Dust and Deception
By PAUL KRUGMAN


Last week a quietly scathing report by the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed what some have long suspected: in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse, the agency systematically misled New Yorkers about the risks the resulting air pollution posed to their health. And it did so under pressure from the White House.

The Bush administration has misled the public on many issues, from the budget outlook to the Iraqi threat. But this particular deception seems, at first sight, not just callous but gratuitous. It's only when you look back at budget politics in 2001 that you see the method in the administration's mendacity.

A draft E.P.A. report released last December conceded that 9/11 had led to huge emissions of pollutants. In particular, releases of dioxins — which are carcinogens and can also damage the nervous system and cause birth defects — created "likely the highest ambient concentrations that have ever been reported," up to 1,500 times normal levels. But the report concluded that because the outdoor air cleared after a couple of months, little harm had been done.

In fact, the main danger comes from toxic dust that seeped into buildings and remains in carpets, furniture and air ducts. According to a recent report in Salon, businesses that did environmental assessments of their own premises found alarming levels not just of dioxins but also of asbestos and other dangerous pollutants. So the most shocking revelation from the new report is that under White House direction, the E.P.A. suppressed warnings about indoor pollution. Scattered evidence suggests that as a result, hundreds of cleaning workers and thousands of residents may be suffering chronic health problems.

Why was crucial information withheld from the public? The report mentions "the desire to reopen Wall Street and national security concerns." Maybe — though the national security benefits of failing to remove toxic dust escape me. I suspect that there was another reason: budget politics.

Immediately after 9/11 there was a great national outpouring of sympathy for New York, and a natural inclination to provide generous help. President Bush quickly promised $20 billion, and everyone expected the federal government to assume the burden of additional security. Yet hard-line Republicans never wanted to help the stricken city. Indeed, according to an article by Michael Tomasky in New York magazine, Senators Phil Gramm and Don Nickles attempted to slash aid to New York within hours of Mr. Bush's promise.

Matters were patched up sufficiently so Mr. Bush could make his triumphant appearance at ground zero the next day. But then the backtracking began. By February 2002, only a fraction of the promised funds had been allocated — and Mitch Daniels, the White House budget director, accused New York's lawmakers of playing "money-grubbing games."

Why this stinginess? A source told Mr. Tomasky that "Gramm just doesn't like spending money. And Nickles . . . he's just anti-New York." That sums it up: even after 9/11, hard-line conservatives opposed any spending, no matter how justified, that wasn't on weapons or farm subsidies, while some people from America's "red states" just hate big-city folk.

What does all this have to do with toxic dust? Think how much harder it would have been to stiff New York if the public had understood the extent to which Lower Manhattan had become a hazardous waste site. I can't prove that was what administration officials were thinking, but otherwise their efforts to play down the risks seem incomprehensible.

In the end, New York seems to have gotten its $20 billion — barely. As for the additional help everyone expected: don't get me started. There wasn't a penny of federal aid for "first responders" — like those firefighters and police officers who cheered Mr. Bush at ground zero — until a few months ago, and much of it went to sparsely populated states. The federal government spends much more protecting the average resident of Wyoming from terrorists than it spends protecting the average resident of New York City.

All in all, the people running Washington, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of whatever they feel like doing, have treated the city that bore the brunt of the actual attack very shabbily. In September 2004 the Republicans will hold their nominating convention in New York. Will New Yorkers take the occasion to remind them about how the city was lied to and shortchanged?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/26/opinion/26KRUG.html

I thought the East Coast blackout was symptomatic of a "blackout in consciousness." A mass denial of what's really happening in this country. Electricity? Well, electro-chemical impulses fire brain synapses. That's another kind of "grid", isn't it? Something is seriously wrong with a body politic that unconsciously colluded to allow someone like George Bush to get into the White House. He stands for everything the American people profess as being opposite their core "values." If that's really the case, how is it that he was allowed to became president? -- Claudia D. Dikinis, August 19, 2003


Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS FOR CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR!

I thought the East Coast blackout was symptomatic of a "blackout in consciousness." A mass denial of what's really happening in this country. Electricity? Well, electro-chemical impulses fire brain synapses. That's another kind of "grid", isn't it? Something is seriously wrong with a body politic that unconsciously colluded to allow someone like George Bush to get into the White House. He stands for everything the American people profess as being opposite their core "values." If that's really the case, how is it that he was allowed to became president? -- Claudia D. Dikinis, August 19, 2003

Sad . . . .

