to the Peace Corps when they become eligible to do so in 2007 or 2008.
In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush called for doubling the size of the Peace Corps, from 7,000 to 14,000 volunteers, within five years. That same year, the administration named a career Navy officer with 12 years of experience in military recruiting to head the Peace Corps' recruitment and selection office.
Since then, however, the Corps has grown by little more than 10 percent. Barbara Daly, a spokeswoman for the Corps, said that tight budgets - rather than a shortage of qualified candidates - were the reason.
"The president has been very supportive of the Peace Corps and has requested budget increases each fiscal year that would allow for this" gradual doubling, she said. "Congress has not approved our budget at the levels requested by the president."
Wrap...
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Reading and viewing pleasures...
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
Fiction:
Winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether prize Gayle Brandeis's SELF STORAGE, a humorous story of a young mother of two who loves to attend self storage auctions, and then sells her winnings at yard sales, to Anika Streitfeld of Ballantine, in a two-book deal, by Arielle Eckstut at the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world).ctisne@randomhouse.com
Film:
Film rights to the story "Will Power, Inc." from Todd Hasak-Lowy's THE TASK OF THIS TRANSLATOR, optioned to Melanie Shanley, by Simon Lipskar at Writers House.slipskar@writershouse.com
Biography:
Larry Hedrick's 21st Century edition of Xenophon of Athens' classic work, CYRUS THE GREAT: THE ARTS OF WAR AND LEADERSHIP, to Truman Talley at St. Martin's, in a very nice deal, by Sam Fleishman at Literary Artists Representatives (NA).LitArtists@aol.com
Jennifer Abrahamson's SWEET RELIEF, about Marla Ruzicka, the 28-year-old American relief worker and founder of Civic (Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict) killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber in April -- after having collaborated on the first part of the manuscript, to Jennifer Bergstrom at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, following the purchase of film rights by Paramount earlier this summer, for publication in fall 2006, by Joe Veltre at Artists Literary Group (NA).
Business/Investing/Finance
Former Washington Bureau Chief for The Australian Financial Review Peter Hartcher's BUBBLE MAN: Alan Greenspan & the Missing 7 Trillion Dollars, an account of Greenspan's role in the creation of two bubbles and a timely reconsideration of his legacy, to Star Lawrence at Norton, for publication in Spring 2006, by Catherine Drayton and Richard Pine at Inkwell Management (NA). catherine@inkwellmanagement.com
History/Politics/Current Affairs
George Weller's NAGASAKI: THE CENSORED ARTICLES OF GEORGE WELLER, WELLER'S WAR, a collection of war reporting from the first Western journalist on the scene after the bombing of Nagasaki, to Luke Dempsey at Crown, in a pre-empt, by Henry Dunow at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency (NA).henry@dclagency.com
Zev Chafets's UNHOLY ALLIANCE, about the politically influential relationship between American Jews and Christian Evangelicals, to David Hirshey at Harper, in a pre-empt, by Flip Brophy at Sterling Lord Literistic.
F. Lee Bailey with Jean Rabe's WHEN HUSBANDS ARE SUSPECT: From Sam Shepherd to Scott Peterson, the Public's Passion for Spousal Homicides, which will examine many classic cases including recent erroneous suspicions, to Forge, in a pre-empt, for publication in February 2007, by Frank Weimann of the Literary Group International.mwoods@theliterarygroup.com
Illustrated/Art
Connie Briscoe & Michael Cunningham's I AM THE DREAM: 50 Phenomenal Black Women Over 50, 50 black & white photographs and essays paying homage to the spirit of black women in America over 50, to Jill Cohen at Bulfinch, by Victoria Sanders at Victoria Sanders & Associates (world).vsanders@victoriasanders.com
Memoir
Senator Joseph Biden's untitled memoir, about his life (including "devastating personal tragedies and setbacks he has faced -- and overcome") and thirty-year career in the United States Senate, using his "characteristic directness and honesty" to discuss domestic and international issues and the challenges the Senate currently faces, to Will Murphy at Random House, by Flip Brophy at Sterling Lord Literistic (NA).rbernstein@randomhouse.com
Pop Culture
Court TV editor and journalist Brad Dunn's WHERE THEY WERE AT 22, a humorous collection of short essays about 100 famous individuals -- from Bill Murray and Karl Rove to Pamela Anderson and Sean "Puffy" Combs -- on where they were at this turning-point age, to Lane Butler at Andrews McMeel, for publication in Spring 2006, by Matthew Carnicelli at Carnicelli Literary Management (world).
