From Alternet.org via truthout.org :
Rev. Moon's Conjugal Visitations
By John Gorenfeld
AlterNet.org
Monday 17 April 2006
We all know the religious Right wants to tell us what we can't do in the bedroom, but no one asks what they want us to do instead.
Among the trendier gripes about why liberals lack power in American politics is that there isn't enough tolerance for America's faithful. A big problem, Rabbi Michael Lerner recently sighed, is that "the Left's hostility to religion and spirituality has become such a major stumbling block to the chances that progressive forces will ever win enough power" to make a difference. So the new advice, from Hillary Clinton to the New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook, is: Stop making snickering remarks at Jerry Falwell's expense. Cheer the innovation of $2 billion in federal tax money carted off to religious groups last year. Drag the "Left Behind" series into your Amazon shopping cart.
And listen, I should add, to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative mouthpiece the Washington Times and self-proclaimed Messiah. Moon's warning to America is that we must have sex the way he entreats us, in the positions he has designated, or else forfeit our "love organs," as he dubs them, to the dark lord Satan.
We all know the Right wants to decide what we can't do in the bedroom. But no one ever seems to ask what the Right wants us to do instead.
"After the act of love," read the instructions from the Rev. Moon's conservative Family Federation, "both spouses should wipe their sexual areas with the Holy Handkerchief. Hang the handkerchief[s] to dry naturally and keep them eternally. They must be kept individually labeled and should never be laundered and mixed up."
Maybe the best explanation of our widespread ignorance of the Washington Times owner's sex rites is liberal squeamishness. For those of you who suckled on secular humanism and feminist tracts (which Moon calls Satanic, by the way), these prescriptions from God might seem as off-putting as a Castro Street postcard storefront to Dr. James Dobson.
But in order to usher in a national dialogue on faith in the public square, it's important to look beyond stereotypes of the Right to understand the diverse philosophies behind public movements for state-enforced morality.
Rev. Moon, whose Washington Times is a crown jewel of the conservative media Death Star, offers the essential lessons. He's the last man most Americans would associate with Republican power circles, but is in his own secretive way as important a figure in the Christian Right as Jerry Falwell, who's still in business thanks to a $3.5 million bailout from Moon in 1995, or Tim LaHaye of the Council For National Policy, who took money to serve on the board of a group rehabilitating Moon's image, and once wrote a letter addressing Moon as "the Master."
Just how big is Moon's standing in the Right? The "Republican Noise Machine" is a mighty edifice built with $3 billion in gifts from various right-wing philanthropists. Moon's gift of the Washington Times to the conservative cause alone places him in the club as a charter member; the paper owes its existence to a staggering figure of over $2,000,000,000 since 1982 in donations in Moon's mystery money.
Moon also also controls United Press International, one of the world's largest wire news services. In addition to having a hand in the creation of modern-day Christian Right politics, Moon has given huge sums to Richard Viguerie, the "founding funder" of the Reagan revolution; Terry Dolan, the pioneer of the "liberal bias" attack; and George W. Bush, who received $250,000 from Moon in 2004.
By 1989, US News & World Report was reporting Moon had built "a network of affiliated organizations and connections in almost every conservative organization in Washington, including the Heritage Foundation," but that "conservatives ... fear repercussions if they expose the church's role." In 2004, a veteran Christian Right lobbyist, Gary Jarmin, arranged to have Moon coronated the "King of Peace" in a kitschy ceremony on Capitol Hill in which he wore a glittering crown and royal robes.
Moon, the first President Bush said, while touring South America with the True Father in 1996, is "the man with the vision" whose newspaper "restores sanity to Washington." So why must the gatekeepers of the mainstream media bar his ideas from the public debate on morality? Why does his own employee, Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley, whose paper Moon says he mainly established to "tell the world about God," hold back from telling the McLaughlin Group about the greatness of Rev. Moon's plans for society?
In the interest of healthy public discourse, it bears upon us instead to consider the philosophy fueling Moon, who has long acted on his professed longing to see gays and "free sex" banished from America. Moon's Federation offers an instruction manual explaining, among other things, on which occasions the man should be on top, how Satan can be banished with the spank of a wooden paddle and franker lessons still.
Recipe for Love
There is, as Moon sees it, a profound sex crisis in America. "Satan," the Times publisher said in 2004, "is clinging to our sexual organs." Women are a "line of prostitutes," who should be punished for selfishness. "The concave organ [vagina] should be sealed with concrete."
"The women are the problem in history," he said in 2004. "Women who don't want to have children should cut away their breasts, bottoms and love organ because the purpose for those was first for the children. If they don't fulfill that purpose, then they are not needed."
"Woman's sexual organ is like the open mouth of a snake filled with poison," he said in 1996. Men don't get off any easier. Keep pliers in your pocket, he says, "and when you go to the bathroom, once a day, pinch your love organ. Cut the skin a little bit as a warning."
Moon has even a darker vision for gay men. Moon told an audience he'd like to see them removed in a "purge on God's orders.... Gays will be eliminated, the three Israels will unite. If not, then they will be burned. We do not know what kind of world God will bring, but this is what happens. It will be greater than the Communist purge but at God's orders." (No wonder the Times style guide puts "gay" in quotes.)
Far from being confined to his church, his philosophy has fueled years of voter mobilization drives, state and local candidacies and public campaigns opposing sexual liberties for nonmembers - such as birth control, sex education, gay rights. There have been Moon-sponsored rallies for "pure sex" in the streets of Chicago, featuring mascots dressed up as gonorrhea bacteria. So don't mistake his sexual beliefs for a party to which you aren't invited. "By 2004, we have to reach the level of Jesus occupying Rome," he said in 2001, speaking of his American ambitions. "Invite me as master and owner, or it all will fade away and be broken. The Capitol Hill, the UN - I should be the king."
The goal of getting involved in politics and social services, say his clerics, is to cleanse Satan from humanity's bloodline. Meanwhile, under George W. Bush's Healthy Marriage Initiative and abstinence-only grants, his pastors have won nearly $1 million in public funding. Moon's abstinence-only education group Free Teens USA, funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, instructs school kids in New Jersey: "It's not just your body, it's your whole lineage forever." In a lesson plan featured online, a "family tree" exercise appears to be inspired by Moon's teachings. And to teach that loving carelessly is vile, youths are asked to drink from a cup of spit, according to a lesson plan featured online.
Conjugal Visitation
So let's say you've married a spouse chosen for you by the creator of the Washington Times at one of his 2,000-couple stadium weddings. You've gone through a Moon-ordained period of sexlessness, but now the time has come to get down to business for the first time with your new husband or wife.
Not so fast. At some date prior to the lovemaking, Moon's "indemnity stick ceremony" is used to paddle Satan's spirit from your lover-to-be. The evil spirit is present, according to one church testimony, because "men and women misused each other's sexual parts, for selfish purposes, [and] it gave birth to this resentment ... So we receive three hits of the stick."
According to the Family Federation website, Satan will not be purged until newlyweds carry out his "Three Day Ceremony" in specified sex positions, in Holy Gowns, in front of his photograph. You're to meet at a location that's "as holy a place as possible" - one of Moon's churches is OK. You should have a number of items on hand, according to the instructions available online, including a Holy Handkerchief, a church-supplied cloth, and a photo of the Washington Times publisher and conservative benefactor with his wife, Hak Ja Moon. By now you have embraced them as your True Parents, maybe even replacing your biological mom and dad. Next the room must be sanctified to ward off any potential Satanic comeback, with prayers, a candle and the sprinkling of holy salt.
Over three nights, there must be three acts of sex. The first night, the woman is on top. The second night proceeds much the same as the first. But this time there is emphasis on the idea the man-on-bottom has progressed to "Growth Stage Adam."
Night three: time for the "man to restore dominion." Missionary position.
Moon appears to recognize that not all men will be able to sustain an erection during this procedure.
"The act of love should be a complete act (penetration and ejaculation)," the anonymous authors make clear. "In the event that it is difficult to achieve this, strive to achieve as much penetration as possible and continue with the remainder of the ceremony.
"For the act of love, it is all right to caress each other. Insertion must be accomplished. The couple should continue the act of love until ejaculation, but if it is difficult to reach ejaculation, the act may be stopped at that point. However, insertion itself must be accomplished. If insertion is not possible because the husband does not have an erection, the wife must take her husband's sexual organ in her hand and guide it into her sexual part in order to successfully do the ceremony. If the act of love is not fulfilled and it is delayed, it must be fulfilled within 24 hours starting from the beginning of the ceremony. It is not permitted to use a condom or any other apparatus during the act of love."
In an America where the separation of church and state have widely come to be seen as an urban legend, these ideas deserve as much consideration as the Silver Ring Thing, until recently the inspiration for a $1 million grant in Pittsburgh to push someone else's religious crusade: "to saturate the United States," as the mission statement said, "with a generation of young people who have taken a vow of sexual abstinence until marriage and put on the silver ring. This mission can only be achieved by offering a personal relationship with Jesus Christ ..."
And this is the risk of inviting God into the public square. One man's Silver Ring Thing is another man's Holy Handkerchief.
Wrap...
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
CIA appreciates blogger info....
From The Washington Times:
CIA mines 'rich' content from blogs
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 19, 2006
President Bush and U.S. policy-makers are receiving more intelligence from open sources such as Internet blogs and foreign newspapers than they previously did, senior intelligence officials said.
The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin.
"A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we're getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to ... people putting information on there that doesn't exist anywhere else," Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.
Eliot A. Jardines, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for open source, said the amount of unclassified intelligence reaching Mr. Bush and senior policy-makers has increased as a result of the center's creation in November.
"We're certainly scoring a number of wins with our ultimate customer," said Mr. Jardines, who became the first high-level official in charge of the government's nonsecret intelligence in December.
"I can't get into detail of what, but I'll just say the amount of open source reporting that goes into the president's daily brief has gone up rather significantly," Mr. Jardines said. "There has been a real interest at the highest levels of our government, and we've been able to consistently deliver products that are on par with the rest of the intelligence community."
Mr. Naquin said recent OSC successes have included the discovery of a technology advance in a foreign country. Also, most data on avian flu outbreaks come from open sources, he said.
"Have we got coups out of it? Close to it," Mr. Naquin said. "But certainly we've had more insight than we've ever had before."
The OSC uses powerful computers and software technology to "sift" the Internet for valuable intelligence. It also buys information from commercial databases.
In the past, open-source reports were used mainly by intelligence analysts.
"But now our customer base literally ranges from the president to local police departments," Mr. Naquin said. The Fairfax County police use OSC products, as do police departments in San Diego, New York and Baltimore. The center also provides support to the U.S. military.
A Defense Department official said Chinese military bloggers have become a valuable source of intelligence on Beijing's secret military buildup. For example, China built its first Yuan-class attack submarine at an underground factory that was unknown to U.S. intelligence until a photo of the submarine appeared on the Internet in 2004.
The center took over the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, known as FBIS, that was formed in 1941 to translate foreign broadcasts.
The OSC is doubling its staff and bringing in material from 32 government agencies that also produce unclassified reports, Mr. Jardines said.
Wrap...
CIA mines 'rich' content from blogs
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 19, 2006
President Bush and U.S. policy-makers are receiving more intelligence from open sources such as Internet blogs and foreign newspapers than they previously did, senior intelligence officials said.
The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin.
"A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we're getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to ... people putting information on there that doesn't exist anywhere else," Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.
Eliot A. Jardines, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for open source, said the amount of unclassified intelligence reaching Mr. Bush and senior policy-makers has increased as a result of the center's creation in November.
"We're certainly scoring a number of wins with our ultimate customer," said Mr. Jardines, who became the first high-level official in charge of the government's nonsecret intelligence in December.
"I can't get into detail of what, but I'll just say the amount of open source reporting that goes into the president's daily brief has gone up rather significantly," Mr. Jardines said. "There has been a real interest at the highest levels of our government, and we've been able to consistently deliver products that are on par with the rest of the intelligence community."
Mr. Naquin said recent OSC successes have included the discovery of a technology advance in a foreign country. Also, most data on avian flu outbreaks come from open sources, he said.
"Have we got coups out of it? Close to it," Mr. Naquin said. "But certainly we've had more insight than we've ever had before."
The OSC uses powerful computers and software technology to "sift" the Internet for valuable intelligence. It also buys information from commercial databases.
In the past, open-source reports were used mainly by intelligence analysts.
"But now our customer base literally ranges from the president to local police departments," Mr. Naquin said. The Fairfax County police use OSC products, as do police departments in San Diego, New York and Baltimore. The center also provides support to the U.S. military.
A Defense Department official said Chinese military bloggers have become a valuable source of intelligence on Beijing's secret military buildup. For example, China built its first Yuan-class attack submarine at an underground factory that was unknown to U.S. intelligence until a photo of the submarine appeared on the Internet in 2004.
The center took over the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, known as FBIS, that was formed in 1941 to translate foreign broadcasts.
The OSC is doubling its staff and bringing in material from 32 government agencies that also produce unclassified reports, Mr. Jardines said.
Wrap...
Here are the BushCo chickenhawks....
From ThinkProgress.com :
ThinkProgress put together a list of all the key players in the Bush administration's war of choice. The list is somewhat similar to TomPaine.com's graphic published last fall, Dick and Don's Cabal, that illustrated the special relationships involved in the campaign to invade Iraq, WMD or no WMD.
Among other things, the ThinkProgress feature includes an entertaining "key quote" for each person. My favorite is Richard Perle's: [more]
Wrap...
ThinkProgress put together a list of all the key players in the Bush administration's war of choice. The list is somewhat similar to TomPaine.com's graphic published last fall, Dick and Don's Cabal, that illustrated the special relationships involved in the campaign to invade Iraq, WMD or no WMD.
Among other things, the ThinkProgress feature includes an entertaining "key quote" for each person. My favorite is Richard Perle's: [more]
Wrap...
CIA now sets own rules for file designation...
From Secrecy News:
CIA EXPANDS OPERATIONAL FILE SECRECY
The Central Intelligence Agency conducted a review of its"operational files" last year, as it is required to do every ten years under the CIA Information Act of 1984, to see if any such files could have their "operational" designation rescinded, making them subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.
But instead of removing any files from operational status, as contemplated by the 1984 Act, the CIA added nearly two dozen new categories of files that will now be exempt from search and review under the FOIA, according to a newly disclosed report to Congress.
Remarkably, the CIA report to Congress misstated the requirements ofthe 1984 law. The CIA told Congress that: "The CIA Information Act... required that not less than once every ten years, the DCI review the operational files exemptions then in force to determine whether such exemptions could be removed from any category of exempted files or portion of those files, and whether any new categories of files should be designated as exempt."
Only the first half of that sentence is true.The statute that governs these reviews -- 50 U.S.C. 432 -- refers only to the removal of the operational file exemption based on"historical value or other public interest." It says nothing about adding new designations.
Having misstated the law, CIA proceeded to implement its own misrepresentation.The Agency did not remove any operational file exemptions at all. Instead, it added twenty three new file category exemptions.
The CIA has the legal authority under the 1984 CIA Information Act to create new operational file designations at any time. But that is not the purpose of the decennial reviews, which were established by Congress specifically to correct and curtail prior designations that were no longer necessary or appropriate.
In this case, the corrective mechanism designed by Congress was defeated by CIA.The Report of the Second Decennial Review of CIA Operational File Exemptions was transmitted to Congress on June 28, 2005. It was publicly released this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act appeal from the Federation of American Scientists.
See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/ciaopf2.html
In the first decennial review in 1995, the operational file exemption was removed from four file categories and they were opened to FOIA requests. See the report of the first decennial review here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/ciaopf.html
If rigid and arbitrary secrecy were preconditions for a superior intelligence product, then advocates of greater openness would confront a dilemma. But we know that is not the case. CIA secrecy policy as it exists today is not a sign of vigor but of decay. In the latest sign of institutional turmoil at the Agency, the editor of the somewhat respected CIA journal Studies in Intelligence has resigned, and so has the chairman of its Editorial Board.
"The most chilling aspect is that there are newly established editorial hurdles at the journal. Merit is no longer the sole criterion governing publication," wrote Max Holland, a sometime contributor to Studies. He reported on the resignations in a new article in WashingtonSpectator, "Lessons Not Learned," April 15:
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20060415lessons_1.cfm
Wrap...
CIA EXPANDS OPERATIONAL FILE SECRECY
The Central Intelligence Agency conducted a review of its"operational files" last year, as it is required to do every ten years under the CIA Information Act of 1984, to see if any such files could have their "operational" designation rescinded, making them subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.
But instead of removing any files from operational status, as contemplated by the 1984 Act, the CIA added nearly two dozen new categories of files that will now be exempt from search and review under the FOIA, according to a newly disclosed report to Congress.
Remarkably, the CIA report to Congress misstated the requirements ofthe 1984 law. The CIA told Congress that: "The CIA Information Act... required that not less than once every ten years, the DCI review the operational files exemptions then in force to determine whether such exemptions could be removed from any category of exempted files or portion of those files, and whether any new categories of files should be designated as exempt."
Only the first half of that sentence is true.The statute that governs these reviews -- 50 U.S.C. 432 -- refers only to the removal of the operational file exemption based on"historical value or other public interest." It says nothing about adding new designations.
Having misstated the law, CIA proceeded to implement its own misrepresentation.The Agency did not remove any operational file exemptions at all. Instead, it added twenty three new file category exemptions.
The CIA has the legal authority under the 1984 CIA Information Act to create new operational file designations at any time. But that is not the purpose of the decennial reviews, which were established by Congress specifically to correct and curtail prior designations that were no longer necessary or appropriate.
In this case, the corrective mechanism designed by Congress was defeated by CIA.The Report of the Second Decennial Review of CIA Operational File Exemptions was transmitted to Congress on June 28, 2005. It was publicly released this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act appeal from the Federation of American Scientists.
See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/ciaopf2.html
In the first decennial review in 1995, the operational file exemption was removed from four file categories and they were opened to FOIA requests. See the report of the first decennial review here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/ciaopf.html
If rigid and arbitrary secrecy were preconditions for a superior intelligence product, then advocates of greater openness would confront a dilemma. But we know that is not the case. CIA secrecy policy as it exists today is not a sign of vigor but of decay. In the latest sign of institutional turmoil at the Agency, the editor of the somewhat respected CIA journal Studies in Intelligence has resigned, and so has the chairman of its Editorial Board.
