WITH A WHISPER, NOT A BANG
By David Martin
12/24/2003
Bush signs parts of Patriot Act II into law stealthily
On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing - on a Saturday - as "the President signs bills seven days a week." But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago - on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shuttng down the federal government the following Monday.
By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.
By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote.
The Bush Administration and its Congressional allies tucked away these new executive powers in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, a legislative behemoth that funds all the intelligence activities of the federal government. The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of "financial institution," which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business "whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."
Congress passed the legislation around Thanksgiving. Except for U.S. Representative Charlie Gonzalez, all San Antonio's House members voted for the act. The Senate passed it with a voice vote to avoid individual accountability. While broadening the definition of "financial institution," the Bush administration is ramping up provisions within the 2001 USA Patriot Act, which granted the FBI the authority to obtain client records from banks by merely requesting the records in a "National Security Letter." To get the records, the FBI doesn't have to appear before a judge, nor demonstrate "probable cause" - reason to believe that the targeted client is involved in criminal or terrorist activity. Moreover, the National Security Letters are attached with a gag order, preventing any financial institution from informing its clients that their records have been surrendered to the FBI. If a financial institution breaches the gag order, it faces criminal penalties. And finally, the FBI will no longer be required to report to Congress how often they have used the National Security Letters.
Supporters of expanding the Patriot Act claim that the new law is necessary to prevent future terrorist attacks on the U.S. The FBI needs these new powers to be "expeditious and efficient" in its response to these new threats. Robert Summers, professor of international law and director of the new Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University, explains, "We don't go to war with the terrorists as we went to war with the Germans or the North Vietnamese. If we apply old methods of following the money, we will not be successful. We need to meet them on an even playing field to avoid another disaster."
"It's a problem that some of these riders that are added on may not receive the scrutiny that we would like to see."
Robert Summers
Opponents of the PATRIOT Act and its expansion claim that safeguards like judicial oversight and the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure, are essential to prevent abuses of power. "There's a reason these protections were put into place," says Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, and a historian of U.S. political repression. "It has been shown that if you give [these agencies] this power they will abuse it. For any investigative agency, once you tell them that they must make sure that they protect the country from subversives, it inevitably gets translated into a program to silence dissent."
Opponents claim the FBI already has all the tools to stop crime and terrorism. Moreover, explains Patrick Filyk, an attorney and vice president of the local chapter of the ACLU, "The only thing the act accomplishes is the removal of judicial oversight and the transfer of more power to law enforcements agents."
This broadening of the Patriot Act represents a political victory for the Bush Administration's stealth legislative strategy to increase executive power. Last February, shortly before Bush launched the war on Iraq, the Center for Public Integrity obtained a draft of a comprehensive expansion of the Patriot Act, nicknamed Patriot Act II, written by Attorney General John Ashcroft's staff. Again, the timing was suspicious; it appeared that the Bush Administration was waiting for the start of the Iraq war to introduce Patriot Act II, and then exploit the crisis to ram it through Congress with little public debate.
The leak and ensuing public backlash frustrated the Bush administration's strategy, so Ashcroft and Co. disassembled Patriot Act II, then reassembled its parts into other legislation. By attaching the redefinition of "financial institution" to an Intelligence Authorization Act, the Bush Administration and its Congressional allies avoided public hearings and floor debates for the expansion of the Patriot Act.
Even proponents of this expansion have expressed concern about these legislative tactics. "It's a problem that some of these riders that are added on may not receive the scrutiny that we would like to see," says St. Mary's Professor Robert Summers.
The Bush Administration has yet to answer pivotal questions about its latest constitutional coup: If these new executive powers are necessary to protect United States citizens, then why would the legislation not withstand the test of public debate? If the new act's provisions are in the public interest, why use stealth in ramming them through the legislative process? "
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
If America is safer since the invasion of Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein, why did Bush raise the threat level to orange over the holidays? It seems threats come from Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, NOT Hussein's baathist insurgents. Doh!! -- Claudia Dikinis 12/29/03
Monday, December 29, 2003
http://www.memphisflyer.com/onthefly/onthefly_new.asp?ID=2773
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MAD AS HELL CHERI DELBROCCO PEGGING THE NEW YEAR RIGHT  Like many kids, my brother had one of those toy shape finders. It came with a little mallet and wooden pegs for hammering correctly shaped pegs into matching holes in a bench. When playing with his friends, inevitably, some would not be able to fit the peg into its corresponding shape. One kid would always figure out that if he took the mallet and banged and hammered really hard, and forced the peg, even if it splintered or broke, eventually the peg would fit into a hole that did not fit its shape. George W. Bush has been the kid who has forced the square pegs into the round holes. He has beaten and hammered the country and the world. He has used force to break us, and come hell or high water, he is going to bang those pegs into the shapes he wants, even if they are the wrong ones. In 2004, we have finally, finally reached another election year. As the year unfolds, it will become clear to voters that after four long years of being forced, divided, hammered, and broken, they will have a distinct choice in candidates and the chance to replace the destructive forces of George W. Bush. Recently, in The Washington Post, Al From, who heads the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, credited Howard Dean with running a successful campaign, but questioned whether Dean can effectively lead the party as its nominee. “We need to lay out a reason to replace Bush.” From said. Al From should take a break from his efforts to create the Republican-lite a.k.a. Loser Party and listen to Howard Dean, for he has been laying out reasons to replace Bush for months, now. The following are just a few reasons why most Democrats and many Independents think another four years of a Bush administration will be a global tragedy in the making: Reason Number One: The greatest disaster to ever happen in our country, September 11, 2001, could have been prevented by George W. Bush. He has taken more vacations, more long week-ends, and more taxpayer financed campaign fundraising trips than any President in history. Former Republican governor of New Jersey, Tom Kean, chairman of the independent 9/11 investigating commission said publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented. Why was Bush taking a month off to vacation in Crawford, Texas just prior to 9/11 when he and his national security adviser had been warned repeatedly of its imminence? Why did he fail to alert the American people? Is it too much to ask of the President to stay on the job and not take a month’s vacation if he has been told we might be attacked? Governor Kean promises major revelations in the coming new year, but if his commission raises doubts about the President’s competency, Bush will just take that proverbial mallet and bang away until the will of the people is thwarted and the square peg has fit into the round hole. Reason Number Two: Bush lied about his reasons for invading Iraq. He squandered the country’s entire stock of global empathy and goodwill following 9/11 by invading Iraq under false pretenses, in violation of international law, and without the approval of most of the world. Bush said Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction(WMD) posed an imminent danger to America, but when no WMD were found, he said we invaded Iraq so we could install democracy there. Bush used 9/11 as a pretense for invading Iraq and repeatedly spoke of Sadaam Hussein and 9/11 in the same breath, as if it was Sadaam Hussein who had orchestrated the attacks on our country. Our efforts should have been concentrated on capturing Osama bin Laden and defeating al Qaeda, but Bush handed victories to the very terrorists he claims to scorn by placing our troops in Iraq. It took 150,000 soldiers, tens of thousands of deaths, and a billion dollars a week to capture Sadaam Hussein. Americans are told the country is safer, but are given warnings of “high alert” for more terrorist attacks. So which way is it? Are we safer? Are we more vulnerable and at a higher risk of another 9/11? Where are the weapons of mass destruction that were such an imminent danger? Reason Number Three: Under Bush, at the expense of necessary programs such as Social Security and Medicare, the giant corporations who contributed so lavishly to his campaign, are being rewarded. During this administration, three million people have lost their jobs. Daily, the corporate giants announce thousands of jobs being exported to India and China. The Wall Street Journal, recently reported that if this trend continues, by 2010, well over half of America’s high tech jobs will have vanished and America will have completed its transformation from an advanced to a Third World economy! And what about those Bush tax refunds? The $300 in tax relief most middle-income earners received was more than offset by increases in local property and state taxes, tuition hikes, and increased energy costs due to draconian cuts in federal funds for vital state and local services. Reason Number Four: Bush has transfigured a healthy budget surplus created by Democrats into an endless sea of red ink - in the form of massive federal deficits of over $500 billion. Taxpaying families, their children, and their children’s children will be swimming in debt to pay for what? Endless war, tax cuts for millionaires, and multinational corporate bankrolling. The national debt has exploded to over $6.9 trillion since 2000. Since then, our currency has declined in value over 30%. This President is asking future generations to pay more taxes, experience high inflation, and suffer a devalued currency to repay the unrealistic tax cuts of his reckless fiscal policies. So ring out the old, ring in the new! The year to come will surely be a bright and happy one when we get someone in the White House who doesn’t beat, hammer, and bang America by splitting it and forcing it into a shape it doesn’t belong. |
Saturday, December 27, 2003
From the web site: http://www.allhatnocattle.com
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." -- H.L. Mencken
Friday, December 26, 2003
Iraq Ambush, Explosions Kill 3 U.S. GIs
1 hour, 8 minutes ago
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An American soldier died in a rebel ambush and two others were killed in bomb explosions Friday, one of the bloodiest days for the U.S. military since the Dec. 13 capture of Saddam Hussein.
Two of the deaths occurred in Baqouba, a center of guerrilla activity northeast of Baghdad in a Sunni Muslim area that served as a power base for Saddam, the former Iraqi dictator. U.S. forces, who have a base in the town, often conduct raids and arrest suspected insurgents.
One of the U.S. soldiers killed Friday was in a U.S. convoy that came under attack, said Capt. Jefferson Wolfe of the Army's 4th Infantry Division. Another soldier was injured, but troops fired back, killing two attackers, he said.
In a separate incident in the same area, a soldier tried to defuse a homemade bomb, but it blew up and killed him, Wolfe said. Such bombs are a favored weapon of rebels, who leave them on roadsides and detonate them as military convoys pass.
The guerrillas used that tactic Friday in Balad, north of Baghdad, setting off a bomb that killed one soldier, the U.S. military in the capital said.
Further north, three soldiers from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division were wounded in an ambush in Mosul when their convoy came under small arms fire, said Maj. Trey Cate, the division spokesman.
The soldiers, who were searching the city's streets for bombs, returned fire but did not catch their attackers, Cate said. Witnesses claimed a taxi driver was killed in the firefight, but the spokesman could not confirm the report.
On Thursday, Iraqi insurgents shelled an American base in Baqouba, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers, the military said.
Four other soldiers were wounded in the attack, Maj. Josslyn Aberle of the 4th Infantry Division said.
A total of 11 U.S. soldiers have died from hostile action since Monday.
Two soldiers from Poland, which has about 2,400 troops in Iraq (news - web sites), were wounded Thursday when assailants struck their convoy with a remote-controlled mine, Col. Zdzislaw Gnatowski told the Polish news agency PAP.
Also on Christmas Day, rocket and mortar attacks hit a hotel housing foreigners and targeted two banks, the Iranian and Turkish embassies and a U.S. Army base. The strikes had more symbolic than military impact; two civilians — a woman and her daughter sleeping in an apartment — were hurt, and damage was limited.
Late Thursday, several more explosions were heard in central Baghdad, and sirens sounded in the Green Zone, a barricaded area that houses the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition governing Iraq. A U.S. military spokesman said two rockets hit a car park near the headquarters, but there were no casualties.
Troops in an aircraft located the launch point and soldiers on the ground captured five men suspected of firing those rockets, Capt. Jason Beck said Friday.
U.S. forces had increased security in the capital following threats of attacks over Christmas, but the strikes showed how easily small bands of rebels operate under cover of night in the city center, and then slip away.
At the same time, the furtive, hit-and-run operations inflicted far less damage than attacks by suicide bombers in recent months that killed dozens of people at embassies, police stations and the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.
Such targets are now more heavily defended. There are also fewer "soft" targets, with the United Nations withdrawing foreign staffers and many aid workers departing because of security concerns.
The 19-story Ishtar Sheraton Hotel was hit on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, the first time by a mortar shell, and then by a rocket-propelled grenade.
One grenade, apparently intended for the Sheraton, crashed through a bedroom wall in an apartment building across the street, detonating and inflicting shrapnel wounds on a woman and her 20-year-old daughter.
U.S. soldiers investigating the area found leaflets warning Iraqis to stay home, said Lt. Kurt Muniz of the U.S. Army. The leaflets warned U.S. forces to leave the country and Iraqi police to stop working with foreign occupiers.
The latest military deaths bring the toll to 323 U.S. troops killed in hostile action since the invasion in March.
1 hour, 8 minutes ago
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An American soldier died in a rebel ambush and two others were killed in bomb explosions Friday, one of the bloodiest days for the U.S. military since the Dec. 13 capture of Saddam Hussein.
Two of the deaths occurred in Baqouba, a center of guerrilla activity northeast of Baghdad in a Sunni Muslim area that served as a power base for Saddam, the former Iraqi dictator. U.S. forces, who have a base in the town, often conduct raids and arrest suspected insurgents.
One of the U.S. soldiers killed Friday was in a U.S. convoy that came under attack, said Capt. Jefferson Wolfe of the Army's 4th Infantry Division. Another soldier was injured, but troops fired back, killing two attackers, he said.
In a separate incident in the same area, a soldier tried to defuse a homemade bomb, but it blew up and killed him, Wolfe said. Such bombs are a favored weapon of rebels, who leave them on roadsides and detonate them as military convoys pass.
The guerrillas used that tactic Friday in Balad, north of Baghdad, setting off a bomb that killed one soldier, the U.S. military in the capital said.
Further north, three soldiers from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division were wounded in an ambush in Mosul when their convoy came under small arms fire, said Maj. Trey Cate, the division spokesman.
The soldiers, who were searching the city's streets for bombs, returned fire but did not catch their attackers, Cate said. Witnesses claimed a taxi driver was killed in the firefight, but the spokesman could not confirm the report.
On Thursday, Iraqi insurgents shelled an American base in Baqouba, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers, the military said.
Four other soldiers were wounded in the attack, Maj. Josslyn Aberle of the 4th Infantry Division said.
A total of 11 U.S. soldiers have died from hostile action since Monday.
Two soldiers from Poland, which has about 2,400 troops in Iraq (news - web sites), were wounded Thursday when assailants struck their convoy with a remote-controlled mine, Col. Zdzislaw Gnatowski told the Polish news agency PAP.
Also on Christmas Day, rocket and mortar attacks hit a hotel housing foreigners and targeted two banks, the Iranian and Turkish embassies and a U.S. Army base. The strikes had more symbolic than military impact; two civilians — a woman and her daughter sleeping in an apartment — were hurt, and damage was limited.
Late Thursday, several more explosions were heard in central Baghdad, and sirens sounded in the Green Zone, a barricaded area that houses the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition governing Iraq. A U.S. military spokesman said two rockets hit a car park near the headquarters, but there were no casualties.
Troops in an aircraft located the launch point and soldiers on the ground captured five men suspected of firing those rockets, Capt. Jason Beck said Friday.
U.S. forces had increased security in the capital following threats of attacks over Christmas, but the strikes showed how easily small bands of rebels operate under cover of night in the city center, and then slip away.
At the same time, the furtive, hit-and-run operations inflicted far less damage than attacks by suicide bombers in recent months that killed dozens of people at embassies, police stations and the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.
Such targets are now more heavily defended. There are also fewer "soft" targets, with the United Nations withdrawing foreign staffers and many aid workers departing because of security concerns.
The 19-story Ishtar Sheraton Hotel was hit on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, the first time by a mortar shell, and then by a rocket-propelled grenade.
One grenade, apparently intended for the Sheraton, crashed through a bedroom wall in an apartment building across the street, detonating and inflicting shrapnel wounds on a woman and her 20-year-old daughter.