Science
Hannah Holmes's A MID-SIZED AND IMMODEST MAMMAL: A Natural History of Myself, revealing how we stack up to other creatures, presenting new theories about why we behave as we do, and what we can fathom about our origins and our evolution, to Stephanie Higgs at Random House, in a pre-empt, by Michelle Tessler at Tessler Literary Agency (world). michelle@tessleragency.com
University of Washington Professor David Montgomery's DIRT: An Un-Natural History, which provides a detailed history of the dirt beneath our feet and its influence on societies, to Blake Edgar at University of California Press, in a very nice deal, by Sam Fleishman at Literary Artists Representatives (world).LitArtists@aol.com
Wrap...
Fiction:
Winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether prize Gayle Brandeis's SELF STORAGE, a humorous story of a young mother of two who loves to attend self storage auctions, and then sells her winnings at yard sales, to Anika Streitfeld of Ballantine, in a two-book deal, by Arielle Eckstut at the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world).ctisne@randomhouse.com
Film:
Film rights to the story "Will Power, Inc." from Todd Hasak-Lowy's THE TASK OF THIS TRANSLATOR, optioned to Melanie Shanley, by Simon Lipskar at Writers House.slipskar@writershouse.com
Biography:
Larry Hedrick's 21st Century edition of Xenophon of Athens' classic work, CYRUS THE GREAT: THE ARTS OF WAR AND LEADERSHIP, to Truman Talley at St. Martin's, in a very nice deal, by Sam Fleishman at Literary Artists Representatives (NA).LitArtists@aol.com
Jennifer Abrahamson's SWEET RELIEF, about Marla Ruzicka, the 28-year-old American relief worker and founder of Civic (Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict) killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber in April -- after having collaborated on the first part of the manuscript, to Jennifer Bergstrom at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, following the purchase of film rights by Paramount earlier this summer, for publication in fall 2006, by Joe Veltre at Artists Literary Group (NA).
Business/Investing/Finance
Former Washington Bureau Chief for The Australian Financial Review Peter Hartcher's BUBBLE MAN: Alan Greenspan & the Missing 7 Trillion Dollars, an account of Greenspan's role in the creation of two bubbles and a timely reconsideration of his legacy, to Star Lawrence at Norton, for publication in Spring 2006, by Catherine Drayton and Richard Pine at Inkwell Management (NA). catherine@inkwellmanagement.com
History/Politics/Current Affairs
George Weller's NAGASAKI: THE CENSORED ARTICLES OF GEORGE WELLER, WELLER'S WAR, a collection of war reporting from the first Western journalist on the scene after the bombing of Nagasaki, to Luke Dempsey at Crown, in a pre-empt, by Henry Dunow at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency (NA).henry@dclagency.com
Zev Chafets's UNHOLY ALLIANCE, about the politically influential relationship between American Jews and Christian Evangelicals, to David Hirshey at Harper, in a pre-empt, by Flip Brophy at Sterling Lord Literistic.
F. Lee Bailey with Jean Rabe's WHEN HUSBANDS ARE SUSPECT: From Sam Shepherd to Scott Peterson, the Public's Passion for Spousal Homicides, which will examine many classic cases including recent erroneous suspicions, to Forge, in a pre-empt, for publication in February 2007, by Frank Weimann of the Literary Group International.mwoods@theliterarygroup.com
Illustrated/Art
Connie Briscoe & Michael Cunningham's I AM THE DREAM: 50 Phenomenal Black Women Over 50, 50 black & white photographs and essays paying homage to the spirit of black women in America over 50, to Jill Cohen at Bulfinch, by Victoria Sanders at Victoria Sanders & Associates (world).vsanders@victoriasanders.com
Memoir
Senator Joseph Biden's untitled memoir, about his life (including "devastating personal tragedies and setbacks he has faced -- and overcome") and thirty-year career in the United States Senate, using his "characteristic directness and honesty" to discuss domestic and international issues and the challenges the Senate currently faces, to Will Murphy at Random House, by Flip Brophy at Sterling Lord Literistic (NA).rbernstein@randomhouse.com
Pop Culture
Court TV editor and journalist Brad Dunn's WHERE THEY WERE AT 22, a humorous collection of short essays about 100 famous individuals -- from Bill Murray and Karl Rove to Pamela Anderson and Sean "Puffy" Combs -- on where they were at this turning-point age, to Lane Butler at Andrews McMeel, for publication in Spring 2006, by Matthew Carnicelli at Carnicelli Literary Management (world).