"The most chilling aspect is that there are newly established editorial hurdles at the journal. Merit is no longer the sole criterion governing publication," wrote Max Holland, a sometime contributor to Studies. He reported on the resignations in a new article in WashingtonSpectator, "Lessons Not Learned," April 15:
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20060415lessons_1.cfm
Wrap...
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Knowing the "SECRET" classifications...
From NoQuarter.typepad.com :
April 18, 2006
The State INR Memo on Plame
byLarry C Johnson
If you have not seen the copy of the State Department memo detailing what State knew (or did not know) about Joe Wilson's efforts to determine if Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger, check it out. Those not familiar with the format should pay attention to some particulars:
1. A paragraph is classified based on the information it contains. For example, if it is "Official" information but not classified the author could label it "FOUO" (which means, For Official Use Only) or "LOU" (Limited Official Use).
2. When a paragraph is labeled S/NF (Secret/No Forn) that means the information is SECRET and not to be shared with foreigners. The mere mention of Valerie Wilson's name required that the paragraph be classified. If she was not undercover, the paragraph could have (and should have) been classified as LOU or FOUO. The New York Sun editors are morons. They don't even understand this basic point.
3. On the second page of the State Department memo we encounter a blacked out section in the third paragraph from the top. Looks like the words, "Exlusive Dissemination" were excised. I would also note that the term, "ORCON", means "Originator Controlled". In other words, the person who wrote the intel controls the classificaion of it as well as its dissemination.
4. The last paragraph on page four indicates that the forged documents were brought to the United States through Defense Department (not State Department) channels. This helps explain how the documents found their way into the Office of the Vice President.
5. The really explosive news are the six documents listed as "Attachments". This provides the first comprehensive list of the different documents that discounted attempts by Iraq to buy uranium from Niger. Remember, Joe Wilson said in his op-ed from July 2003 that there were at least four documents that dealt with this issue. Once again, Joe is wrong. THERE WERE SIX!
This memo is one more nail in the coffin containing the lies Bush told to take us to war. The memo vindicates Joe Wilson and should remind the public that his wife's identity was a SECRET. That is why the paragraphs with her name and/or identity are classified as SECRET.
Wrap...
April 18, 2006
The State INR Memo on Plame
byLarry C Johnson
If you have not seen the copy of the State Department memo detailing what State knew (or did not know) about Joe Wilson's efforts to determine if Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger, check it out. Those not familiar with the format should pay attention to some particulars:
1. A paragraph is classified based on the information it contains. For example, if it is "Official" information but not classified the author could label it "FOUO" (which means, For Official Use Only) or "LOU" (Limited Official Use).
2. When a paragraph is labeled S/NF (Secret/No Forn) that means the information is SECRET and not to be shared with foreigners. The mere mention of Valerie Wilson's name required that the paragraph be classified. If she was not undercover, the paragraph could have (and should have) been classified as LOU or FOUO. The New York Sun editors are morons. They don't even understand this basic point.
3. On the second page of the State Department memo we encounter a blacked out section in the third paragraph from the top. Looks like the words, "Exlusive Dissemination" were excised. I would also note that the term, "ORCON", means "Originator Controlled". In other words, the person who wrote the intel controls the classificaion of it as well as its dissemination.
4. The last paragraph on page four indicates that the forged documents were brought to the United States through Defense Department (not State Department) channels. This helps explain how the documents found their way into the Office of the Vice President.
5. The really explosive news are the six documents listed as "Attachments". This provides the first comprehensive list of the different documents that discounted attempts by Iraq to buy uranium from Niger. Remember, Joe Wilson said in his op-ed from July 2003 that there were at least four documents that dealt with this issue. Once again, Joe is wrong. THERE WERE SIX!
This memo is one more nail in the coffin containing the lies Bush told to take us to war. The memo vindicates Joe Wilson and should remind the public that his wife's identity was a SECRET. That is why the paragraphs with her name and/or identity are classified as SECRET.
Wrap...
A rather different selection of Books...
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
MYSTERY/CRIME:
A.W. Hill's THE LAST DAYS OF MADAME REY, Hollywood noir with a post-modern bite and a mystical aura, reminding us that the gumshoes of old were really Grail knights in brown fedoras, to Philip Turner at Carroll & Graf, in a nice deal, by Kimberley Cameron at Reece Halsey Paris (NA). bookgir2@comcast.net
THRILLER:
Charles Cumming's A SPY BY NATURE, THE HIDDEN MAN, THE SPANISH GAME, to Diane Reverand at St. Martin's, by Luke Janklow at Janklow & Nesbit. melissa.contreras@stmartins.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
Whitbread and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jim Crace's THE PESTHOUSE, to Nan Talese at Nan A. Talese, for publication in May 2007, plus two more novels, by David Godwin at David Godwin Associates.ndewey@randomhouse.com
Death of an Ordinary Man and I, Lucifer author Glen Duncan's THE BLOODSTONE PAPERS, in which an Anglo-Indian family carries its history, certain mysteries, and unresolved passions from the last days of the Raj to modern day London, to Dan Halpern and Millicent Bennett of Ecco, in a two-book deal, by Jane Gelfman of Gelfman Schneider, on behalf of Jonny Geller of Curtis Brown London (NA).jane@gelfmanschneider.com
Lynn York's second novel, a follow up to her debut The Piano Teacher, to Trena Keating at Plume, in a very nice deal, by Suzanne Gluck at the William Morris Agency (NA).
CHILDREN'S/MIDDLE GRADE:
MY BIG SISTER IS SO BOSSY SHE SAYS YOU CAN'T READ THIS BOOK author Mary Hershey's STUMP, a darkly humorous coming-of-age story about the relationship between a teen boy, who calls himself Stump to draw shocked attention to his missing leg, and his dad, who left the family after the accident that caused the amputation five years earlier, to Liesa Abrams at Razorbill, in a nice deal, by Erin Murphy of Erin Murphy Literary Agency (world). kitohana@earthlink.net
FILM:
Rights to Laura Lippman's EVERY SECRET THING, about two young women and what happens to them after seven years in juvenile prison for a crime committed when they were eleven, optioned to Frances McDormand, by Justin Manask at IPG on behalf of Vicky Bijur at the Vicky Bijur Literary Agency.
John Connolly's BAD MEN, on the run from a ruthless ex-husband a woman and her young son settle on a desolate and secluded island, to Sobini Films, in a good deal, by Steve Fisher, working on behalf of the Darley Anderson. Screenwriter Steve Susco ("The Grudge") is adapting. sfisher@apa-agency.com
BUSINESS/INVESTING/FINANCE:
John Connolly's BAD MEN, on the run from a ruthless ex-husband a woman and her young son settle on a desolate and secluded island, to Sobini Films, in a good deal, by Steve Fisher, working on behalf of the Darley Anderson. Screenwriter Steve Susco ("The Grudge") is adapting. sfisher@apa-agency.com
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Historian Alexander Rose's AMERICAN RIFLE, an examination of the relationship between American culture and gun technology from the Revolution to the present and AMERICAN SOLDIER, which explores the question of what it's really like being in battle from the perspective of a common soldier, to John Flicker at Bantam Dell, by Emma Parry at Fletcher & Parry.
Vincent DiGirolamo's CRYING THE NEWS: A History of America's Newsboys, exploring how these resourceful and ambitious child workers came to personify the spirit of capitalism in America, to Susan Ferber at Oxford University Press, by Brettne Bloom at Kneerim & Williams (world).bloom@fr.com
MEMOIR:
Sarah Goodall's THE PALACE DIARIES, The True Story of Life Behind the Palace Gates, described as Bridget Jones meets Paul Burrell, life behind the scenes of the Royal Establishment by a young woman who bumbled her way into a job working for Prince Charles and remained with him for 12 years, to Jackie Cantor for Berkley, for publication in hardback and trade paperback by NAL and Signet for mass market, in a very nice deal, by Fiona Brownlee at Mainstream (NA). fiona.brownlee@mainstreampublishing.com
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg's DRUNKARD, illuminating the quiet desperation of a functioning alcoholic, to Trena Keating for Dutton/Plume, in a very nice deal, by Susan Raihofer at David Black Literary Agency (NA).
Anti-terrorism consultant for the FBI Daveed Gartenstein-Ross's MY YEAR IN RADICAL ISLAM, in which the author tells of converting to Islam as a college student and working for the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a charity dedicated to fostering Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's austere form of Islam that serves as a theological inspiration for many terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, to Sara Carder at Tarcher, in a very nice deal, by Gary Morris at the David Black Literary Agency.
Federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert's THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, about his kidnapping in Manhattan just before his 38th birthday, the intense psychological duel with his captors that eventually set him free, and the investigation that led to their arrests, to Neil Nyren at Putnam, in a pre-empt, for publication in early 2007, by Ronald Goldfarb (world).
SCIENCE:
Microbiologist Anne Maczulak's THE MICROBES WHO LIVE WITH YOU, a guide to the applications of microbiology from bioterrorism and health hazards in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes to household cleaning detergents, money handling, and food preservatives, to John Oakes at Thunder's Mouth, in a nice deal, by Jodie Rhodes (World).jrhodes1@san.rr.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
English travel writer and author of THE CALIPH'S HOUSE Tahir Shah's IN ARABIAN NIGHTS, about the traditions of Moroccan storytelling, the idea that every soul has its own story, and the author's own family legacy of storytelling, again to Philip Rappaport at Bantam Dell, by Emma Parry of Fletcher & Parry. UK/translation: Patrick Walsh at Conville and Walsh
Wrap....
MYSTERY/CRIME:
A.W. Hill's THE LAST DAYS OF MADAME REY, Hollywood noir with a post-modern bite and a mystical aura, reminding us that the gumshoes of old were really Grail knights in brown fedoras, to Philip Turner at Carroll & Graf, in a nice deal, by Kimberley Cameron at Reece Halsey Paris (NA). bookgir2@comcast.net
THRILLER:
Charles Cumming's A SPY BY NATURE, THE HIDDEN MAN, THE SPANISH GAME, to Diane Reverand at St. Martin's, by Luke Janklow at Janklow & Nesbit. melissa.contreras@stmartins.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
Whitbread and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jim Crace's THE PESTHOUSE, to Nan Talese at Nan A. Talese, for publication in May 2007, plus two more novels, by David Godwin at David Godwin Associates.ndewey@randomhouse.com
Death of an Ordinary Man and I, Lucifer author Glen Duncan's THE BLOODSTONE PAPERS, in which an Anglo-Indian family carries its history, certain mysteries, and unresolved passions from the last days of the Raj to modern day London, to Dan Halpern and Millicent Bennett of Ecco, in a two-book deal, by Jane Gelfman of Gelfman Schneider, on behalf of Jonny Geller of Curtis Brown London (NA).jane@gelfmanschneider.com
Lynn York's second novel, a follow up to her debut The Piano Teacher, to Trena Keating at Plume, in a very nice deal, by Suzanne Gluck at the William Morris Agency (NA).
CHILDREN'S/MIDDLE GRADE:
MY BIG SISTER IS SO BOSSY SHE SAYS YOU CAN'T READ THIS BOOK author Mary Hershey's STUMP, a darkly humorous coming-of-age story about the relationship between a teen boy, who calls himself Stump to draw shocked attention to his missing leg, and his dad, who left the family after the accident that caused the amputation five years earlier, to Liesa Abrams at Razorbill, in a nice deal, by Erin Murphy of Erin Murphy Literary Agency (world). kitohana@earthlink.net
FILM:
Rights to Laura Lippman's EVERY SECRET THING, about two young women and what happens to them after seven years in juvenile prison for a crime committed when they were eleven, optioned to Frances McDormand, by Justin Manask at IPG on behalf of Vicky Bijur at the Vicky Bijur Literary Agency.
John Connolly's BAD MEN, on the run from a ruthless ex-husband a woman and her young son settle on a desolate and secluded island, to Sobini Films, in a good deal, by Steve Fisher, working on behalf of the Darley Anderson. Screenwriter Steve Susco ("The Grudge") is adapting. sfisher@apa-agency.com
BUSINESS/INVESTING/FINANCE:
John Connolly's BAD MEN, on the run from a ruthless ex-husband a woman and her young son settle on a desolate and secluded island, to Sobini Films, in a good deal, by Steve Fisher, working on behalf of the Darley Anderson. Screenwriter Steve Susco ("The Grudge") is adapting. sfisher@apa-agency.com
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Historian Alexander Rose's AMERICAN RIFLE, an examination of the relationship between American culture and gun technology from the Revolution to the present and AMERICAN SOLDIER, which explores the question of what it's really like being in battle from the perspective of a common soldier, to John Flicker at Bantam Dell, by Emma Parry at Fletcher & Parry.
Vincent DiGirolamo's CRYING THE NEWS: A History of America's Newsboys, exploring how these resourceful and ambitious child workers came to personify the spirit of capitalism in America, to Susan Ferber at Oxford University Press, by Brettne Bloom at Kneerim & Williams (world).bloom@fr.com
MEMOIR:
Sarah Goodall's THE PALACE DIARIES, The True Story of Life Behind the Palace Gates, described as Bridget Jones meets Paul Burrell, life behind the scenes of the Royal Establishment by a young woman who bumbled her way into a job working for Prince Charles and remained with him for 12 years, to Jackie Cantor for Berkley, for publication in hardback and trade paperback by NAL and Signet for mass market, in a very nice deal, by Fiona Brownlee at Mainstream (NA). fiona.brownlee@mainstreampublishing.com
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg's DRUNKARD, illuminating the quiet desperation of a functioning alcoholic, to Trena Keating for Dutton/Plume, in a very nice deal, by Susan Raihofer at David Black Literary Agency (NA).
Anti-terrorism consultant for the FBI Daveed Gartenstein-Ross's MY YEAR IN RADICAL ISLAM, in which the author tells of converting to Islam as a college student and working for the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a charity dedicated to fostering Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's austere form of Islam that serves as a theological inspiration for many terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, to Sara Carder at Tarcher, in a very nice deal, by Gary Morris at the David Black Literary Agency.
Federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert's THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, about his kidnapping in Manhattan just before his 38th birthday, the intense psychological duel with his captors that eventually set him free, and the investigation that led to their arrests, to Neil Nyren at Putnam, in a pre-empt, for publication in early 2007, by Ronald Goldfarb (world).
SCIENCE:
Microbiologist Anne Maczulak's THE MICROBES WHO LIVE WITH YOU, a guide to the applications of microbiology from bioterrorism and health hazards in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes to household cleaning detergents, money handling, and food preservatives, to John Oakes at Thunder's Mouth, in a nice deal, by Jodie Rhodes (World).jrhodes1@san.rr.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
English travel writer and author of THE CALIPH'S HOUSE Tahir Shah's IN ARABIAN NIGHTS, about the traditions of Moroccan storytelling, the idea that every soul has its own story, and the author's own family legacy of storytelling, again to Philip Rappaport at Bantam Dell, by Emma Parry of Fletcher & Parry. UK/translation: Patrick Walsh at Conville and Walsh
Wrap....
Supremes take on the insanity defense....
From SCOTUSblog:
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Tomorrow's Argument in Clark v. Arizona
05:41 PM
Kimberley Morris
Since John Hinckley shot President Reagan, the country has hosted a lively debate on the place of the insanity defense and evidence of mental illness in the criminal courtroom. On Wednesday, the Court will hear arguments in No. 05-5966, Clark v. Arizona, a case that squarely revives these considerations.
The case poses two questions: (1) whether a state criminal law that permits the fact-finder to ignore evidence of mental illness when deciding if a defendant acted with the requisite mens rea of a crime violates due process; and (2) whether a state’s standard for a defense of mental insanity violates due process if it does not follow the M’Naghten Rule, which permits a defense of insanity both when the defendant was suffering from a mental illness that made him unable to appreciate the “nature and quality” of his acts and when he did not know that what he was doing was wrong.
David Goldberg of Flagstaff, Arizona, will argue on behalf of the petitioner, Eric Michael Clark. Randall M. Howe will argue on behalf of the respondent, the State of Arizona, and Solicitor General Paul Clement will argue on behalf of the United States as an amicus curiae in support of the respondent.
The parties' briefs are available here. The brief for the United States may be found here.
Continue reading "Tomorrow's Argument in Clark v. Arizona" »
Wrap...
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Tomorrow's Argument in Clark v. Arizona
05:41 PM
Kimberley Morris
Since John Hinckley shot President Reagan, the country has hosted a lively debate on the place of the insanity defense and evidence of mental illness in the criminal courtroom. On Wednesday, the Court will hear arguments in No. 05-5966, Clark v. Arizona, a case that squarely revives these considerations.
The case poses two questions: (1) whether a state criminal law that permits the fact-finder to ignore evidence of mental illness when deciding if a defendant acted with the requisite mens rea of a crime violates due process; and (2) whether a state’s standard for a defense of mental insanity violates due process if it does not follow the M’Naghten Rule, which permits a defense of insanity both when the defendant was suffering from a mental illness that made him unable to appreciate the “nature and quality” of his acts and when he did not know that what he was doing was wrong.
David Goldberg of Flagstaff, Arizona, will argue on behalf of the petitioner, Eric Michael Clark. Randall M. Howe will argue on behalf of the respondent, the State of Arizona, and Solicitor General Paul Clement will argue on behalf of the United States as an amicus curiae in support of the respondent.
The parties' briefs are available here. The brief for the United States may be found here.
Continue reading "Tomorrow's Argument in Clark v. Arizona" »
Wrap...
Los Alamos Nuke Lab...employees screwed...
From Lanl-the-real-story blog:
PRESS RELEASE ** PRESS RELEASE ** PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: April 18, 2006
Contacts:
Los Alamos, NM: Manuel Trujillo (505) 927-3883
Livermore, CA: Jeff Colvin (925) 449-4846
Washington DC: Candice Johnson (202) 434-1168
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Privatization of Employees’ Pensions
Endangers National Security
As a result of the privatization of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Department of Energy and the University of California will transfer all 10,000 employees at the nation’s largest and most prestigious nuclear weapons research facility from university employment to private employment controlled by a consortium of defense contractors and the University of California. This move jeopardizes decades of accrued pension benefits and any future job security for the thousands of professionals and employees who have made the work of Los Alamos so highly regarded. After years of security and safety incidents that focused congressional and media attention on the Los Alamos Lab, these changes will make a difficult situation worse.