U.S. soldiers investigating the area found leaflets warning Iraqis to stay home, said Lt. Kurt Muniz of the U.S. Army. The leaflets warned U.S. forces to leave the country and Iraqi police to stop working with foreign occupiers.
The latest military deaths bring the toll to 323 U.S. troops killed in hostile action since the invasion in March.
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/03/12/far03007.html
Whatever You Do, Don't Diss the King: When Bush-Backing Bullies Attack
by Maureen Farrell
"YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP," Andrew Sullivan announced, referring to Rep. Jim McDermott's most recent controversial comments. "Fresh from Howard Dean's raising of the question of whether President Bush had been tipped off in advance by the Saudis about 9/11 comes Democrat Jim McDermott, not exactly a stranger to conspiracy theories." Citing McDermott's observation that the U.S. could have found Saddam Hussein "a long time ago if they wanted," Sullivan criticized the Congressman for saying that the Bush administration knew Saddam's whereabouts and timed his capture for political gain.
"You begin to wonder if some Democrats have gone nuts -- politically as well as psychologically," Sullivan remarked.
Dear God, this is getting old, isn't it? While the "Democrats-as-traitors" smear has run its course (particularly since "Baghdad Jim" was vindicated in the end) "crazy conspiracy theorist" is the Bush-protecting, truth-deflecting insult du jour. But considering that three weeks ago, Illinois Congressman Ray LaHood issued his less-than-subtle hint that the U.S. was "this close" to nabbing Saddam and last summer's headlines repeatedly made similar claims, McDermott's musings aren't as far-fetched as Sullivan would have you believe.
For those keeping track, the progression went something like this:
In July, Australia's The World Today reported that "former Pentagon insiders say they think US authorities are close to catching Saddam Hussein in Iraq within weeks," while the BBC announced that "US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said on Monday that troops carrying out such raids in Iraq "were just hours behind Saddam Hussein."
On August 15, The Sydney Morning Herald published comments from senior US commander Col. James Hickey who said, "We're working on a lot of interesting information right now and have good reason to believe [Saddam] is still in this area.. . He's running out of space and he's running out of support. We're going to get him and it's going to be sooner rather than later..."
On Dec. 2, the following quotes by Republican Congressman Ray LaHood were published on Pantagraph.com:
"We're this close" [to catching Saddam Hussein] – LaHood
"Do you know something we don't?" – Pantagraph editorial board member
"Yes, I do." – LaHood
On Dec. 15, Rep. Jim McDermott told a Seattle radio station, "I don't know that it [Saddam's capture] was definitely planned on this weekend, but I know they've been in contact with people all along who knew basically where he was. It was just a matter of time till they'd find him."
Given this, does Sullivan really consider McDermott's comments "nuts"? Or is it that, once again, the official story doesn't quite mesh with what we've been told, and it's best to head off speculation?
Soon after Saddam's capture, several reports emerged, pointing to inaccuracies within the official U.S. account. The real story, one paper reported, "exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete." Though few were swayed by Saddam's sister's observation that her brother had been drugged, less than a week after his capture, a British newspaper stated that "Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him." [Agence France-Presse] Meanwhile, on Dec. 21, Bloomberg.com reported that "Hussein Was Held by Kurds Before U.S. Capture," [Bloomberg.com] and Scotland's Sunday Herald reported that the Kurdish media, which was first to disclose the news, claimed that "Saddam Hussein, the former President of the Iraqi regime, was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan." [Sunday Herald]
Now that contradictory information has begun to trickle in, it seems that the official version of the story, like far too many official versions before it, may not be entirely accurate. And considering that last May, Andrew Sullivan deemed the BBC's deconstruction of the original heavily-propagandized Jessica Lynch story a "smear" told by a "far-lefty" [Journalism.org], he'll have to excuse us for not trusting his insights this time around, either.
Then, too, retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner has openly stated that much of what we're reading about Saddam's capture isn't designed to inform us, but to fool others. "We are seeing an orchestrated media campaign by the administration and a psychological operation aimed at the insurgents in Iraq," he said. "As a former instructor at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College, I am familiar with the pattern of using the press to conduct psychological operations. . . The technique is straightforward: plant stories or persuade media outlets to slant the news in a way that debilitates your enemy. And so far, media reports on the intelligence significance of Saddam's capture have followed that pattern to the letter."
Citing "the terrible job" The Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor have done cutting through the spin, Gardiner wondered, "Why are so few real questions raised by reporters when they are confronted with the military's media and psychological operations campaign? Why aren't they helping us get to truth?" [MediaChannel.org]
Good question.
Last time Rep. McDermott was pilloried by pundits, you might recall, it was for telling the truth about Bush's lies. "The President of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war," he said, in the fall of 2002, right about the time George Bush was telling tall tales about Saddam being "six months away" from developing a nuclear weapon. [CommonDreams.org]
At the time, the Republican National Committee was outraged by McDermott's comments, [RNC.org] as were dittoheads nationwide. The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes [MSNBC] was appalled by McDermott's blasphemous assertion that the Bush administration "sometimes" issued "misinformation" and "would mislead the American people." Hayes also took umbrage to other sins, such as McDermott's charitable stance regarding weapons inspections; his refusal to "backpeddle" from the truth; and the Congressman's concerns over the Bush administration's ever-changing rationale for war. [WeeklyStandard.com]
It wasn't that long ago (May 7 to be exact) that former White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer told reporters, "One of the reasons we went to war was because of [Iraq's] possession of weapons of mass destruction. And nothing has changed on that front at all." Somehow, in the interim, that imminent threat morphed into a possible weapons program. "So what's the difference?" George Bush asked Diane Sawyer. [New York Times] Billions of dollars and thousands of lives later, we might ask, "So what was the hurry?"
As memories of White House denials and fabrications linger, a litmus test begins to emerge: the louder right-wing pundits howl about any given story, it seems, the nearer and dearer the truth.
At times, the media attack machine can be downright comical, however. Unsatisfied with merely taking swipes at Congressman McDermott (making certain to refer to him as "Baghdad Jim," of course), Newsmax also recently went after Madeleine Albright for "telling reporters that the Bush administration may already have captured Osama bin Laden and will release the news just before next year's presidential election." Yes, Virginia, the Bush administration's political maneuvers have become so over-the-top, that when our former Secretary of State says it's a "possibility" Karl Rove might be harboring Osama bin Laden, right-wingers believe she's serious and promptly step in to protect our appointed king. [Newsmax]
"It's nuts. It's staggering. It's paranoid," Bill Bennett protested and Albright felt compelled to explain. "Last night, in the makeup room at Fox News, I made a tongue-in-cheek comment to Mort Kondracke concerning Osama bin Laden," she said. "To my amazement, Mr. Kondracke immediately went on the air to repeat this comment, which was made to a person I thought was a friend and smart enough to know the difference between a serious statement and one that was not."
The million dollar question throughout all of this, of course, is where does the blame for this bizarre political climate lie? With McDermott and Albright or the Mayberry Machiavellis and the pundits who protect them?
Recent retaliatory attacks may provide the answer. While former psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer dismissed Howard Dean's announcement "that 'the most interesting' theory as to why the president is 'suppressing' the Sept. 11 report is that Bush knew about Sept. 11 in advance" by saying "it's time to check on thorazine supplies," Krauthammer's tact was made even more unethical by the misrepresentation of Dean's words. "But the trouble is, by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kind of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and eventually, they get repeated as fact," Dean continued. "So I think the president is taking a great risk by suppressing the key information that needs to go to the Kean Commission," he added, though Krauthammer failed to notice.
Dean could have spoken more judiciously, of course, but even so, Krauthammer's attack lost its oomph once Sept. 11 Commission chairman Gov. Thomas Kean admitted that the 911 attacks could have been prevented. And though CBS News reported that Kean "is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame," [CBS News] Kean soon softened his rhetoric before, as the Boston Globe pointed out, "the vaunted Bush attack machine," could call its media minions to arms. "One reason the attack machine didn't unload on Kean immediately last week," the Globe's Thomas Oliphant explained, "was that he quickly amended his comments. . . and gave the White House nothing defined to shoot at."
Nevertheless, Kean's initial statement was stunning enough to finally land Sept. 11 widow Kristen Breitweiser a guest spot on the Dec.18 edition of Hardball, where she expressed relief that at least one official was at long last saying that someone should be held accountable for 9/11 intelligence failures. When asked what she would do differently had she been president on Sept. 11, she alluded to the President's August 6, 2001 briefing that warned that Osama bin Laden was planning to hijack airplanes in the U.S., and replied:
BREITWEISER: Undoubtedly, I think that I would have told the public. I would have told people like my husband and the 3,000 others that worked in New York City and that decided to fly on planes that day that we were a nation under an imminent threat, that the airlines were a target.
And after the first building in New York City, then you know what?
People like my husband in the second building would have immediately fled. They would have immediately evacuated that second tower, because they wouldn't have thought it was an accident.
People like Donald Rumsfeld may not have sat at his desk for 45 minutes until the Pentagon was hit. People like the president wouldn't have sat there for 25 minutes in front of a group of children.
(CROSSTALK)
BREITWEISER: They would have acted more decisively. Lives would have been saved. I would have informed the public.
MATTHEWS: It sounds like the problem is at the top.
BREITWEISER: It does. [MSNBC]
Of course, while Dean is fair game, few pundits would dream of attacking Breitweiser and other Sept. 11 victims' family members for making such assertions or raising questions. Wondering about everything from how the FBI immediately knew exactly which flight schools to search and which A.T.M. videotape would reap Mohammed Atta's mugshot to why NORAD failed to promptly react, Breitweiser and three other Sept. 11 widows were featured in the August 25 edition of the New York Observer. "When you pull it [NORAD's 9/11 timeline] apart, it just doesn't reconcile with the official storyline," Lorie van Auken said. ". . .There's no way this could be. Somebody is not telling us the whole story." [911Truth.org]
Lest anyone believe that these widows and Gov. Kean also need thorazine, the Daily Misleader reminds us that although Bush denies any foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, once upon a time, the White House conceded otherwise. [Misleader.org]. And as the Boston Globe's Thomas Oliphant announced, "The problem is not Tom Kean's assertion that the terrorist attack on the United States two years ago was preventable, it is President Bush's repeated assurance that it was not." [Boston Globe]
"[T]he White House [has] decided to lead a fresh burst of weird propaganda on a nearly two-year-old theme about unconnected dots and intelligence chatter, designed to create the impression that the attacks were literally bolts from the blue instead of evidence that the government had been caught napping," Oliphant continued, reminding us that warnings of a "spectacular attack" [BuzzFlash.com] are not just figments of our collective imaginations.
Else you're beginning to believe the spin, however, this brief retrospective should shock you out of it:
"There were lots of warnings." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (Parade Magazine interview, Defense Department Website, Oct 12, 2001)
"As each day goes by we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before September 11th than it has ever admitted." -- Former Senator and 911 commissioner Max Cleland ("9/11 Commission Could Subpoena Oval Office Files," The New York Times, Oct. 26, 2003)
"I don't believe any longer that it's a matter of connecting the dots. I think they had a veritable blueprint, and we want to know why they didn't act on it." -- Senator Arlen Specter ("FBI, CIA Brass in a Sling," New York Daily News, June 6, 2002).
"They don't have any excuse because the information was in their lap, and they didn't do anything to prevent it." -- Senator Richard Shelby, member of the joint intelligence committee investigating 9/11 ("Another Dot That Didn't Get Connected," San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2002).
"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done. This was not something that had to happen." -- 911 head Thomas Kean, ("9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable," CBS News, Dec. 18, 2003)
"[T]he least understandable argument of all is the line first used by Rice in May of 2002, that no one could have foreseen that terrorists would hijack airplanes and crash-fly them into buildings. It is especially odd coming from the coordination person in the White House. . . It is also odd coming from the official who had an administration plan for actions against Al Qaeda on her desk on the day of the attacks." -- Thomas Oliphant ("Prejudging the 9/11 report," the Boston Globe, Dec. 21, 2002)
"US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. . . . It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with airplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House." -- former British environment minister Michael Meacher, ("This War on Terrorism is Bogus," The Guardian, Sept. 6, 2003)
"If you were to tell me that two years after the murder of my husband that we wouldn't have one question answered, I wouldn't believe it." -- Kristen Breitweiser ("911 Chair: Attack Was Preventable," CBS News, Dec.18, 2003)
"We spent $100 million on Whitewater. Only $3 million has been spent on investigating September 11! It's not about 'getting Bush' -- I'm no fan of Bill Clinton either! In a democracy it's always about us -- and what we're willing to let people get away with." -- David Potorti, author of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, ("Building a War Machine on the Back of Victims," Pulse of the Twin Cities, Dec. 10, 2003)
"Delusions" regarding 9/11 aside, there are countless examples of what happens when anyone questions the official story, as well as what citizens are "willing to let people get away with." So much so, it seems, that when George W. Bush advised that we should "never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th," many pundits seemed to think that meant we shouldn't tolerate any diversion from the official script -- and should attack anyone else who dares question anything.
Even so, speculating that "Bush knew" about Sept. 11 or Saddam's whereabouts or the real reason we went to war in Iraq (or anything else right-wingers deem "off limits") is akin to wearing a huge "kick me" sign amidst a gaggle of Bush-backing bullies. And as Sept. 11 families spokesman David Potorti pointed out, this is not about "getting Bush" or even a matter of Democrats versus Republicans, but about uncovering truth and preserving democracy.
Considering the ferocity of pundits' attacks, however, truth and democracy are precious commodities. Blessed be those who try to protect both.
Whatever You Do, Don't Diss the King: When Bush-Backing Bullies Attack
by Maureen Farrell
"YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP," Andrew Sullivan announced, referring to Rep. Jim McDermott's most recent controversial comments. "Fresh from Howard Dean's raising of the question of whether President Bush had been tipped off in advance by the Saudis about 9/11 comes Democrat Jim McDermott, not exactly a stranger to conspiracy theories." Citing McDermott's observation that the U.S. could have found Saddam Hussein "a long time ago if they wanted," Sullivan criticized the Congressman for saying that the Bush administration knew Saddam's whereabouts and timed his capture for political gain.
"You begin to wonder if some Democrats have gone nuts -- politically as well as psychologically," Sullivan remarked.
Dear God, this is getting old, isn't it? While the "Democrats-as-traitors" smear has run its course (particularly since "Baghdad Jim" was vindicated in the end) "crazy conspiracy theorist" is the Bush-protecting, truth-deflecting insult du jour. But considering that three weeks ago, Illinois Congressman Ray LaHood issued his less-than-subtle hint that the U.S. was "this close" to nabbing Saddam and last summer's headlines repeatedly made similar claims, McDermott's musings aren't as far-fetched as Sullivan would have you believe.
For those keeping track, the progression went something like this:
In July, Australia's The World Today reported that "former Pentagon insiders say they think US authorities are close to catching Saddam Hussein in Iraq within weeks," while the BBC announced that "US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said on Monday that troops carrying out such raids in Iraq "were just hours behind Saddam Hussein."
On August 15, The Sydney Morning Herald published comments from senior US commander Col. James Hickey who said, "We're working on a lot of interesting information right now and have good reason to believe [Saddam] is still in this area.. . He's running out of space and he's running out of support. We're going to get him and it's going to be sooner rather than later..."
