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Bush Grabs New Power for FBI
By Kim Zetter
02:00 AM Jan. 06, 2004 PT
While the nation was distracted last month by images of Saddam Hussein's spider hole and dental exam, President George W. Bush quietly signed into law a new bill that gives the FBI increased surveillance powers and dramatically expands the reach of the USA Patriot Act.
The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 grants the FBI unprecedented power to obtain records from financial institutions without requiring permission from a judge.
Under the law, the FBI does not need to seek a court order to access such records, nor does it need to prove just cause.
Previously, under the Patriot Act, the FBI had to submit subpoena requests to a federal judge. Intelligence agencies and the Treasury Department, however, could obtain some financial data from banks, credit unions and other financial institutions without a court order or grand jury subpoena if they had the approval of a senior government official.
The new law (see Section 374 of the act), however, lets the FBI acquire these records through an administrative procedure whereby an FBI field agent simply drafts a so-called national security letter stating the information is relevant to a national security investigation.
And the law broadens the definition of "financial institution" to include such businesses as insurance companies, travel agencies, real estate agents, stockbrokers, the U.S. Postal Service and even jewelry stores, casinos and car dealerships.
The law also prohibits subpoenaed businesses from revealing to anyone, including customers who may be under investigation, that the government has requested records of their transactions.
Bush signed the bill on Dec. 13, a Saturday, which was the same day the U.S. military captured Saddam Hussein.
Some columnists and bloggers have accused the president of signing the legislation on a weekend, when news organizations traditionally operate with a reduced staff, to avoid public scrutiny and criticism. Any attention that might have been given the bill, they say, was supplanted by a White House announcement the next day about Hussein's capture.
James Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, didn't see any significance to the timing of Bush's signing. The 2004 fiscal year began Oct. 1 and the Senate and House passed the final version of the act in November. He said there was pressure to pass the legislation to free up intelligence spending.
However, Dempsey called the inclusion of the financial provision "an intentional end-run" by the administration to expand the administration's power without proper review.
Critics like Dempsey say the government is trying to pass legislation that was shot down prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when the Bush administration drafted plans to expand the powers of the Patriot Act.
The so-called Patriot Act II, as the press dubbed it, was written by the Justice Department. The Center for Public Integrity discovered it last year and exposed the document, initiating a public outcry that forced the government to back down on its plans.
But critics say the government didn't abandon its goals after the uproar; it simply extracted the most controversial provisions from Patriot Act II and slipped them surreptitiously into other bills, such as the Intelligence Authorization Act, to avoid raising alarm.
Dempsey said the Intelligence Authorization Act is a favorite vehicle of politicians for expanding government powers without careful scrutiny. The bill, because of its sensitive nature, is generally drafted in relative secrecy and approved without extensive debate because it is viewed as a "must-pass" piece of legislation. The act provides funding for intelligence agencies.
"It's hard for the average member to vote against it," said Dempsey, "so it makes the perfect vehicle for getting what you want without too much fuss."
The provision granting increased power was little more than a single line of legislation. But Dempsey said it was written in such a cryptic manner that no one noticed its significance until it was too late.
"We were the first to notice it outside of Congress," he said, "but we only noticed it in September after it had already passed in the House."
Rep. Porter Goss (R-Florida), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee that reviewed the bill, introduced the legislation into the House last year on June 11, where it passed two weeks later by a vote of 410-9. The Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent in July before it went to conference.
Goss's staff said he was out of the country and unavailable for comment. But Goss told the House last year that he believed the financial institution provision in the bill brought the intelligence community up to date with the reality of the financial industry.
"This bill will allow those tracking terrorists and spies to 'follow the money' more effectively and thereby protect the people of the United States more effectively," he said.
But Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minnesota), who opposed the legislation, told the House, "It is clear the Republican leadership and the administration would rather expand on the USA Patriot Act through deception and secrecy than debate such provisions in an open forum."
McCollum voted in favor of the legislation in the House in June before she and other legislators realized the significance of the provision. She opposed the final conference report in November. A conference report reconciles differences of opinion between the two legislative bodies and represents the final wording of a bill before it goes to the president for signature.
A number of other representatives expressed concern that the financial provision was slipped into the Intelligence Act at the 11th hour with no time for public debate and against objections from members the Senate Judiciary Committee, which normally has jurisdiction over the FBI. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the minority leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with five other members of the Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the Intelligence Committee requesting that their committee be given time to review the bill. But the provision had already passed by the time their letter went out.
"In our fight to protect America and our people, to make our world a safer place, we must never turn our backs on our freedoms," said Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter (R-Idaho) in a November press release. "Expanding the use of administrative subpoenas and threatening our system of checks and balances is a step in the wrong direction."