U.S. Troops Shoot Dead Reuters Cameraman in Iraq
Sun August 17, 2003 07:08 PM ET
By Andrew Marshall

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops shot dead an award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming on Sunday near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Eyewitnesses said soldiers on an American tank shot at Mazen Dana, 43, as he filmed outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad which had earlier come under a mortar attack.

Dana's last pictures show a U.S. tank driving toward him outside the prison walls. Several shots ring out from the tank, and Dana's camera falls to the ground.

The U.S. military acknowledged on Sunday that its troops had "engaged" a Reuters cameraman, saying they had thought his camera was a rocket propelled grenade launcher.

"Army soldiers engaged an individual they thought was aiming an RPG at them. It turned out to be a Reuters cameraman," Navy Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Reuters in Washington.

Journalists had gone to the prison after the U.S. military said a mortar bomb attack there a day before had killed six Iraqis and wounded 59 others.

Recounting the moments before the shooting, Reuters soundman Nael al-Shyoukhi, who was working with Dana, said he had asked a U.S. soldier near the prison if they could speak to an officer and was told they could not.

"They saw us and they knew about our identities and our mission," Shyoukhi said. The incident happened in the afternoon in daylight.

The soldier agreed to their request to film an overview of the prison from a bridge nearby.

"After we filmed we went into the car and prepared to go when a convoy led by a tank arrived and Mazen stepped out of the car to film. I followed him and Mazen walked three to four meters (yards). We were noted and seen clearly," Shyoukhi said.

"A soldier on the tank shot at us. I lay on the ground. I heard Mazen and I saw him scream and touching his chest.

"I cried at the soldier, telling him you killed a journalist. They shouted at me and asked me to step back and I said 'I will step back, but please help, please help and stop the bleed'.

"They tried to help him but Mazen bled heavily. Mazen took a last breath and died before my eyes."

AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST

Dana's death brings to 17 the number of journalists or their assistants who have died in Iraq since war began on March 20. Two others have been missing since the first days of the war.

Dana is the second Reuters cameraman to be killed since the U.S.-led force invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

On April 8, Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian based in Warsaw, died when a U.S. tank fired a shell at the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel, the base for many foreign media in Baghdad.

"Mazen was one of Reuters finest cameramen and we are devastated by his loss," said Stephen Jukes, Reuters global head of news.

"He was a brave and award-winning journalist who had worked in many of the world's hot spots," Jukes said.

"He was committed to covering the story wherever it was and was an inspiration to friends and colleagues at Reuters and throughout the industry. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with his family."

Dana, a Palestinian, had worked for Reuters mostly in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Paul Holmes, former Reuters bureau chief in Jerusalem, recalled a towering, chain-smoking bear of a man with a ruddy complexion and expansive heart.

"The amazing thing about him was he was like the king of Hebron. Every journalist in the city looked up to him and any journalist who covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will know and love Mazen," he said.

Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer said he hoped there would be "the fullest and most comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy."

Married with four young children, Dana was one of the company's most experienced conflict journalists and had worked in Baghdad before, shortly after U.S. troops entered the city.

He was awarded an International Press Freedom Award in 2001 by the Committee to Protect Journalists for his work in Hebron where he was wounded and beaten many times. (additional reporting by Charles Aldinger in Washington)

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3291033

:: how jedi are you? ::

Claudia sent me this link in an email earlier:


Read the top story re Jack van Impe and Bush.

This is why we need to invoke the 25th Amendment.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/943879.asp?0si=-#BODY


Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS FOR CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR!

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.' " -- H.L Menken



I say:

BULLSHIT! (to Van Impe that is, lol)

“I believe he is a wonderful man,” Van Impe responded, and goes on to say, “I was contacted a few weeks ago by the Office of Public Liaison for the White House and by the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to make an outline. And I’ve spent hours preparing it. I will release this information to the public in September, but it’s in his hands. He will know exactly what is going to happen in the Middle East and what part he will have under the leading of the Holy Spirit of God. So, it’s a tremendous time to be alive.”

heh . . .sorry guys . . .I almost lost this whole blog! I changed my username and my backup files only went up to mid-May. Thanks to the people here at Blogger, I found that they had all of my files too!

Thanks Blogger!