On Dec. 2, the following quotes by Republican Congressman Ray LaHood were published on Pantagraph.com:
"We're this close" [to catching Saddam Hussein] – LaHood
"Do you know something we don't?" – Pantagraph editorial board member
"Yes, I do." – LaHood
On Dec. 15, Rep. Jim McDermott told a Seattle radio station, "I don't know that it [Saddam's capture] was definitely planned on this weekend, but I know they've been in contact with people all along who knew basically where he was. It was just a matter of time till they'd find him."
Given this, does Sullivan really consider McDermott's comments "nuts"? Or is it that, once again, the official story doesn't quite mesh with what we've been told, and it's best to head off speculation?
Soon after Saddam's capture, several reports emerged, pointing to inaccuracies within the official U.S. account. The real story, one paper reported, "exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete." Though few were swayed by Saddam's sister's observation that her brother had been drugged, less than a week after his capture, a British newspaper stated that "Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him." [Agence France-Presse] Meanwhile, on Dec. 21, Bloomberg.com reported that "Hussein Was Held by Kurds Before U.S. Capture," [Bloomberg.com] and Scotland's Sunday Herald reported that the Kurdish media, which was first to disclose the news, claimed that "Saddam Hussein, the former President of the Iraqi regime, was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan." [Sunday Herald]
Now that contradictory information has begun to trickle in, it seems that the official version of the story, like far too many official versions before it, may not be entirely accurate. And considering that last May, Andrew Sullivan deemed the BBC's deconstruction of the original heavily-propagandized Jessica Lynch story a "smear" told by a "far-lefty" [Journalism.org], he'll have to excuse us for not trusting his insights this time around, either.
Then, too, retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner has openly stated that much of what we're reading about Saddam's capture isn't designed to inform us, but to fool others. "We are seeing an orchestrated media campaign by the administration and a psychological operation aimed at the insurgents in Iraq," he said. "As a former instructor at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College, I am familiar with the pattern of using the press to conduct psychological operations. . . The technique is straightforward: plant stories or persuade media outlets to slant the news in a way that debilitates your enemy. And so far, media reports on the intelligence significance of Saddam's capture have followed that pattern to the letter."
Citing "the terrible job" The Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor have done cutting through the spin, Gardiner wondered, "Why are so few real questions raised by reporters when they are confronted with the military's media and psychological operations campaign? Why aren't they helping us get to truth?" [MediaChannel.org]
Good question.
Last time Rep. McDermott was pilloried by pundits, you might recall, it was for telling the truth about Bush's lies. "The President of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war," he said, in the fall of 2002, right about the time George Bush was telling tall tales about Saddam being "six months away" from developing a nuclear weapon. [CommonDreams.org]
At the time, the Republican National Committee was outraged by McDermott's comments, [RNC.org] as were dittoheads nationwide. The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes [MSNBC] was appalled by McDermott's blasphemous assertion that the Bush administration "sometimes" issued "misinformation" and "would mislead the American people." Hayes also took umbrage to other sins, such as McDermott's charitable stance regarding weapons inspections; his refusal to "backpeddle" from the truth; and the Congressman's concerns over the Bush administration's ever-changing rationale for war. [WeeklyStandard.com]
It wasn't that long ago (May 7 to be exact) that former White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer told reporters, "One of the reasons we went to war was because of [Iraq's] possession of weapons of mass destruction. And nothing has changed on that front at all." Somehow, in the interim, that imminent threat morphed into a possible weapons program. "So what's the difference?" George Bush asked Diane Sawyer. [New York Times] Billions of dollars and thousands of lives later, we might ask, "So what was the hurry?"
As memories of White House denials and fabrications linger, a litmus test begins to emerge: the louder right-wing pundits howl about any given story, it seems, the nearer and dearer the truth.
At times, the media attack machine can be downright comical, however. Unsatisfied with merely taking swipes at Congressman McDermott (making certain to refer to him as "Baghdad Jim," of course), Newsmax also recently went after Madeleine Albright for "telling reporters that the Bush administration may already have captured Osama bin Laden and will release the news just before next year's presidential election." Yes, Virginia, the Bush administration's political maneuvers have become so over-the-top, that when our former Secretary of State says it's a "possibility" Karl Rove might be harboring Osama bin Laden, right-wingers believe she's serious and promptly step in to protect our appointed king. [Newsmax]
"It's nuts. It's staggering. It's paranoid," Bill Bennett protested and Albright felt compelled to explain. "Last night, in the makeup room at Fox News, I made a tongue-in-cheek comment to Mort Kondracke concerning Osama bin Laden," she said. "To my amazement, Mr. Kondracke immediately went on the air to repeat this comment, which was made to a person I thought was a friend and smart enough to know the difference between a serious statement and one that was not."
The million dollar question throughout all of this, of course, is where does the blame for this bizarre political climate lie? With McDermott and Albright or the Mayberry Machiavellis and the pundits who protect them?
Recent retaliatory attacks may provide the answer. While former psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer dismissed Howard Dean's announcement "that 'the most interesting' theory as to why the president is 'suppressing' the Sept. 11 report is that Bush knew about Sept. 11 in advance" by saying "it's time to check on thorazine supplies," Krauthammer's tact was made even more unethical by the misrepresentation of Dean's words. "But the trouble is, by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kind of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and eventually, they get repeated as fact," Dean continued. "So I think the president is taking a great risk by suppressing the key information that needs to go to the Kean Commission," he added, though Krauthammer failed to notice.
Dean could have spoken more judiciously, of course, but even so, Krauthammer's attack lost its oomph once Sept. 11 Commission chairman Gov. Thomas Kean admitted that the 911 attacks could have been prevented. And though CBS News reported that Kean "is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame," [CBS News] Kean soon softened his rhetoric before, as the Boston Globe pointed out, "the vaunted Bush attack machine," could call its media minions to arms. "One reason the attack machine didn't unload on Kean immediately last week," the Globe's Thomas Oliphant explained, "was that he quickly amended his comments. . . and gave the White House nothing defined to shoot at."
Nevertheless, Kean's initial statement was stunning enough to finally land Sept. 11 widow Kristen Breitweiser a guest spot on the Dec.18 edition of Hardball, where she expressed relief that at least one official was at long last saying that someone should be held accountable for 9/11 intelligence failures. When asked what she would do differently had she been president on Sept. 11, she alluded to the President's August 6, 2001 briefing that warned that Osama bin Laden was planning to hijack airplanes in the U.S., and replied:
BREITWEISER: Undoubtedly, I think that I would have told the public. I would have told people like my husband and the 3,000 others that worked in New York City and that decided to fly on planes that day that we were a nation under an imminent threat, that the airlines were a target.
And after the first building in New York City, then you know what?
People like my husband in the second building would have immediately fled. They would have immediately evacuated that second tower, because they wouldn't have thought it was an accident.
People like Donald Rumsfeld may not have sat at his desk for 45 minutes until the Pentagon was hit. People like the president wouldn't have sat there for 25 minutes in front of a group of children.
(CROSSTALK)
BREITWEISER: They would have acted more decisively. Lives would have been saved. I would have informed the public.
MATTHEWS: It sounds like the problem is at the top.
BREITWEISER: It does. [MSNBC]
Of course, while Dean is fair game, few pundits would dream of attacking Breitweiser and other Sept. 11 victims' family members for making such assertions or raising questions. Wondering about everything from how the FBI immediately knew exactly which flight schools to search and which A.T.M. videotape would reap Mohammed Atta's mugshot to why NORAD failed to promptly react, Breitweiser and three other Sept. 11 widows were featured in the August 25 edition of the New York Observer. "When you pull it [NORAD's 9/11 timeline] apart, it just doesn't reconcile with the official storyline," Lorie van Auken said. ". . .There's no way this could be. Somebody is not telling us the whole story." [911Truth.org]
Lest anyone believe that these widows and Gov. Kean also need thorazine, the Daily Misleader reminds us that although Bush denies any foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, once upon a time, the White House conceded otherwise. [Misleader.org]. And as the Boston Globe's Thomas Oliphant announced, "The problem is not Tom Kean's assertion that the terrorist attack on the United States two years ago was preventable, it is President Bush's repeated assurance that it was not." [Boston Globe]
"[T]he White House [has] decided to lead a fresh burst of weird propaganda on a nearly two-year-old theme about unconnected dots and intelligence chatter, designed to create the impression that the attacks were literally bolts from the blue instead of evidence that the government had been caught napping," Oliphant continued, reminding us that warnings of a "spectacular attack" [BuzzFlash.com] are not just figments of our collective imaginations.
Else you're beginning to believe the spin, however, this brief retrospective should shock you out of it:
"There were lots of warnings." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (Parade Magazine interview, Defense Department Website, Oct 12, 2001)
"As each day goes by we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before September 11th than it has ever admitted." -- Former Senator and 911 commissioner Max Cleland ("9/11 Commission Could Subpoena Oval Office Files," The New York Times, Oct. 26, 2003)
"I don't believe any longer that it's a matter of connecting the dots. I think they had a veritable blueprint, and we want to know why they didn't act on it." -- Senator Arlen Specter ("FBI, CIA Brass in a Sling," New York Daily News, June 6, 2002).
"They don't have any excuse because the information was in their lap, and they didn't do anything to prevent it." -- Senator Richard Shelby, member of the joint intelligence committee investigating 9/11 ("Another Dot That Didn't Get Connected," San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2002).
"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done. This was not something that had to happen." -- 911 head Thomas Kean, ("9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable," CBS News, Dec. 18, 2003)
"[T]he least understandable argument of all is the line first used by Rice in May of 2002, that no one could have foreseen that terrorists would hijack airplanes and crash-fly them into buildings. It is especially odd coming from the coordination person in the White House. . . It is also odd coming from the official who had an administration plan for actions against Al Qaeda on her desk on the day of the attacks." -- Thomas Oliphant ("Prejudging the 9/11 report," the Boston Globe, Dec. 21, 2002)
"US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. . . . It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with airplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House." -- former British environment minister Michael Meacher, ("This War on Terrorism is Bogus," The Guardian, Sept. 6, 2003)
"If you were to tell me that two years after the murder of my husband that we wouldn't have one question answered, I wouldn't believe it." -- Kristen Breitweiser ("911 Chair: Attack Was Preventable," CBS News, Dec.18, 2003)
"We spent $100 million on Whitewater. Only $3 million has been spent on investigating September 11! It's not about 'getting Bush' -- I'm no fan of Bill Clinton either! In a democracy it's always about us -- and what we're willing to let people get away with." -- David Potorti, author of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, ("Building a War Machine on the Back of Victims," Pulse of the Twin Cities, Dec. 10, 2003)
"Delusions" regarding 9/11 aside, there are countless examples of what happens when anyone questions the official story, as well as what citizens are "willing to let people get away with." So much so, it seems, that when George W. Bush advised that we should "never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th," many pundits seemed to think that meant we shouldn't tolerate any diversion from the official script -- and should attack anyone else who dares question anything.
Even so, speculating that "Bush knew" about Sept. 11 or Saddam's whereabouts or the real reason we went to war in Iraq (or anything else right-wingers deem "off limits") is akin to wearing a huge "kick me" sign amidst a gaggle of Bush-backing bullies. And as Sept. 11 families spokesman David Potorti pointed out, this is not about "getting Bush" or even a matter of Democrats versus Republicans, but about uncovering truth and preserving democracy.
Considering the ferocity of pundits' attacks, however, truth and democracy are precious commodities. Blessed be those who try to protect both.
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Security Increased Amid Heightened Alert
By BRAD FOSS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - In ways big and small, obvious and opaque, already tight security has been fortified at transportation and energy facilities nationwide in response to government warnings that al-Qaida could attack this holiday season.
Bomb-sniffing canine units were added at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, maritime patrols were augmented near power plants that border Lake Erie, and more officers than usual were activated along the U.S.-Canadian border.
U.S. officials said Tuesday they also have received information from a credible source about an al-Qaida threat against oil interests in Alaska, which they have not fully corroborated. Still, officials were treating the information seriously and have taken extra security precautions.
Similar defenses have been increased around key bridges, tunnels, seaports and landmarks, as well as chemical facilities and other places that may be vulnerable to attack. Other layers of protection likely have been in place since Sunday, when the national security level was bumped up to orange, which is "high" alert, from yellow, or "elevated," security experts said.
Similar defenses have been increased around key bridges, tunnels, seaports and landmarks, as well as chemical facilities and other places that may be vulnerable to attack. Other layers of protection likely have been in place since Sunday, when the national security level was bumped up to orange, which is "high" alert, from yellow, or "elevated," security experts said.
"There's going to be a menu of visible and invisible measures that are implemented," said Brian Jenkins, research associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University and a special adviser to the Rand Corp., a California-based think tank.
Among the covert steps likely taken, Jenkins said, are an increase in the number of air marshals, particularly on flights arriving from overseas, undercover surveillance around airports and more frequent air patrols near major cities.
There are some concerns about missiles being fired at planes taking off or landing, Jenkins said.
President Bush said the government was doing its best to protect the country and advised citizens "to go about their lives."
"But as they do so, they need to know that governments at all levels are working as hard as we possibly can to protect the American citizens," Bush said in a statement.
The fact that it's the holiday season partly drove the decision to raise the alert. During this time of year, many people are distracted and traveling, and several gather at events like football games and New Year's celebrations.
However, authorities also said the move was based on specific, corroborated intelligence that al-Qaida may soon try to pull off an attack in multiple places to cause mass casualties.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said such an attack could eclipse that of Sept. 11, 2001, which left nearly 3,000 people dead.
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that they did not have any specifics about a potential method, location or time of any attack. They noted that in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, aviation could be a prime possibility.
"We know, tragically, they turned four airplanes into missiles," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told reporters after a meeting of President Bush's Homeland Security Council.
Defense Department officials said they were launching more military air patrols over major cities, but they would provide no details. Other government sources said, however, that New York, Washington and Los Angeles were likely choices.
The Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency charged with protecting air travelers, would not discuss its planning at a detailed level, other than to confirm that vehicle inspections and parking restrictions have increased at airports and that Coast Guard patrols have been added near airports bordering oceans and lakes.
"We're putting all hands on deck," TSA spokesman Darrin Kayser said, adding that parking restrictions may require travelers to park a little farther away than they might normally.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the owners of more than 100 reactors in 31 states, said the power industry is coordinating with law enforcement and intelligence agencies and has 7,000 of its own patrolmen at the ready.
"Really, it's a paramilitary security force," said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the group.
In addition, cargo planes and flights originating overseas were of special concern in the latest warning.
To defend against another airborne attack, baggage and passenger screeners are working overtime at airports, and their managers have come out from behind the scenes to work the front lines, the TSA said.
The TSA also reminded travelers that it needs help, broadcasting messages over loudspeakers at airports and train stations that urge Americans to report any suspicious activity or unattended luggage.
The Coast Guard, meanwhile, cautioned boaters to avoid off-limits areas near power plants and to keep their eyes peeled for suspicious activity.
Amtrak said police officers are randomly riding and inspecting trains and that patrols have been beefed up inside stations and along platforms. Some baggage is also being checked, a spokesman said.
The Air Transport Association, which represents the country's major airlines, has urged travelers to arrive two hours before domestic or international flights and to check all bags in order to expedite the screening process.
Although commercial flight procedures have not changed as a result of the raised terror-threat level, the Federal Aviation Administration has imposed stricter rules for private pilots flying in and out of airports near the nation's capital.
___
Associated Press writers Curt Anderson and Jonathan D. Salant in Washington contributed to this report
By BRAD FOSS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - In ways big and small, obvious and opaque, already tight security has been fortified at transportation and energy facilities nationwide in response to government warnings that al-Qaida could attack this holiday season.