Science
Hannah Holmes's A MID-SIZED AND IMMODEST MAMMAL: A Natural History of Myself, revealing how we stack up to other creatures, presenting new theories about why we behave as we do, and what we can fathom about our origins and our evolution, to Stephanie Higgs at Random House, in a pre-empt, by Michelle Tessler at Tessler Literary Agency (world). michelle@tessleragency.com
University of Washington Professor David Montgomery's DIRT: An Un-Natural History, which provides a detailed history of the dirt beneath our feet and its influence on societies, to Blake Edgar at University of California Press, in a very nice deal, by Sam Fleishman at Literary Artists Representatives (world).LitArtists@aol.com
Wrap...
The nightmare...
US Suppressed Footage of Hiroshima for Decades
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/080305R.shtml
As the world prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Saturday, some American media experts see uncomfortable echoes between the suppression of images of death and destruction then and coverage of the war in Iraq today.
Wrap...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/080305R.shtml
As the world prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Saturday, some American media experts see uncomfortable echoes between the suppression of images of death and destruction then and coverage of the war in Iraq today.
Wrap...
Well?
From Information Clearing House:
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today." : President Theodore Roosevelt - 1906
"A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. "We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." : Woodrow Wilson - From his Campaign Speeches, 1912
"If a baseball player slides into home plate and, right before the umpire rules if he is safe or out, the player says to the umpire - 'Here is $1,000.' What would we call that? We would call that a bribe.
If a lawyer was arguing a case before a judge and said, 'Your honor before you decide on the guilt or innocence of my client, here is $1,000.' What would we call that? We would call that a bribe.
"But if an industry lobbyist walks into the office of a key legislator and hands her or him a check for $1,000, we call that a campaign contribution. We should call it a bribe." : Janice Fine - Dollars and Sense magazine
Wrap...
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today." : President Theodore Roosevelt - 1906
"A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. "We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." : Woodrow Wilson - From his Campaign Speeches, 1912
"If a baseball player slides into home plate and, right before the umpire rules if he is safe or out, the player says to the umpire - 'Here is $1,000.' What would we call that? We would call that a bribe.
If a lawyer was arguing a case before a judge and said, 'Your honor before you decide on the guilt or innocence of my client, here is $1,000.' What would we call that? We would call that a bribe.
"But if an industry lobbyist walks into the office of a key legislator and hands her or him a check for $1,000, we call that a campaign contribution. We should call it a bribe." : Janice Fine - Dollars and Sense magazine
Wrap...
Clear & present danger...
Shaping politics from the pulpits
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
CANTON, Ohio — Pastor Russell Johnson paces across the broad stage as he decries the "secular jihadists" who have "hijacked" America, accuses the public schools of neglecting to teach that Hitler was "an avid evolutionist" and links abortion to children who murder their parents.
Russell Johnson leads the Ohio Restoration Project, a network of nearly 1,000 "Patriot Pastors" from conservative churches across the state.
"It's time for the church to get a spinal column" and push the "seculars and the jihadists ... into the dust bin of history," the guest preacher tells a congregation that fills the sanctuary at First Christian Church of Canton.
That is his mission. Johnson leads the Ohio Restoration Project, an emergent network of nearly 1,000 "Patriot Pastors" from conservative churches across the state. Each has pledged to register 300 "values voters," adding hundreds of thousands of like-minded citizens to the electorate who "would be salt and light for America."