Here is a good one that Clauida just sent in:

EXTRA EXTRA!


http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/06/266752.shtml

A DOD whistleblower detail an attempt by a covert U.S. team to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The team was later killed by friendly fire due to CIA incompetence.
Pentagon Whistleblower Reveals CIA/ DoD Fiascos
20.06.2003 [08:07]

In a world exclusive, Al Martin Raw.com has published a news story about a Department of Defense whistleblower who has revealed that a US covert operations team had planted “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs) in Iraq – then “lost” them when the team was killed by so-called “friendly fire.”

Claudia has some ancient wisdom for us all:

Indian wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead
horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in this ever
competitive world, companies we often try other strategies with
dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a bigger whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this
horse."

4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

5. Hire a consultant to study the horse.

6. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

7. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.

8. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.

9. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.

10. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment.

11. Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."

12. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.

13. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.

14. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."

15. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.

16. Do a CA Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.

17. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.

18. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.

19. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.

20. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.

21. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.

22. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

23. Claim that "The other guys' horse is deader than ours."

24. Outsource the dead horse riding to India.

Clauida sent this one in!

Arnold's Nazi Problem
Why won't he repudiate Kurt Waldheim?
By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, August 7, 2003, at 3:46 PM PT



A slight Waldheim problem

Here's a question Jay Leno forgot to ask Arnold Schwarzenegger when he
announced his candidacy for governor of California on last night's Tonight
Show: "Will you renounce your support for Kurt Waldheim?"

A little refresher course may be in order. Kurt Waldheim, a widely esteemed
former secretary general of the United Nations, was running for president of
Austria in March 1986 when it came to light that he had participated in Nazi
atrocities during World War II. Waldheim had always maintained that he had
served in the Wehrmacht only briefly and that after being wounded early in
the war, he had returned to Vienna to attend law school. In fact, Waldheim
had resumed military service after recuperating from his injury and had been
an intelligence officer in Germany's Army Group E when it committed mass
murder in the Kozara region of western Bosnia. (Waldheim's name appears on
the Wehrmacht's "honor list" of those responsible for the atrocity.) In
1944, Waldheim had reviewed and approved a packet of anti-Semitic propaganda
leaflets to be dropped behind Russian lines, one of which ended, "enough of
the Jewish war, kill the Jews, come over." After the war, Waldheim was
wanted for war crimes by the War Crimes Commission of the United Nations,
the very organization he would later head. None of these revelations
prevented Waldheim from winning the Austrian election, but after he became
president, the U.S. Justice Department put Waldheim on its watch list
denying entry to "any foreign national who assisted or otherwise
participated in activities amounting to persecution during World War II."
The international community largely shunned Waldheim, and he didn't run for
re-election. (This information comes from the1992 book Betrayal: The Untold
Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover-Up, by Eli M. Rosenbaum
and William Hoffer.)


One month after these revelations began to splash across the front pages of
newspapers worldwide, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver exchanged
wedding vows at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass. Schwarzenegger, a
native of Austria, had invited Waldheim to the wedding, which of course
can't be held against him because the invitations surely went out well
before the war crimes story broke. (Schwarzenegger, who held dual
citizenship in Austria and the United States, had also endorsed Waldheim.)
Waldheim didn't attend, but he sent a gift-a statue of Arnold, in
lederhosen, bearing off Maria, who wore a dirndl. Admiring it,
Schwarzenegger offered a tribute that stunned the assemblage into shocked
silence (this is reported in Arnold: An Unauthorized Biography, by Wendy
Leigh):

My friends don't want me to mention Kurt's name, because of all the recent
Nazi stuff and the U.N. controversy, but I love him and Maria does too, and
so thank you, Kurt.

Schwarzenegger's name remained on Waldheim's campaign posters. After
Waldheim was elected, Schwarzenegger paid him a visit and was photographed
with him. According to the New York Post's "Page Six" gossip column,
Schwarzenegger was seen sitting beside Waldheim as recently as 1998, when
the two attended the second inauguration of Waldheim's successor as
president, Thomas Klestil.

In 1988, Schwarzenegger was asked in a Playboy interview what he thought of
Waldheim. He replied:

I hate to talk about it, because it's a no-win situation. Without going
into details, I can say that being half-Austrian and half-American, I don't
like the idea that these two countries that mean so much to me are in such a
disagreement. Austria is a very important place for Americans, because it is
a neutral country. With a little bit of good will, the problem will be
straightened out. I think it's well on the way.