Bomb-sniffing canine units were added at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, maritime patrols were augmented near power plants that border Lake Erie, and more officers than usual were activated along the U.S.-Canadian border.
U.S. officials said Tuesday they also have received information from a credible source about an al-Qaida threat against oil interests in Alaska, which they have not fully corroborated. Still, officials were treating the information seriously and have taken extra security precautions.
Similar defenses have been increased around key bridges, tunnels, seaports and landmarks, as well as chemical facilities and other places that may be vulnerable to attack. Other layers of protection likely have been in place since Sunday, when the national security level was bumped up to orange, which is "high" alert, from yellow, or "elevated," security experts said.
Similar defenses have been increased around key bridges, tunnels, seaports and landmarks, as well as chemical facilities and other places that may be vulnerable to attack. Other layers of protection likely have been in place since Sunday, when the national security level was bumped up to orange, which is "high" alert, from yellow, or "elevated," security experts said.
"There's going to be a menu of visible and invisible measures that are implemented," said Brian Jenkins, research associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University and a special adviser to the Rand Corp., a California-based think tank.
Among the covert steps likely taken, Jenkins said, are an increase in the number of air marshals, particularly on flights arriving from overseas, undercover surveillance around airports and more frequent air patrols near major cities.
There are some concerns about missiles being fired at planes taking off or landing, Jenkins said.
President Bush said the government was doing its best to protect the country and advised citizens "to go about their lives."
"But as they do so, they need to know that governments at all levels are working as hard as we possibly can to protect the American citizens," Bush said in a statement.
The fact that it's the holiday season partly drove the decision to raise the alert. During this time of year, many people are distracted and traveling, and several gather at events like football games and New Year's celebrations.
However, authorities also said the move was based on specific, corroborated intelligence that al-Qaida may soon try to pull off an attack in multiple places to cause mass casualties.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said such an attack could eclipse that of Sept. 11, 2001, which left nearly 3,000 people dead.
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that they did not have any specifics about a potential method, location or time of any attack. They noted that in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, aviation could be a prime possibility.
"We know, tragically, they turned four airplanes into missiles," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told reporters after a meeting of President Bush's Homeland Security Council.
Defense Department officials said they were launching more military air patrols over major cities, but they would provide no details. Other government sources said, however, that New York, Washington and Los Angeles were likely choices.
The Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency charged with protecting air travelers, would not discuss its planning at a detailed level, other than to confirm that vehicle inspections and parking restrictions have increased at airports and that Coast Guard patrols have been added near airports bordering oceans and lakes.
"We're putting all hands on deck," TSA spokesman Darrin Kayser said, adding that parking restrictions may require travelers to park a little farther away than they might normally.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the owners of more than 100 reactors in 31 states, said the power industry is coordinating with law enforcement and intelligence agencies and has 7,000 of its own patrolmen at the ready.
"Really, it's a paramilitary security force," said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the group.
In addition, cargo planes and flights originating overseas were of special concern in the latest warning.
To defend against another airborne attack, baggage and passenger screeners are working overtime at airports, and their managers have come out from behind the scenes to work the front lines, the TSA said.
The TSA also reminded travelers that it needs help, broadcasting messages over loudspeakers at airports and train stations that urge Americans to report any suspicious activity or unattended luggage.
The Coast Guard, meanwhile, cautioned boaters to avoid off-limits areas near power plants and to keep their eyes peeled for suspicious activity.
Amtrak said police officers are randomly riding and inspecting trains and that patrols have been beefed up inside stations and along platforms. Some baggage is also being checked, a spokesman said.
The Air Transport Association, which represents the country's major airlines, has urged travelers to arrive two hours before domestic or international flights and to check all bags in order to expedite the screening process.
Although commercial flight procedures have not changed as a result of the raised terror-threat level, the Federal Aviation Administration has imposed stricter rules for private pilots flying in and out of airports near the nation's capital.
___
Associated Press writers Curt Anderson and Jonathan D. Salant in Washington contributed to this report
Monday, December 22, 2003
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/24/iraq/main541815.shtml
Raids In Iraq Nab Fighters
Dec. 22, 2003
(CBS/AP) Acting on intelligence gleaned from the capture of Saddam Hussein, U.S. troops pursued dozens of suspected rebels in a third day of pre-dawn raids Monday in strongholds of the deposed president, officials said. A third Iraqi died overnight in a raid.
Meanwhile, in Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military convoy, killing two American soldiers and an Iraqi translator, the military said. Two other soldiers from the 1st Armored Division were wounded.
One of those detained in the U.S. raids. is a former Iraqi general suspected of recruiting ex-soldiers to attack American forces, the military said. Ex-army Gen. Mumtaz al-Taji was found Sunday night in a house in Baqouba, about 30 miles north of Baghdad.
In Samarra, a 70-year-old man died when U.S. troops put a bag over his head and prepared to detain him. Neighbors said Mehdi al-Jamal died of fright, apparently a heart attack.
He was the third Iraqi to die since the U.S. military Friday night intensified the hunt for rebels that began in earnest in the days after Saddam's Dec. 13 capture. A 60-year-old woman was killed Sunday when soldiers blasted open the reinforced steel door of their home. Another Iraqi was killed during an airborne raid in Jalulah.
In other developments:
As the United States went to high terror alert, so did troops in Iraq, reports The New York Times. The military is on the lookout for possible attacks timed for around the Christmas holiday.
Thousands of Kurds protested in Kirkuk to demand the important oil-rich city be made part of an autonomous territory for Kurds, a Sunni Muslim minority who comprise about 20 percent of the population of 25 million. Several minorities have claims on Kirkuk, which Saddam kept out of the autonomous Kurd province because of its oil wealth.
Iraq's higher education minister reported the U.S. military detained three scientists from the University of Technology in Baghdad for questioning about their role in "military industrialization programs," a reference to weapons of mass destruction. The scientists were still in custody.
When it comes to the recent U.S. campaign for debt relief for Iraq, top creditor Japan is keeping its hands on its wallet so far. While war critics France, Germany and Russia have voiced support for reducing Iraq's crushing debt burden, Japan — owed $4.54 billion — has been quiet on whether it's willing to join the effort.
Over the weekend, rebels firing rocket-propelled grenades hit gas storage tanks in southern Baghdad and a pipeline feeding gas to the capital, creating fires that burned millions of gallons of gasoline, said Assem Jihad, a spokesman for the Oil Ministry.
Iraq's oil resources are crucial to rebuilding its infrastructure, but years of deterioration under sanctions and acts of sabotage since the war have hampered production. That has led to the ironic site of long gas lines atop the second largest deposit of petroleum in the world.
Authorities put out flyers in Baghdad threatening to try and jail black marketers contributing to a fuel crisis: "The black market is an illegal way of selling and distributing fuel … those caught shall be liable to punishment."
The flyers cited new laws providing for confiscation of the goods, fines of double the value of the goods and jail sentences of three to 10 years.
U.S. troops patrolling in tanks, Humvees and Bradley armored vehicles imposed curfews and roadblocks and went house to house, smashing through doors to surprise residents in a search for guerrillas and weapons to stem attacks on members of the U.S.-led military occupation and Iraqis working for the coalition.
Towns targeted are Fallujah, the town west of Baghdad where the resistance began; Samarra, 75 miles north of Baghdad; Jalulah northwest of the capital and Rawah, near the western border with Syria, where troops dubbed the raids "Operation Santa Claws."
Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said hundreds of suspects have been rounded up and tied the detentions to Saddam's capture.
"Some of the information we gleaned when we picked up Saddam Hussein led to a better understanding of the structure of the resistance," he told the Fox News TV program on Sunday.
Saddam was arrested Dec. 13 near his hometown of Tikrit, and the U.S. military has said soldiers also seized a briefcase containing documents that shed light on the anti-U.S. insurgency. The CIA is interrogating him in Iraq; Iraqi officials say the former dictator is in the Baghdad area.
"The only word I have is that he's not being cooperative," Myers said.
The U.S. military said it was searching for "terrorists," senior members of Saddam's Baath party and "people who finance, supply and organize resistance to the coalition," according to Lt. Col. Henry Kievenaar, who was directing the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Rawah.
©MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Raids In Iraq Nab Fighters
Dec. 22, 2003
(CBS/AP) Acting on intelligence gleaned from the capture of Saddam Hussein, U.S. troops pursued dozens of suspected rebels in a third day of pre-dawn raids Monday in strongholds of the deposed president, officials said. A third Iraqi died overnight in a raid.
Meanwhile, in Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military convoy, killing two American soldiers and an Iraqi translator, the military said. Two other soldiers from the 1st Armored Division were wounded.
One of those detained in the U.S. raids. is a former Iraqi general suspected of recruiting ex-soldiers to attack American forces, the military said. Ex-army Gen. Mumtaz al-Taji was found Sunday night in a house in Baqouba, about 30 miles north of Baghdad.
In Samarra, a 70-year-old man died when U.S. troops put a bag over his head and prepared to detain him. Neighbors said Mehdi al-Jamal died of fright, apparently a heart attack.
He was the third Iraqi to die since the U.S. military Friday night intensified the hunt for rebels that began in earnest in the days after Saddam's Dec. 13 capture. A 60-year-old woman was killed Sunday when soldiers blasted open the reinforced steel door of their home. Another Iraqi was killed during an airborne raid in Jalulah.
In other developments:
As the United States went to high terror alert, so did troops in Iraq, reports The New York Times. The military is on the lookout for possible attacks timed for around the Christmas holiday.
Thousands of Kurds protested in Kirkuk to demand the important oil-rich city be made part of an autonomous territory for Kurds, a Sunni Muslim minority who comprise about 20 percent of the population of 25 million. Several minorities have claims on Kirkuk, which Saddam kept out of the autonomous Kurd province because of its oil wealth.
Iraq's higher education minister reported the U.S. military detained three scientists from the University of Technology in Baghdad for questioning about their role in "military industrialization programs," a reference to weapons of mass destruction. The scientists were still in custody.
When it comes to the recent U.S. campaign for debt relief for Iraq, top creditor Japan is keeping its hands on its wallet so far. While war critics France, Germany and Russia have voiced support for reducing Iraq's crushing debt burden, Japan — owed $4.54 billion — has been quiet on whether it's willing to join the effort.
Over the weekend, rebels firing rocket-propelled grenades hit gas storage tanks in southern Baghdad and a pipeline feeding gas to the capital, creating fires that burned millions of gallons of gasoline, said Assem Jihad, a spokesman for the Oil Ministry.
Iraq's oil resources are crucial to rebuilding its infrastructure, but years of deterioration under sanctions and acts of sabotage since the war have hampered production. That has led to the ironic site of long gas lines atop the second largest deposit of petroleum in the world.
Authorities put out flyers in Baghdad threatening to try and jail black marketers contributing to a fuel crisis: "The black market is an illegal way of selling and distributing fuel … those caught shall be liable to punishment."
The flyers cited new laws providing for confiscation of the goods, fines of double the value of the goods and jail sentences of three to 10 years.
U.S. troops patrolling in tanks, Humvees and Bradley armored vehicles imposed curfews and roadblocks and went house to house, smashing through doors to surprise residents in a search for guerrillas and weapons to stem attacks on members of the U.S.-led military occupation and Iraqis working for the coalition.
Towns targeted are Fallujah, the town west of Baghdad where the resistance began; Samarra, 75 miles north of Baghdad; Jalulah northwest of the capital and Rawah, near the western border with Syria, where troops dubbed the raids "Operation Santa Claws."
Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said hundreds of suspects have been rounded up and tied the detentions to Saddam's capture.
"Some of the information we gleaned when we picked up Saddam Hussein led to a better understanding of the structure of the resistance," he told the Fox News TV program on Sunday.
Saddam was arrested Dec. 13 near his hometown of Tikrit, and the U.S. military has said soldiers also seized a briefcase containing documents that shed light on the anti-U.S. insurgency. The CIA is interrogating him in Iraq; Iraqi officials say the former dictator is in the Baghdad area.
"The only word I have is that he's not being cooperative," Myers said.
The U.S. military said it was searching for "terrorists," senior members of Saddam's Baath party and "people who finance, supply and organize resistance to the coalition," according to Lt. Col. Henry Kievenaar, who was directing the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Rawah.
©MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sunday, December 21, 2003
This is just too cute:
Wrapping Presents With A Cat
1. Clear large space on table for wrapping present.
2. Go to wardrobe and collect bag in which present is contained, and close door.
3. Open door and remove cat from wardrobe.
4. Go to cupboard and retrieve rolls of wrapping paper.
5. Go back and remove cat from cupboard.
6. Go to drawer and collect transparent sticky tape, ribbons, scissors, labels, etc.
7. Lay out present and wrapping materials on table, to enable wrapping strategy to be formed.
8. Go back to drawer to get string, remove cat that has been in the drawer since last visit, and collect string.
9. Remove present from bag.
10. Remove cat from bag.
11. Open box to check present, remove cat from box, replace present.
12. Lay out paper to enable cutting to size.
13. Cut the paper to size, trying to keep the cutting line straight.
14. Throw away first sheet because cat tried to chase the scissors and tore paper.
15. Cut second sheet of paper to size by putting cat in the bag the present came out of.
16. Place present on cut-to-size paper.
17. Lift up edges of paper to seal in present, wonder why edges now don't reach, and find cat between present and paper. Remove cat and retry.
18. Place object on paper, to hold in place, while cutting transparent sticky tape.
19. Spend next 20 minutes carefully trying to remove transparent sticky tape from cat with pair of nail scissors.
20. Seal paper down with transparent sticky tape, making corners as neat as possible.
21. Look for roll of ribbon; chase cat down hall and retrieve ribbon.
22. Try to wrap present with ribbon in a two-directional turn.
23. Re-roll up ribbon and remove paper that is now torn, due to cat's enthusiasm in chasing ribbon end.
24. Repeat steps 12-22 until down to last sheet of paper.
25. Decide to skip steps 12-16 in order to save time and reduce risk of losing last sheet of paper. Retrieve old cardboard box that you know is right size for sheet of paper.
26. Put present in box, and tie down with string.
27. Remove string, open box and remove cat.
28. Put all packing materials in bag with present and head for lockable room.
29. Once inside room, lock door and start to re-lay out packing materials.
30. Remove cat from box, unlock door, put cat outside door, close door and re-lock.
31. Lay out last sheet of paper. (Admittedly this is difficult in the small area of the toilet, but try your best!)
32. Seal box, wrap with paper and start repairs by very carefully sealing down tears with transparent sticky tape. Now tie up with ribbon and decorate with bows to hide worst affected areas.
33. Label, then sit back and admire your handiwork, congratulating yourself on making good of a bad job.
34. Unlock door, and go to kitchen to make drink and feed cat.
35. Spend next 15 minutes looking for cat, before coming to obvious conclusion.
36. Unwrap present, untie box and remove cat.
37. Retrieve all discarded sheets of wrapping paper, feed cat and retire to lockable room for last attempt, making certain you are alone and the door is locked.
38. At time of handing over present, smile sweetly at receiver's face, as they try and hide their contempt at being handed such a badly wrapped present.