And, perhaps, help elect a fellow Christian conservative, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, as governor next year. That has alarmed some establishment Republicans who back rival contenders and warn that an assertive Christian right campaign could repel moderate voters the party needs.
Evangelical Christian leaders nationwide have been emboldened by their role in re-electing President Bush and galvanized by their success in campaigning for constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage, passed in 18 states so far.
Now some are organizing to build on last year's successes. They want to solidify their role in setting the political agenda and electing sympathetic public officials.
The Ohio effort isn't unique. Johnson's project — which he says has signed up more than 900 pastors in Ohio during its first 10 weeks in operation — has helped spawn the Texas Restoration Project in Bush's home state. The fledging Pennsylvania Pastors' Network has signed up 81 conservative clergy so far. Similar efforts are beginning to percolate elsewhere....
Go to www.usatoday.com for the rest of this article.
Wrap..
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
CANTON, Ohio — Pastor Russell Johnson paces across the broad stage as he decries the "secular jihadists" who have "hijacked" America, accuses the public schools of neglecting to teach that Hitler was "an avid evolutionist" and links abortion to children who murder their parents.
Russell Johnson leads the Ohio Restoration Project, a network of nearly 1,000 "Patriot Pastors" from conservative churches across the state.
"It's time for the church to get a spinal column" and push the "seculars and the jihadists ... into the dust bin of history," the guest preacher tells a congregation that fills the sanctuary at First Christian Church of Canton.
That is his mission. Johnson leads the Ohio Restoration Project, an emergent network of nearly 1,000 "Patriot Pastors" from conservative churches across the state. Each has pledged to register 300 "values voters," adding hundreds of thousands of like-minded citizens to the electorate who "would be salt and light for America."
And, perhaps, help elect a fellow Christian conservative, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, as governor next year. That has alarmed some establishment Republicans who back rival contenders and warn that an assertive Christian right campaign could repel moderate voters the party needs.
Evangelical Christian leaders nationwide have been emboldened by their role in re-electing President Bush and galvanized by their success in campaigning for constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage, passed in 18 states so far.
Now some are organizing to build on last year's successes. They want to solidify their role in setting the political agenda and electing sympathetic public officials.
The Ohio effort isn't unique. Johnson's project — which he says has signed up more than 900 pastors in Ohio during its first 10 weeks in operation — has helped spawn the Texas Restoration Project in Bush's home state. The fledging Pennsylvania Pastors' Network has signed up 81 conservative clergy so far. Similar efforts are beginning to percolate elsewhere....
Go to www.usatoday.com for the rest of this article.
Wrap..
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Withdrawal: Coming...coming...
Operation Withdrawal Scam
Norman Solomon
August 02, 2005
Norman Solomon is the author of the new book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
A few days ago, the White House launched a new phase of its propaganda siege for the Iraq war.
The opening salvo came on July 27, when the commander of American forces in Iraq said that continuation of recent trends would make possible “some fairly substantial reductions” of U.S. troop levels in the spring and summer of 2006. Those reductions, Gen. George Casey proclaimed, will happen “if the political process continues to go positively and if the development of the security forces continues to go as it is going.”
Gen. Casey’s statement, which made big news, was the start of a media offensive likely to last for the next 15 months, until the congressional elections. We might call it Operation Withdrawal Scam.
Overall, the strategy is double-barreled: Keep killing in Iraq while hyping scenarios for withdrawal of U.S. troops.
President Bush has always made a show of rejecting calls for a pullout timetable. Yet the current media buzz about possible withdrawal from Iraq is not without precedent. Some appreciable publicity along similar lines came last fall—from a journalistic source who has eagerly done some of Karl Rove’s dirtiest work.
“Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year,” Robert Novak wrote in a column that appeared on Sept. 20, 2004.
“This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go.”
Novak’s column did not stop there. With a matter-of-fact tone, it reported: “The military will tell the [U.S. presidential] election winner there are insufficient U.S. forces in Iraq to wage effective war. That leaves three realistic options: Increase overall U.S. military strength to reinforce Iraq, stay with the present strength to continue the war, or get out. Well-placed sources in the administration are confident Bush’s decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his national security team and would be the recommendation of second-term officials.”