Why on Earth didn't Schwarzenegger take this opportunity to speak out
against Waldheim? It surely isn't because Schwarzenegger himself had any
Nazi sympathies (though during the filming of the documentary Pumping Iron,
he reportedly once made a foolish comment praising Hitler). Rather,
Schwarzenegger was likely playing politics-to be more specific, Austrian
politics and family politics. For years it was rumored that if
Schwarzenegger didn't run for governor of California, he would run for
president of Austria. Because Austrians have long resented what they see as
Waldheim's pointless scapegoating, any firm denunciation would have ruled
the latter possibility out. In addition, Schwarzenegger's mother had for
many years lived with Alfred Gerstl, a prominent Austrian politician who
rose to the top post in the upper house of Austria's parliament.
Schwarzenegger reportedly addressed him as "Uncle." (Schwarzenegger's
father, who died three decades ago, was a police official who had belonged
to the Nazi party.)

Rather than confront his Waldheim problem head-on, Schwarzenegger has
proclaimed his disgust for Nazism, raised money for education about the
Holocaust, traveled to Israel (where he met with then-Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin), and given generously to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles,
which in 1997 bestowed on him its National Leadership Award. "He wants no
truck with . Waldheim," the Wiesenthal Center's Rabbi Marvin Hier told the
Jerusalem Post. "He probably did not have any clue as to the seriousness of
the allegations against Waldheim at that time [i.e., 1986]. To suggest that
Arnold's an anti-Semite is preposterous. He's done more to further the cause
of Holocaust awareness than almost any other Hollywood star."

Clearly, though, that won't be enough. If Schwarzenegger doesn't renounce
Waldheim in a highly public way, he can forget about ever becoming governor
of California.

And on another channel:



That's All Folks!

Some "Out of The Word" Stuff"

Perseid Meteor Shower Begins Slow Crawl to Aug. 12 Peak
By Joe Rao
Special to SPACE.com
And Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
25 July 2002



The annual Perseid meteor shower has begun in modest fashion and will soon start building toward a peak Aug. 12, when as many as 60 or more shooting stars could be visible each hour from the Northern Hemisphere.

The Perseids are not as spectacular as the November Leonids, but they are dependable. Nearly every year they generate a shooting star per minute at their peak.

Weather permitting, this will be a good year to look for the Perseids, because the Moon will be near its new phase, leaving the skies at their darkest. The best viewing times run from Aug. 11 through Aug. 13.

For city dwellers whose view is hampered by bright lights, only the brightest meteors can be seen, so a trip to the country is the only way to get the full effect of the Perseids


Perseids are tiny things, ranging in size from sand grains to peas. The material was shed long ago by a comet named Swift-Tuttle. This comet, like all others that pass through the inner solar system on their orbits around the Sun, is slowly disintegrating. Over the centuries, the comet’s crumbly remains have spread all along its orbit to form a moving river of rubble millions of miles wide and hundreds of millions of miles long.

Earth’s orbit carries it through this stream every August. When a particle strikes the planet’s upper atmosphere, air friction vaporizes it in a quick, white-hot streak.

Technically, the peak occurs in the afternoon of Aug. 12 in North America. Meteors can only be seen at night, however. The best views will come late Sunday, Aug. 11 into the early hours of Monday. The shower should remain strong Monday night and into dawn on Tuesday, Aug. 13.

"Rates from rural observing sites should approach and perhaps even surpass 60 Perseids per hour during the last few hours before dawn on Aug. 12," said Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society.

For Europe, the peak comes near or soon after midnight on Aug. 13. Few Perseids are ever visible from the Southern Hemisphere.

The Perseids are considered active from about July 25 through Aug. 18, though hourly rates usually do not rise above 10 until about Aug. 8. Rates fall off much more rapidly after the peak, dropping again to below 10 per hour after about Aug. 14.

Early morning hours are best, astronomers say, because the part of Earth on which you stand is then facing the oncoming debris as the planet plunges through space on its orbit around the Sun. Experts suggest going out around 2 a.m. and staying until dawn breaks. Allow at least 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then face northeast, because Perseids radiate from a point in the constellation Perseus, which is high in the northeast during pre-dawn hours.

Since this year's best viewing is on a Monday morning, Lunsford offers strategies for working people.