39. Vow to yourself that next year, you will get the store to wrap the thing for you.
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism." -- C.G. Jung
Wrapping Presents With A Cat
1. Clear large space on table for wrapping present.
2. Go to wardrobe and collect bag in which present is contained, and close door.
3. Open door and remove cat from wardrobe.
4. Go to cupboard and retrieve rolls of wrapping paper.
5. Go back and remove cat from cupboard.
6. Go to drawer and collect transparent sticky tape, ribbons, scissors, labels, etc.
7. Lay out present and wrapping materials on table, to enable wrapping strategy to be formed.
8. Go back to drawer to get string, remove cat that has been in the drawer since last visit, and collect string.
9. Remove present from bag.
10. Remove cat from bag.
11. Open box to check present, remove cat from box, replace present.
12. Lay out paper to enable cutting to size.
13. Cut the paper to size, trying to keep the cutting line straight.
14. Throw away first sheet because cat tried to chase the scissors and tore paper.
15. Cut second sheet of paper to size by putting cat in the bag the present came out of.
16. Place present on cut-to-size paper.
17. Lift up edges of paper to seal in present, wonder why edges now don't reach, and find cat between present and paper. Remove cat and retry.
18. Place object on paper, to hold in place, while cutting transparent sticky tape.
19. Spend next 20 minutes carefully trying to remove transparent sticky tape from cat with pair of nail scissors.
20. Seal paper down with transparent sticky tape, making corners as neat as possible.
21. Look for roll of ribbon; chase cat down hall and retrieve ribbon.
22. Try to wrap present with ribbon in a two-directional turn.
23. Re-roll up ribbon and remove paper that is now torn, due to cat's enthusiasm in chasing ribbon end.
24. Repeat steps 12-22 until down to last sheet of paper.
25. Decide to skip steps 12-16 in order to save time and reduce risk of losing last sheet of paper. Retrieve old cardboard box that you know is right size for sheet of paper.
26. Put present in box, and tie down with string.
27. Remove string, open box and remove cat.
28. Put all packing materials in bag with present and head for lockable room.
29. Once inside room, lock door and start to re-lay out packing materials.
30. Remove cat from box, unlock door, put cat outside door, close door and re-lock.
31. Lay out last sheet of paper. (Admittedly this is difficult in the small area of the toilet, but try your best!)
32. Seal box, wrap with paper and start repairs by very carefully sealing down tears with transparent sticky tape. Now tie up with ribbon and decorate with bows to hide worst affected areas.
33. Label, then sit back and admire your handiwork, congratulating yourself on making good of a bad job.
34. Unlock door, and go to kitchen to make drink and feed cat.
35. Spend next 15 minutes looking for cat, before coming to obvious conclusion.
36. Unwrap present, untie box and remove cat.
37. Retrieve all discarded sheets of wrapping paper, feed cat and retire to lockable room for last attempt, making certain you are alone and the door is locked.
38. At time of handing over present, smile sweetly at receiver's face, as they try and hide their contempt at being handed such a badly wrapped present.
39. Vow to yourself that next year, you will get the store to wrap the thing for you.
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism." -- C.G. Jung
Friday, December 19, 2003
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040105&s=krugman
The Death of Horatio Alger
by PAUL KRUGMAN
[from the January 5, 2004 issue]
The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago.
The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled "Waking Up From the American Dream." The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society.
And guess what? Our political leaders are doing everything they can to fortify class inequality, while denouncing anyone who complains--or even points out what is happening--as a practitioner of "class warfare."
Let's talk first about the facts on income distribution. Thirty years ago we were a relatively middle-class nation. It had not always been thus: Gilded Age America was a highly unequal society, and it stayed that way through the 1920s. During the 1930s and '40s, however, America experienced what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have dubbed the Great Compression: a drastic narrowing of income gaps, probably as a result of New Deal policies. And the new economic order persisted for more than a generation: Strong unions; taxes on inherited wealth, corporate profits and high incomes; close public scrutiny of corporate management--all helped to keep income gaps relatively small. The economy was hardly egalitarian, but a generation ago the gross inequalities of the 1920s seemed very distant.
Now they're back. According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez--confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office--between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they're not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.) The distribution of income in the United States has gone right back to Gilded Age levels of inequality.
Never mind, say the apologists, who churn out papers with titles like that of a 2001 Heritage Foundation piece, "Income Mobility and the Fallacy of Class-Warfare Arguments." America, they say, isn't a caste society--people with high incomes this year may have low incomes next year and vice versa, and the route to wealth is open to all. That's where those commies at Business Week come in: As they point out (and as economists and sociologists have been pointing out for some time), America actually is more of a caste society than we like to think. And the caste lines have lately become a lot more rigid.
The myth of income mobility has always exceeded the reality: As a general rule, once they've reached their 30s, people don't move up and down the income ladder very much. Conservatives often cite studies like a 1992 report by Glenn Hubbard, a Treasury official under the elder Bush who later became chief economic adviser to the younger Bush, that purport to show large numbers of Americans moving from low-wage to high-wage jobs during their working lives. But what these studies measure, as the economist Kevin Murphy put it, is mainly "the guy who works in the college bookstore and has a real job by his early 30s." Serious studies that exclude this sort of pseudo-mobility show that inequality in average incomes over long periods isn't much smaller than inequality in annual incomes.
It is true, however, that America was once a place of substantial intergenerational mobility: Sons often did much better than their fathers. A classic 1978 survey found that among adult men whose fathers were in the bottom 25 percent of the population as ranked by social and economic status, 23 percent had made it into the top 25 percent. In other words, during the first thirty years or so after World War II, the American dream of upward mobility was a real experience for many people.
Now for the shocker: The Business Week piece cites a new survey of today's adult men, which finds that this number has dropped to only 10 percent. That is, over the past generation upward mobility has fallen drastically. Very few children of the lower class are making their way to even moderate affluence. This goes along with other studies indicating that rags-to-riches stories have become vanishingly rare, and that the correlation between fathers' and sons' incomes has risen in recent decades. In modern America, it seems, you're quite likely to stay in the social and economic class into which you were born.
Business Week attributes this to the "Wal-Martization" of the economy, the proliferation of dead-end, low-wage jobs and the disappearance of jobs that provide entry to the middle class. That's surely part of the explanation. But public policy plays a role--and will, if present trends continue, play an even bigger role in the future.
Put it this way: Suppose that you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots. What would you do?
One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You'd also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you'd try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.
Meanwhile, on the spending side, you'd cut back on healthcare for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.
And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you'd do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you'd privatize government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees.
It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn't it?
Where is this taking us? Thomas Piketty, whose work with Saez has transformed our understanding of income distribution, warns that current policies will eventually create "a class of rentiers in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can't compete." If he's right--and I fear that he is--we will end up suffering not only from injustice, but from a vast waste of human potential.
Goodbye, Horatio Alger. And goodbye, American Dream.
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
“Are the special privilege boys going to run the country, or are the people going to run it?” -- Harry Truman
The Death of Horatio Alger
by PAUL KRUGMAN
[from the January 5, 2004 issue]
The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago.
The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled "Waking Up From the American Dream." The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society.
And guess what? Our political leaders are doing everything they can to fortify class inequality, while denouncing anyone who complains--or even points out what is happening--as a practitioner of "class warfare."
Let's talk first about the facts on income distribution. Thirty years ago we were a relatively middle-class nation. It had not always been thus: Gilded Age America was a highly unequal society, and it stayed that way through the 1920s. During the 1930s and '40s, however, America experienced what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have dubbed the Great Compression: a drastic narrowing of income gaps, probably as a result of New Deal policies. And the new economic order persisted for more than a generation: Strong unions; taxes on inherited wealth, corporate profits and high incomes; close public scrutiny of corporate management--all helped to keep income gaps relatively small. The economy was hardly egalitarian, but a generation ago the gross inequalities of the 1920s seemed very distant.
Now they're back. According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez--confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office--between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they're not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.) The distribution of income in the United States has gone right back to Gilded Age levels of inequality.
Never mind, say the apologists, who churn out papers with titles like that of a 2001 Heritage Foundation piece, "Income Mobility and the Fallacy of Class-Warfare Arguments." America, they say, isn't a caste society--people with high incomes this year may have low incomes next year and vice versa, and the route to wealth is open to all. That's where those commies at Business Week come in: As they point out (and as economists and sociologists have been pointing out for some time), America actually is more of a caste society than we like to think. And the caste lines have lately become a lot more rigid.
The myth of income mobility has always exceeded the reality: As a general rule, once they've reached their 30s, people don't move up and down the income ladder very much. Conservatives often cite studies like a 1992 report by Glenn Hubbard, a Treasury official under the elder Bush who later became chief economic adviser to the younger Bush, that purport to show large numbers of Americans moving from low-wage to high-wage jobs during their working lives. But what these studies measure, as the economist Kevin Murphy put it, is mainly "the guy who works in the college bookstore and has a real job by his early 30s." Serious studies that exclude this sort of pseudo-mobility show that inequality in average incomes over long periods isn't much smaller than inequality in annual incomes.
It is true, however, that America was once a place of substantial intergenerational mobility: Sons often did much better than their fathers. A classic 1978 survey found that among adult men whose fathers were in the bottom 25 percent of the population as ranked by social and economic status, 23 percent had made it into the top 25 percent. In other words, during the first thirty years or so after World War II, the American dream of upward mobility was a real experience for many people.
Now for the shocker: The Business Week piece cites a new survey of today's adult men, which finds that this number has dropped to only 10 percent. That is, over the past generation upward mobility has fallen drastically. Very few children of the lower class are making their way to even moderate affluence. This goes along with other studies indicating that rags-to-riches stories have become vanishingly rare, and that the correlation between fathers' and sons' incomes has risen in recent decades. In modern America, it seems, you're quite likely to stay in the social and economic class into which you were born.
Business Week attributes this to the "Wal-Martization" of the economy, the proliferation of dead-end, low-wage jobs and the disappearance of jobs that provide entry to the middle class. That's surely part of the explanation. But public policy plays a role--and will, if present trends continue, play an even bigger role in the future.
Put it this way: Suppose that you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots. What would you do?
One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You'd also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you'd try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.
Meanwhile, on the spending side, you'd cut back on healthcare for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.
And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you'd do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you'd privatize government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees.
It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn't it?
Where is this taking us? Thomas Piketty, whose work with Saez has transformed our understanding of income distribution, warns that current policies will eventually create "a class of rentiers in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can't compete." If he's right--and I fear that he is--we will end up suffering not only from injustice, but from a vast waste of human potential.
Goodbye, Horatio Alger. And goodbye, American Dream.
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
“Are the special privilege boys going to run the country, or are the people going to run it?” -- Harry Truman
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak18.html
Rebuilding and retribution in Iraq
December 18, 2003
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Two weeks before Saddam Hussein was found in a rat hole, one high-level U.S. civilian in Iraq sent this e-mail to another: ''My opinion is that CPA (the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority) is a living breathing [obscenity]. It is beyond negligent or even criminal. It is tragic in the Greek sense.'' Capture of the tyrant softens that grim assessment, but it is not the only good news from occupied Iraq.
Even the most negative observer concedes that Hussein in captivity devastates the morale of the guerrillas. That transcendent development coincides with the assignment of two new deputies to chief U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to bring order out of chaos. Really ''winning'' the war in Iraq remains a massive undertaking, but hardheaded officials now regard prospects as better than at any time since President Bush on May 1 declared the collapse of Iraqi military resistance.
The Bush administration has spent a lot of time saying how well things have gone in Iraq, contending the happy truth has been obscured by negative news media coverage. This is privately described by officials as the ''smoke and mirrors'' technique. Nobody has recognized that more clearly than Jerry Bremer. He was not summoned to Washington when he volunteered for a brief visit Nov. 11. He wanted to tell the president personally just how bad things really were in Iraq and, in fact, got a rare one-on-one meeting with Bush.
The inadequate, unrealistic planning for the occupation of Iraq will never be admitted publicly, but it is common knowledge at high levels of the administration. The notion that Iraqi exiles could step in to run the country, pressed on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by his civilian advisory board, was a chimera. Bremer, bearing credentials as an anti-terrorist expert, was brought in May 7 with the U.S. occupation already in disarray.
Esteemed though he is as a public servant, Bremer lacks experience administering large complex organizations. Consequently, more than seven months after taking over Baghdad, two deputies are coming aboard to run the country: Richard H. Jones, an Arabic-speaking veteran foreign service officer who has been the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait the last two years, and Lt. Gen. Joseph K. Kellogg Jr., who comes from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, where he has been J-6 (command, control, communications and computer systems).
Jones, supervising political and economic questions for CPA, will run the operations of Iraqi government industries. Kellogg, who once commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, will handle CPA's day-to-day operations. That includes establishing Iraq's new security forces and rebuilding the oil and electricity sectors of the government. They are all areas which have suffered from poor planning and shoddy administration.
Having arrived in Baghdad the first week of December, Gen. Kellogg plans massive reorganization. In the words of one U.S. official, these changes ''will shake the rotten fruit from the trees.'' A principal subordinate is retired Adm. David Nash, who agrees with Kellogg on the need for big changes in the way things have been done. Corporate executive Nash is specifically in charge of spending $18.6 billion in supplemental funds provided by Congress for the Iraqi economy.
The men around Kellogg and Nash want an end to the deceptive public relations favored by the inner circle at the Pentagon. They consider the changes that will be put in place to be nothing less than a revolution, and they want these deeds to speak for themselves.
If the right kind of team is finally in place for this massive undertaking, its burden is measurably lightened by removing the threat of Saddam Hussein. Stratfor, the private intelligence service that often takes a pessimistic view, this week called Saddam's capture ''a massive psychological blow to the guerrillas'' that ''increases the credibility of the United States dramatically and raises doubts about the viability of the guerrillas.''
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who unlike his Pentagon colleagues foresaw a troubled future in Iraq, has been reported by friends as uncharacteristically gloomy of late. Now, while recovering from successful prostate cancer surgery, he can rejoice that the United States may finally be on the right track in an Iraq without Saddam Hussein.
Rebuilding and retribution in Iraq
December 18, 2003
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Two weeks before Saddam Hussein was found in a rat hole, one high-level U.S. civilian in Iraq sent this e-mail to another: ''My opinion is that CPA (the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority) is a living breathing [obscenity]. It is beyond negligent or even criminal. It is tragic in the Greek sense.'' Capture of the tyrant softens that grim assessment, but it is not the only good news from occupied Iraq.
Even the most negative observer concedes that Hussein in captivity devastates the morale of the guerrillas. That transcendent development coincides with the assignment of two new deputies to chief U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to bring order out of chaos. Really ''winning'' the war in Iraq remains a massive undertaking, but hardheaded officials now regard prospects as better than at any time since President Bush on May 1 declared the collapse of Iraqi military resistance.
The Bush administration has spent a lot of time saying how well things have gone in Iraq, contending the happy truth has been obscured by negative news media coverage. This is privately described by officials as the ''smoke and mirrors'' technique. Nobody has recognized that more clearly than Jerry Bremer. He was not summoned to Washington when he volunteered for a brief visit Nov. 11. He wanted to tell the president personally just how bad things really were in Iraq and, in fact, got a rare one-on-one meeting with Bush.
The inadequate, unrealistic planning for the occupation of Iraq will never be admitted publicly, but it is common knowledge at high levels of the administration. The notion that Iraqi exiles could step in to run the country, pressed on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by his civilian advisory board, was a chimera. Bremer, bearing credentials as an anti-terrorist expert, was brought in May 7 with the U.S. occupation already in disarray.
Esteemed though he is as a public servant, Bremer lacks experience administering large complex organizations. Consequently, more than seven months after taking over Baghdad, two deputies are coming aboard to run the country: Richard H. Jones, an Arabic-speaking veteran foreign service officer who has been the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait the last two years, and Lt. Gen. Joseph K. Kellogg Jr., who comes from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, where he has been J-6 (command, control, communications and computer systems).