That assessment from “well-placed sources in the administration,” trumpeted by Novak’s column at the start of the fall campaign, received some media pickup at the time. And Novak didn’t let it rest. He followed up with an Oct. 7 piece that asserted: “Nobody from the administration has officially rejected my column.” In no uncertain terms, Rove’s most useful columnist stood behind his claim that Bush’s policymakers believed “U.S. troops must leave Iraq” in 2005.
While the Bush campaign denied Novak’s claim, it was helpful to the president. He continued his resolute warrior posturing, while the deniable “leak” falsely signaled flexibility and fresh thinking that could lead to a U.S. exit strategy for the Iraq war.
Still pledging not to “cut and run,” the White House can gain from spin that indicates withdrawal is much more likely and more imminent than previously believed. A double-barreled approach—continuing the war effort while suggesting that a pullout is on the horizon—aims to provide a wishful Rorschach blob to commentators and voters.
During the next 15 months, political benefits will beckon for the Bush administration to keep saying things that seem to foreshadow a drastic reduction of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Floated withdrawal scenarios will be part of an enormous hoax.
As the war drags on and U.S. public opinion polls show widespread unhappiness about it, Republicans in Congress will be eager for media coverage to become more reassuring before next year’s November elections.That’s where Operation Withdrawal Scam comes in.
The Bush administration has already boosted or lowered U.S. troop strength in Iraq for military or political purposes. And it has acknowledged plans to make such adjustments again later this year. “Any troop reduction isn’t likely to start soon; in fact, overall troop numbers are likely to go up somewhat before they begin to head down,” the Wall Street Journal reported on July 28, in connection with a referendum on an Iraqi constitution set for October and national elections scheduled for December.
Spinners in the White House must have felt gratified that the main headline over the Journal’ s front-page article was notably upbeat: “U.S. Opens Door for Big Pullback in Iraq Next Year.”
That “big pullback” is actually quite a longshot. But even such an unlikely occurrence would not necessarily mean less American involvement in the killing of Iraqi people. If American troop numbers drop next summer in Iraq, the subsequent U.S. military role there could be as deadly as ever—or even worse.
Bush administration officials, and their enablers in the news media, say that Iraqis will take up burdens now being shouldered by the occupiers. Such “Iraqization” could change just the style of carnage—like the Vietnamization that occurred in the last several years of the Vietnam War.
During a much-heralded visit to Guam in July 1969, President Nixon announced that the U.S. government would “furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with our treaty commitments. But we shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility for its defense.”
Such proclaimed doctrines of replacing American soldiers with natives are real crowd-pleasers in the USA. But such measures may do nothing to reduce the amount of blood on Uncle Sam’s hands. Three years after Nixon’smid-1969 pronouncement, the U.S. troop levels in Vietnam had fallen to 69,000. Yet during the three-year withdrawal of nearly half a million American soldiers, the tonnage rate of U.S. bombs falling on Vietnam actually increased.
No matter how many troops it has on the ground in Iraq, the Pentagon will be set up for a major role there. A recent letter in The New York Times shed more light on the Bush administration’s intentions than hours of network punditry. “My brother-in-law just returned from a stint in Iraq with the Minnesota Air National Guard,” wrote Ronald M. Asher II. “Although he couldn’t tell me where in Iraq he was stationed, he did say that the level and type of construction going on at the air base convinced him that the United States military planned on being there for a very long time.”
Operation Withdrawal Scam has begun. It will be a long maneuver.
Wrap...
Norman Solomon
August 02, 2005
Norman Solomon is the author of the new book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
A few days ago, the White House launched a new phase of its propaganda siege for the Iraq war.
The opening salvo came on July 27, when the commander of American forces in Iraq said that continuation of recent trends would make possible “some fairly substantial reductions” of U.S. troop levels in the spring and summer of 2006. Those reductions, Gen. George Casey proclaimed, will happen “if the political process continues to go positively and if the development of the security forces continues to go as it is going.”
Gen. Casey’s statement, which made big news, was the start of a media offensive likely to last for the next 15 months, until the congressional elections. We might call it Operation Withdrawal Scam.