On March 15, the University of California and LANS, LLC (the new private company controlled by UC and Bechtel) notified employees that they must forfeit further accrual of their University of California pensions if they want to keep their jobs with the privatized Los Alamos National Security, LLC.
The Department of Energy has already begun the privatization of the other nuclear weapons research facility run by UC, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Legislators and DOE officials anticipate that the thousands of LLNL employees also to be privatized by October 2007.
The Los Alamos and Livermore Lab employees are members of Communications Workers of America Local 9119, University Professional and Technical Employees.
The typical and appropriate solution to this type of transition would involve establishing "reciprocity”, whereby employees could retain their vested benefits under the University’s retirement plan while accruing added service credit and added benefits at LANS. Instead, employees are faced with a Catch-22 dilemma: they must either transfer all of their vested assets into the new and untested LANS plan, which provides far less retirement security than the University’s plan, or freeze their University pensions and be punished by being placed in a radically diminished LANS plan.
Further, employees who select to freeze their current pension and keep those funds with UC have grave concerns about UC’s statements that it plans to spin off this portion of the retirement plan. This could lead to chronic under-funding of this pension plan unless UC resolves its current conflict with the Department of Energy as to which entity is responsible for the viability of such a spin off fund. Adding insult to injury, employees are being required to make their impossible choice immediately, before UC decides whether to go through with the spin-off.
Thousands of employees have begun the process of retiring rather than lose their pensions. After years of mismanagement that led to security breaches and financial malfeasance, employees have lost their commitment to the mission of the national lab. This drain of talented professionals puts the mission of the Los Alamos program – and national security – at great risk. ”Employees are being coerced into making decisions that will cause irreparable harm,” warns Manny Trujillo, UPTE/LANL President. “Employees are being spoon fed little to no information that is often erroneous, causing confusion and frustration,” he added.
CWA and UPTE-CWA members are very concerned that this move is causing irreparable harm to the Department of Energy laboratory that plays such a pivotal role in national security. Employees at Los Alamos Lab perform countless critical tasks, such as keeping the U.S. nuclear stockpile safe, detecting nuclear threats from oil fields in Iraq to airports in Belarus, and computing for the human genome project.
UPTE-CWA is filing a lawsuit today challenging the legality of forcing current UC employees to make the truly impossible and coerced pension decisions described above.
We will be having a Press Conference tomorrow at 11:30 AM on south side of Ashley Pond in Los Alamos NM. Lawrence Livermore National laboratory (LLNL) will have theirs half an hour later and there is also one planned in Washington DC.
Wrap...
PRESS RELEASE ** PRESS RELEASE ** PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: April 18, 2006
Contacts:
Los Alamos, NM: Manuel Trujillo (505) 927-3883
Livermore, CA: Jeff Colvin (925) 449-4846
Washington DC: Candice Johnson (202) 434-1168
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Privatization of Employees’ Pensions
Endangers National Security
As a result of the privatization of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Department of Energy and the University of California will transfer all 10,000 employees at the nation’s largest and most prestigious nuclear weapons research facility from university employment to private employment controlled by a consortium of defense contractors and the University of California. This move jeopardizes decades of accrued pension benefits and any future job security for the thousands of professionals and employees who have made the work of Los Alamos so highly regarded. After years of security and safety incidents that focused congressional and media attention on the Los Alamos Lab, these changes will make a difficult situation worse.
On March 15, the University of California and LANS, LLC (the new private company controlled by UC and Bechtel) notified employees that they must forfeit further accrual of their University of California pensions if they want to keep their jobs with the privatized Los Alamos National Security, LLC.
The Department of Energy has already begun the privatization of the other nuclear weapons research facility run by UC, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Legislators and DOE officials anticipate that the thousands of LLNL employees also to be privatized by October 2007.
The Los Alamos and Livermore Lab employees are members of Communications Workers of America Local 9119, University Professional and Technical Employees.
The typical and appropriate solution to this type of transition would involve establishing "reciprocity”, whereby employees could retain their vested benefits under the University’s retirement plan while accruing added service credit and added benefits at LANS. Instead, employees are faced with a Catch-22 dilemma: they must either transfer all of their vested assets into the new and untested LANS plan, which provides far less retirement security than the University’s plan, or freeze their University pensions and be punished by being placed in a radically diminished LANS plan.
Further, employees who select to freeze their current pension and keep those funds with UC have grave concerns about UC’s statements that it plans to spin off this portion of the retirement plan. This could lead to chronic under-funding of this pension plan unless UC resolves its current conflict with the Department of Energy as to which entity is responsible for the viability of such a spin off fund. Adding insult to injury, employees are being required to make their impossible choice immediately, before UC decides whether to go through with the spin-off.
Thousands of employees have begun the process of retiring rather than lose their pensions. After years of mismanagement that led to security breaches and financial malfeasance, employees have lost their commitment to the mission of the national lab. This drain of talented professionals puts the mission of the Los Alamos program – and national security – at great risk. ”Employees are being coerced into making decisions that will cause irreparable harm,” warns Manny Trujillo, UPTE/LANL President. “Employees are being spoon fed little to no information that is often erroneous, causing confusion and frustration,” he added.
CWA and UPTE-CWA members are very concerned that this move is causing irreparable harm to the Department of Energy laboratory that plays such a pivotal role in national security. Employees at Los Alamos Lab perform countless critical tasks, such as keeping the U.S. nuclear stockpile safe, detecting nuclear threats from oil fields in Iraq to airports in Belarus, and computing for the human genome project.
UPTE-CWA is filing a lawsuit today challenging the legality of forcing current UC employees to make the truly impossible and coerced pension decisions described above.
We will be having a Press Conference tomorrow at 11:30 AM on south side of Ashley Pond in Los Alamos NM. Lawrence Livermore National laboratory (LLNL) will have theirs half an hour later and there is also one planned in Washington DC.
Wrap...
Blogger muscle: Add politics to this mix....
From The Guardian via American Progress :
Ignore bloggers at your peril, say researchers
· Online pundits 'influence businesses and opinion'
· Companies are falling foul of negative net buzz
Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
Tuesday April 18, 2006
The Guardian
Bloggers and internet pundits are exerting a "disproportionately large influence" on society, according to a report by a technology research company. Its study suggests that although "active" web users make up only a small proportion of Europe's online population, they are increasingly dominating public conversations and creating business trends.
More than half of the internet users on the continent are passive and do not contribute to the web at all, while a further 23% only respond when prompted. But the remainder who do engage with the net - through messageboards, websites and blogs - are helping change the national conversation, say researchers.
"We're seeing this growing," said Julian Smith, an online advertising analyst with Jupiter Research and author of the report. "The strongest part of their influence is on the media: if something online suddenly becomes a story in the local press, then it matters."
Although unprompted contributors are generally younger and more vocal than the wider online population, they are increasingly important as opinion formers and trend-setters. Mr Smith says businesses, media organisations and advertisers reading blogs should be wary of making assumptions about their wider significance, but that their muscle cannot be ignored.
"They're not representative of the larger audience, but what they're saying does matter," he said. "It's a good straw poll - a snapshot of the verbal conversations going on that we can't measure."
"That's exactly right," said Glenn Reynolds, author of An Army of Davids, which explores the explosion in web punditry. "Bloggers and blog-readers are 'influentials' - the minority that pays attention to events outside of political and news cycles. They also tend on average to be better off, better educated and, more importantly, employed."
There are now more than 35m blogs around the world, according to search engine Technorati. While most bloggers only write for small audiences, they can sometimes achieve wider fame or become the focus of consumer campaigns.
Companies like McDonald's, lock manufacturer Kryptonite and computer firm Dell have all fallen foul of internet buzz in recent years. Because search engines like Google can allow grassroots campaigns to become highly visible, industry insiders agree decisions can be shaped by a small number of activists.
"It's always been the case that vocal minorities are listened to by media organisations, brands, advertisers and marketers - normally because they're thought to represent a wider swath of opinion," said Tom Coates, a technologist with Yahoo! and prominent blogger.
"TV and radio programmes are censored or pulled on the green-inked letters of a few hundred people, products removed from shelves because of less than 100 complaints.
"On that basis, these figures start to sound like a pretty large number of people, and probably a much more representative sample than perhaps before."
Mr Reynolds admits the idea of small groups being able to pressurise wider decisions is nothing new, but those who ignore online buzz do so at their peril: "You can bury your head in the sand, but very quickly you'll look like a very old-fashioned company."
Wrap...
Ignore bloggers at your peril, say researchers
· Online pundits 'influence businesses and opinion'
· Companies are falling foul of negative net buzz
Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
Tuesday April 18, 2006
The Guardian
Bloggers and internet pundits are exerting a "disproportionately large influence" on society, according to a report by a technology research company. Its study suggests that although "active" web users make up only a small proportion of Europe's online population, they are increasingly dominating public conversations and creating business trends.
More than half of the internet users on the continent are passive and do not contribute to the web at all, while a further 23% only respond when prompted. But the remainder who do engage with the net - through messageboards, websites and blogs - are helping change the national conversation, say researchers.
"We're seeing this growing," said Julian Smith, an online advertising analyst with Jupiter Research and author of the report. "The strongest part of their influence is on the media: if something online suddenly becomes a story in the local press, then it matters."
Although unprompted contributors are generally younger and more vocal than the wider online population, they are increasingly important as opinion formers and trend-setters. Mr Smith says businesses, media organisations and advertisers reading blogs should be wary of making assumptions about their wider significance, but that their muscle cannot be ignored.
"They're not representative of the larger audience, but what they're saying does matter," he said. "It's a good straw poll - a snapshot of the verbal conversations going on that we can't measure."
"That's exactly right," said Glenn Reynolds, author of An Army of Davids, which explores the explosion in web punditry. "Bloggers and blog-readers are 'influentials' - the minority that pays attention to events outside of political and news cycles. They also tend on average to be better off, better educated and, more importantly, employed."
There are now more than 35m blogs around the world, according to search engine Technorati. While most bloggers only write for small audiences, they can sometimes achieve wider fame or become the focus of consumer campaigns.
Companies like McDonald's, lock manufacturer Kryptonite and computer firm Dell have all fallen foul of internet buzz in recent years. Because search engines like Google can allow grassroots campaigns to become highly visible, industry insiders agree decisions can be shaped by a small number of activists.
"It's always been the case that vocal minorities are listened to by media organisations, brands, advertisers and marketers - normally because they're thought to represent a wider swath of opinion," said Tom Coates, a technologist with Yahoo! and prominent blogger.
"TV and radio programmes are censored or pulled on the green-inked letters of a few hundred people, products removed from shelves because of less than 100 complaints.
"On that basis, these figures start to sound like a pretty large number of people, and probably a much more representative sample than perhaps before."
Mr Reynolds admits the idea of small groups being able to pressurise wider decisions is nothing new, but those who ignore online buzz do so at their peril: "You can bury your head in the sand, but very quickly you'll look like a very old-fashioned company."
Wrap...
Watergate's Bernstein says INVESTIGATE BUSHCO!!!
From Vanity Fair via truthout.org
Senate Hearings on Bush, Now
By Carl Bernstein
Vanity Fair
Monday 17 April 2006
In this VF.com exclusive, a Watergate veteran and Vanity Fair contributor calls for bipartisan hearings investigating the Bush presidency. Should Republicans on the Hill take the high road and save themselves come November?
Worse than Watergate? High crimes and misdemeanors justifying the impeachment of George W. Bush, as increasing numbers of Democrats in Washington hope, and, sotto voce, increasing numbers of Republicans - including some of the president's top lieutenants - now fear? Leaders of both parties are acutely aware of the vehemence of anti-Bush sentiment in the country, expressed especially in the increasing number of Americans - nearing fifty percent in some polls - who say they would favor impeachment if the president were proved to have deliberately lied to justify going to war in Iraq.
John Dean, the Watergate conspirator who ultimately shattered the Watergate conspiracy, rendered his precipitous (or perhaps prescient) impeachment verdict on Bush two years ago in the affirmative, without so much as a question mark in choosing the title of his book Worse than Watergate. On March 31, some three decades after he testified at the seminal hearings of the Senate Watergate Committee, Dean reiterated his dark view of Bush's presidency in a congressional hearing that shed more noise than light, and more partisan rancor than genuine inquiry. The ostensible subject: whether Bush should be censured for unconstitutional conduct in ordering electronic surveillance of Americans without a warrant.
Raising the worse-than-Watergate question and demanding unequivocally that Congress seek to answer it is, in fact, overdue and more than justified by ample evidence stacked up from Baghdad back to New Orleans and, of increasing relevance, inside a special prosecutor's office in downtown Washington.
In terms of imminent, meaningful action by the Congress, however, the question of whether the president should be impeached (or, less severely, censured) remains premature. More important, it is essential that the Senate vote - hopefully before the November elections, and with overwhelming support from both parties - to undertake a full investigation of the conduct of the presidency of George W. Bush, along the lines of the Senate Watergate Committee's investigation during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.
How much evidence is there to justify such action?
Certainly enough to form a consensus around a national imperative: to learn what this president and his vice president knew and when they knew it; to determine what the Bush administration has done under the guise of national security; and to find out who did what, whether legal or illegal, unconstitutional or merely under the wire, in ignorance or incompetence or with good reason, while the administration barricaded itself behind the most Draconian secrecy and disingenuous information policies of the modern presidential era.
"We ought to get to the bottom of it so it can be evaluated, again, by the American people," said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on April 9. "[T]he President of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people … about exactly what he did." Specter was speaking specifically about a special prosecutor's assertion that Bush selectively declassified information (of dubious accuracy) and instructed the vice president to leak it to reporters to undermine criticism of the decision to go to war in Iraq. But the senator's comments would be even more appropriately directed at far more pervasive and darker questions that must be answered if the American political system is to acquit itself in the Bush era, as it did in Nixon's.
Perhaps there are facts or mitigating circumstances, given the extraordinary nature of conceiving and fighting a war on terror, that justify some of the more questionable policies and conduct of this presidency, even those that turned a natural disaster in New Orleans into a catastrophe of incompetence and neglect. But the truth is we have no trustworthy official record of what has occurred in almost any aspect of this administration, how decisions were reached, and even what the actual policies promulgated and approved by the president are. Nor will we, until the subpoena powers of the Congress are used (as in Watergate) to find out the facts - not just about the war in Iraq, almost every aspect of it, beginning with the road to war, but other essential elements of Bush's presidency, particularly the routine disregard for truthfulness in the dissemination of information to the American people and Congress.
The first fundamental question that needs to be answered by and about the president, the vice president, and their political and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell, to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozen others), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation of information have been a basic matter of policy - used to overwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient data from the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president and his actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.
Most of what we have learned about the reality of this administration - and the disconcerting mind-set and decision-making process of President Bush himself - has come not from the White House or the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security or the Treasury Department, but from insider accounts by disaffected members of the administration after their departure, and from distinguished journalists, and, in the case of a skeletal but hugely significant body of information, from a special prosecutor. And also, of late, from an aide-de-camp to the British prime minister. Almost invariably, their accounts have revealed what the president and those serving him have deliberately concealed - torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and its apparent authorization by presidential fiat; wholesale N.S.A. domestic wiretapping in contravention of specific prohibitive law; brutal interrogations of prisoners shipped secretly by the C.I.A. and U.S. military to Third World gulags; the nonexistence of W.M.D. in Iraq; the role of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's chief of staff in divulging the name of an undercover C.I.A. employee; the non-role of Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the events of 9/11; the death by friendly fire of Pat Tillman (whose mother, Mary Tillman, told journalist Robert Scheer, "The administration tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him"); the lack of a coherent post-invasion strategy for Iraq, with all its consequent tragedy and loss and destabilizing global implications; the failure to coordinate economic policies for America's long-term financial health (including the misguided tax cuts) with funding a war that will drive the national debt above a trillion dollars; the assurance of Wolfowitz (since rewarded by Bush with the presidency of the World Bank) that Iraq's oil reserves would pay for the war within two to three years after the invasion; and Bush's like-minded confidence, expressed to Blair, that serious internecine strife in Iraq would be unlikely after the invasion.
But most grievous and momentous is the willingness - even enthusiasm, confirmed by the so-called Downing Street Memo and the contemporaneous notes of the chief foreign-policy adviser to British prime minister Tony Blair - to invent almost any justification for going to war in Iraq (including sending up an American U-2 plane painted with U.N. markings to be deliberately shot down by Saddam Hussein's air force, a plan hatched while the president, the vice president, and Blair insisted to the world that war would be initiated "only as a last resort"). Attending the meeting between Bush and Blair where such duplicity was discussed unabashedly ("intelligence and facts" would be jiggered as necessary and "fixed around the policy," wrote the dutiful aide to the prime minister) were Ms. Rice, then national-security adviser to the president, and Andrew Card, the recently departed White House chief of staff.
As with Watergate, the investigation of George W. Bush and his presidency needs to start from a shared premise and set of principles that can be embraced by Democrats and Republicans, by liberals and centrists and conservatives, and by opponents of the war and its advocates: that the president of the United States and members of his administration must defend the requirements of the Constitution, obey the law, demonstrate common sense, and tell the truth. Obviously there will be disagreements, even fierce ones, along the way. Here again the Nixon example is useful: Republicans on the Senate Watergate Committee, including its vice chairman, Howard Baker of Tennessee ("What did the president know and when did he know it?"), began the investigation as defenders of Nixon. By its end, only one was willing to make any defense of Nixon's actions.
The Senate Watergate Committee was created (by a 77-0 vote of the Senate) with the formal task of investigating illegal political-campaign activities. Its seven members were chosen by the leadership of each party, three from the minority, four from the majority. (The Democratic majority leader of the Senate, Mike Mansfield, insisted that none of the Democrats be high-profile senators with presidential aspirations.) One of the crucial tasks of any committee charged with investigating the Bush presidency will be to delineate the scope of inquiry. It must not be a fishing expedition - and not only because the pond is so loaded with fish. The lines ought to be drawn so that the hearings themselves do not become the occasion for the ultimate battle of the culture wars. This investigation should be seen as an opportunity to at last rise above the culture wars and, as in Watergate, learn whether the actions of the president and his deputies have been consistent with constitutional principles, the law, and the truth.