Jones, supervising political and economic questions for CPA, will run the operations of Iraqi government industries. Kellogg, who once commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, will handle CPA's day-to-day operations. That includes establishing Iraq's new security forces and rebuilding the oil and electricity sectors of the government. They are all areas which have suffered from poor planning and shoddy administration.
Having arrived in Baghdad the first week of December, Gen. Kellogg plans massive reorganization. In the words of one U.S. official, these changes ''will shake the rotten fruit from the trees.'' A principal subordinate is retired Adm. David Nash, who agrees with Kellogg on the need for big changes in the way things have been done. Corporate executive Nash is specifically in charge of spending $18.6 billion in supplemental funds provided by Congress for the Iraqi economy.
The men around Kellogg and Nash want an end to the deceptive public relations favored by the inner circle at the Pentagon. They consider the changes that will be put in place to be nothing less than a revolution, and they want these deeds to speak for themselves.
If the right kind of team is finally in place for this massive undertaking, its burden is measurably lightened by removing the threat of Saddam Hussein. Stratfor, the private intelligence service that often takes a pessimistic view, this week called Saddam's capture ''a massive psychological blow to the guerrillas'' that ''increases the credibility of the United States dramatically and raises doubts about the viability of the guerrillas.''
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who unlike his Pentagon colleagues foresaw a troubled future in Iraq, has been reported by friends as uncharacteristically gloomy of late. Now, while recovering from successful prostate cancer surgery, he can rejoice that the United States may finally be on the right track in an Iraq without Saddam Hussein.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
WHITE HOUSE MEMO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/politics/18PREX.html?ex=1072751715&ei=1&en=e1580f09d8acdaf1
Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: December 18, 2003
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 — In the debate over the necessity for the war in Iraq, few issues have been more contentious than whether Saddam Hussein possessed arsenals of banned weapons, as the Bush administration repeatedly said, or instead was pursuing weapons programs that might one day constitute a threat.
On Tuesday, with Mr. Hussein in American custody and polls showing support for the White House's Iraq policy rebounding, Mr. Bush suggested that he no longer saw much distinction between the possibilities.
"So what's the difference?" he responded at one point as he was pressed on the topic during an interview by Diane Sawyer of ABC News.
To critics of the war, there is a big difference. They say that the administration's statements that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that it could use on the battlefield or turn over to terrorists added an urgency to the case for immediate military action that would have been lacking if Mr. Hussein were portrayed as just developing the banned weapons.
"This was a pre-emptive war, and the rationale was that there was an imminent threat," said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who has said that by elevating Iraq to the most dangerous menace facing the United States, the administration unwisely diverted resources from fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorists.
The overwhelming vote in Congress last year to authorize the use of force against Iraq would have been closer "but for the fact that the president had so explicitly said that there were weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to citizens of the United States," Mr. Graham said in an interview on Wednesday.
As early as last spring, Mr. Bush suggested that the Iraqis might have dispersed their biological and chemical weapons so widely that they would be extremely difficult to find. And some weapons experts have suggested that Mr. Hussein may have destroyed banned weapons that he had in the early 1990's but left in place the capacity to produce more.
This week, at a news conference on Monday and in the ABC interview on Tuesday, Mr. Bush's answers to questions on the subject continued a gradual shift in the way he has addressed the topic, from the immediacy of the threat to an assertion that no matter what, the world is better off without Mr. Hussein in power.
Where once Mr. Bush and his top officials asserted unambiguously that Mr. Hussein had the weapons at the ready, their statements now are often far more couched, reflecting the fact that no weapons have been found — "yet," as Mr. Bush was quick to interject during the interview.
In the interview, Mr. Bush said removing Mr. Hussein from power was justified even without the recovery of any banned weapons. As he has since his own weapons inspector, David Kay, issued an interim report in October saying he had uncovered extensive evidence of weapons programs in Iraq but no actual weapons, Mr. Bush said the existence of such programs, by violating United Nations Security Council resolutions, provided ample grounds for the war.
"If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger," Mr. Bush continued, referring to Mr. Hussein. "That's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with, and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger."
Pressed to explain the president's remarks, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Bush was not backing away from his assertions about Mr. Hussein's possession of banned weapons.
"We continue to believe that he had weapons of mass destruction programs and weapons of mass destruction," Mr. McClellan said on Wednesday.
Mr. Bush has always been careful to have multiple reasons ready for his major policy proposals, and his administration has deployed them deftly to adapt to changing circumstances.
In trying to build public and international support for toppling Mr. Hussein, the administration cited, with different emphasis at different times, the banned weapons, links between the Iraqi leader and terrorist organizations, a desire to liberate the Iraqi people and a policy of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
When it came to describing the weapons program, Mr. Bush never hedged before the war. "If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today — and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" Mr. Bush asked during a speech in Cincinnati in October 2002.
In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad in April, the White House was equally explicit. "One of the reasons we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction," Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, told reporters on May 7. "And nothing has changed on that front at all."
On Wednesday Mr. McClellan, when pressed, only restated the president's belief that weapons would eventually be found. Mr. Bush, despite being asked repeatedly about the issue in different ways by Ms. Sawyer, never did say it, except to note Mr. Hussein's past use of chemical weapons. He emphasized Mr. Hussein's capture instead.
"And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction?" Ms. Sawyer asked the president, according to a transcript provided by ABC.
"Diane, you can keep asking the question," Mr. Bush replied. "I'm telling you — I made the right decision for America because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait. But the fact that he is not there is, means America's a more secure country."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/politics/18PREX.html?ex=1072751715&ei=1&en=e1580f09d8acdaf1
Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: December 18, 2003
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 — In the debate over the necessity for the war in Iraq, few issues have been more contentious than whether Saddam Hussein possessed arsenals of banned weapons, as the Bush administration repeatedly said, or instead was pursuing weapons programs that might one day constitute a threat.
On Tuesday, with Mr. Hussein in American custody and polls showing support for the White House's Iraq policy rebounding, Mr. Bush suggested that he no longer saw much distinction between the possibilities.
"So what's the difference?" he responded at one point as he was pressed on the topic during an interview by Diane Sawyer of ABC News.
To critics of the war, there is a big difference. They say that the administration's statements that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that it could use on the battlefield or turn over to terrorists added an urgency to the case for immediate military action that would have been lacking if Mr. Hussein were portrayed as just developing the banned weapons.
"This was a pre-emptive war, and the rationale was that there was an imminent threat," said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who has said that by elevating Iraq to the most dangerous menace facing the United States, the administration unwisely diverted resources from fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorists.
The overwhelming vote in Congress last year to authorize the use of force against Iraq would have been closer "but for the fact that the president had so explicitly said that there were weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to citizens of the United States," Mr. Graham said in an interview on Wednesday.
As early as last spring, Mr. Bush suggested that the Iraqis might have dispersed their biological and chemical weapons so widely that they would be extremely difficult to find. And some weapons experts have suggested that Mr. Hussein may have destroyed banned weapons that he had in the early 1990's but left in place the capacity to produce more.
This week, at a news conference on Monday and in the ABC interview on Tuesday, Mr. Bush's answers to questions on the subject continued a gradual shift in the way he has addressed the topic, from the immediacy of the threat to an assertion that no matter what, the world is better off without Mr. Hussein in power.
Where once Mr. Bush and his top officials asserted unambiguously that Mr. Hussein had the weapons at the ready, their statements now are often far more couched, reflecting the fact that no weapons have been found — "yet," as Mr. Bush was quick to interject during the interview.
In the interview, Mr. Bush said removing Mr. Hussein from power was justified even without the recovery of any banned weapons. As he has since his own weapons inspector, David Kay, issued an interim report in October saying he had uncovered extensive evidence of weapons programs in Iraq but no actual weapons, Mr. Bush said the existence of such programs, by violating United Nations Security Council resolutions, provided ample grounds for the war.
"If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger," Mr. Bush continued, referring to Mr. Hussein. "That's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with, and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger."
Pressed to explain the president's remarks, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Bush was not backing away from his assertions about Mr. Hussein's possession of banned weapons.
"We continue to believe that he had weapons of mass destruction programs and weapons of mass destruction," Mr. McClellan said on Wednesday.
Mr. Bush has always been careful to have multiple reasons ready for his major policy proposals, and his administration has deployed them deftly to adapt to changing circumstances.
In trying to build public and international support for toppling Mr. Hussein, the administration cited, with different emphasis at different times, the banned weapons, links between the Iraqi leader and terrorist organizations, a desire to liberate the Iraqi people and a policy of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
When it came to describing the weapons program, Mr. Bush never hedged before the war. "If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today — and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" Mr. Bush asked during a speech in Cincinnati in October 2002.
In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad in April, the White House was equally explicit. "One of the reasons we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction," Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, told reporters on May 7. "And nothing has changed on that front at all."
On Wednesday Mr. McClellan, when pressed, only restated the president's belief that weapons would eventually be found. Mr. Bush, despite being asked repeatedly about the issue in different ways by Ms. Sawyer, never did say it, except to note Mr. Hussein's past use of chemical weapons. He emphasized Mr. Hussein's capture instead.
"And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction?" Ms. Sawyer asked the president, according to a transcript provided by ABC.
"Diane, you can keep asking the question," Mr. Bush replied. "I'm telling you — I made the right decision for America because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait. But the fact that he is not there is, means America's a more secure country."
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
December 16, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Patriots and Profits
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/16/opinion/16KRUG.html
Last week there were major news stories about possible profiteering by Halliburton and other American contractors in Iraq. These stories have, inevitably and appropriately, been pushed temporarily into the background by the news of Saddam's capture. But the questions remain. In fact, the more you look into this issue, the more you worry that we have entered a new era of excess for the military-industrial complex.
The story about Halliburton's strangely expensive gasoline imports into Iraq gets curiouser and curiouser. High-priced gasoline was purchased from a supplier whose name is unfamiliar to industry experts, but that appears to be run by a prominent Kuwaiti family (no doubt still grateful for the 1991 liberation). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers documents seen by The Wall Street Journal refer to "political pressures" from Kuwait's government and the U.S. embassy in Kuwait to deal only with that firm. I wonder where that trail leads.
Meanwhile, NBC News has obtained Pentagon inspection reports of unsanitary conditions at mess halls run by Halliburton in Iraq: "Blood all over the floors of refrigerators, dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars, rotting meat and vegetables." An October report complains that Halliburton had promised to fix the problem but didn't.
And more detail has been emerging about Bechtel's much-touted school repairs. Again, a Pentagon report found "horrible" work: dangerous debris left in playground areas, sloppy paint jobs and broken toilets.
Are these isolated bad examples, or part of a pattern? It's impossible to be sure without a broad, scrupulously independent investigation. Yet such an inquiry is hard to imagine in the current political environment — which is precisely why one can't help suspecting the worst.
Let's be clear: worries about profiteering aren't a left-right issue. Conservatives have long warned that regulatory agencies tend to be "captured" by the industries they regulate; the same must be true of agencies that hand out contracts. Halliburton, Bechtel and other major contractors in Iraq have invested heavily in political influence, not just through campaign contributions, but by enriching people they believe might be helpful. Dick Cheney is part of a long if not exactly proud tradition: Brown & Root, which later became the Halliburton subsidiary doing those dubious deals in Iraq, profited handsomely from its early support of a young politician named Lyndon Johnson.
So is there any reason to think that things are worse now? Yes.
The biggest curb on profiteering in government contracts is the threat of exposure: sunshine is the best disinfectant. Yet it's hard to think of a time when U.S. government dealings have been less subject to scrutiny.
First of all, we have one-party rule — and it's a highly disciplined, follow-your-orders party. There are members of Congress eager and willing to take on the profiteers, but they don't have the power to issue subpoenas.
And getting information without subpoena power has become much harder because, as a new report in U.S. News & World Report puts it, the Bush administration has "dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government." Since 9/11, the administration has invoked national security to justify this secrecy, but it actually began the day President Bush took office.
To top it all off, after 9/11 the U.S. media — which eagerly played up the merest hint of scandal during the Clinton years — became highly protective of the majesty of the office. As the stories I've cited indicate, they have become more searching lately. But even now, compare British and U.S. coverage of the Neil Bush saga.
The point is that we've had an environment in which officials inclined to do favors for their business friends, and contractors inclined to pad their bills or do shoddy work, didn't have to worry much about being exposed. Human nature being what it is, then, the odds are that the troubling stories that have come to light aren't isolated examples.
Some Americans still seem to feel that even suggesting the possibility of profiteering is somehow unpatriotic. They should learn the story of Harry Truman, a congressman who rose to prominence during World War II by leading a campaign against profiteering. Truman believed, correctly, that he was serving his country.
On the strength of that record, Franklin Roosevelt chose Truman as his vice president. George Bush, of course, chose Dick Cheney.
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
“Are the special privilege boys going to run the country, or are the people going to run it?” -- Harry Truman
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Patriots and Profits
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/16/opinion/16KRUG.html
Last week there were major news stories about possible profiteering by Halliburton and other American contractors in Iraq. These stories have, inevitably and appropriately, been pushed temporarily into the background by the news of Saddam's capture. But the questions remain. In fact, the more you look into this issue, the more you worry that we have entered a new era of excess for the military-industrial complex.
The story about Halliburton's strangely expensive gasoline imports into Iraq gets curiouser and curiouser. High-priced gasoline was purchased from a supplier whose name is unfamiliar to industry experts, but that appears to be run by a prominent Kuwaiti family (no doubt still grateful for the 1991 liberation). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers documents seen by The Wall Street Journal refer to "political pressures" from Kuwait's government and the U.S. embassy in Kuwait to deal only with that firm. I wonder where that trail leads.
Meanwhile, NBC News has obtained Pentagon inspection reports of unsanitary conditions at mess halls run by Halliburton in Iraq: "Blood all over the floors of refrigerators, dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars, rotting meat and vegetables." An October report complains that Halliburton had promised to fix the problem but didn't.
And more detail has been emerging about Bechtel's much-touted school repairs. Again, a Pentagon report found "horrible" work: dangerous debris left in playground areas, sloppy paint jobs and broken toilets.
Are these isolated bad examples, or part of a pattern? It's impossible to be sure without a broad, scrupulously independent investigation. Yet such an inquiry is hard to imagine in the current political environment — which is precisely why one can't help suspecting the worst.
Let's be clear: worries about profiteering aren't a left-right issue. Conservatives have long warned that regulatory agencies tend to be "captured" by the industries they regulate; the same must be true of agencies that hand out contracts. Halliburton, Bechtel and other major contractors in Iraq have invested heavily in political influence, not just through campaign contributions, but by enriching people they believe might be helpful. Dick Cheney is part of a long if not exactly proud tradition: Brown & Root, which later became the Halliburton subsidiary doing those dubious deals in Iraq, profited handsomely from its early support of a young politician named Lyndon Johnson.
So is there any reason to think that things are worse now? Yes.
The biggest curb on profiteering in government contracts is the threat of exposure: sunshine is the best disinfectant. Yet it's hard to think of a time when U.S. government dealings have been less subject to scrutiny.
First of all, we have one-party rule — and it's a highly disciplined, follow-your-orders party. There are members of Congress eager and willing to take on the profiteers, but they don't have the power to issue subpoenas.
And getting information without subpoena power has become much harder because, as a new report in U.S. News & World Report puts it, the Bush administration has "dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government." Since 9/11, the administration has invoked national security to justify this secrecy, but it actually began the day President Bush took office.