Otter also voted in favor of the bill in the House in June but, like McCollum, he opposed the final conference report in November once the significance of the provision was clear.
Charlie Mitchell, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said many legislators failed to recognize the significance of the legislation until it was too late. But he said the fact that 15 Republicans and over 100 Democrats voted against the conference report indicated that, had there been more time, there probably would have been sufficient opposition to remove the provision.
"To have that many people vote against it, based on just that one provision without discussion beforehand, signifies there is strong opposition to new Patriot Act II powers," Mitchell said.
He said legislators are now on the lookout for other Patriot Act II provisions being tucked into new legislation.
"All things considered, this was a loss for civil liberties," he said. But on a brighter note, "this was the only provision of Patriot II that made it through this year. Members are hearing from their constituents. I really think we have the ability to stop much of this Patriot Act II legislation in the future." (emphasis added)
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,61792,00.html?tw=wn_polihead_2
actually, rooster, they generally like us, the American people, a lot -- it's our current junta they don't much care for . . .
Halliburton-boy directly admits what we all already knew or should have known, and in fact brags about it -- dubya, asscrack and gang were lying through their teeth from the start when they said that the police-state powers granted under the Patriot Act, which by the way authorizes much more than just some benign-sounding 'information sharing', were only going to be used to fight terrorism (and it gets worse, much worse, as I will get to in my next post or three):
Cheney Defends Iraq War, Touts Patriot Act
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Associated Press
ROSEMONT, Ill. — The United States was justified in going to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein (search) was capable of producing weapons of mass destruction, Vice President Dick Cheney (search) told backers of GOP candidates Saturday.
Cheney also called on Congress to renew the Patriot Act, (search) the anti-terrorism bill that critics say has curbed civil liberties but that Cheney defended as allowing federal law enforcement to share more intelligence information.
"We use these tools to catch embezzlers and drug traffickers and we need these tools as well to hunt terrorists," he said of the bill's provisions.
Speaking to nearly 200 people at a $1,500-a-plate luncheon benefiting Republican U.S. House candidates, Cheney said that while inspectors have failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the regime did have the scientists and the technology needed to produce them.
"We know that Saddam Hussein had the intent to arm his regime with weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein had something else — he had a record of using weapons of mass destruction against his enemies and against his own people," he said.
Cheney also praised U.S. intelligence officers for discovering terrorist plots that he said authorities were able to prevent. He did not give any specifics.
"Americans can be grateful every day for the skillful and daring service of our nation's intelligence professionals," Cheney said.
The fund-raiser in Rosemont, a Chicago suburb, was sponsored by the National Republican Congressional Committee. [emphasis added]
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,110764,00.html
easymoney101 -- thanks (eom)
easymoney101 -- it would be very interesting to hear your friend's take on things here -- hope you and she have a great time during her visit
rooster -- if there was someone there, wouldn't we all like to know . . .
easymoney101 -- that sounds a lot like 'those who would trade freedom for security deserve, and will have, neither' -- re Delta and the CAPPS II program, all should understand that those running the shop now plan and intend to be keeping those sorts of tabs on each and every one of us, every minute of every day; CAPPS II is just part of the prototype stage (all for our own good, for our own safety and security, of course . . .)
spree -- in terms of how it's usually done, I agree -- though a Justice can in fact retire at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all; and of course there's another way vacancies can open up
spree -- I'm thinking, or at least hoping, that we're already close enough to what is clearly going to be a bitterly-fought campaign that dubya very well may lose, that even if a vacancy opened up today the chance of any dubya nominee being confirmed before the election would be slim to none -- at least unless dubya somehow actually nominated a genuine moderate with a known respect for individual rights and liberties in general and for the existing precedents of the Supreme Court which Scalia and Thomas would so like to reverse in particular, an eventuality the chance of which happening I would also place in the 'slim to none' category
spree -- yup -- on October 23, 1987, the Senate voted 58-42 against Bork's nomination
having just mentioned Bork -- the future composition of the Supreme Court, extending way beyond just the next presidential term, is yet another strategically absolutely crucial reason that dubya, Halliburton-boy, rummy and asscrack must be sent packing this time around -- back in 2000 this was my own number one key concern in opposing dubya -- ah those wonderful, innocent days of yore; not that this concern is even one little bit less important this time around, as it isn't (in fact, of course, it just keeps growing all the more urgent as all of the current Justices continue growing older), but if only that were my biggest concern this time around -- in any event, we have been nothing short of incredibly lucky so far on this score; one could even fairly term it a miracle that no Justice has yet retired or otherwise left the Supreme Court since dubya took the oath of office he's so deliberately and thoroughly dishonored when it comes to the Constitution -- but make no mistake about it, there is absolutely no way that this streak of great good fortune can in any way reasonably be hoped, let alone be expected, to continue unbroken through an additional four years of those who run dubya controlling nominations to the Supreme Court:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUNE 27, 2003
11:00 AM
CONTACT: People For the American Way
Tracy Duckett, Nathan Richter 202-467-4999
Reflections on the Importance of the Bork Defeat and Future Supreme Court Nominees on Americans' Rights and Freedoms
WASHINGTON - June 27 - Statement by Ralph G. Neas, President, People For the American Way Foundation.