Karl Rove and other White House strategists are betting (with odds in their favor) that Republicans on Capitol Hill are extremely unlikely to take the high road before November and endorse any kind of serious investigation into Bush's presidency - a gamble that may increase the risk of losing Republican majorities in either or both houses of Congress, and even further undermine the future of the Bush presidency. Already in the White House, there is talk of a nightmare scenario in which the Democrats successfully make the November congressional elections a referendum on impeachment - and win back a majority in the House, and maybe the Senate too.
But voting now to create a Senate investigation - chaired by a Republican - could work to the advantage both of the truth and of Republican candidates eager to put distance between themselves and the White House.
The calculations of politicians about their electoral futures should pale in comparison to the urgency of examining perhaps the most disastrous five years of decision-making of any modern American presidency.
Cont: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041806Z.shtml
Wrap...
Senate Hearings on Bush, Now
By Carl Bernstein
Vanity Fair
Monday 17 April 2006
In this VF.com exclusive, a Watergate veteran and Vanity Fair contributor calls for bipartisan hearings investigating the Bush presidency. Should Republicans on the Hill take the high road and save themselves come November?
Worse than Watergate? High crimes and misdemeanors justifying the impeachment of George W. Bush, as increasing numbers of Democrats in Washington hope, and, sotto voce, increasing numbers of Republicans - including some of the president's top lieutenants - now fear? Leaders of both parties are acutely aware of the vehemence of anti-Bush sentiment in the country, expressed especially in the increasing number of Americans - nearing fifty percent in some polls - who say they would favor impeachment if the president were proved to have deliberately lied to justify going to war in Iraq.
John Dean, the Watergate conspirator who ultimately shattered the Watergate conspiracy, rendered his precipitous (or perhaps prescient) impeachment verdict on Bush two years ago in the affirmative, without so much as a question mark in choosing the title of his book Worse than Watergate. On March 31, some three decades after he testified at the seminal hearings of the Senate Watergate Committee, Dean reiterated his dark view of Bush's presidency in a congressional hearing that shed more noise than light, and more partisan rancor than genuine inquiry. The ostensible subject: whether Bush should be censured for unconstitutional conduct in ordering electronic surveillance of Americans without a warrant.
Raising the worse-than-Watergate question and demanding unequivocally that Congress seek to answer it is, in fact, overdue and more than justified by ample evidence stacked up from Baghdad back to New Orleans and, of increasing relevance, inside a special prosecutor's office in downtown Washington.
In terms of imminent, meaningful action by the Congress, however, the question of whether the president should be impeached (or, less severely, censured) remains premature. More important, it is essential that the Senate vote - hopefully before the November elections, and with overwhelming support from both parties - to undertake a full investigation of the conduct of the presidency of George W. Bush, along the lines of the Senate Watergate Committee's investigation during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.
How much evidence is there to justify such action?
Certainly enough to form a consensus around a national imperative: to learn what this president and his vice president knew and when they knew it; to determine what the Bush administration has done under the guise of national security; and to find out who did what, whether legal or illegal, unconstitutional or merely under the wire, in ignorance or incompetence or with good reason, while the administration barricaded itself behind the most Draconian secrecy and disingenuous information policies of the modern presidential era.
"We ought to get to the bottom of it so it can be evaluated, again, by the American people," said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on April 9. "[T]he President of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people … about exactly what he did." Specter was speaking specifically about a special prosecutor's assertion that Bush selectively declassified information (of dubious accuracy) and instructed the vice president to leak it to reporters to undermine criticism of the decision to go to war in Iraq. But the senator's comments would be even more appropriately directed at far more pervasive and darker questions that must be answered if the American political system is to acquit itself in the Bush era, as it did in Nixon's.
Perhaps there are facts or mitigating circumstances, given the extraordinary nature of conceiving and fighting a war on terror, that justify some of the more questionable policies and conduct of this presidency, even those that turned a natural disaster in New Orleans into a catastrophe of incompetence and neglect. But the truth is we have no trustworthy official record of what has occurred in almost any aspect of this administration, how decisions were reached, and even what the actual policies promulgated and approved by the president are. Nor will we, until the subpoena powers of the Congress are used (as in Watergate) to find out the facts - not just about the war in Iraq, almost every aspect of it, beginning with the road to war, but other essential elements of Bush's presidency, particularly the routine disregard for truthfulness in the dissemination of information to the American people and Congress.
The first fundamental question that needs to be answered by and about the president, the vice president, and their political and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell, to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozen others), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation of information have been a basic matter of policy - used to overwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient data from the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president and his actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.
Most of what we have learned about the reality of this administration - and the disconcerting mind-set and decision-making process of President Bush himself - has come not from the White House or the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security or the Treasury Department, but from insider accounts by disaffected members of the administration after their departure, and from distinguished journalists, and, in the case of a skeletal but hugely significant body of information, from a special prosecutor. And also, of late, from an aide-de-camp to the British prime minister. Almost invariably, their accounts have revealed what the president and those serving him have deliberately concealed - torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and its apparent authorization by presidential fiat; wholesale N.S.A. domestic wiretapping in contravention of specific prohibitive law; brutal interrogations of prisoners shipped secretly by the C.I.A. and U.S. military to Third World gulags; the nonexistence of W.M.D. in Iraq; the role of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's chief of staff in divulging the name of an undercover C.I.A. employee; the non-role of Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the events of 9/11; the death by friendly fire of Pat Tillman (whose mother, Mary Tillman, told journalist Robert Scheer, "The administration tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him"); the lack of a coherent post-invasion strategy for Iraq, with all its consequent tragedy and loss and destabilizing global implications; the failure to coordinate economic policies for America's long-term financial health (including the misguided tax cuts) with funding a war that will drive the national debt above a trillion dollars; the assurance of Wolfowitz (since rewarded by Bush with the presidency of the World Bank) that Iraq's oil reserves would pay for the war within two to three years after the invasion; and Bush's like-minded confidence, expressed to Blair, that serious internecine strife in Iraq would be unlikely after the invasion.
But most grievous and momentous is the willingness - even enthusiasm, confirmed by the so-called Downing Street Memo and the contemporaneous notes of the chief foreign-policy adviser to British prime minister Tony Blair - to invent almost any justification for going to war in Iraq (including sending up an American U-2 plane painted with U.N. markings to be deliberately shot down by Saddam Hussein's air force, a plan hatched while the president, the vice president, and Blair insisted to the world that war would be initiated "only as a last resort"). Attending the meeting between Bush and Blair where such duplicity was discussed unabashedly ("intelligence and facts" would be jiggered as necessary and "fixed around the policy," wrote the dutiful aide to the prime minister) were Ms. Rice, then national-security adviser to the president, and Andrew Card, the recently departed White House chief of staff.
As with Watergate, the investigation of George W. Bush and his presidency needs to start from a shared premise and set of principles that can be embraced by Democrats and Republicans, by liberals and centrists and conservatives, and by opponents of the war and its advocates: that the president of the United States and members of his administration must defend the requirements of the Constitution, obey the law, demonstrate common sense, and tell the truth. Obviously there will be disagreements, even fierce ones, along the way. Here again the Nixon example is useful: Republicans on the Senate Watergate Committee, including its vice chairman, Howard Baker of Tennessee ("What did the president know and when did he know it?"), began the investigation as defenders of Nixon. By its end, only one was willing to make any defense of Nixon's actions.
The Senate Watergate Committee was created (by a 77-0 vote of the Senate) with the formal task of investigating illegal political-campaign activities. Its seven members were chosen by the leadership of each party, three from the minority, four from the majority. (The Democratic majority leader of the Senate, Mike Mansfield, insisted that none of the Democrats be high-profile senators with presidential aspirations.) One of the crucial tasks of any committee charged with investigating the Bush presidency will be to delineate the scope of inquiry. It must not be a fishing expedition - and not only because the pond is so loaded with fish. The lines ought to be drawn so that the hearings themselves do not become the occasion for the ultimate battle of the culture wars. This investigation should be seen as an opportunity to at last rise above the culture wars and, as in Watergate, learn whether the actions of the president and his deputies have been consistent with constitutional principles, the law, and the truth.
Karl Rove and other White House strategists are betting (with odds in their favor) that Republicans on Capitol Hill are extremely unlikely to take the high road before November and endorse any kind of serious investigation into Bush's presidency - a gamble that may increase the risk of losing Republican majorities in either or both houses of Congress, and even further undermine the future of the Bush presidency. Already in the White House, there is talk of a nightmare scenario in which the Democrats successfully make the November congressional elections a referendum on impeachment - and win back a majority in the House, and maybe the Senate too.
But voting now to create a Senate investigation - chaired by a Republican - could work to the advantage both of the truth and of Republican candidates eager to put distance between themselves and the White House.
The calculations of politicians about their electoral futures should pale in comparison to the urgency of examining perhaps the most disastrous five years of decision-making of any modern American presidency.
Cont: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041806Z.shtml
Wrap...
Monday, April 17, 2006
After Iraq, who trusts BushCo re. Iran?
From the New York Times via truthout.org :
Bombs That Would Backfire
By Richard Clarke and Steven Simon
The New York Times
Sunday 16 April 2006
White House spokesmen have played down press reports that the Pentagon has accelerated planning to bomb Iran. We would like to believe that the administration is not intent on starting another war, because a conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to our interests than the current struggle in Iraq has been. A brief look at history shows why.
Reports by the journalist Seymour Hersh and others suggest that the United States is contemplating bombing a dozen or more nuclear sites, many of them buried, around Iran. In the event, scores of air bases, radar installations and land missiles would also be hit to suppress air defenses. Navy bases and coastal missile sites would be struck to prevent Iranian retaliation against the American fleet and Persian Gulf shipping. Iran's long-range missile installations could also be targets of the initial American air campaign.
These contingencies seem familiar to us because we faced a similar situation as National Security Council staff members in the mid-1990's. American frustrations with Iran were growing, and in early 1996 the House speaker, Newt Gingrich, publicly called for the overthrow of the Iranian government. He and the C.I.A. put together an $18 million package to undertake it.
The Iranian legislature responded with a $20 million initiative for its intelligence organizations to counter American influence in the region. Iranian agents began casing American embassies and other targets around the world. In June 1996, the Qods Force, the covert-action arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, arranged the bombing of an apartment building used by our Air Force in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans.
At that point, the Clinton administration and the Pentagon considered a bombing campaign. But after long debate, the highest levels of the military could not forecast a way in which things would end favorably for the United States.
While the full scope of what America did do remains classified, published reports suggest that the United States responded with a chilling threat to the Tehran government and conducted a global operation that immobilized Iran's intelligence service. Iranian terrorism against the United States ceased.
In essence, both sides looked down the road of conflict and chose to avoid further hostilities. And then the election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran in 1997 gave Washington and Tehran the cover they needed to walk back from the precipice.
Now, as in the mid-90's, any United States bombing campaign would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process. Iran could respond three ways. First, it could attack Persian Gulf oil facilities and tankers - as it did in the mid-1980's - which could cause oil prices to spike above $80 dollars a barrel.
Second and more likely, Iran could use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States. Iran has forces at its command that are far superior to anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field. The Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah has a global reach, and has served in the past as an instrument of Iran. We might hope that Hezbollah, now a political party, would decide that it has too much to lose by joining a war against the United States. But this would be a dangerous bet.
Third, Iran is in a position to make our situation in Iraq far more difficult than it already is. The Badr Brigade and other Shiite militias in Iraq could launch a more deadly campaign against British and American troops. There is every reason to believe that Iran has such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready.
No matter how Iran responded, the question that would face American planners would be, "What's our next move?" How do we achieve so-called escalation dominance, the condition in which the other side fears responding because they know that the next round of American attacks would be too lethal for the regime to survive?
Bloodied by Iranian retaliation, President Bush would most likely authorize wider and more intensive bombing. Non-military Iranian government targets would probably be struck in a vain hope that the Iranian people would seize the opportunity to overthrow the government. More likely, the American war against Iran would guarantee the regime decades more of control.
So how would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a persuasive answer. The president assures us he will seek a diplomatic solution to the Iranian crisis. And there is a role for threats of force to back up diplomacy and help concentrate the minds of our allies. But the current level of activity in the Pentagon suggests more than just standard contingency planning or tactical saber-rattling.
The parallels to the run-up to to war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was "no war plan on my desk" despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion. Congress did not ask the hard questions then. It must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well.
Wrap...
Bombs That Would Backfire
By Richard Clarke and Steven Simon
The New York Times
Sunday 16 April 2006
White House spokesmen have played down press reports that the Pentagon has accelerated planning to bomb Iran. We would like to believe that the administration is not intent on starting another war, because a conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to our interests than the current struggle in Iraq has been. A brief look at history shows why.
Reports by the journalist Seymour Hersh and others suggest that the United States is contemplating bombing a dozen or more nuclear sites, many of them buried, around Iran. In the event, scores of air bases, radar installations and land missiles would also be hit to suppress air defenses. Navy bases and coastal missile sites would be struck to prevent Iranian retaliation against the American fleet and Persian Gulf shipping. Iran's long-range missile installations could also be targets of the initial American air campaign.
These contingencies seem familiar to us because we faced a similar situation as National Security Council staff members in the mid-1990's. American frustrations with Iran were growing, and in early 1996 the House speaker, Newt Gingrich, publicly called for the overthrow of the Iranian government. He and the C.I.A. put together an $18 million package to undertake it.
The Iranian legislature responded with a $20 million initiative for its intelligence organizations to counter American influence in the region. Iranian agents began casing American embassies and other targets around the world. In June 1996, the Qods Force, the covert-action arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, arranged the bombing of an apartment building used by our Air Force in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans.
At that point, the Clinton administration and the Pentagon considered a bombing campaign. But after long debate, the highest levels of the military could not forecast a way in which things would end favorably for the United States.
While the full scope of what America did do remains classified, published reports suggest that the United States responded with a chilling threat to the Tehran government and conducted a global operation that immobilized Iran's intelligence service. Iranian terrorism against the United States ceased.
In essence, both sides looked down the road of conflict and chose to avoid further hostilities. And then the election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran in 1997 gave Washington and Tehran the cover they needed to walk back from the precipice.
Now, as in the mid-90's, any United States bombing campaign would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process. Iran could respond three ways. First, it could attack Persian Gulf oil facilities and tankers - as it did in the mid-1980's - which could cause oil prices to spike above $80 dollars a barrel.
Second and more likely, Iran could use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States. Iran has forces at its command that are far superior to anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field. The Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah has a global reach, and has served in the past as an instrument of Iran. We might hope that Hezbollah, now a political party, would decide that it has too much to lose by joining a war against the United States. But this would be a dangerous bet.
Third, Iran is in a position to make our situation in Iraq far more difficult than it already is. The Badr Brigade and other Shiite militias in Iraq could launch a more deadly campaign against British and American troops. There is every reason to believe that Iran has such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready.
No matter how Iran responded, the question that would face American planners would be, "What's our next move?" How do we achieve so-called escalation dominance, the condition in which the other side fears responding because they know that the next round of American attacks would be too lethal for the regime to survive?
Bloodied by Iranian retaliation, President Bush would most likely authorize wider and more intensive bombing. Non-military Iranian government targets would probably be struck in a vain hope that the Iranian people would seize the opportunity to overthrow the government. More likely, the American war against Iran would guarantee the regime decades more of control.
So how would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a persuasive answer. The president assures us he will seek a diplomatic solution to the Iranian crisis. And there is a role for threats of force to back up diplomacy and help concentrate the minds of our allies. But the current level of activity in the Pentagon suggests more than just standard contingency planning or tactical saber-rattling.
The parallels to the run-up to to war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was "no war plan on my desk" despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion. Congress did not ask the hard questions then. It must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well.
Wrap...
New interrogation & debriefing Army battalion...
From Press Service:
By Elaine Wilson
Special to American Forces Press Service
FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas
April 17, 2006
The first joint interrogation and debriefing battalion in the Army stood up April 12 during a ceremony here.
Army leaders are taking lessons learned from the 2003 Abu Ghraib detainee abuse incidents in Iraq to revamp the intelligence field. Changes include the activation of dedicated interrogation battalions and a new joint training center for the intelligence career field.
The 201st Military Intelligence Battalion is the first of four joint interrogation battalions -- two active and two reserve -- to be activated in the next several years. Its mission is to conduct detainee screening and interrogation missions in support of military operations throughout the world, such as Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.
"Being the first dedicated interrogation battalion in the Army, the spotlight is on these fine soldiers and their leadership," said Col. Richard Saddler, commander of the 470th Military Intelligence Brigade and keynote speaker at the ceremony. "Fortunately, they are the finest our nation has to offer, and they will do well in their upcoming missions."
The 201st Military Intelligence Battalion comprises 147 active duty soldiers, all specializing in interrogation and intelligence.The concept for the battalions came about, in part, as a result of a 2004 investigation led by Maj. Gen. George Fay into the Abu Ghraib abuse of detainees.
"The Department of the Army, based on the Fay report and other weaknesses in how we conducted intelligence operations, recognized the need for dedicated interrogation battalions," Saddler said."Prior to this, the command and control stopped at the company level.
The Army needed the command and control a battalion structure can provide," explained Lt. Col. John Strycula, battalion commander, who previously served as chief of intelligence operations for U.S. Army Europe and 7th Army in Heidelberg, Germany. Also, soldiers were in smaller elements embedded in units throughout the world instead of consolidated into "highly trained units."While the Army will retain oversight and provide the manpower in theater, the battalion can plug in other services and agencies as needed, Strycula said."We can bring on Air Force, Marines, Navy, whatever the mission calls for," he said.
Strycula said he is looking forward to the challenge of commanding the first-of-its-kind battalion."I'm honored and excited about commanding this battalion," Strycula said. "There's a lot to do, but this battalion will not fail."This battalion will succeed because of the competency, motivation and professionalism of the soldiers you see standing before you," he added. "They are that impressive, and I am honored to serve with them."