Overall, the strategy is double-barreled: Keep killing in Iraq while hyping scenarios for withdrawal of U.S. troops.
President Bush has always made a show of rejecting calls for a pullout timetable. Yet the current media buzz about possible withdrawal from Iraq is not without precedent. Some appreciable publicity along similar lines came last fall—from a journalistic source who has eagerly done some of Karl Rove’s dirtiest work.
“Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year,” Robert Novak wrote in a column that appeared on Sept. 20, 2004.
“This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go.”
Novak’s column did not stop there. With a matter-of-fact tone, it reported: “The military will tell the [U.S. presidential] election winner there are insufficient U.S. forces in Iraq to wage effective war. That leaves three realistic options: Increase overall U.S. military strength to reinforce Iraq, stay with the present strength to continue the war, or get out. Well-placed sources in the administration are confident Bush’s decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his national security team and would be the recommendation of second-term officials.”
That assessment from “well-placed sources in the administration,” trumpeted by Novak’s column at the start of the fall campaign, received some media pickup at the time. And Novak didn’t let it rest. He followed up with an Oct. 7 piece that asserted: “Nobody from the administration has officially rejected my column.” In no uncertain terms, Rove’s most useful columnist stood behind his claim that Bush’s policymakers believed “U.S. troops must leave Iraq” in 2005.
While the Bush campaign denied Novak’s claim, it was helpful to the president. He continued his resolute warrior posturing, while the deniable “leak” falsely signaled flexibility and fresh thinking that could lead to a U.S. exit strategy for the Iraq war.
Still pledging not to “cut and run,” the White House can gain from spin that indicates withdrawal is much more likely and more imminent than previously believed. A double-barreled approach—continuing the war effort while suggesting that a pullout is on the horizon—aims to provide a wishful Rorschach blob to commentators and voters.
During the next 15 months, political benefits will beckon for the Bush administration to keep saying things that seem to foreshadow a drastic reduction of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Floated withdrawal scenarios will be part of an enormous hoax.
As the war drags on and U.S. public opinion polls show widespread unhappiness about it, Republicans in Congress will be eager for media coverage to become more reassuring before next year’s November elections.That’s where Operation Withdrawal Scam comes in.
The Bush administration has already boosted or lowered U.S. troop strength in Iraq for military or political purposes. And it has acknowledged plans to make such adjustments again later this year. “Any troop reduction isn’t likely to start soon; in fact, overall troop numbers are likely to go up somewhat before they begin to head down,” the Wall Street Journal reported on July 28, in connection with a referendum on an Iraqi constitution set for October and national elections scheduled for December.
Spinners in the White House must have felt gratified that the main headline over the Journal’ s front-page article was notably upbeat: “U.S. Opens Door for Big Pullback in Iraq Next Year.”
That “big pullback” is actually quite a longshot. But even such an unlikely occurrence would not necessarily mean less American involvement in the killing of Iraqi people. If American troop numbers drop next summer in Iraq, the subsequent U.S. military role there could be as deadly as ever—or even worse.
Bush administration officials, and their enablers in the news media, say that Iraqis will take up burdens now being shouldered by the occupiers. Such “Iraqization” could change just the style of carnage—like the Vietnamization that occurred in the last several years of the Vietnam War.
During a much-heralded visit to Guam in July 1969, President Nixon announced that the U.S. government would “furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with our treaty commitments. But we shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility for its defense.”
Such proclaimed doctrines of replacing American soldiers with natives are real crowd-pleasers in the USA. But such measures may do nothing to reduce the amount of blood on Uncle Sam’s hands. Three years after Nixon’smid-1969 pronouncement, the U.S. troop levels in Vietnam had fallen to 69,000. Yet during the three-year withdrawal of nearly half a million American soldiers, the tonnage rate of U.S. bombs falling on Vietnam actually increased.
No matter how many troops it has on the ground in Iraq, the Pentagon will be set up for a major role there. A recent letter in The New York Times shed more light on the Bush administration’s intentions than hours of network punditry. “My brother-in-law just returned from a stint in Iraq with the Minnesota Air National Guard,” wrote Ronald M. Asher II. “Although he couldn’t tell me where in Iraq he was stationed, he did say that the level and type of construction going on at the air base convinced him that the United States military planned on being there for a very long time.”