"I would suggest watching during the last hour or two before dawn," Lunsford advises. "This will allow you to see the most Perseid activity from your particular location."

He also recommends doing some practice observing beginning around Aug. 8. By then, the Moon is gone from the morning skies, leaving dark conditions.

Finally, Lunsford has advice for the worst-case scenario -- a cloudy Aug. 12: "If anyone is clouded out Monday morning," he says, "rates on Tuesday will also be impressive, much better than those seen the day before maximum."

Perseid meteors are typically white or yellowish with some glowing trains and an occasional very bright meteor called a fireball. Up to 10 shooting stars per hour not associated with the Perseids grace the sky this time of year. These other meteors can approach from any direction in the sky.

Joe Rao is SPACE.com's backyard astronomy columnist. Robert Roy Britt is SPACE.com's senior science writer.

Top Ten Arnold Schwarzenegger Campaign Slogans

10. "Monosyllabic Answers To Questions Will Help Speed Up Press Conferences"
9. "Governor Schwarzenegger or 'Kindergarten Cop 2.' You Choose."
8. "Just Close Your Eyes And You'll Swear I'm Henry Kissinger"
7. "Vote For Me And One Day I Might Be Able To Fight Off Robots That Are Trying To Wipe Out Human Race!"
6. "My Role As The 'Terminator' Has Prepared Me For A Career As A Soul-Less, Unfeeling Politician"
5. "Say Hello To Attorney General Lou Ferrigno"
4. "I'm Practically A Kennedy!"
3. "Ask Yourself: Are You Better Off Now, Than You Were Four Terminators Ago?"
2. "Vote For Me, If You Want To Live"
1. "You Thought Bush Mispronounced Words..."


Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium

Dick Rosengarten, editor and publisher of California Political Week, told CNN Wednesday that the California race was drawing so many people, it was in danger of becoming a farce.
"You know what they say about politics," Rosengarten said. "It's show business for ugly people."

Where's the tacos?



Actor Calls for Overhaul of State Economic Engine
By CHARLIE LeDUFF


NORWALK, Calif., Aug 7 — Arnold Schwarzenegger took the second step in his fledgling campaign for governor this afternoon, stopping to pick up his application papers.

It was a scene similar to a Hollywood premiere, with Mr. Schwarzenegger signing T-shirts and photo albums for shrieking fans. Some said they were voters, some said they were not, others said they just wanted their car tax cut.

In a short news conference on the steps of the Los Angeles County Registrar building, Mr. Schwarzenegger, the hulking 56-year-old movie star, was skimpy on details about how he would conduct his two-month campaign or how he might conduct business in California should he unseat Gov. Gray Davis.

"I have a very, very good agenda," Mr. Schwarzenegger promised. "We have to overhaul our economic engine in California. We have to bring back businesses to California and to make sure that everyone in California has a great job, a fantastic job."

He said he would reveal a comprehensive plan in the next few weeks to balance the budget, cure an ailing educational system and encourage business back into the state while protecting the environment. He also said that as governor he would not negotiate with the special interests or special-interest politicians he said infested the state capital.

Asked about his lack of credentials or political experience, Mr. Schwarzenegger said there were more important things than qualifications.

"The most important thing when you run a state is leadership," he said. "Governor Davis has said his is experience you can't buy. Well, look what it's gotten us."

"In everything I ever did, I showed great leadership," he added and then launched into what is shaping up to be his stump speech, about a penniless farm boy from Austria who went to America and became the highest-paid entertainer in the world.

"The rags-to-riches story plays well in a state with so many immigrants," said a top Californian Republican strategist. "But at some point he has to make the transition. In a few weeks people will start to get sick of the bikini-wax jokes and the general circuslike atmosphere. He'll have to become a politician."

Mr. Schwarzenegger made his announcement Wednesday evening on the "Tonight" show. It was part high drama, part "Simpsons," with him reciting his famous movie lines, like "I'll be back" and saying the hardest decision he faced before this was the time he got a bikini wax.

His surprising plunge into political life propelled him into this morning's headlines, but the metamorphosis is not yet complete. Mr. Schwarzenegger's first one-on-one interview was not with a member of the political press corps, but with Pat O'Brien, host of "Access Hollywood."

Mr. Schwarzenegger could become a caricature of himself if he falls back on this strategy, some political veterans believe.