Along with the new battalion, plans for a new joint training center at nearby Camp Bullis are in the works.
"This interrogation center of excellence will feature a (major training) event that all interrogation units will rotate through to ensure they are battle ready on all interrogation and warrior tasks before they go to war," Saddler said.A timeline hasn't been set, but Army leaders are taking the fast track on the initiative, Saddler said. "They are committed to improving capabilities, and doing it quickly."
(Elaine Wilson is editor of the Fort Sam Houston News Leader.)
Wrap...
By Elaine Wilson
Special to American Forces Press Service
FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas
April 17, 2006
The first joint interrogation and debriefing battalion in the Army stood up April 12 during a ceremony here.
Army leaders are taking lessons learned from the 2003 Abu Ghraib detainee abuse incidents in Iraq to revamp the intelligence field. Changes include the activation of dedicated interrogation battalions and a new joint training center for the intelligence career field.
The 201st Military Intelligence Battalion is the first of four joint interrogation battalions -- two active and two reserve -- to be activated in the next several years. Its mission is to conduct detainee screening and interrogation missions in support of military operations throughout the world, such as Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.
"Being the first dedicated interrogation battalion in the Army, the spotlight is on these fine soldiers and their leadership," said Col. Richard Saddler, commander of the 470th Military Intelligence Brigade and keynote speaker at the ceremony. "Fortunately, they are the finest our nation has to offer, and they will do well in their upcoming missions."
The 201st Military Intelligence Battalion comprises 147 active duty soldiers, all specializing in interrogation and intelligence.The concept for the battalions came about, in part, as a result of a 2004 investigation led by Maj. Gen. George Fay into the Abu Ghraib abuse of detainees.
"The Department of the Army, based on the Fay report and other weaknesses in how we conducted intelligence operations, recognized the need for dedicated interrogation battalions," Saddler said."Prior to this, the command and control stopped at the company level.
The Army needed the command and control a battalion structure can provide," explained Lt. Col. John Strycula, battalion commander, who previously served as chief of intelligence operations for U.S. Army Europe and 7th Army in Heidelberg, Germany. Also, soldiers were in smaller elements embedded in units throughout the world instead of consolidated into "highly trained units."While the Army will retain oversight and provide the manpower in theater, the battalion can plug in other services and agencies as needed, Strycula said."We can bring on Air Force, Marines, Navy, whatever the mission calls for," he said.
Strycula said he is looking forward to the challenge of commanding the first-of-its-kind battalion."I'm honored and excited about commanding this battalion," Strycula said. "There's a lot to do, but this battalion will not fail."This battalion will succeed because of the competency, motivation and professionalism of the soldiers you see standing before you," he added. "They are that impressive, and I am honored to serve with them."
Along with the new battalion, plans for a new joint training center at nearby Camp Bullis are in the works.
"This interrogation center of excellence will feature a (major training) event that all interrogation units will rotate through to ensure they are battle ready on all interrogation and warrior tasks before they go to war," Saddler said.A timeline hasn't been set, but Army leaders are taking the fast track on the initiative, Saddler said. "They are committed to improving capabilities, and doing it quickly."
(Elaine Wilson is editor of the Fort Sam Houston News Leader.)
Wrap...
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Los Alamos staff: Keep your mouths shut!!!
From Lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com :
A word of warning
Submitted by Anonymous:
A word of warning to those LANL staff who still feel the need to express themselves by writing scathing letters to the LANL NewsBulletin: you are about to become "at-will" employees.
If you thought there was an atmosphere of intimidation and retaliation under Nanos, then you need to realize that under LANS, LLC you will truly put your remaining careers at LANL at risk by writing letters to the NewsBulletin that are critical of LANS, DOE, NNSA, UC, BWXT, or anything LANL-related.
You will probably be safe ranting about those favorite NewsBulletin topics involving bad drivers, bicycle safety, and parking problems. However, you may rest assured that criticisms of the new LANL management will not go unnoticed. Authors of such letters will find themselves "at-risk".
Wrap...
A word of warning
Submitted by Anonymous:
A word of warning to those LANL staff who still feel the need to express themselves by writing scathing letters to the LANL NewsBulletin: you are about to become "at-will" employees.
If you thought there was an atmosphere of intimidation and retaliation under Nanos, then you need to realize that under LANS, LLC you will truly put your remaining careers at LANL at risk by writing letters to the NewsBulletin that are critical of LANS, DOE, NNSA, UC, BWXT, or anything LANL-related.
You will probably be safe ranting about those favorite NewsBulletin topics involving bad drivers, bicycle safety, and parking problems. However, you may rest assured that criticisms of the new LANL management will not go unnoticed. Authors of such letters will find themselves "at-risk".
Wrap...
Nat'l Nuclear Security Agency: 250 new nukes per year...
From Japan Times:
U.S. aims to up nuclear warhead production capability to 250 a year
WASHINGTON (Kyodo)
The United States envisions a plan to establish an annual production capability of 250 nuclear warheads in a bid to be prepared for possible contingencies in the future, a senior U.S. administration official said.
The plan also calls for promoting development of new types of warheads in a five-year cycle to continuously replace existing ones, the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) official said on condition of anonymity.
The official also said the new type, called the reliable replacement warhead, or RRW, which is now being studied for submarine-launched ballistic missiles in place of the current W-76 warhead, could also be used for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The move shows that the NNSA is contemplating twice the contingency production capability more than what it has publicly stated.
In a congressional hearing early this month, NNSA Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs Thomas D'Agostino said the agency plans a "baseline production capacity of 125 (plutonium) pits per year to the stockpile by 2022."
The five-year development cycle means the administration will continue to develop new types of RRW after it successfully produces the one for replacing the W-76 warhead.
The NNSA official said, "Every five years we would go through a cycle . . . research, development, production, retirement, dismantlement."
The Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are expected to "establish technical feasibility" of developing the RRW without the resumption of nuclear tests, he said.
The Japan Times: Sunday, April 16, 2006
(C) All rights reserved
Wrap...
U.S. aims to up nuclear warhead production capability to 250 a year
WASHINGTON (Kyodo)
The United States envisions a plan to establish an annual production capability of 250 nuclear warheads in a bid to be prepared for possible contingencies in the future, a senior U.S. administration official said.
The plan also calls for promoting development of new types of warheads in a five-year cycle to continuously replace existing ones, the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) official said on condition of anonymity.
The official also said the new type, called the reliable replacement warhead, or RRW, which is now being studied for submarine-launched ballistic missiles in place of the current W-76 warhead, could also be used for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The move shows that the NNSA is contemplating twice the contingency production capability more than what it has publicly stated.
In a congressional hearing early this month, NNSA Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs Thomas D'Agostino said the agency plans a "baseline production capacity of 125 (plutonium) pits per year to the stockpile by 2022."
The five-year development cycle means the administration will continue to develop new types of RRW after it successfully produces the one for replacing the W-76 warhead.
The NNSA official said, "Every five years we would go through a cycle . . . research, development, production, retirement, dismantlement."
The Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are expected to "establish technical feasibility" of developing the RRW without the resumption of nuclear tests, he said.
The Japan Times: Sunday, April 16, 2006
(C) All rights reserved
Wrap...
Saturday, April 15, 2006
H.R. McMaster may worry the Generals...
From The Huffington Post...an excerpt:
by James Pinkerton:
One particular cloud on the horizon might be no bigger than a fist right now, but everyone in the Pentagon knows that this cloud could explode with reputation-shattering thunder and lightning. That cloud has a name: H.R. McMaster.
On PBS' "Washington Week in Review" show earlier this evening, John Hendren, military correspondent for NPR, was asked about the "generals' revolt" against Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
You know, the six retired generals whose picture appeared on the front page of Friday's New York Times: all have criticized Rumsfeld's handling of the Iraq war and called for his resignation. Hendren and the other panelists speculated that additional generals might soon be climbing on the anti-Rumsfeld bandwagon. But why now? Why speak up more than three years after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom? Hendren said that one reason the top brass might be positioning themselves against Rumsfeld is that they're worried that H.R. McMaster is writing another book.
H.R. who? He's not exactly a household name, but it's safe to say that every senior officer in the US Army, and probably in the entire Defense Department, knows exactly who H.R. McMaster is. He is the author of a 1997 book, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. Zeroing on 1965, the hinge year of escalation for the Vietnam War, McMaster wrote in his conclusion, "Lyndon Johnson, with the assistance of Robert S. McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had set the stage for America's disaster in Vietnam."
Hot stuff, especially since "dereliction of duty" rings bells inside the armed services; it is, after all, a specific term of legal art, punishable according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The book was one long indictment. It had zero legal force, but maximum moral force.
Even hotter was the identity of McMaster. He was no college professor or foreign service officer. A 1984 graduate of West Point, he held a combat command in the 1991 Gulf War and, at the time of his authorship, was an active-duty Army officer. [and he still is, in Iraq now]
Continued at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-pinkerton/a-new-storm-on-the-pentag_b_19161.html
Wrap...
by James Pinkerton:
One particular cloud on the horizon might be no bigger than a fist right now, but everyone in the Pentagon knows that this cloud could explode with reputation-shattering thunder and lightning. That cloud has a name: H.R. McMaster.
On PBS' "Washington Week in Review" show earlier this evening, John Hendren, military correspondent for NPR, was asked about the "generals' revolt" against Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
You know, the six retired generals whose picture appeared on the front page of Friday's New York Times: all have criticized Rumsfeld's handling of the Iraq war and called for his resignation. Hendren and the other panelists speculated that additional generals might soon be climbing on the anti-Rumsfeld bandwagon. But why now? Why speak up more than three years after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom? Hendren said that one reason the top brass might be positioning themselves against Rumsfeld is that they're worried that H.R. McMaster is writing another book.
H.R. who? He's not exactly a household name, but it's safe to say that every senior officer in the US Army, and probably in the entire Defense Department, knows exactly who H.R. McMaster is. He is the author of a 1997 book, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. Zeroing on 1965, the hinge year of escalation for the Vietnam War, McMaster wrote in his conclusion, "Lyndon Johnson, with the assistance of Robert S. McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had set the stage for America's disaster in Vietnam."
Hot stuff, especially since "dereliction of duty" rings bells inside the armed services; it is, after all, a specific term of legal art, punishable according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The book was one long indictment. It had zero legal force, but maximum moral force.
Even hotter was the identity of McMaster. He was no college professor or foreign service officer. A 1984 graduate of West Point, he held a combat command in the 1991 Gulf War and, at the time of his authorship, was an active-duty Army officer. [and he still is, in Iraq now]
Continued at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-pinkerton/a-new-storm-on-the-pentag_b_19161.html
Wrap...
I wonder...
Had a question cross my mind today: What is Bush gonna do with himself once he's out of office?
Asked a writer friend what she thought and she said: "I think for the rest of his life, twig is gonna have to just putter on his acerage. Unless it's repugs, I can't imagine anyone wanting to pay him to speak, nor any foreign country wanting to host him. We'll all just have to keep making do with Clinton and Carter."
Consider former Presidents Clinton and Carter...welcomed wherever they go. Respected wherever they go. Traveling out in the world doing good things. Writing books that are very well received.
There's no way, with half the nation and most of the world hating his guts, that Bush could do the same. I can't see him traveling...somebody would shoot his ass. He's certainly not going to be respected...not with the evil he's caused. He can't even get out a decent sentence. No way he could write a book, and if he did, how many people would want to pay their hard-earned money for it?
The world is not going to want to see his face or hear his voice ever again.
So the question remains...what's he gonna do? And where?
Will he try to bull his way back into DC under some pretext? I don't think people would rush to entertain him or seek his advice. In fact, because of who he is and what he's done, I'd be very surprised if anyone would even want to be seen in his company.
Who would come to the opening celebration of a library of his? In Texas? In Midland?
Maybe the oil corporations' big wheels. But why? Out of office, he'd be no use to them.
Wherever is he going to find a stage to strut and preen and muscle his way onto?
My sympathy goes to the Secret Service people who'd be stuck with him for years.
Bottom line: I'm very grateful that I am not him.
Wrap...
Asked a writer friend what she thought and she said: "I think for the rest of his life, twig is gonna have to just putter on his acerage. Unless it's repugs, I can't imagine anyone wanting to pay him to speak, nor any foreign country wanting to host him. We'll all just have to keep making do with Clinton and Carter."
Consider former Presidents Clinton and Carter...welcomed wherever they go. Respected wherever they go. Traveling out in the world doing good things. Writing books that are very well received.
There's no way, with half the nation and most of the world hating his guts, that Bush could do the same. I can't see him traveling...somebody would shoot his ass. He's certainly not going to be respected...not with the evil he's caused. He can't even get out a decent sentence. No way he could write a book, and if he did, how many people would want to pay their hard-earned money for it?
The world is not going to want to see his face or hear his voice ever again.
So the question remains...what's he gonna do? And where?
Will he try to bull his way back into DC under some pretext? I don't think people would rush to entertain him or seek his advice. In fact, because of who he is and what he's done, I'd be very surprised if anyone would even want to be seen in his company.
Who would come to the opening celebration of a library of his? In Texas? In Midland?
Maybe the oil corporations' big wheels. But why? Out of office, he'd be no use to them.
Wherever is he going to find a stage to strut and preen and muscle his way onto?
My sympathy goes to the Secret Service people who'd be stuck with him for years.
Bottom line: I'm very grateful that I am not him.
Wrap...
It's serious when the Generals speak out...
From News for Real via truthout.org :
Permission to Speak Freely, Sir
By Stephen Pizzo
News for Real
Saturday 15 April 2006
I am sorry that high school and college kids no longer have to face a couple of years of mandatory military service. That may be a strange thing to say for a guy who protested the draft back in the '60s. Maybe it's the inevitable aging process. Or maybe it's the perspective you get from the higher altitude of experience.
What got me thinking about this were the extraordinary statements being made by recently retired U.S. generals. Those who have never served in the military don't understand how extraordinary it is for career military officers to say the things these guys are saying about their former civilian superiors.
I hit Marine Corps bootcamp on July 7, 1965, a wimpy kid from suburbia. The first thing we were told was that we were the lowest forms of life on earth - and that meant lower than civilians. I was to learn as time went on that this was not just drill instructor blather. It was a genuine, deeply ingrained belief that permeated the highest ranks of the military for civilian control. We were repeatedly told that the lowest civilian we met on the street outranked the highest grade military officer. And that was not show. They believed it, not just as a principle, but a sacred trust.
Those who never served will likely see that as corny, empty rhetoric, window dressing, quaint - at best. But those who did serve know of what I speak. We get it. That's one reason I bemoan that two generations of kids have since been spared a stint in uniform. It changed my life in ways I now understand and appreciate in ways I could not back then.
This is not a column about reinstituting the draft. I just want to make the case that you pay close and respectful attention to the recent statements by retired top Pentagon brass. Because never in my life did I ever expect to hear these kinds of things coming out of the mouths of such men. Never.
Here's a sampler:
"[Donald Rumsfeld] has proved himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down."-General Paul Eaton, who oversaw training of Iraqi army troops, 2003-2004
"I really believe that we need a new secretary of defense because Secretary Rumsfeld carries way too much baggage with him. Specifically, I feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces there."-retired Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.
"I think we need a fresh start … We need leadership up there (the Pentagon) that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them."-Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, 2004-2005
We won't get fooled again … Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach should be replaced."-Marines Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, director of operations of Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2000-2002
"The problem is that we've wasted three years … absolutely, Rumsfeld should resign."-Marines Gen. Anthony Zinni, former chief of U.S. Central Command
"A lot of them [other generals] are hugely frustrated. Rumsfeld gave the impression that military advice was neither required nor desired" in the planning for the Iraq war.-Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, former commander of Marines forces in the Pacific Theater
"Everyone pretty much thinks Rumsfeld and the bunch around him should be cleared out. [Rumsfeld and his advisers have] made fools of themselves, and totally underestimated what would be needed for a sustained conflict."-Army Maj. Gen. John Riggs
The administration is trying to counter these devastating statements by noting that none of the generals voiced such reservations during the lead-up to the war. And, because so many Americans now lack any direct experience with the military, the tactic may just work. After all, it's easy to dismiss these retired generals just that easily. "So, where were your qualms when we really need them, general?"
I know the answer to that question - and it's not the answer the Bushies want you to get.
When an officer has a particularly sticky problem with the actions or orders of a superior officer, s/he can "request permission to speak freely, sir."
Well, that was tried, by Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was promptly and unceremoniously "shit-canned." (Another term my fellow vets may find familiar.)
The Pentagon's civilian leaders sent a clear message to the rest of the Pentagon brass: "Do what we want, or we'll find a junior officer who will."
With the "permission to speak freely" option off the table, the brass was left only with their prime directive: Civilians rule.
So, their silence leading up to war was not cowardice or careerism, as some have suggested. It was instead the manifestation of that deeply ingrained principle that civilians not only outrank them, but that the most dangerous thing that can happen in a democracy is for the military to start preempting civilian leadership.
We can quibble over that notion, of course. We can wave around the Nuremberg principle that "just following orders" is no defense for wrongdoing. I agree. But let me tell you, my experience in the military left me with a deep respect for the way the American military views its place in our democracy. They really do believe civilians rule. I would have it no other way. And neither should you.
Which is why we old vets understand better than most how gut-wrenching it must have been for these recently retired officers to go public. I am certain it was not the way they wanted to end their lifetimes of service to their country. Because, as far as these men are concerned, under normal circumstances, such behavior smacks of treason.
Retired two-star Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the Big Red One (the Army's 1st Infantry Division) in Iraq until November, said Rumsfeld must go for ignoring and intimidating career officers. "You know, it speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense. (Full Story)
So, no one should take their statements lightly. This is serious business … especially at the very moment these same civilian leaders are grunting eagerly over satellite images of Iran.
--------
Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, which was nominated for a Pulitzer.
Wrap...
Permission to Speak Freely, Sir
By Stephen Pizzo
News for Real
Saturday 15 April 2006
I am sorry that high school and college kids no longer have to face a couple of years of mandatory military service. That may be a strange thing to say for a guy who protested the draft back in the '60s. Maybe it's the inevitable aging process. Or maybe it's the perspective you get from the higher altitude of experience.