Operation Withdrawal Scam has begun. It will be a long maneuver.
Wrap...
Monday, August 01, 2005
Hiss...Spit....
Just read this on the Ohio 02 blog:
"One of the hardest things about covering this special election has been your humble editor subjecting himself to the daily rants of WLW arch wingnut shock jock Bill Cunningham. Today he was in top form. Cunningham called Hackett a baby killer for being pro choice. His favorite point of the day was comparing Hackett to such other famous marines as Lee Harvey Oswald and Timothy McVeigh. Class act."
And had this sudden thought: As long as Bush is president we will be subjected to hearing and reading that kind of viscious attack.
And unless he's impeached, he WILL be president until January, 2009. Just think of that.
Consider the damage he and his administration have managed to do since 2001 to the nation and the world. What in heaven's name will he manage to do between now and 2009? I dread to think. Especially since he has been able to do about anything and get away with it, no matter how outrageous.
Some say that the problem is that Republicans, in Congress and out, have given their loyalty to the party. I wonder. It seems to me that their loyalty is to Bush, that they admire and believe in him and that goes beyond party. That's personal. And it's unpatriotic.
It's wrong. Everyone's loyalty should be to the nation. Partys are supposed to stand for what people believe is what's best for the nation.
Bottom line is that we need as many Hacketts as we can get elected.
Wrap...
"One of the hardest things about covering this special election has been your humble editor subjecting himself to the daily rants of WLW arch wingnut shock jock Bill Cunningham. Today he was in top form. Cunningham called Hackett a baby killer for being pro choice. His favorite point of the day was comparing Hackett to such other famous marines as Lee Harvey Oswald and Timothy McVeigh. Class act."
And had this sudden thought: As long as Bush is president we will be subjected to hearing and reading that kind of viscious attack.
And unless he's impeached, he WILL be president until January, 2009. Just think of that.
Consider the damage he and his administration have managed to do since 2001 to the nation and the world. What in heaven's name will he manage to do between now and 2009? I dread to think. Especially since he has been able to do about anything and get away with it, no matter how outrageous.
Some say that the problem is that Republicans, in Congress and out, have given their loyalty to the party. I wonder. It seems to me that their loyalty is to Bush, that they admire and believe in him and that goes beyond party. That's personal. And it's unpatriotic.
It's wrong. Everyone's loyalty should be to the nation. Partys are supposed to stand for what people believe is what's best for the nation.
Bottom line is that we need as many Hacketts as we can get elected.
Wrap...
Get ready...
An excerpt from Pitt's article on Truthout.org :
There have been two bad moments looming over the horizon for the last couple of weeks. One is still in the offing, and a lot of people who have been watching and working the details should prepare themselves for the ram. The other went down this morning, and a lot of good folks are choking on their own rage right now.
One will center around Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been surprisingly diligent and effective in his investigation into who outed deep-cover CIA agent Valerie Plame. His diligence and effectiveness have been surprising, it should be noted, because he has been the only person in government lo these last five years who has actually and sincerely attempted to uncover and unravel the nest of lies, deceptions and bare-faced criminal actions of the Bush administration.
That means, of course, that he has got to go. GOP defenders of Bush, Rove and Libby have been lining up salvos against Fitzgerald should he continue to evidence his unfortunate streak of moral clarity. As Joe Conason reported in the New York Observer last week, "Circled in a bristling perimeter around the White House, the friends and allies of Mr. Rove can soon be expected to fire their rhetorical mortars at Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the White House exposure of CIA operative Valerie Wilson. Indeed, the preparations for that assault began months ago in the editorial columns of The Wall Street Journal, which has tarred Mr. Fitzgerald as a 'loose cannon' and an 'unguided missile.'"
"Evidently," continued Conason, "Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, will lead the next foray against the special prosecutor. This week the Senator's press office announced his plan to hold hearings on the Fitzgerald probe. That means interfering with an 'ongoing investigation,' as the White House press secretary might say, but such considerations won't deter the highly partisan Kansan."