"The media, the scrutiny, it's going to be a new world for him," said Sheri Annis, who advised Mr. Schwarzenegger last fall when he was the sponsor of Proposition 49, a successful ballot initiative for after-school programs.

"He's extraordinarily smart, and extremely savvy, but he has to be careful," Ms. Annis said in an interview before Mr. Schwarzenegger entered the race. "When the press looks at an actor in Hollywood who doesn't do Shakespeare, they don't think there is a lot upstairs. So if he's protected too much from the political media, he'll have trouble."

Mr. Schwarzenegger's handlers said today that his first business was completing the paperwork, and second was touring the morning talk shows. Then he would begin to make himself available for substantive questions, they said. He plans to barnstorm the state. "The public will not be disappointed," said Sean Walsh, a spokesman for Mr. Schwarzenegger. "The public will see a lot of Arnold in the coming weeks."

Not only will his inexperience be an issue, but unflattering accusations are sure to surface, like the tabloid accounts of groping and boorish behavior on movie sets that surfaced when Mr. Schwarzenegger considered a run for governor two years ago. He said after his television announcement last night that he was expecting as much.

"I know they're going to throw everything at me and say I have no experience, that I'm a womanizer, that I'm a terrible guy," he said. "All these things are going to come my way. But this is why you have a great team together, a great staff. You fight these things off."

Mr. Schwarzenegger is not a student of the bond market, but he does have a correspondence degree in business from the University of Wisconsin. He won the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding title six years in a row beginning in 1970. He was the national fitness guru for the first President Bush and has devoted his life to promoting education and nonviolence among children. He has committed more than 500 on-screen murders, according to a Web site that tracks such things.

The election will be 59 days from Saturday. The filing deadline and the shortened format should help Mr. Schwarzenegger, said Karal Ann Marling, professor of pop culture and the University of Minnesota.

"If I was running his campaign, I'd have him say nothing," Ms. Marling said. "A 60-day election is a popularity contest. And in today's society, Arnold is the winner."

he he

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/08/national/08ARNO.html

And now for a change of scenery:

Hollywood Is All Eyes as One of Its Own Takes a New Stage
By BERNARD WEINRAUB


HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 7 — George Butler, the producer and director of the 1977 documentary that helped make an Austrian immigrant bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger a star, today recalled the early days when he met Mr. Schwarzenegger in Brooklyn.

"He was enormously intelligent and enormously crude, and he said then that he had a recurring dream that he would be King of the Earth," Mr. Butler said. "He had a master plan. He wanted to be a movie star, a millionaire and have enormous power."

Advertisement


Across Hollywood, the one word on people's lips is "Arnold." A former Mr. Universe turned action hero whose movie career was ebbing, Mr. Schwarzenegger, 56, has this largely Democratic community greeting his bid for governor of California with a blend of fascination and, in some cases, derision.

"Ludicrous," said Larry Gelbart, a top film and television comedy writer. "This whole thing has taken on farcical dimensions. He has no experience in governing anything his own career.

"This is the world's fifth-largest economy. Some part of me resents being in California and being a laughingstock, that we would have this Wild West political show here. Larry Flynt is running, too. You can't satirize this. The headlines are satire."

Mr. Gelbart's view seems, at least in Hollywood, unusually dissident. Mr. Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, the television reporter and member of the Kennedy family, are central players in the elite world of West Side Los Angeles — Beverly Hills, Brentwood and the Pacific Palisades. It is a world of rich, sometimes politically engaged and frequently self-important Democrats who have met Mr. Schwarzenegger over the years, seem to like him personally but are now perplexed about what to do next.

"He's a very serious, very smart, very determined guy," David Geffen, the billionaire mogul and Democrat, said of Mr. Schwarzenegger. "I think he'd be very formidable."

Barbara Howar, a novelist who has known Ms. Shriver for years, said the entertainment elite seemed to know four of the major players in the recall election of Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat — Mr. Davis himself; former Mayor Richard J. Riordan of Los Angeles, who is expected not to join the race; Arianna Huffington, the commentator running as an independent, and Mr. Schwarzenegger.

"People are in a quandary," Ms. Howar said. "It's overlapping into their social world and it's hard for them to split their allegiances even along party lines. Riordan and Huffington and Arnold are all at dinner together. They've known each other for years. Their friends and money sources are identical. They're all tap dancing to the same crowd and the same money."