To top it all off, after 9/11 the U.S. media — which eagerly played up the merest hint of scandal during the Clinton years — became highly protective of the majesty of the office. As the stories I've cited indicate, they have become more searching lately. But even now, compare British and U.S. coverage of the Neil Bush saga.
The point is that we've had an environment in which officials inclined to do favors for their business friends, and contractors inclined to pad their bills or do shoddy work, didn't have to worry much about being exposed. Human nature being what it is, then, the odds are that the troubling stories that have come to light aren't isolated examples.
Some Americans still seem to feel that even suggesting the possibility of profiteering is somehow unpatriotic. They should learn the story of Harry Truman, a congressman who rose to prominence during World War II by leading a campaign against profiteering. Truman believed, correctly, that he was serving his country.
On the strength of that record, Franklin Roosevelt chose Truman as his vice president. George Bush, of course, chose Dick Cheney.
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
“Are the special privilege boys going to run the country, or are the people going to run it?” -- Harry Truman
washingtonpost.com
Saddam Arrest Cheer Fades Into Iraqi Ire at U.S.
Reuters
Monday, December 15, 2003; 5:03 AM
By Joseph Logan
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Joy at the capture of Saddam Hussein gave way to resentment toward Washington Monday as Iraqis confronted afresh the bloodshed, shortages and soaring prices of life under U.S. occupation.
The morning after Iraq's U.S. governor revealed the ousted strongman was a disheveled prisoner, Iraqis flooded the streets to snatch up newspapers emblazoned with photos of the man who ruled them by fear, now humbled and captive.
Many were ecstatic to see Saddam captured and hoped he would answer for his deeds but said they would not rush to thank America -- in their eyes the source of their problems since a U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam in April.
"I hope that we get the chance to try him our way, to let everyone who suffered make him taste what he had made us taste," said Ali Hussein, 29, a stationery shop owner who said he was still dizzy with joy.
"But whether he's in a hole or in jail, it does nothing for me today, it won't feed me or protect me or send my children to school," he said.
Even as news of Saddam's capture sank in, car bombs ripped through two police stations in the capital, the latest in a series of attacks U.S. forces blame on loyalists of Saddam and on foreign "terrorists" infiltrating Iraq.
President Bush warned that catching Saddam would not end attacks by people who do not "accept the rise of liberty in the heart of the Middle East," implying a pledge of a better life many Iraqis said Bush was failing to keep.
"AFGHANISTAN"
"It's great that he's caught, but it wasn't him who screwed up the petrol and the electricity and everything else so badly, so now a canister of gas that was 250 dinars costs 4,000, if you can get one," said Ghazi, a 52-year-old dentist, from his car as he queued with hundreds of other drivers waiting for petrol.
"This is an oil country and it should be rich. It should not be Afghanistan."
Other drivers echoed the complaints of chronic fuel shortages in a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves, as well as of their treatment at the hands of troops who have killed civilians while hunting suspected Saddam partisans or pursuing criminals with Iraqi police.
"The Americans promised freedom and prosperity; what's this? Go up to their headquarters, at one of those checkpoints where they point their guns at you, and tell them that you hate them as much as Saddam, and see what they do to you," said Mohammad Saleh, 39, a building contractor.
"The only difference is that Saddam would kill you in private, where the Americans will kill you in public," he said.
"A lot of things -- safety, freedom, prosperity -- that we were supposed to have are gone. They promised many things, and now that they have caught Saddam maybe they kept one."
© 2003 Reuters
Monday, December 15, 2003
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=743
Indications Saddam Was Not in Hiding But a Captive
DEBKAfile Special Report
December 14, 2003, 6:55 PM (GMT+02:00)
A number of questions are raised by the incredibly bedraggled, tired and crushed condition of this once savage, dapper and pampered ruler who was discovered in a hole in the ground on Saturday, December 13:
1. The length and state of his hair indicated he had not seen a barber or even had a shampoo for several weeks.
2. The wild state of his beard indicated he had not shaved for the same period
3. The hole dug in the floor of a cellar in a farm compound near Tikrit was primitive indeed – 6ft across and 8ft across with minimal sanitary arrangements - a far cry from his opulent palaces.
4. Saddam looked beaten and hungry.
5. Detained trying to escape were two unidentified men. Left with him were two AK-47 assault guns and a pistol, none of which were used.
6. The hole had only one opening. It was not only camouflaged with mud and bricks – it was blocked. He could not have climbed out without someone on the outside removing the covering.
7. And most important, $750,000 in 100-dollar notes were found with him (a pittance for his captors who expected a $25m reward)– but no communications equipment of any kind, whether cell phone or even a carrier pigeon for contacting the outside world.
According to DEBKAfile analysts, these seven anomalies point to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein was not in hiding; he was a prisoner.
After his last audiotaped message was delivered and aired over al Arabiya TV on Sunday November 16, on the occasion of Ramadan, Saddam was seized, possibly with the connivance of his own men, and held in that hole in Adwar for three weeks or more, which would have accounted for his appearance and condition. Meanwhile, his captors bargained for the $25 m prize the Americans promised for information leading to his capture alive or dead. The negotiations were mediated by Jalal Talabani’s Kurdish PUK militia.
These circumstances would explain the ex-ruler’s docility – described by Lt.Gen. Ricardo Sanchez as “resignation” – in the face of his capture by US forces. He must have regarded them as his rescuers and would have greeted them with relief.
From Gen. Sanchez’s evasive answers to questions on the $25m bounty, it may be inferred that the Americans and Kurds took advantage of the negotiations with Saddam’s abductors to move in close and capture him on their own account, for three reasons:
A. His capture had become a matter of national pride for the Americans. No kudos would have been attached to his handover by a local gang of bounty-seekers or criminals. The country would have been swept anew with rumors that the big hero Saddam was again betrayed by the people he trusted, just as in the war.
B. It was vital to catch his kidnappers unawares so as to make sure Saddam was taken alive. They might well have killed him and demanded the prize for his body. But they made sure he had no means of taking his own life and may have kept him sedated.
C. During the weeks he is presumed to have been in captivity, guerrilla activity declined markedly – especially in the Sunni Triangle towns of Falluja, Ramadi and Balad - while surging outside this flashpoint region – in Mosul in the north and Najef, Nasseriya and Hilla in the south. It was important for the coalition to lay hands on him before the epicenter of the violence turned back towards Baghdad and the center of the Sunni Triangle.
The next thing to watch now is not just where and when Saddam is brought to justice for countless crimes against his people and humanity - Sanchez said his interrogation will take “as long as it takes – but what happens to the insurgency. Will it escalate or gradually die down?
An answer to this, according to DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources, was received in Washington nine days before Saddam reached US custody.
It came in the form of a disturbing piece of intelligence that the notorious Lebanese terrorist and hostage-taker Imad Mughniyeh, who figures on the most wanted list of 22 men published by the FBI after 9/11, had arrived in southern Iraq and was organizing a new anti-US terror campaign to be launched in March-April 2004, marking the first year of the American invasion.
For the past 21 years, Mughniyeh has waged a war of terror against Americans, whether on behalf of the Hizballah, the Iranian Shiite fundamentalists, al Qaeda or for himself. The Lebanese arch-terrorist represents for the anti-American forces in Iraq an ultimate weapon.
Saddam’s capture will not turn this offensive aside; it may even bring it forward.
For Israel, there are three lessons to be drawn from the dramatic turn of events in Iraq:
First, An enemy must be pursued to the end and if necessary taken captive. The Sharon government’s conduct of an uncertain, wavering war against the Palestinian terror chief Yasser Arafat stands in stark contrast to the way the Americans have fought Saddam and his cohorts in Iraq and which has brought them impressive gains.
Second, Israel must join the US in bracing for the decisive round of violence under preparation by Mughniyeh, an old common enemy from the days of Beirut in the 1980s. Only three weeks ago, DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal, the terrorist mastermind himself was seen in south Lebanon in surveillance of northern Israel in the company of Iranian military officers. With this peril still to be fought, it is meaningless for Israelis to dicker over the Geneva Accord, unilateral steps around the Middle East road map, or even the defensive barrier.
Third, Certain Israeli pundits and even politicians, influenced by opinion in Europe, declared frequently in recent weeks that the Americans had no hope of capturing Saddam Hussein and were therefore bogged down irretrievably in Iraq. The inference was that the Americans erred in embarking on an unwinnable war in Iraq.
This was wide of the mark even before Saddam was brought in. The Americans are in firm control - even though they face a tough new adversary – and the whole purpose of the defeatist argument heard in Israel was to persuade the Sharon government that its position in relation to the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat is as hopeless as that of the Americans in Iraq. Israel’s only choice, according to this argument, is to knuckle under to Palestinian demands and give them what they want. Now that the Iraqi ruler is in American custody, they will have to think again.
Indications Saddam Was Not in Hiding But a Captive
DEBKAfile Special Report
December 14, 2003, 6:55 PM (GMT+02:00)
A number of questions are raised by the incredibly bedraggled, tired and crushed condition of this once savage, dapper and pampered ruler who was discovered in a hole in the ground on Saturday, December 13:
1. The length and state of his hair indicated he had not seen a barber or even had a shampoo for several weeks.
2. The wild state of his beard indicated he had not shaved for the same period
3. The hole dug in the floor of a cellar in a farm compound near Tikrit was primitive indeed – 6ft across and 8ft across with minimal sanitary arrangements - a far cry from his opulent palaces.
4. Saddam looked beaten and hungry.
5. Detained trying to escape were two unidentified men. Left with him were two AK-47 assault guns and a pistol, none of which were used.
6. The hole had only one opening. It was not only camouflaged with mud and bricks – it was blocked. He could not have climbed out without someone on the outside removing the covering.
7. And most important, $750,000 in 100-dollar notes were found with him (a pittance for his captors who expected a $25m reward)– but no communications equipment of any kind, whether cell phone or even a carrier pigeon for contacting the outside world.
According to DEBKAfile analysts, these seven anomalies point to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein was not in hiding; he was a prisoner.
After his last audiotaped message was delivered and aired over al Arabiya TV on Sunday November 16, on the occasion of Ramadan, Saddam was seized, possibly with the connivance of his own men, and held in that hole in Adwar for three weeks or more, which would have accounted for his appearance and condition. Meanwhile, his captors bargained for the $25 m prize the Americans promised for information leading to his capture alive or dead. The negotiations were mediated by Jalal Talabani’s Kurdish PUK militia.
These circumstances would explain the ex-ruler’s docility – described by Lt.Gen. Ricardo Sanchez as “resignation” – in the face of his capture by US forces. He must have regarded them as his rescuers and would have greeted them with relief.
From Gen. Sanchez’s evasive answers to questions on the $25m bounty, it may be inferred that the Americans and Kurds took advantage of the negotiations with Saddam’s abductors to move in close and capture him on their own account, for three reasons:
A. His capture had become a matter of national pride for the Americans. No kudos would have been attached to his handover by a local gang of bounty-seekers or criminals. The country would have been swept anew with rumors that the big hero Saddam was again betrayed by the people he trusted, just as in the war.
B. It was vital to catch his kidnappers unawares so as to make sure Saddam was taken alive. They might well have killed him and demanded the prize for his body. But they made sure he had no means of taking his own life and may have kept him sedated.
C. During the weeks he is presumed to have been in captivity, guerrilla activity declined markedly – especially in the Sunni Triangle towns of Falluja, Ramadi and Balad - while surging outside this flashpoint region – in Mosul in the north and Najef, Nasseriya and Hilla in the south. It was important for the coalition to lay hands on him before the epicenter of the violence turned back towards Baghdad and the center of the Sunni Triangle.
The next thing to watch now is not just where and when Saddam is brought to justice for countless crimes against his people and humanity - Sanchez said his interrogation will take “as long as it takes – but what happens to the insurgency. Will it escalate or gradually die down?
An answer to this, according to DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources, was received in Washington nine days before Saddam reached US custody.
It came in the form of a disturbing piece of intelligence that the notorious Lebanese terrorist and hostage-taker Imad Mughniyeh, who figures on the most wanted list of 22 men published by the FBI after 9/11, had arrived in southern Iraq and was organizing a new anti-US terror campaign to be launched in March-April 2004, marking the first year of the American invasion.
For the past 21 years, Mughniyeh has waged a war of terror against Americans, whether on behalf of the Hizballah, the Iranian Shiite fundamentalists, al Qaeda or for himself. The Lebanese arch-terrorist represents for the anti-American forces in Iraq an ultimate weapon.
Saddam’s capture will not turn this offensive aside; it may even bring it forward.
For Israel, there are three lessons to be drawn from the dramatic turn of events in Iraq:
First, An enemy must be pursued to the end and if necessary taken captive. The Sharon government’s conduct of an uncertain, wavering war against the Palestinian terror chief Yasser Arafat stands in stark contrast to the way the Americans have fought Saddam and his cohorts in Iraq and which has brought them impressive gains.
Second, Israel must join the US in bracing for the decisive round of violence under preparation by Mughniyeh, an old common enemy from the days of Beirut in the 1980s. Only three weeks ago, DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal, the terrorist mastermind himself was seen in south Lebanon in surveillance of northern Israel in the company of Iranian military officers. With this peril still to be fought, it is meaningless for Israelis to dicker over the Geneva Accord, unilateral steps around the Middle East road map, or even the defensive barrier.
Third, Certain Israeli pundits and even politicians, influenced by opinion in Europe, declared frequently in recent weeks that the Americans had no hope of capturing Saddam Hussein and were therefore bogged down irretrievably in Iraq. The inference was that the Americans erred in embarking on an unwinnable war in Iraq.
This was wide of the mark even before Saddam was brought in. The Americans are in firm control - even though they face a tough new adversary – and the whole purpose of the defeatist argument heard in Israel was to persuade the Sharon government that its position in relation to the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat is as hopeless as that of the Americans in Iraq. Israel’s only choice, according to this argument, is to knuckle under to Palestinian demands and give them what they want. Now that the Iraqi ruler is in American custody, they will have to think again.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3710931&p1=0
The New Law of Uncertainty
By Jonathan Alter
NewsweekDec. 22 Issue - "Game over," an Iraqi on the streets of Baghdad told CNN. Maybe. More likely, the game is just beginning, and not only on the ground in Iraq. The American presidential campaign, connected at the hip this year to foreign policy, will now move in a different direction. Toward a Bush landslide? Not so fast.
The biggest fallacy in forecasting of any kind is to take current conditions and extrapolate forward as if those conditions won't change. President Bush could still be vulnerable politically. Same for Howard Dean in the primaries, regardless of how positive the news climate may be for both of them right now. Even with good odds, the shoo-in doesn't fit.
That's because the media-political universe adheres to two strange laws simultaneously. The first is the Law of Premature Predictions. It's a dinner party or chat-room thing. "Stick a fork in him" sounds confident and smart. "Who knows?" sounds boring and lame. So people look at the latest news--Saddam captured, Al Gore endorses Dean--and ignore other inconvenient variables.
Then there's the Law of Media Oscillation. The process invites--no, demands--a series of sine curves to keep everyone interested. Up one week, down the next. The only safe prediction is that a static, unchanging political narrative is impossible. As we're seeing, stuff happens in war and politics, and when it doesn't, the media will half-consciously rearrange all the atoms of emphasis and particles of story choice to make it seem so.
Think of Werner Heisenberg's theory of physics, the Uncertainty Principle: "The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known." In other words, the more we handicap, the more handicapped we.