For all those who have ever questioned the importance of the Senate's bipartisan rejection of Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination in 1987, this week's Supreme Court decisions on civil rights and privacy should be a resounding answer.
If Robert Bork had been confirmed, there would be no enhanced constitutional right to privacy, including the privacy rights of gay Americans. If Robert Bork had been confirmed, affirmative action programs in higher education would not be constitutionally permissible. And if Robert Bork had been confirmed, there would be no constitutional right to reproductive freedom, as well as many other rights and liberties that have been part of our constitutional fabric for decades.
These decisions have also underscored the importance of preventing a Scalia-Thomas majority on the Supreme Court. As People For the American Way Foundation has recently documented in Courting Disaster, Justices Scalia and Thomas are eager to have the Court aggressively reverse gains in civil rights, environmental protection, privacy and reproductive rights, separation of church and state, and more. In fact, a Scalia-Thomas majority on the Court could overturn more than 100 Supreme Court precedents going back to the New Deal.
This week's majority and dissenting opinions make it clear that new justices who embrace the Scalia and Thomas judicial philosophy would turn back the clock on important social justice achievements. President Bush has the opportunity to be a uniter, not a divider, by consulting with senators of both parties and choosing a nominee who is committed to protecting Americans' privacy and civil rights and preserving the social justice gains of the last 70 years. For their part, senators must fulfill their constitutional responsibility to carefully evaluate any nominee to the nation's highest court, and make an independent judgment about that nominee's commitment to upholding Americans' civil rights and constitutional liberties.
Contrary to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer's seeming backpedaling at today's White House briefing, advocates across the political spectrum have repeatedly noted that as a presidential candidate, Bush called Scalia and Thomas the models for his nominations. Indeed, a number of right-wing leaders have been warning Bush of the consequences of failing to put forward nominees in the mold of Scalia and Thomas.
Regardless of whether a Supreme Court resignation occurs next week, next year, or the year after that, vacancies are inevitably coming in the near future. Indeed, it has been nine years since the last Supreme Court confirmation, the longest interval between vacancies since 1823. Over the past half century, there has been on the average one Supreme Court nomination every two years. Over the next few years, we could have multiple vacancies, comparable to the four vacancies between 1969 and 1972 and the five between 1987 and 1994.
###
http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0627-02.htm
yes, rooster, there can be no denying it -- you and zit_for_brains truly do make such a nice pair, an impressive team indeed most sublime, just possibly the greatest of its kind ever since the days of those universally-esteemed masters of ratiocination Tweedledum and Tweedledee . . .
I mean look at you, you wondrous two! -- you two have already, all by yourselves, provoked me into becoming sufficiently focused on certain matters, matters I'll admit I don't particularly like to contemplate but which are these days never far from my mind, that I've made only my second political contribution ever, $2,000 to John Kerry for the primary elections -- and if I'm not mistaken, I'll be able to, and if so I will, contribute another $2,000 to John Kerry for the general election, once he becomes the Democratic nominee (my only other political contribution ever having been the $200 I gave the successful campaign that kept Robert Bork off the Supreme Court back in 1987) -- so you two have my deep thanks; and please by all means keep up all your great work!
and just to show my deep thanks, and to honor you two, our very own Tweedledum and Tweedledee all new, I now offer the one and the only, the original Tweedledum and Tweedledee -- I trust you'll enjoy!
Through the Looking Glass
by
Lewis Carroll
CHAPTER IV
TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE
THEY were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other's neck, and Alice knew which was which in a moment, because one of them had "DUM" embroidered on his collar, and the other "DEE". `I suppose they've each got "TWEEDLE" round at the back of the collar,' she said to herself.
They stood so still that she quite forgot they were alive, and she was just going round to see if the word "TWEEDLE" was written at the back of each collar, when she was startled by a voice coming from the one marked "DUM".
`If you think we're wax-works,' he said, `you ought to pay, you know. Wax-works weren't made to be looked at for nothing. Nohow.'
`Contrariwise,' added the one marked "DEE", `if you think we're alive, you ought to speak.'
`I'm sure I'm very sorry,' was all Alice could say; for the words of the old song kept ringing through her head like the ticking of a clock, and she could hardly help saying them out loud:
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle!