Even his message, voiced on NBC's "Tonight" show with Jay Leno, has a Hollywood ring. Discussing the election, scheduled for Oct. 7, Mr. Schwarzenegger was hardly original. "We're mad as hell and we're not taking it anymore," he said. It paraphrased the line by Peter Finch, as a television commentator having a nervous breakdown, from the 1976 film "Network."

Those who have worked with Mr. Schwarzenegger in recent years said they were not surprised by his announcement. Jonathan Mostow, director of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," his current movie, said that Mr. Schwarzenegger had showed an unusual interest in electoral politics during filming.

"An endless line of political figures came to the set," Mr. Mostow said. "We had mayors, governors, senators, City Council people from Iowa, Bill Clinton."

As a Republican in the mostly Democratic world of west Los Angeles, Mr. Schwarzenegger is clearly a political aberration, but he seems to have handled it well.

Lionel Chetwynd, a writer and director who is a Republican, said Mr. Schwarzenegger had avoided the stigma of "having identified himself as a Republican — he's very deft at that." Mr. Chetwynd recalled attending a Christmas party with actors like Warren Beatty and others Democrats. "Arnold was the star," Mr. Chetwynd said. "He's made Republicans who have been hiding in Hollywood feel good. He's outed us."

As reported in the book "Pumping Iron," in the early 1970's, Mr. Schwarzenegger said: "I will go into movies as an actor, producer and eventually director. By the time I am 30, I will have starred in my first movie and I will be a millionaire." He also said, "I will marry a glamorous and intelligent wife."

Mr. Butler, the producer and director, met Mr. Schwarzenegger in 1972 at a Mr. America contest in Brooklyn. "Arnold was naïve and ingenuous," he recalled. "He was crafty as all get out. His idea was that money was power. He never looked over his shoulder, he had no sentiment for the past. He was the biggest greenhorn you could ever imagine, but he was very smart and the quickest read I've ever met."

"Running for office?" Mr. Butler added. "Being powerful? For those who knew him back then, we expected this to happen, and it has."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/08/national/08HOLL.html

All Hail Bob, All Hail Bob!

Prewar statements by Cheney under scrutiny
Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON -- Unlike CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who have taken responsibility and ex-pressed regret for allowing President Bush to make an erroneous claim in his State of the Union address, Vice President Dick Cheney in recent days has staked out an unapologetic defense of the war in Iraq.

Last week, the president took personal responsibility for the claim that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Africa, an assertion that rested partly on forged documents. But a day later, Cheney was basking in applause during a speech to conservative state legislators with a line suggesting little doubt about the war's justifications or results.

"In Iraq, a dictator with a deep and bitter hatred of the United States -- who built, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction and cultivated ties to terrorists -- is no more," Cheney said.


As the White House fends off questions about whether the administration misused prewar intelligence, lawmakers and analysts are increasingly scrutinizing the role played by Cheney. Some are asking if Cheney, one of the most powerful figures in the administration and perhaps the most influential vice president in history, went too far in making the case for war.

Cheney has drawn attention for several reasons, among them his prewar visits to CIA analysts, which some say pressured those analysts to exaggerate the Iraqi threat; his involvement in the claim that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Niger; and his strong prewar statements, some of which are now in question, on Iraq's weapons programs.

Critics say Cheney's role may have helped mask significant disputes within the U.S. intelligence community. Those disputes have been raised anew given the failure to find chemical or biological weapons in Iraq or evidence of a reconstituted nuclear weapons program.

Officials at the CIA and the vice president's office have explained Cheney's personal visits to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., as a healthy indication of his attention to their work, and not an attempt to skew conclusions to fit a policy goal of toppling Saddam Hussein.

The vice president was accompanied by his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on the visits, which supplemented the daily intelligence briefings for Cheney and those he attends with Bush.

"He's got a deep interest in intelligence and engages actively with our folks on it," one CIA official said. "That is something which we welcome."

But Greg Thielmann, who retired in September as director of strategic, proliferation and military affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said he saw no similar curiosity from Cheney about the State Department's intelligence shop, known as INR.

That agency was far more skeptical than the CIA about claims that Iraq possessed threatening weaponry.

"One would think if Cheney was on some sort of noble pursuit of the truth and really wanted to get into details, he would have noticed that INR had very loud and lengthy dissents on some critical pieces of Iraq intelligence," Thielmann said.