What got me thinking about this were the extraordinary statements being made by recently retired U.S. generals. Those who have never served in the military don't understand how extraordinary it is for career military officers to say the things these guys are saying about their former civilian superiors.
I hit Marine Corps bootcamp on July 7, 1965, a wimpy kid from suburbia. The first thing we were told was that we were the lowest forms of life on earth - and that meant lower than civilians. I was to learn as time went on that this was not just drill instructor blather. It was a genuine, deeply ingrained belief that permeated the highest ranks of the military for civilian control. We were repeatedly told that the lowest civilian we met on the street outranked the highest grade military officer. And that was not show. They believed it, not just as a principle, but a sacred trust.
Those who never served will likely see that as corny, empty rhetoric, window dressing, quaint - at best. But those who did serve know of what I speak. We get it. That's one reason I bemoan that two generations of kids have since been spared a stint in uniform. It changed my life in ways I now understand and appreciate in ways I could not back then.
This is not a column about reinstituting the draft. I just want to make the case that you pay close and respectful attention to the recent statements by retired top Pentagon brass. Because never in my life did I ever expect to hear these kinds of things coming out of the mouths of such men. Never.
Here's a sampler:
"[Donald Rumsfeld] has proved himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down."-General Paul Eaton, who oversaw training of Iraqi army troops, 2003-2004
"I really believe that we need a new secretary of defense because Secretary Rumsfeld carries way too much baggage with him. Specifically, I feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces there."-retired Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.
"I think we need a fresh start … We need leadership up there (the Pentagon) that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them."-Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, 2004-2005
We won't get fooled again … Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach should be replaced."-Marines Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, director of operations of Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2000-2002
"The problem is that we've wasted three years … absolutely, Rumsfeld should resign."-Marines Gen. Anthony Zinni, former chief of U.S. Central Command
"A lot of them [other generals] are hugely frustrated. Rumsfeld gave the impression that military advice was neither required nor desired" in the planning for the Iraq war.-Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, former commander of Marines forces in the Pacific Theater
"Everyone pretty much thinks Rumsfeld and the bunch around him should be cleared out. [Rumsfeld and his advisers have] made fools of themselves, and totally underestimated what would be needed for a sustained conflict."-Army Maj. Gen. John Riggs
The administration is trying to counter these devastating statements by noting that none of the generals voiced such reservations during the lead-up to the war. And, because so many Americans now lack any direct experience with the military, the tactic may just work. After all, it's easy to dismiss these retired generals just that easily. "So, where were your qualms when we really need them, general?"
I know the answer to that question - and it's not the answer the Bushies want you to get.
When an officer has a particularly sticky problem with the actions or orders of a superior officer, s/he can "request permission to speak freely, sir."
Well, that was tried, by Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was promptly and unceremoniously "shit-canned." (Another term my fellow vets may find familiar.)
The Pentagon's civilian leaders sent a clear message to the rest of the Pentagon brass: "Do what we want, or we'll find a junior officer who will."
With the "permission to speak freely" option off the table, the brass was left only with their prime directive: Civilians rule.
So, their silence leading up to war was not cowardice or careerism, as some have suggested. It was instead the manifestation of that deeply ingrained principle that civilians not only outrank them, but that the most dangerous thing that can happen in a democracy is for the military to start preempting civilian leadership.
We can quibble over that notion, of course. We can wave around the Nuremberg principle that "just following orders" is no defense for wrongdoing. I agree. But let me tell you, my experience in the military left me with a deep respect for the way the American military views its place in our democracy. They really do believe civilians rule. I would have it no other way. And neither should you.
Which is why we old vets understand better than most how gut-wrenching it must have been for these recently retired officers to go public. I am certain it was not the way they wanted to end their lifetimes of service to their country. Because, as far as these men are concerned, under normal circumstances, such behavior smacks of treason.
Retired two-star Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the Big Red One (the Army's 1st Infantry Division) in Iraq until November, said Rumsfeld must go for ignoring and intimidating career officers. "You know, it speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense. (Full Story)
So, no one should take their statements lightly. This is serious business … especially at the very moment these same civilian leaders are grunting eagerly over satellite images of Iran.
--------
Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, which was nominated for a Pulitzer.
Wrap...
Rumsfeld: One sick s.o.b...Gen Miller: Dishonorable..
From Salon.com :
What Rumsfeld knew
Interviews with high-ranking military officials shed new light on the role Rumsfeld played in the harsh treatment of a Guantánamo detainee.
By Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin
April 14, 2006
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in the late 2002 interrogation of a high-value al-Qaida detainee known in intelligence circles as "the 20th hijacker." He also communicated weekly with the man in charge of the interrogation, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the controversial commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center.
During the same period, detainee Mohammed al-Kahtani suffered from what Army investigators have called "degrading and abusive" treatment by soldiers who were following the interrogation plan Rumsfeld had approved. Kahtani was forced to stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, and was forced to wear women's underwear and to perform "dog tricks" on a leash. He received 18-to-20-hour interrogations during 48 of 54 days.
Little more than two years later, during an investigation into the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantánamo, Rumsfeld expressed puzzlement at the notion that his policies had caused the abuse. "He was going, 'My God, you know, did I authorize putting a bra and underwear on this guy's head?'" recalled Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, an investigator who interviewed Rumsfeld twice in early 2005.
These disclosures are contained in a Dec. 20, 2005, Army inspector general's report on Miller's conduct, which was obtained this week by Salon through the Freedom of Information Act. The 391-page document -- which has long passages blacked out by the government -- concludes that Miller should not be punished for his oversight role in detainee operations, a fact that was reported last month by Time magazine. But the never-before-released full report also includes the transcripts of interviews with high-ranking military officials that shed new light on the role that Rumsfeld and Miller played in the harsh treatment of Kahtani, who had met with Osama bin Laden on several occasions and received terrorist training in al-Qaida camps.
In a sworn statement to the inspector general, Schmidt described Rumsfeld as "personally involved" in the interrogation and said that the defense secretary was "talking weekly" with Miller. Schmidt said he concluded that Rumsfeld did not specifically prescribe the more "creative" interrogation methods used on Kahtani. But he added that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld approved, and that the apparent lack of supervision of day-to-day interrogations permitted the abusive conduct to take place. "Where is the throttle on this stuff?" asked Schmidt, an Air Force fighter pilot, who said in his interview under oath with the inspector general that he had concerns about the length and repetition of the harsh interrogation methods. "There were no limits."
Schmidt also saw close parallels between the interrogations at Guantánamo, and the photographic evidence of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "Just for the lack of a camera, it would sure look like Abu Ghraib," Schmidt told the inspector general, in the interview that was conducted in August 2005. At the direction of Pentagon officials, Miller led a mission to Iraq in August 2003 to review detainee operations at Abu Ghraib -- a visit that critics say precipitated the abuse of prisoners there.
In April 2005, Schmidt completed his report on detainee abuse at Guantánamo, which he co-authored with Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow. They recommended that Miller be "admonished" and "held accountable" for the alleged abuse of Kahtani. But that recommendation was rejected by Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the current head of the Southern Command, who said Miller had not violated any law or policy.
On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld approved 16 harsher interrogation strategies for use against Kahtani, including the use of forced nudity, stress positions and the removal of religious items. In public statements, however, Rumsfeld has maintained that none of the policies at Guantánamo led to "inhumane" treatment of detainees. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told Salon Thursday that Kahtani was an al-Qaida terrorist who provided a "treasure trove" of still-classified information during his interrogation. "Al-Kahtani's interrogation was guided by a very detailed plan, conducted by trained professionals in a controlled environment, and with active supervision and oversight," Gordon said in an e-mail statement. "Nothing was done randomly."
Miller -- who has invoked his right against self-incrimination in courts-martial of Abu Ghraib soldiers -- said that he did not know all the details of Kahtani's interrogation. But Schmidt told the inspector general that he found that claim "hard to believe" in light of Miller's knowledge of Rumsfeld's continuing interest in Kahtani. "The secretary of defense is personally involved in the interrogation of one person, and the entire General Counsel system of all the departments of the military," Schmidt said. "There is just not a too-busy alibi there for that."
The harsh interrogation of Kahtani came to an abrupt end in mid-January 2003. Gen. James T. Hill, Craddock's predecessor as the head of Southern Command, recalled in his interview with the inspector general that he received a call from Rumsfeld on a January weekend asking about the progress of Kahtani's interrogation. "Someone had come to him and suggested that it needed to be looked at," Hill said of Rumsfeld. "He said, 'What do you think?' And I said, 'Why don't [you] let me call General Miller.'"
According to Hill's account of that call, Miller advised that the harsh interrogation of Kahtani should continue, using the techniques Rumsfeld had previously approved. "We think we're right on the verge of making a breakthrough," Hill remembered Miller saying. Hill said he called Rumsfeld back with the news. "The secretary said, 'Fine,'" Hill remembered.
Nonetheless, several days later Rumsfeld revoked the harsher interrogation methods, apparently responding to military lawyers who had raised concerns that they may constitute cruel and unusual punishment or torture.
"My attitude on that was, 'Great!'" said Hill. The general recalled thinking about Rumsfeld and the decision to halt the harsh interrogation, "All I'm trying to do is what you want us to do in the first place and doing it the right way."
The harsher methods were not approved again.
Wrap...
What Rumsfeld knew
Interviews with high-ranking military officials shed new light on the role Rumsfeld played in the harsh treatment of a Guantánamo detainee.
By Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin
April 14, 2006
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in the late 2002 interrogation of a high-value al-Qaida detainee known in intelligence circles as "the 20th hijacker." He also communicated weekly with the man in charge of the interrogation, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the controversial commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center.
During the same period, detainee Mohammed al-Kahtani suffered from what Army investigators have called "degrading and abusive" treatment by soldiers who were following the interrogation plan Rumsfeld had approved. Kahtani was forced to stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, and was forced to wear women's underwear and to perform "dog tricks" on a leash. He received 18-to-20-hour interrogations during 48 of 54 days.
Little more than two years later, during an investigation into the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantánamo, Rumsfeld expressed puzzlement at the notion that his policies had caused the abuse. "He was going, 'My God, you know, did I authorize putting a bra and underwear on this guy's head?'" recalled Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, an investigator who interviewed Rumsfeld twice in early 2005.
These disclosures are contained in a Dec. 20, 2005, Army inspector general's report on Miller's conduct, which was obtained this week by Salon through the Freedom of Information Act. The 391-page document -- which has long passages blacked out by the government -- concludes that Miller should not be punished for his oversight role in detainee operations, a fact that was reported last month by Time magazine. But the never-before-released full report also includes the transcripts of interviews with high-ranking military officials that shed new light on the role that Rumsfeld and Miller played in the harsh treatment of Kahtani, who had met with Osama bin Laden on several occasions and received terrorist training in al-Qaida camps.
In a sworn statement to the inspector general, Schmidt described Rumsfeld as "personally involved" in the interrogation and said that the defense secretary was "talking weekly" with Miller. Schmidt said he concluded that Rumsfeld did not specifically prescribe the more "creative" interrogation methods used on Kahtani. But he added that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld approved, and that the apparent lack of supervision of day-to-day interrogations permitted the abusive conduct to take place. "Where is the throttle on this stuff?" asked Schmidt, an Air Force fighter pilot, who said in his interview under oath with the inspector general that he had concerns about the length and repetition of the harsh interrogation methods. "There were no limits."
Schmidt also saw close parallels between the interrogations at Guantánamo, and the photographic evidence of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "Just for the lack of a camera, it would sure look like Abu Ghraib," Schmidt told the inspector general, in the interview that was conducted in August 2005. At the direction of Pentagon officials, Miller led a mission to Iraq in August 2003 to review detainee operations at Abu Ghraib -- a visit that critics say precipitated the abuse of prisoners there.
In April 2005, Schmidt completed his report on detainee abuse at Guantánamo, which he co-authored with Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow. They recommended that Miller be "admonished" and "held accountable" for the alleged abuse of Kahtani. But that recommendation was rejected by Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the current head of the Southern Command, who said Miller had not violated any law or policy.
On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld approved 16 harsher interrogation strategies for use against Kahtani, including the use of forced nudity, stress positions and the removal of religious items. In public statements, however, Rumsfeld has maintained that none of the policies at Guantánamo led to "inhumane" treatment of detainees. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told Salon Thursday that Kahtani was an al-Qaida terrorist who provided a "treasure trove" of still-classified information during his interrogation. "Al-Kahtani's interrogation was guided by a very detailed plan, conducted by trained professionals in a controlled environment, and with active supervision and oversight," Gordon said in an e-mail statement. "Nothing was done randomly."
Miller -- who has invoked his right against self-incrimination in courts-martial of Abu Ghraib soldiers -- said that he did not know all the details of Kahtani's interrogation. But Schmidt told the inspector general that he found that claim "hard to believe" in light of Miller's knowledge of Rumsfeld's continuing interest in Kahtani. "The secretary of defense is personally involved in the interrogation of one person, and the entire General Counsel system of all the departments of the military," Schmidt said. "There is just not a too-busy alibi there for that."
The harsh interrogation of Kahtani came to an abrupt end in mid-January 2003. Gen. James T. Hill, Craddock's predecessor as the head of Southern Command, recalled in his interview with the inspector general that he received a call from Rumsfeld on a January weekend asking about the progress of Kahtani's interrogation. "Someone had come to him and suggested that it needed to be looked at," Hill said of Rumsfeld. "He said, 'What do you think?' And I said, 'Why don't [you] let me call General Miller.'"
According to Hill's account of that call, Miller advised that the harsh interrogation of Kahtani should continue, using the techniques Rumsfeld had previously approved. "We think we're right on the verge of making a breakthrough," Hill remembered Miller saying. Hill said he called Rumsfeld back with the news. "The secretary said, 'Fine,'" Hill remembered.
Nonetheless, several days later Rumsfeld revoked the harsher interrogation methods, apparently responding to military lawyers who had raised concerns that they may constitute cruel and unusual punishment or torture.
"My attitude on that was, 'Great!'" said Hill. The general recalled thinking about Rumsfeld and the decision to halt the harsh interrogation, "All I'm trying to do is what you want us to do in the first place and doing it the right way."
The harsher methods were not approved again.
Wrap...
BushCo & Congressional Intel Committee...
From Daily Docket blog...an excerpt:
Four years before President Harry Truman issued the first executive order on classified information, he signed into law the National Security Act of 1947, which "realigned and reorganized the United States' armed forces, foreign policy, and intelligence community apparatus in the aftermath of World War II." This act remains in force today, as amended, and provides for general Congressional oversight of current and planned intelligence activities, § 413, and a presidential duty to keep [the entire membership of] congressional intelligence committees fully and currently informed of all covert actions, § 413b.
Subsection (c)(2) of 413b is where we find the President, "to meet extraordinary circumstances affecting vital interests of the United States," can limit access to the required written intelligence "findings" to the "Gang of Eight." (Sections 421, 422, and 426 of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 codified nearby are the provisions providing criminal penalties for disclosing the identity of a covert agent.)
Requirements of the 1947 Act were referenced in the Truman and Eisenhower executive orders on classified information linked above; and the Clinton and Bush orders both contain identical language in (now) Section 6.2, General Provisions:
(a) Nothing in this order shall supersede any requirement made by or under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, or the National Security Act of 1947, as amended.And yet, on October 5, 2001, Bush issued this order to the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense, the Attorney General, and the Directors of the CIA and the FBI:
The only Members of Congress whom you or your expressly designated officers may brief regarding classified or sensitive law enforcement information are the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate.The strategy ever since 9/11 seems to be to use § 413b(c)(2) to limit the entire Congressional intelligence oversight process to the Gang of Eight, under a purportedly continuous state of "extraordinary circumstances affecting vital interests of the United States."
And the Congress we have now is rolling over for it.
Wrap...
Four years before President Harry Truman issued the first executive order on classified information, he signed into law the National Security Act of 1947, which "realigned and reorganized the United States' armed forces, foreign policy, and intelligence community apparatus in the aftermath of World War II." This act remains in force today, as amended, and provides for general Congressional oversight of current and planned intelligence activities, § 413, and a presidential duty to keep [the entire membership of] congressional intelligence committees fully and currently informed of all covert actions, § 413b.
Subsection (c)(2) of 413b is where we find the President, "to meet extraordinary circumstances affecting vital interests of the United States," can limit access to the required written intelligence "findings" to the "Gang of Eight." (Sections 421, 422, and 426 of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 codified nearby are the provisions providing criminal penalties for disclosing the identity of a covert agent.)
Requirements of the 1947 Act were referenced in the Truman and Eisenhower executive orders on classified information linked above; and the Clinton and Bush orders both contain identical language in (now) Section 6.2, General Provisions:
(a) Nothing in this order shall supersede any requirement made by or under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, or the National Security Act of 1947, as amended.And yet, on October 5, 2001, Bush issued this order to the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense, the Attorney General, and the Directors of the CIA and the FBI:
The only Members of Congress whom you or your expressly designated officers may brief regarding classified or sensitive law enforcement information are the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate.The strategy ever since 9/11 seems to be to use § 413b(c)(2) to limit the entire Congressional intelligence oversight process to the Gang of Eight, under a purportedly continuous state of "extraordinary circumstances affecting vital interests of the United States."
And the Congress we have now is rolling over for it.
Wrap...
BushCo lies...lemme count...
From West Point Graduates Against the War:
The Lies of the Leadership [all Clinton's fault...right? Ugh!]
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
- Dick Cheney, August 26 2002
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
- George W. Bush, September 12 2002
"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."
- Ari Fleischer, December 2 2002
"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
- Ari Fleischer, January 9 2003
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."
- George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 28 2003
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."
- Colin Powell, February 5 2003
"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons."
- George Bush, February 8 2003
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
- George Bush, March 17 2003
"Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes."
- Ari Fleischer, March 21 2003
"There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them."
- Gen. Tommy Franks, March 22 2003
"We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."
- Donald Rumsfeld, March 30 2003.
"Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."
- Bush in October 2002.
"Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."
- Bush in January 2003 State of the Union address.
"Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."
- Bush in February 2003.
"… sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network."
Powell in his U.N. speech prior to the Iraq War.
"We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda."
Bush in May 2003.
Stated that the Iraqis were "providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the Al Qaeda organization."
- Cheney in September 2003.
"Saddam had an established relationship with Al Qaeda, providing training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons, gases, making conventional weapons."
- Cheney in October 2003.
Cheney said Saddam "had long established ties with Al Qaeda."
- June 14, 2004.
Bush said, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."
- June 17, 2004.
Wrap...
The Lies of the Leadership [all Clinton's fault...right? Ugh!]
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
- Dick Cheney, August 26 2002
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
- George W. Bush, September 12 2002
"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."
- Ari Fleischer, December 2 2002
"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
- Ari Fleischer, January 9 2003
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."
- George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 28 2003
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."
- Colin Powell, February 5 2003
"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons."
- George Bush, February 8 2003
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
- George Bush, March 17 2003
"Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes."
- Ari Fleischer, March 21 2003
"There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them."
- Gen. Tommy Franks, March 22 2003
"We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."
- Donald Rumsfeld, March 30 2003.
"Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."
- Bush in October 2002.
"Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."
- Bush in January 2003 State of the Union address.
"Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."
- Bush in February 2003.
"… sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network."
Powell in his U.N. speech prior to the Iraq War.
"We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda."
Bush in May 2003.
Stated that the Iraqis were "providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the Al Qaeda organization."
- Cheney in September 2003.
"Saddam had an established relationship with Al Qaeda, providing training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons, gases, making conventional weapons."
- Cheney in October 2003.
Cheney said Saddam "had long established ties with Al Qaeda."
- June 14, 2004.
Bush said, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."
- June 17, 2004.
Wrap...
1st the Generals, 2nd West Point Graduates: NO!
From West Point Graduates Against the War via beckperson's blog:
Atten-HUT!
Well, you know you've gone over the edge when the military starts turning against you. First, it's the generals, now it's West Point graduates.
From the military academy graduates...this will just give you chills:
"Instilled by the Cadet Honor System with a fundamental, longstanding respect for truth, we graduates of the United States Military Academy believe that honor is a basic attribute of character.
That we are no longer cadets is irrelevant.
We stand appalled by the deceitful behavior of the government of the United States and, in particular, its widely known malefactors. Lying, cheating, stealing, delivering evasive statements and quibbling not only has demeaned these deceivers and the United States of America, but has placed vast numbers of innocent people in deadly peril. We will not serve the lies.
The war in Iraq was launched illegally. It has since killed tens of thousands of innocents, causing incalculable damage to Iraq and the Iraqi people, as well as the reputation of the United States of America. We will not serve the lies.
When we West Point graduates took our commissioning oath of office one past June morning, we swore to protect our nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The deceitful connivances of the current administration have resulted in a war catastrophic to our nation’s interests: politically, economically, militarily, and morally. We now stand to protect our nation from these deceivers. We will not serve their lies.
We seek justice for all victims of this illegal war, both servicemen and servicewomen, and the citizens of Iraq. To our purpose we invoke the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence whereby we too “mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, & our sacred Honor.”
Wrap...
Atten-HUT!
Well, you know you've gone over the edge when the military starts turning against you. First, it's the generals, now it's West Point graduates.
From the military academy graduates...this will just give you chills:
"Instilled by the Cadet Honor System with a fundamental, longstanding respect for truth, we graduates of the United States Military Academy believe that honor is a basic attribute of character.
That we are no longer cadets is irrelevant.
We stand appalled by the deceitful behavior of the government of the United States and, in particular, its widely known malefactors. Lying, cheating, stealing, delivering evasive statements and quibbling not only has demeaned these deceivers and the United States of America, but has placed vast numbers of innocent people in deadly peril. We will not serve the lies.
The war in Iraq was launched illegally. It has since killed tens of thousands of innocents, causing incalculable damage to Iraq and the Iraqi people, as well as the reputation of the United States of America. We will not serve the lies.
When we West Point graduates took our commissioning oath of office one past June morning, we swore to protect our nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The deceitful connivances of the current administration have resulted in a war catastrophic to our nation’s interests: politically, economically, militarily, and morally. We now stand to protect our nation from these deceivers. We will not serve their lies.
We seek justice for all victims of this illegal war, both servicemen and servicewomen, and the citizens of Iraq. To our purpose we invoke the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence whereby we too “mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, & our sacred Honor.”
Wrap...
Friday, April 14, 2006
Molly Ivins on food poisoning, oil rip-offs, pensions..
From Creators Syndicate:
Molly Ivins
AUSTIN, Texas
We need to keep up with the daily drip, that endless succession of special favors for special interests performed by Congress, or we'll never figure out how we got so far behind the eight ball. While the top Bushies lunge about test-driving new wars (great idea -- the one we're having is a bummer, so let's start another!), Congress just keeps right on cranking out those corporate goodies.
Earlier this month, the House effectively repealed more than 200 state food safety and public health protections. Say, when was the last time you enjoyed a little touch of food poisoning? Coming soon to a stomach near you.
What was really impressive about H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act," is that it was passed without a public hearing.
"The House is trampling crucial health safeguards in every state without so much as a single public hearing," said Erik Olson, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This just proves the old adage, 'Money talks.' The food industry spared no expense to ensure passage."
Thirty-nine attorneys general, plus health, consumer and environmental groups, are opposing the law. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the food industry has spent more than $81 million on campaign contributions to members of Congress since 2000.
The bill would automatically override any state measure that is stronger than federal law, the opposite of what a sensible law would do.
The NRDC says state laws protecting consumers from chemical additives, bacteria and ingredients that can trigger allergic reactions would be barred, and that includes alerts about chemical contamination in fish, health protection standards for milk and eggs, and warnings about chemicals or toxins such as arsenic, mercury and lead. Happy eating, all.
Here's another little gem, one of those "it was after midnight and everyone wanted to go home" deals. Just a no-cost sweetener to encourage oil and gas companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico -- and who needs more encouragement these days than the oil companies? The poor things are making hardly any money at all. Just have the federal government waive the royalty rights for drilling in the publicly owned waters. Turns out this waiver will cost the government at least $7 billion over the next five years.
I roared with laughter upon reading that Texas Rep. Joe Barton had assured his colleagues the provision of energy bill was "so non-controversial" that senior House and Senate negotiators had not even discussed it.
That's one of the oldest ploys in the Texas handbook of sneaky tricks and has been successfully used to pass many a sweet deal for the oil industry. "The big lie about this whole program is that it doesn't cost anything," Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey told The New York Times. "Taxpayers are being asked to provide huge subsidies to oil companies to produce oil -- it's like subsidizing a fish to swim."
Then there are daily drips so strange it's hard to tell if members of Congress are clear on what they're doing. You may have heard that more and more corporations are backing out of their pension obligations and dumping the responsibility on an under-funded federal agency.
So the push is on to get companies to pony up for the pension agency. According to the Financial Times: "Employers will be able to slash their contributions to under-funded pension schemes by tens of billions of dollars over the next five years under proposed legislation before Congress that was expected to have the opposite effect.
"The legislation was proposed by the White House last year to lessen the risk of a taxpayer bailout of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a federal safety net for pension schemes." Brilliant.
Anyone know how the White House went from protecting the Benefit Guaranty Corp. to slashing corporate contributions by tens of billions? Did they send Michael "Brownie" Brown to do the job?
Long ago, Abraham Lincoln wrote, "Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in few hands and the republic is destroyed."
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
Wrap...
Molly Ivins
AUSTIN, Texas
We need to keep up with the daily drip, that endless succession of special favors for special interests performed by Congress, or we'll never figure out how we got so far behind the eight ball. While the top Bushies lunge about test-driving new wars (great idea -- the one we're having is a bummer, so let's start another!), Congress just keeps right on cranking out those corporate goodies.
Earlier this month, the House effectively repealed more than 200 state food safety and public health protections. Say, when was the last time you enjoyed a little touch of food poisoning? Coming soon to a stomach near you.
What was really impressive about H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act," is that it was passed without a public hearing.
"The House is trampling crucial health safeguards in every state without so much as a single public hearing," said Erik Olson, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This just proves the old adage, 'Money talks.' The food industry spared no expense to ensure passage."
Thirty-nine attorneys general, plus health, consumer and environmental groups, are opposing the law. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the food industry has spent more than $81 million on campaign contributions to members of Congress since 2000.
The bill would automatically override any state measure that is stronger than federal law, the opposite of what a sensible law would do.
The NRDC says state laws protecting consumers from chemical additives, bacteria and ingredients that can trigger allergic reactions would be barred, and that includes alerts about chemical contamination in fish, health protection standards for milk and eggs, and warnings about chemicals or toxins such as arsenic, mercury and lead. Happy eating, all.
Here's another little gem, one of those "it was after midnight and everyone wanted to go home" deals. Just a no-cost sweetener to encourage oil and gas companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico -- and who needs more encouragement these days than the oil companies? The poor things are making hardly any money at all. Just have the federal government waive the royalty rights for drilling in the publicly owned waters. Turns out this waiver will cost the government at least $7 billion over the next five years.
I roared with laughter upon reading that Texas Rep. Joe Barton had assured his colleagues the provision of energy bill was "so non-controversial" that senior House and Senate negotiators had not even discussed it.
That's one of the oldest ploys in the Texas handbook of sneaky tricks and has been successfully used to pass many a sweet deal for the oil industry. "The big lie about this whole program is that it doesn't cost anything," Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey told The New York Times. "Taxpayers are being asked to provide huge subsidies to oil companies to produce oil -- it's like subsidizing a fish to swim."
Then there are daily drips so strange it's hard to tell if members of Congress are clear on what they're doing. You may have heard that more and more corporations are backing out of their pension obligations and dumping the responsibility on an under-funded federal agency.
So the push is on to get companies to pony up for the pension agency. According to the Financial Times: "Employers will be able to slash their contributions to under-funded pension schemes by tens of billions of dollars over the next five years under proposed legislation before Congress that was expected to have the opposite effect.
"The legislation was proposed by the White House last year to lessen the risk of a taxpayer bailout of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a federal safety net for pension schemes." Brilliant.
Anyone know how the White House went from protecting the Benefit Guaranty Corp. to slashing corporate contributions by tens of billions? Did they send Michael "Brownie" Brown to do the job?
Long ago, Abraham Lincoln wrote, "Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in few hands and the republic is destroyed."
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
Wrap...
Marine Corps Captain: "I'll never trust them again.."
From The Seattle Times:
Coming home — disillusioned
By Christopher H. Sheppard
04/14/06
"Seattle Times"
Three years ago, I was a Marine Corps captain on the Iraqi/Kuwaiti border, participating in the invasion of Iraq. Awestruck, I heard our howitzers thunder and watched artillery rockets rise into the night sky and streak toward Iraq — their light bathing the desert moonscape like giant arc welders.
As I watched the Iraq war begin, I completely trusted the Bush administration. I thought we were going to prove all of the left-wing antiwar protesters and dissenters wrong. I thought we were going to make America safer. Regrettably, I acknowledge that it was I who was wrong.
I believed the Bush administration when it said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
I believed its assertion that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Africa and refine it into weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb.
I believed its claim Iraq had vast quantities of biological and chemical agents. After years of thorough inspections, all of these claims have been disproved.
I believed the administration when it claimed there was overwhelming evidence Iraq was in cahoots with al-Qaida. In January 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that there was no concrete evidence linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.
I believed the administration when it grandly proclaimed we were going to bring a stable, Western-style liberal democracy to Iraq, complete with religious tolerance and the rule of law.
We never had enough troops in Iraq to restore civil order and the rule of law. The Iraqi elections have produced a ruling majority of Shiite fundamentalists and marginalized the seething Sunni minority. Iraq dangerously teeters on the brink of civil war. We have emboldened Iran and destabilized the entire Middle East.
I believed the administration when it claimed the war could be done quickly and cheaply. It said the war would cost only between $50 billion and $60 billion. It said that Iraqi oil revenue would fund the country's reconstruction.
I believed President Bush when he landed on the USS Lincoln and said "major combat operations have ended."The war has cost the American taxpayers $250 billion and counting. The vast majority — 94 percent — of the more than 2,300 United States service members killed in Iraq have occurred since Bush's "Top Gun" proclamation. The cost in men and materiel has been far beyond what we were led to believe.
I volunteered to go back to Iraq for the fall and winter of 2004-2005. I went back out of frustration and guilt; frustration from watching Iraq unravel on the news and guilt that I wasn't there trying to stop it. Many fine Marines from my reserve battalion felt the same and volunteered to go back. I buried my mounting suspicions and mustered enough trust and faith in my civilian leadership to go back.
I returned disillusioned by what I saw. I participated in the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004. We crushed the insurgents in the city, but we only ended up scattering them throughout the province. The dumb ones stayed and died. The smart ones left town before the battle, to garner more recruits and fight another day. We were simply the little Dutch boy with our finger in the dike. In retrospect, we never had enough troops to firmly control the region; we had just enough to maintain a tenuous equilibrium.
I now know I wrongfully placed my faith and trust in a presidential administration hopelessly mired in incompetence, hubris and a lack of accountability. It planned a war based on false intelligence and unrealistic assumptions. It has strategically surrendered the condition of victory in Iraq to people who do not share our vision, values or interests. The Bush administration has proven successful at only one thing in Iraq — painting us into a corner with no feasible exit.
I will never trust any of them again.
Christopher H. Sheppard is a former Marine captain who served two tours of duty in Iraq as a combat engineer. He currently is finishing his master's degree in mass communication and lives in Marysville.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
Wrap...
Coming home — disillusioned
By Christopher H. Sheppard
04/14/06
"Seattle Times"
Three years ago, I was a Marine Corps captain on the Iraqi/Kuwaiti border, participating in the invasion of Iraq. Awestruck, I heard our howitzers thunder and watched artillery rockets rise into the night sky and streak toward Iraq — their light bathing the desert moonscape like giant arc welders.
As I watched the Iraq war begin, I completely trusted the Bush administration. I thought we were going to prove all of the left-wing antiwar protesters and dissenters wrong. I thought we were going to make America safer. Regrettably, I acknowledge that it was I who was wrong.
I believed the Bush administration when it said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
I believed its assertion that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Africa and refine it into weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb.
I believed its claim Iraq had vast quantities of biological and chemical agents. After years of thorough inspections, all of these claims have been disproved.
I believed the administration when it claimed there was overwhelming evidence Iraq was in cahoots with al-Qaida. In January 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that there was no concrete evidence linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.
I believed the administration when it grandly proclaimed we were going to bring a stable, Western-style liberal democracy to Iraq, complete with religious tolerance and the rule of law.
We never had enough troops in Iraq to restore civil order and the rule of law. The Iraqi elections have produced a ruling majority of Shiite fundamentalists and marginalized the seething Sunni minority. Iraq dangerously teeters on the brink of civil war. We have emboldened Iran and destabilized the entire Middle East.
I believed the administration when it claimed the war could be done quickly and cheaply. It said the war would cost only between $50 billion and $60 billion. It said that Iraqi oil revenue would fund the country's reconstruction.
I believed President Bush when he landed on the USS Lincoln and said "major combat operations have ended."The war has cost the American taxpayers $250 billion and counting. The vast majority — 94 percent — of the more than 2,300 United States service members killed in Iraq have occurred since Bush's "Top Gun" proclamation. The cost in men and materiel has been far beyond what we were led to believe.
I volunteered to go back to Iraq for the fall and winter of 2004-2005. I went back out of frustration and guilt; frustration from watching Iraq unravel on the news and guilt that I wasn't there trying to stop it. Many fine Marines from my reserve battalion felt the same and volunteered to go back. I buried my mounting suspicions and mustered enough trust and faith in my civilian leadership to go back.
I returned disillusioned by what I saw. I participated in the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004. We crushed the insurgents in the city, but we only ended up scattering them throughout the province. The dumb ones stayed and died. The smart ones left town before the battle, to garner more recruits and fight another day. We were simply the little Dutch boy with our finger in the dike. In retrospect, we never had enough troops to firmly control the region; we had just enough to maintain a tenuous equilibrium.
I now know I wrongfully placed my faith and trust in a presidential administration hopelessly mired in incompetence, hubris and a lack of accountability. It planned a war based on false intelligence and unrealistic assumptions. It has strategically surrendered the condition of victory in Iraq to people who do not share our vision, values or interests. The Bush administration has proven successful at only one thing in Iraq — painting us into a corner with no feasible exit.
I will never trust any of them again.
Christopher H. Sheppard is a former Marine captain who served two tours of duty in Iraq as a combat engineer. He currently is finishing his master's degree in mass communication and lives in Marysville.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
Wrap...
Young Jews protest treatment of Palestinians...
From Boston.IndyMedia.org :
Young Boston Jews support Palestinian rights, challenge AIPAC and JCRC by holding seder outside their offices
On Tuesday, April 11, at 5:00 pm, 20 young Jewish people gathered for a seder (traditional celebration of Passover) outside 126 High Street in Boston, the building that houses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Boston's Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).
The group expressed their support for Palestinian human rights and opposition to AIPAC’s and JCRC’s unquestioning support for Israel and its governmental policies. With a banner that read “Passover means liberation for all. Justice for Palestine,” they conveyed the message to the organizations inside and to the media that AIPAC and JCRC do not speak for all Jews.
The group set up a seder table and recited Passover's traditional four questions, with newly written answers that included facts about Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes, confiscation and destruction of Palestine's land resources for the expansion of settlements and the Separation Wall, and malnutrition and poverty in Palestine caused by Israeli closure and movement restrictions. (supplement attached)
According to Marjorie Kent, one of the organizers of the seder “During Passover, every generation of Jewish people is commanded to remember that we were slaves and to tell the story of the Exodus so that we can recognize oppression that happens today and work to stop it. Today we committed ourselves to this task.”
AIPAC pushes the US government to support Israeli policies which result in the brutal oppression of Palestinian people and denial of their internationally recognized human rights.
JCRC, while claiming to speak for all Jews, invests enormous time and energy suppressing any voice of opposition to Israeli policies, especially Jewish voices.