This was to be expected. The word "Irony" was deleted from the GOP Dictionary many years ago, along with words like "Shame" and "Hypocrite." These fellows achieved their lofty status in no small part because of a genuinely loose-cannon investigator named Starr, who burned five years of our lives leaping from land deals to consensual sex in a Puritanical crusade that had more to do with the 2000 election and stalling out an effective Democratic administration than anything else.
Attacks against Fitzgerald won't do a great deal of damage to the investigation, or to Fitzgerald, by themselves. But they will help to increase the volume as we cycle towards the endgame. You see, Fitzgerald's term as Special Counsel expires in October. Former Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald, no relation, intimated in a recent interview that House Speaker Denny Hastert is auguring towards making sure the pesky investigator is not granted an extension of his investigative term.
Can Bush and his congressional allies survive the resulting howls of indignation if Fitzgerald and his investigation are stuffed in a soft-shoe version of the Saturday Night Massacre? Well, considering the fact that they have thus far survived a disastrous invasion of Iraq, 1,796 dead American soldiers, shameless profiteering from corporations umbilically connected to the White House, Enron, tax cuts that eviscerated the budget, and the murder of about 3,000 people in New York and Washington right under their noses, and all that just for starters, the idea that dumping Fitzgerald will do any harm to the administration can pretty safely be filed under "Pipe Dream."
Wrap...
There have been two bad moments looming over the horizon for the last couple of weeks. One is still in the offing, and a lot of people who have been watching and working the details should prepare themselves for the ram. The other went down this morning, and a lot of good folks are choking on their own rage right now.
One will center around Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been surprisingly diligent and effective in his investigation into who outed deep-cover CIA agent Valerie Plame. His diligence and effectiveness have been surprising, it should be noted, because he has been the only person in government lo these last five years who has actually and sincerely attempted to uncover and unravel the nest of lies, deceptions and bare-faced criminal actions of the Bush administration.
That means, of course, that he has got to go. GOP defenders of Bush, Rove and Libby have been lining up salvos against Fitzgerald should he continue to evidence his unfortunate streak of moral clarity. As Joe Conason reported in the New York Observer last week, "Circled in a bristling perimeter around the White House, the friends and allies of Mr. Rove can soon be expected to fire their rhetorical mortars at Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the White House exposure of CIA operative Valerie Wilson. Indeed, the preparations for that assault began months ago in the editorial columns of The Wall Street Journal, which has tarred Mr. Fitzgerald as a 'loose cannon' and an 'unguided missile.'"
"Evidently," continued Conason, "Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, will lead the next foray against the special prosecutor. This week the Senator's press office announced his plan to hold hearings on the Fitzgerald probe. That means interfering with an 'ongoing investigation,' as the White House press secretary might say, but such considerations won't deter the highly partisan Kansan."
This was to be expected. The word "Irony" was deleted from the GOP Dictionary many years ago, along with words like "Shame" and "Hypocrite." These fellows achieved their lofty status in no small part because of a genuinely loose-cannon investigator named Starr, who burned five years of our lives leaping from land deals to consensual sex in a Puritanical crusade that had more to do with the 2000 election and stalling out an effective Democratic administration than anything else.
Attacks against Fitzgerald won't do a great deal of damage to the investigation, or to Fitzgerald, by themselves. But they will help to increase the volume as we cycle towards the endgame. You see, Fitzgerald's term as Special Counsel expires in October. Former Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald, no relation, intimated in a recent interview that House Speaker Denny Hastert is auguring towards making sure the pesky investigator is not granted an extension of his investigative term.
Can Bush and his congressional allies survive the resulting howls of indignation if Fitzgerald and his investigation are stuffed in a soft-shoe version of the Saturday Night Massacre? Well, considering the fact that they have thus far survived a disastrous invasion of Iraq, 1,796 dead American soldiers, shameless profiteering from corporations umbilically connected to the White House, Enron, tax cuts that eviscerated the budget, and the murder of about 3,000 people in New York and Washington right under their noses, and all that just for starters, the idea that dumping Fitzgerald will do any harm to the administration can pretty safely be filed under "Pipe Dream."
Wrap...
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