"You'd think he might want to hear from us," he added. "It never happened, of course, because Cheney wasn't engaged in an academic search for truth."

The State Department bureau concluded last October that there was no compelling evidence Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear weapons program, according to recently declassified portions of a National Intelligence Estimate, a top-level synthesis of U.S. intelligence reports.

INR also characterized as "highly dubious" claims that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Africa. "We thought the nuclear section of the estimate was so flawed that we thought we needed to have a whole special treatment of it to explain our views," Thielmann said.

An official in Cheney's office said CIA analysts offered the government's most authoritative information on Iraq and other intelligence matters, and dismissed the State Department's dissent as a small minority view in the intelligence community. Cheney's office also declined to specify how many times the vice president visited with analysts, or to describe what was discussed.

But some say Cheney's visits contributed to an atmosphere that pressured the CIA to conform with an administration policy bent on regime change in Iraq.

"These visits were unprecedented," wrote three Democratic members of Congress in a July 21 letter to Cheney. "Normally, vice presidents, yourself included, receive regular briefing from (the) CIA in your office and have a CIA officer on permanent detail. There is no reason for the vice president to make personal visits to CIA analysts."

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said two weeks ago at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee that he knew of "at least three" intelligence analysts who said they felt pressured to draw dramatic conclusions about Iraq.

A senior intelligence official said Cheney may have not intended to apply pressure. "But whatever (Cheney) was saying, analysts certainly felt there was pressure," the official said. "There was an outcome, and they were being driven to get stuff to support that outcome."

In the year preceding the war, unclassified CIA intelligence assessments provided to Congress went from expressing low-level concern about Iraq's weapons capability to expressing the same information in "alarmist" terms, said Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

At the same time, officials including Cheney began voicing their views of Iraq's illegal weapons in more certain terms.

Regarding nuclear weapons, Cheney said in a speech last August to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." Yet that was a less-than-unanimous view in the intelligence community.

Cheney's role in the controversial uranium claim began in early 2002, when his aides acknowledge that he asked the CIA about sketchy intelligence reports indicating that Iraq may have sought the material from Niger for a nuclear bomb.

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent by the CIA to check out the report and was told of Cheney's interest. He concluded that there was too much oversight from an international consortium for the sale to have occurred, and that is what he reported back.

"The vice president's office asked a serious question," Wilson wrote in a newspaper account last month. "I was asked to help formulate the answer."

Tenet and Cheney's office said the vice president was never briefed on the results of Wilson's trip, or even of the CIA's doubts about the claim.

Cheney also apparently did not know that Tenet had telephoned a Bush aide and sent two memos to White House officials asking them to remove the uranium reference from a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7. The White House revealed the existence of the memos on July 22.

"I don't think he was aware the CIA had pulled that out of the Cincinnati speech," the Cheney aide said.

Cheney was among those who reviewed the president's State of the Union address before Bush delivered it Jan. 28. But Cheney knew nothing of the CIA's doubts about the uranium claim so it raised no red flags, the official said.

Some outside the administration find it hard to believe Cheney could be so deeply enmeshed in intelligence issues but be left out of the loop regarding the uranium claim, especially because it was a subject in which Cheney took interest.

"The vice president became very interested in this whole story of (uranium) coming from Africa to Iraq," said Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president. "I can't believe that the CIA did not provide to the vice president, since he was the one that requested it, all the information that they gathered about Niger."

Before the war, Cheney also emphasized as a "fact" that Iraq had imported high-strength aluminum tubes needed for a restarted nuclear weapons program. The same day last September that The New York Times ran a story on the tubes, attributed to unnamed Bush administration officials, Cheney appeared on "Meet the Press."

Citing the newspaper story, Cheney said: "It's now public that, in fact, (Saddam) has been seeking to acquire ... the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge" needed to enrich uranium for a bomb.

But according to information declassified last month, the State Department's INR cited technical experts at the Energy Department "who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment."

The "alternative view" expressed in a National Intelligence Estimate last year said it was "far more likely" the tubes were intended for the production of artillery rockets.

Cheney's backers say he never misled the public or went beyond the majority views of the intelligence community at the time of his comments. And they insist that the use or misuse of intelligence to justify war will likely fizzle as an issue with voters.

And Cheney has been adept in defending the administration politically. In a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute two weeks ago, he emphasized the point that a murderous dictator had been stopped.



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