"Our generation has had enough of AIPAC’s and JCRC's complicity in Israel's human rights abuses of Palestinians," said Hannah Mermelstein, another seder organizer. “Their support of these policies betray the libratory message of Passover.” The group called on people leaving the building to take the message of “liberation for all” home with them this Passover. They handed out supplements for people to add to their traditional Passover seders. The text of the supplement follows.
As the group left, the police arrived with specific instructions to arrest them.
Wrap...
Young Boston Jews support Palestinian rights, challenge AIPAC and JCRC by holding seder outside their offices
On Tuesday, April 11, at 5:00 pm, 20 young Jewish people gathered for a seder (traditional celebration of Passover) outside 126 High Street in Boston, the building that houses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Boston's Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).
The group expressed their support for Palestinian human rights and opposition to AIPAC’s and JCRC’s unquestioning support for Israel and its governmental policies. With a banner that read “Passover means liberation for all. Justice for Palestine,” they conveyed the message to the organizations inside and to the media that AIPAC and JCRC do not speak for all Jews.
The group set up a seder table and recited Passover's traditional four questions, with newly written answers that included facts about Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes, confiscation and destruction of Palestine's land resources for the expansion of settlements and the Separation Wall, and malnutrition and poverty in Palestine caused by Israeli closure and movement restrictions. (supplement attached)
According to Marjorie Kent, one of the organizers of the seder “During Passover, every generation of Jewish people is commanded to remember that we were slaves and to tell the story of the Exodus so that we can recognize oppression that happens today and work to stop it. Today we committed ourselves to this task.”
AIPAC pushes the US government to support Israeli policies which result in the brutal oppression of Palestinian people and denial of their internationally recognized human rights.
JCRC, while claiming to speak for all Jews, invests enormous time and energy suppressing any voice of opposition to Israeli policies, especially Jewish voices.
"Our generation has had enough of AIPAC’s and JCRC's complicity in Israel's human rights abuses of Palestinians," said Hannah Mermelstein, another seder organizer. “Their support of these policies betray the libratory message of Passover.” The group called on people leaving the building to take the message of “liberation for all” home with them this Passover. They handed out supplements for people to add to their traditional Passover seders. The text of the supplement follows.
As the group left, the police arrived with specific instructions to arrest them.
Wrap...
"Impeach the President" sings Neil Young...
I find this very very interesting. When the music people join with the Generals, many writers, many bloggers, and a public slowly but surely getting more torqued by the minute, it's the music--especially the lyrics-- to which the nation begins to react... Stand by, then:
From JamBase:
As Harp Magazine recently reported, Neil Young has announced a new album... and it's already finished!
The news that Neil Young has a complete album in the bag shocked all of us at JamBase. On the heels of his very successful 2005 release, Prairie Wind and with his award-winning documentary Neil Young: Heart of Gold in theatres now, no one saw this coming.
Filmmaker Jonathan Demme (who filmed Neil Young: Heart of Gold) recently sent an email stating; "Neil just finished writing and recording – with no warning – a new album called Living With War. It all happened in three days."
Young has long worked under the "strike while the iron is hot" mentality, often working in creative spurts and never forcing it. Well, it seems the iron must have been burning bright for him to create a complete album in three days!
As Katherine Silkaitis at Harp reported, Demme went on to say, "It is a brilliant electric assault, accompanied by a 100-voice choir, on Bush and the war in Iraq... Truly mind blowing. Will be in stores soon."
Details are sketchy at best, but the featured song, "Impeach the President" contains Bush's voice accompanied by a choir chanting "flip/flop."
Stay tuned as JamBase will be sure to report as details unfold.
Wrap...
From JamBase:
As Harp Magazine recently reported, Neil Young has announced a new album... and it's already finished!
The news that Neil Young has a complete album in the bag shocked all of us at JamBase. On the heels of his very successful 2005 release, Prairie Wind and with his award-winning documentary Neil Young: Heart of Gold in theatres now, no one saw this coming.
Filmmaker Jonathan Demme (who filmed Neil Young: Heart of Gold) recently sent an email stating; "Neil just finished writing and recording – with no warning – a new album called Living With War. It all happened in three days."
Young has long worked under the "strike while the iron is hot" mentality, often working in creative spurts and never forcing it. Well, it seems the iron must have been burning bright for him to create a complete album in three days!
As Katherine Silkaitis at Harp reported, Demme went on to say, "It is a brilliant electric assault, accompanied by a 100-voice choir, on Bush and the war in Iraq... Truly mind blowing. Will be in stores soon."
Details are sketchy at best, but the featured song, "Impeach the President" contains Bush's voice accompanied by a choir chanting "flip/flop."
Stay tuned as JamBase will be sure to report as details unfold.
Wrap...
Fascism...BushCo style...
From the Information Clearing House....a couple of pertinent quotes from people who know:
Big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are again the undisputed overlords of politics and government. The White House, the Congress and, increasingly, the judiciary, reflect their interests. We appear to have a government run by remote control from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. To hell with everyone else:
Bill Moyers - PBS Commentator
=The principal power in Washington is no longer the government of the people it represents. It is the Money Power. Under the deceptive cloak of campaign contributions, access and influence, votes and amendments are bought and sold. Money established priorities of action, holds down federal revenues, revises federal legislation, shifts income from the middle class to the very rich. Money restrains the enforcement of laws written to protect the country from abuses of wealth--laws that mandate environmental protection, antitrust laws, laws to protect the consumer against fraud, laws that safeguard the securities markets, and many more:
Richard N. Goodwin - Speechwriter for John F. Kennedy
="Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.": Mussolini
[There's no argument there. Just look around.]
Wrap...
Big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are again the undisputed overlords of politics and government. The White House, the Congress and, increasingly, the judiciary, reflect their interests. We appear to have a government run by remote control from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. To hell with everyone else:
Bill Moyers - PBS Commentator
=The principal power in Washington is no longer the government of the people it represents. It is the Money Power. Under the deceptive cloak of campaign contributions, access and influence, votes and amendments are bought and sold. Money established priorities of action, holds down federal revenues, revises federal legislation, shifts income from the middle class to the very rich. Money restrains the enforcement of laws written to protect the country from abuses of wealth--laws that mandate environmental protection, antitrust laws, laws to protect the consumer against fraud, laws that safeguard the securities markets, and many more:
Richard N. Goodwin - Speechwriter for John F. Kennedy
="Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.": Mussolini
[There's no argument there. Just look around.]
Wrap...
Egad! Another great book!!!
Had an email from this author whose work I do admire. He's really delighted with the review Publisher's Weekly---one tough set of reviewers, lemme tell you--gave his new mystery, as well he should be. Thought I'd just post that review so mystery loving readers can grab it up as soon as it hits the shelves in June:
Impulse
Ramsay, Frederick (Author)
ISBN: 1590582837
Poisoned Pen Press
Published 2006-06
Hardcover , $24.95 (225p)
Fiction Mystery & Detective - GeneralAges
Reviewed 2006-04-17
At the start of Ramsey's superb, perfectly paced stand-alone, Phoenix mystery writer Frank Smith heads for his 50th prep school reunion-at Scott Academy, near Baltimore-anxious about all the attendant grudges, passions, jealousies and nostalgia.
More seriously, Smith must contend with the suicide of his brother, Jack, 50 years earlier; the disappearance of four teenage schoolboys during the 1980s; and, back home in Arizona, the relatively recent murder of his wife, Sandy, a crime for which he's now the chief suspect.
Ramsey (Artscape andSecrets ) treats these traumas in a manner at once intriguing and believable yet somehow breezy and joyous. Seldom in crime fiction does one meet lead characters as likable as Smith and his long-lost friend/new love interest, Rosemary Mitchell.
Both are "pushing seventy" but try to solve the various mysteries with the style, audacity and intelligence of a Sun City version of Nick and Nora Charles. Their senior viewpoint with commentary on various generations-"Greatest," Boomers, Xers-makes for a perspective that's at once tart, worldly and compassionate and that nicely balances the genuine evil in the air.(June)
[NOTE: You all see that? "Superb, perfectly paced"? Hah! Not come by easily, as any writer can tell you. Color me green. :)) ]
Wrap...
Impulse
Ramsay, Frederick (Author)
ISBN: 1590582837
Poisoned Pen Press
Published 2006-06
Hardcover , $24.95 (225p)
Fiction Mystery & Detective - GeneralAges
Reviewed 2006-04-17
At the start of Ramsey's superb, perfectly paced stand-alone, Phoenix mystery writer Frank Smith heads for his 50th prep school reunion-at Scott Academy, near Baltimore-anxious about all the attendant grudges, passions, jealousies and nostalgia.
More seriously, Smith must contend with the suicide of his brother, Jack, 50 years earlier; the disappearance of four teenage schoolboys during the 1980s; and, back home in Arizona, the relatively recent murder of his wife, Sandy, a crime for which he's now the chief suspect.
Ramsey (Artscape andSecrets ) treats these traumas in a manner at once intriguing and believable yet somehow breezy and joyous. Seldom in crime fiction does one meet lead characters as likable as Smith and his long-lost friend/new love interest, Rosemary Mitchell.
Both are "pushing seventy" but try to solve the various mysteries with the style, audacity and intelligence of a Sun City version of Nick and Nora Charles. Their senior viewpoint with commentary on various generations-"Greatest," Boomers, Xers-makes for a perspective that's at once tart, worldly and compassionate and that nicely balances the genuine evil in the air.(June)
[NOTE: You all see that? "Superb, perfectly paced"? Hah! Not come by easily, as any writer can tell you. Color me green. :)) ]
Wrap...
Palast pins the tail on the true BushCo asses....
From The Guardian:
Desert Rats Leave The Sinking Ship
Why Rumsfeld Should Not Resign
The Guardian
Comment
Friday, April 14, 2006
By Greg Palast
Well, here they come: the wannabe Rommels, the gaggle of generals, safely retired, to lay siege to Donald Rumsfeld. This week, six of them have called for the Secretary of Defense's resignation. Well, according to my watch, they're about four years too late -- and they still don't get it.
I know that most of my readers will be tickled pink that the bemedalled boys in crew cuts are finally ready to kick Rummy in the rump, in public. But to me, it just shows me that these boys still can't shoot straight. It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who stood up in front of the UN and identified two mobile latrines as biological weapons labs, was it, General Powell? It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who told us our next warning from Saddam could be a mushroom cloud, was it Condoleezza? It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who declared that Al Qaeda and Saddam were going steady, was it, Mr. Cheney?
Yes, Rumsfeld is a swaggering bag of mendacious arrogance, a duplicitous chicken-hawk, yellow-bellied bully-boy and Tinker-Toy Napoleon -- but he didn't appoint himself Secretary of Defense.
Let me tell you a story about the Secretary of Defense you didn't read in the New York Times, related to me by General Jay Garner, the man our president placed in Baghdad as the US' first post-invasion viceroy.
Garner arrived in Kuwait City in March 2003 working under the mistaken notion that when George Bush called for democracy in Iraq, the President meant the Iraqis could choose their own government. Misunderstanding the President's true mission, General Garner called for Iraqis to hold elections within 90 days and for the U.S. to quickly pull troops out of the cities to a desert base. "It's their country," the General told me of the Iraqis. "And," he added, most ominously, "their oil."
Let's not forget: it's all about the oil. I showed Garner a 101-page plan for Iraq's economy drafted secretly by neo-cons at the State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon, calling for "privatization" (i.e. the sale) of "all state assets ... especially in the oil and oil-supporting industries."
The General knew of the plans and he intended to shove it where the Iraqi sun don't shine. Garner planned what he called a "Big Tent" meeting of Iraqi tribal leaders to plan elections. By helping Iraqis establish their own multi-ethnic government -- and this was back when Sunnis, Shias and Kurds were on talking terms -- knew he could get the nation on its feet peacefully before a welcomed "liberation" turned into a hated "occupation." But, Garner knew, a freely chosen coalition government would mean the death-knell for the neo-con oil-and-assets privatization grab.
On April 21, 2003, three years ago this month, the very night General Garner arrived in Baghdad, he got a call from Washington. It was Rumsfeld on the line. He told Garner, in so many words, "Don't unpack, Jack, you're fired." Rummy replaced Garner, a man with years of on-the-ground experience in Iraq, with green-boots Paul Bremer, the Managing Director of Kissinger Associates.
Bremer cancelled the Big Tent meeting of Iraqis and postponed elections for a year; then he issued 100 orders, like some tin-pot pasha, selling off Iraq's economy to U.S. and foreign operators, just as Rumsfeld's neo-con clique had desired.
Reading this, it sounds like I should applaud the six generals' call for Rumfeld's ouster. Forget it. For a bunch of military hotshots, they sure can't shoot straight. They're wasting all their bullets on the decoy. They've gunned down the puppet instead of the puppeteers.
There's no way that Rumsfeld could have yanked General Garner from Baghdad without the word from The Bunker. Nothing moves or breathes or spits in the Bush Administration without Darth Cheney's growl of approval. And ultimately, it's the Commander-in-Chief who's chiefly in command.
Even the generals' complaint -- that Rumsfeld didn't give them enough troops -- was ultimately a decision of the cowboy from Crawford. (And by the way, the problem was not that we lacked troops -- the problem was that we lacked moral authority to occupy this nation. A million troops would not be enough -- the insurgents would just have more targets.) President Bush is one lucky fella. I can imagine him today on the intercom with Cheney: "Well, pardner, looks like the game's up." And Cheney replies, "Hey, just hang the Rumsfeld dummy out the window until he's taken all their ammo."
When Bush and Cheney read about the call for Rumsfeld's resignation today, I can just hear George saying to Dick, "Mission Accomplished." Generals, let me give you a bit of advice about choosing a target: It's the President, stupid.
********** Read more about the untold story of General Garner and the secret war plans in ARMED MADHOUSE, by Greg Palast, to be released June 6 (US) and July 6 (UK). View Palast's interview with Garner for BBC Television at www.GregPalast.com
Wrap...
Desert Rats Leave The Sinking Ship
Why Rumsfeld Should Not Resign
The Guardian
Comment
Friday, April 14, 2006
By Greg Palast
Well, here they come: the wannabe Rommels, the gaggle of generals, safely retired, to lay siege to Donald Rumsfeld. This week, six of them have called for the Secretary of Defense's resignation. Well, according to my watch, they're about four years too late -- and they still don't get it.
I know that most of my readers will be tickled pink that the bemedalled boys in crew cuts are finally ready to kick Rummy in the rump, in public. But to me, it just shows me that these boys still can't shoot straight. It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who stood up in front of the UN and identified two mobile latrines as biological weapons labs, was it, General Powell? It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who told us our next warning from Saddam could be a mushroom cloud, was it Condoleezza? It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who declared that Al Qaeda and Saddam were going steady, was it, Mr. Cheney?
Yes, Rumsfeld is a swaggering bag of mendacious arrogance, a duplicitous chicken-hawk, yellow-bellied bully-boy and Tinker-Toy Napoleon -- but he didn't appoint himself Secretary of Defense.
Let me tell you a story about the Secretary of Defense you didn't read in the New York Times, related to me by General Jay Garner, the man our president placed in Baghdad as the US' first post-invasion viceroy.
Garner arrived in Kuwait City in March 2003 working under the mistaken notion that when George Bush called for democracy in Iraq, the President meant the Iraqis could choose their own government. Misunderstanding the President's true mission, General Garner called for Iraqis to hold elections within 90 days and for the U.S. to quickly pull troops out of the cities to a desert base. "It's their country," the General told me of the Iraqis. "And," he added, most ominously, "their oil."
Let's not forget: it's all about the oil. I showed Garner a 101-page plan for Iraq's economy drafted secretly by neo-cons at the State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon, calling for "privatization" (i.e. the sale) of "all state assets ... especially in the oil and oil-supporting industries."
The General knew of the plans and he intended to shove it where the Iraqi sun don't shine. Garner planned what he called a "Big Tent" meeting of Iraqi tribal leaders to plan elections. By helping Iraqis establish their own multi-ethnic government -- and this was back when Sunnis, Shias and Kurds were on talking terms -- knew he could get the nation on its feet peacefully before a welcomed "liberation" turned into a hated "occupation." But, Garner knew, a freely chosen coalition government would mean the death-knell for the neo-con oil-and-assets privatization grab.
On April 21, 2003, three years ago this month, the very night General Garner arrived in Baghdad, he got a call from Washington. It was Rumsfeld on the line. He told Garner, in so many words, "Don't unpack, Jack, you're fired." Rummy replaced Garner, a man with years of on-the-ground experience in Iraq, with green-boots Paul Bremer, the Managing Director of Kissinger Associates.
Bremer cancelled the Big Tent meeting of Iraqis and postponed elections for a year; then he issued 100 orders, like some tin-pot pasha, selling off Iraq's economy to U.S. and foreign operators, just as Rumsfeld's neo-con clique had desired.
Reading this, it sounds like I should applaud the six generals' call for Rumfeld's ouster. Forget it. For a bunch of military hotshots, they sure can't shoot straight. They're wasting all their bullets on the decoy. They've gunned down the puppet instead of the puppeteers.
There's no way that Rumsfeld could have yanked General Garner from Baghdad without the word from The Bunker. Nothing moves or breathes or spits in the Bush Administration without Darth Cheney's growl of approval. And ultimately, it's the Commander-in-Chief who's chiefly in command.
Even the generals' complaint -- that Rumsfeld didn't give them enough troops -- was ultimately a decision of the cowboy from Crawford. (And by the way, the problem was not that we lacked troops -- the problem was that we lacked moral authority to occupy this nation. A million troops would not be enough -- the insurgents would just have more targets.) President Bush is one lucky fella. I can imagine him today on the intercom with Cheney: "Well, pardner, looks like the game's up." And Cheney replies, "Hey, just hang the Rumsfeld dummy out the window until he's taken all their ammo."
When Bush and Cheney read about the call for Rumsfeld's resignation today, I can just hear George saying to Dick, "Mission Accomplished." Generals, let me give you a bit of advice about choosing a target: It's the President, stupid.
********** Read more about the untold story of General Garner and the secret war plans in ARMED MADHOUSE, by Greg Palast, to be released June 6 (US) and July 6 (UK). View Palast's interview with Garner for BBC Television at www.GregPalast.com
Wrap...
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