From here on, beating the ever-changing expectations spread gets tricky, abroad and at home. Bush must now show rapid progress toward security and democracy in Iraq, or end up worse off than he was before Saddam was apprehended. For all the value of the Gore endorsement in making Dean more credible with African-Americans and other core constituencies, the governor may be at his moment of maximum peril. The usual Democratic buyers' remorse (which hobbles every presumptive nominee in early summer) could set in early this time, as harsh antiwar declarations lose their appeal.
Dean's hedge against the Uncertainty Principle is the Tupperware Party. He's pioneering the use in politics of what is called "multilevel marketing"--the magic behind Tupperware, Amway and other sophisticated selling schemes. The most amazing statistic I heard in New Hampshire last week was that Dean supporters there have, in three months, held nearly 1,000 "house meetings." A "Deaniac" invites over a dozen friends and passes out a compelling Dean pamphlet modeled on Tom Paine's "Common Sense." Dean himself is mentioned only on the last page of the pamphlet; it's mostly about building a movement to "take the country back" from the big-money interests that have hijacked it. New recruits to the crusade then hold their own house meetings, and the idea spreads virally.
When you buy Tupperware, you get Teflon, too. Normally, gaffes stick to a candidate and dry up money. Dean has reversed that. Every time he runs into trouble, his backers give more. It's almost a form of human insurance.
For months, the other candidates have tried to derail the Dean Machine. John Kerry calls him a flip-flopper. Joe Lieberman warns that Dean is in danger of being isolated on the left on national security, trade and spiritual values. John Edwards explains that optimism, not anger, wins presidential elections, a point borne out by the failure of populist campaigns to ever win the White House. (FDR, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton all ousted GOP incumbents with smiles, not scowls.)
These arguments may be true, but they aren't likely to be relevant in the primaries. The challengers' best bet may be a simple change of scenery. Every epidemic has a break point, a natural and often inexplicable moment when, just as in punditry, present trends no longer continue. For Dean, that may come when the campaign shifts to Southern and Midwestern states where local politicians have detected no groundswell for him.
The Dean phenomenon is empowering for the hundreds of thousands of people who suddenly feel a connection to politics; it's invigorating for a process that seemed as if it were destined forever to be run by big money; it's inspiring for a Democratic Party that has traditionally trailed far behind the GOP in attracting small donors, and it's intriguing to see how far it goes. Might the movement grow large enough to fire Bush? It sure doesn't look that way this week. But the only certainty of American politics is that its quantum physics will continue to confound us.
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
The New Law of Uncertainty
By Jonathan Alter
NewsweekDec. 22 Issue - "Game over," an Iraqi on the streets of Baghdad told CNN. Maybe. More likely, the game is just beginning, and not only on the ground in Iraq. The American presidential campaign, connected at the hip this year to foreign policy, will now move in a different direction. Toward a Bush landslide? Not so fast.
The biggest fallacy in forecasting of any kind is to take current conditions and extrapolate forward as if those conditions won't change. President Bush could still be vulnerable politically. Same for Howard Dean in the primaries, regardless of how positive the news climate may be for both of them right now. Even with good odds, the shoo-in doesn't fit.
That's because the media-political universe adheres to two strange laws simultaneously. The first is the Law of Premature Predictions. It's a dinner party or chat-room thing. "Stick a fork in him" sounds confident and smart. "Who knows?" sounds boring and lame. So people look at the latest news--Saddam captured, Al Gore endorses Dean--and ignore other inconvenient variables.
Then there's the Law of Media Oscillation. The process invites--no, demands--a series of sine curves to keep everyone interested. Up one week, down the next. The only safe prediction is that a static, unchanging political narrative is impossible. As we're seeing, stuff happens in war and politics, and when it doesn't, the media will half-consciously rearrange all the atoms of emphasis and particles of story choice to make it seem so.
Think of Werner Heisenberg's theory of physics, the Uncertainty Principle: "The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known." In other words, the more we handicap, the more handicapped we.
From here on, beating the ever-changing expectations spread gets tricky, abroad and at home. Bush must now show rapid progress toward security and democracy in Iraq, or end up worse off than he was before Saddam was apprehended. For all the value of the Gore endorsement in making Dean more credible with African-Americans and other core constituencies, the governor may be at his moment of maximum peril. The usual Democratic buyers' remorse (which hobbles every presumptive nominee in early summer) could set in early this time, as harsh antiwar declarations lose their appeal.
Dean's hedge against the Uncertainty Principle is the Tupperware Party. He's pioneering the use in politics of what is called "multilevel marketing"--the magic behind Tupperware, Amway and other sophisticated selling schemes. The most amazing statistic I heard in New Hampshire last week was that Dean supporters there have, in three months, held nearly 1,000 "house meetings." A "Deaniac" invites over a dozen friends and passes out a compelling Dean pamphlet modeled on Tom Paine's "Common Sense." Dean himself is mentioned only on the last page of the pamphlet; it's mostly about building a movement to "take the country back" from the big-money interests that have hijacked it. New recruits to the crusade then hold their own house meetings, and the idea spreads virally.
When you buy Tupperware, you get Teflon, too. Normally, gaffes stick to a candidate and dry up money. Dean has reversed that. Every time he runs into trouble, his backers give more. It's almost a form of human insurance.
For months, the other candidates have tried to derail the Dean Machine. John Kerry calls him a flip-flopper. Joe Lieberman warns that Dean is in danger of being isolated on the left on national security, trade and spiritual values. John Edwards explains that optimism, not anger, wins presidential elections, a point borne out by the failure of populist campaigns to ever win the White House. (FDR, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton all ousted GOP incumbents with smiles, not scowls.)
These arguments may be true, but they aren't likely to be relevant in the primaries. The challengers' best bet may be a simple change of scenery. Every epidemic has a break point, a natural and often inexplicable moment when, just as in punditry, present trends no longer continue. For Dean, that may come when the campaign shifts to Southern and Midwestern states where local politicians have detected no groundswell for him.
The Dean phenomenon is empowering for the hundreds of thousands of people who suddenly feel a connection to politics; it's invigorating for a process that seemed as if it were destined forever to be run by big money; it's inspiring for a Democratic Party that has traditionally trailed far behind the GOP in attracting small donors, and it's intriguing to see how far it goes. Might the movement grow large enough to fire Bush? It sure doesn't look that way this week. But the only certainty of American politics is that its quantum physics will continue to confound us.
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
Saddam Captured Hiding in Hole Near Tikrit
By Joseph Logan
A photo of Saddam Hussein after his capture is shown during
a press conference in Baghdad, December 14, 2003. U.S. troops captured
Saddam Hussein near his home town of Tikrit announced U.S. administrator
in Iraq Paul Bremer on Sunday, in a major coup for Washington's beleaguered
occupation force in Iraq. Photo by Reuters
AD-DAWR, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. troops captured Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole near his home town of Tikrit in a major coup for Washington's beleaguered occupation force in Iraq .
Grubby and bearded the 66-year-old dictator was dug out by troops from a cramped hiding pit during a raid on a farm in Ad-Dawr village late Saturday, the jubilant U.S. commander in Iraq Ricardo Sanchez said Sunday.
Gunfire crackled out in celebration across the country as Iraqis greeted a U.S. military video showing their once feared leader, disheveled and sporting a bushy black and gray beard, undergoing a medical examination after seven months on the run.
The arrest is a boon for President Bush after a run of increasingly bloody attacks on U.S. troops and their allies that imperil his campaign for re-election next year. Saddam may also provide intelligence on alleged banned weapons. The former president, who once seemed almost to believe his own claims of invincibility and urged his men to go down fighting the invaders, gave up without a shot being fired, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told a news conference in Baghdad.
Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," a beaming U.S. administrator Paul Bremer said in his first comments to the news conference where the film was shown. "The tyrant is a prisoner."
Cheering Iraqis in the audience shouted "Death to Saddam!"
Leading members of the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council said they would put Saddam on trial in Baghdad. He may face the death penalty as he answers for a three-decade reign of terror and for leading his oil-rich nation into three disastrous wars.
"We want Saddam to get what he deserves. I believe he will be sentenced to hundreds of death sentences at a fair trial because he's responsible for all the massacres and crimes in Iraq," said Amar al-Hakim, a senior member of the Shi'ite party the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
NO END TO VIOLENCE
The White House warned, however, that Saddam's capture may not mean an end to violence, which continued hours after he was seized, with a suspected suicide car bombing that left at least 17 dead at a police station in Khalidiyah, west of Baghdad.
U.S. officials say anti-American Muslim militants affiliated to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network have become active in Iraq amid the chaos following Saddam's ousting on April 9.
U.S. officials will also hope to extract vital intelligence on the alleged weapons programs which formed the public grounds for Bush to go to war in defiance of many U.N. allies.
Little evidence of banned weapons has been found, helping fuel continuing international wrangling over the lack of security in Iraq and the cost of rebuilding a country that holds the world's second biggest oil reserves.
However, there was broad consensus among opponents of the U.S. invasion that getting Saddam behind bars was a good thing. French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, both fierce critics of Bush's war, hailed the arrest.
"This has lifted a shadow from the people of Iraq. Saddam will not be returning," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's main ally in the invasion of March 20.
In the Arab world, there were mixed feelings, with many ordinary people welcoming the final humiliation of a man who had invaded two of his neighbors, Iran and Kuwait, oppressed Iraq's Shi'ite majority and launched gas attacks on Kurdish villages.
Others, however, regretted the role the U.S. occupiers played in his overthrow and capture and some lamented the passing of a figure they saw as a defender of Arab interests in the face of the global superpower.
HOLE IN THE GROUND
Saddam's capture was in stark contrast to the bloody demise of his once powerful sons Uday and Qusay, who went down with guns blazing against an overwhelming U.S. force in July.
Saddam kept up a series of taped appeals to his countrymen after that. But a huge manhunt and the $25 million price on his head must have cramped his role in the guerrilla war. It was unclear if any bounty would be paid for his capture -- U.S. forces paid out $30 million to a man who informed on his sons.
Sanchez said the farm where Saddam was seized near Ad Dawr, south of Tikrit, had been surrounded by troops acting on a tip.
It was a humiliating end to a lifelong adventure that began not far away in a poor village on the Tigris river outside Tikrit. Clan connections in the Sunni-dominated military and a taste for ruthless street violence took Saddam to the top of the Arab nationalist Ba'ath party which seized power in a 1968 coup.
He crushed all opposition and spent huge amounts of Iraq's oil wealth on marble-lined palaces and massive monuments to himself. Many of the former are now barracks for U.S. troops while the latter were pulled down by joyful Iraqis months ago.
The soldiers finally tracked the fugitive down to the bottom of a narrow, man-sized hole in the ground, some two to three-meters (six to eight feet) deep, Sanchez said.
Washington had made Saddam number one -- the "ace of spades" -- on a list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis.
Saddam would be put on trial, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi told Reuters. A tribunal system for Iraqis to try Saddam and fellow Baathist leaders was set up only last week and U.S. officials say it could make use of capital punishment.
By Joseph Logan
A photo of Saddam Hussein after his capture is shown during
a press conference in Baghdad, December 14, 2003. U.S. troops captured
Saddam Hussein near his home town of Tikrit announced U.S. administrator
in Iraq Paul Bremer on Sunday, in a major coup for Washington's beleaguered
occupation force in Iraq. Photo by Reuters
AD-DAWR, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. troops captured Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole near his home town of Tikrit in a major coup for Washington's beleaguered occupation force in Iraq .
Grubby and bearded the 66-year-old dictator was dug out by troops from a cramped hiding pit during a raid on a farm in Ad-Dawr village late Saturday, the jubilant U.S. commander in Iraq Ricardo Sanchez said Sunday.
Gunfire crackled out in celebration across the country as Iraqis greeted a U.S. military video showing their once feared leader, disheveled and sporting a bushy black and gray beard, undergoing a medical examination after seven months on the run.
The arrest is a boon for President Bush after a run of increasingly bloody attacks on U.S. troops and their allies that imperil his campaign for re-election next year. Saddam may also provide intelligence on alleged banned weapons. The former president, who once seemed almost to believe his own claims of invincibility and urged his men to go down fighting the invaders, gave up without a shot being fired, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told a news conference in Baghdad.
Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," a beaming U.S. administrator Paul Bremer said in his first comments to the news conference where the film was shown. "The tyrant is a prisoner."
Cheering Iraqis in the audience shouted "Death to Saddam!"
Leading members of the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council said they would put Saddam on trial in Baghdad. He may face the death penalty as he answers for a three-decade reign of terror and for leading his oil-rich nation into three disastrous wars.
"We want Saddam to get what he deserves. I believe he will be sentenced to hundreds of death sentences at a fair trial because he's responsible for all the massacres and crimes in Iraq," said Amar al-Hakim, a senior member of the Shi'ite party the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
NO END TO VIOLENCE
The White House warned, however, that Saddam's capture may not mean an end to violence, which continued hours after he was seized, with a suspected suicide car bombing that left at least 17 dead at a police station in Khalidiyah, west of Baghdad.
U.S. officials say anti-American Muslim militants affiliated to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network have become active in Iraq amid the chaos following Saddam's ousting on April 9.
U.S. officials will also hope to extract vital intelligence on the alleged weapons programs which formed the public grounds for Bush to go to war in defiance of many U.N. allies.
Little evidence of banned weapons has been found, helping fuel continuing international wrangling over the lack of security in Iraq and the cost of rebuilding a country that holds the world's second biggest oil reserves.
However, there was broad consensus among opponents of the U.S. invasion that getting Saddam behind bars was a good thing. French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, both fierce critics of Bush's war, hailed the arrest.
"This has lifted a shadow from the people of Iraq. Saddam will not be returning," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's main ally in the invasion of March 20.
In the Arab world, there were mixed feelings, with many ordinary people welcoming the final humiliation of a man who had invaded two of his neighbors, Iran and Kuwait, oppressed Iraq's Shi'ite majority and launched gas attacks on Kurdish villages.
Others, however, regretted the role the U.S. occupiers played in his overthrow and capture and some lamented the passing of a figure they saw as a defender of Arab interests in the face of the global superpower.
HOLE IN THE GROUND
Saddam's capture was in stark contrast to the bloody demise of his once powerful sons Uday and Qusay, who went down with guns blazing against an overwhelming U.S. force in July.
Saddam kept up a series of taped appeals to his countrymen after that. But a huge manhunt and the $25 million price on his head must have cramped his role in the guerrilla war. It was unclear if any bounty would be paid for his capture -- U.S. forces paid out $30 million to a man who informed on his sons.
Sanchez said the farm where Saddam was seized near Ad Dawr, south of Tikrit, had been surrounded by troops acting on a tip.
It was a humiliating end to a lifelong adventure that began not far away in a poor village on the Tigris river outside Tikrit. Clan connections in the Sunni-dominated military and a taste for ruthless street violence took Saddam to the top of the Arab nationalist Ba'ath party which seized power in a 1968 coup.
He crushed all opposition and spent huge amounts of Iraq's oil wealth on marble-lined palaces and massive monuments to himself. Many of the former are now barracks for U.S. troops while the latter were pulled down by joyful Iraqis months ago.
The soldiers finally tracked the fugitive down to the bottom of a narrow, man-sized hole in the ground, some two to three-meters (six to eight feet) deep, Sanchez said.
Washington had made Saddam number one -- the "ace of spades" -- on a list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis.
Saddam would be put on trial, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi told Reuters. A tribunal system for Iraqis to try Saddam and fellow Baathist leaders was set up only last week and U.S. officials say it could make use of capital punishment.
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