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel!
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.'
`I know what you're thinking about,' said Tweedledum; `but it isn't so, nohow.'
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
`I was thinking,' Alice said politely, `which is the best way out of this wood: it's getting so dark. Would you tell me, please?'
But the fat little men only looked at each other and grinned.
They looked so exactly like a couple of great schoolboys, that Alice couldn't help pointing her finger at Tweedledum, and saying `First Boy!'
`Nohow!' Tweedledum cried out briskly, and shut his mouth up again with a snap.
`Next Boy!' said Alice, passing on to Tweedledee, though she felt quite certain he would only shout out `Contrariwise!' and so he did.
`You've begun wrong!' cried Tweedledum. `The first thing in a visit is to say "How d'ye do?" and shake hands!' And here the two brothers gave each other a hug, and then they held out the two hands that were free, to shake hands with her.
Alice did not like shaking hands with either of them first, for fear of hurting the other one's feelings; so, as the best way out of the difficulty, she took hold of both hands at once: the next moment they were dancing round in a ring. This seemed quite natural (she remembered afterwards), and she was not even surprised to hear music playing: it seemed to come from the tree under which they were dancing, and it was done (as well as she could make it out) by the branches rubbing one across the other, like fiddles and fiddle-sticks.
`But it certainly was funny,' (Alice said afterwards, when she was telling her sister the history of all this), `to find myself singing "Here we go round the mulberry bush." I don't know when I began it, but somehow I felt as if I'd been singing it a long long time!'
The other two dancers were fat, and very soon out of breath. `Four times round is enough for one dance,' Tweedledum panted out, and they left off dancing as suddenly as they had begun: the music stopped at the same moment.
Then they let go of Alice's hands, and stood looking at her for a minute: there was a rather awkward pause, as Alice didn't know how to begin a conversation with people she had just been dancing with. `It would never do to say "How d'ye do?" now,' she said to herself: `we seem to have got beyond that, somehow!'
`I hope you're not much tired?' she said at last.
`Nohow. And thank you very much for asking,' said Tweedledum.
`So much obliged!' added Tweedledee. `You like poetry?'
`Ye-es, pretty well--some poetry,' Alice said doubtfully. `Would you tell me which road leads out of the wood?'
`What shall I repeat to her?' said Tweedledee, looking round at Tweedledum with great solemn eyes, and not noticing Alice's question.
`"The Walrus and the Carpenter" is the longest,' Tweedledum replied, giving his brother an affectionate hug.
Tweedledee began instantly:
`The sun was shining--'
Here Alice ventured to interrupt him. `If it's very long,' she said, as politely as she could, `would you please tell me first which road--'
Tweedledee smiled gently, and began again:
`The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him", she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead--
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand:
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"
"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."
The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now, if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."
"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?
"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice.
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"
"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick.
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"
"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathise."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.'
`I like the Walrus best,' said Alice: `because he was a little sorry for the poor oysters.'
`He ate more than the Carpenter, though,' said Tweedledee. `You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise.'
`That was mean!' Alice said indignantly. `Then I like the Carpenter best--if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus.'
`But he ate as many as he could get,' said Tweedledum.
This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, `Well! They were both very unpleasant characters--' Here she checked herself in some alarm, at hearing something that sounded to her like the puffing of a large steam-engine in the wood near them, though she feared it was more likely to be a wild beast. `Are there any lions or tigers about here?' she asked timidly.
`It's only the Red King snoring,' said Tweedledee.
`Come and look at him!' the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice's hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping.
`Isn't he a lovely sight?' said Tweedledum.
Alice couldn't say honestly that he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud-- `fit to snore his head off!' as Tweedledum remarked.
`I'm afraid he'll catch cold with lying on the damp grass,' said Alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl.
`He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: `and what do you think he's dreaming about?'
Alice said `Nobody can guess that.'
`Why, about you!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. `And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?'
`Where I am now, of course,' said Alice.
`Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. `You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!'
`If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, `you'd go out-- bang!--just like a candle!'
`I shouldn't!' Alice exclaimed indignantly. `Besides, if I'm only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?'
`Ditto,' said Tweedledum.
`Ditto, ditto!' cried Tweedledee.
He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying `Hush! You'll be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise.'
`Well, it's no use your talking about waking him,' said Tweedledum, `when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real.'
`I am real!' said Alice, and began to cry.
`You won't make yourself a bit realer by crying,' Tweedledee remarked: `there's nothing to cry about.'
`If I wasn't real,' Alice said--half laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous--`I shouldn't be able to cry.'
`I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?' Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.
`I know they're talking nonsense,' Alice thought to herself: `and it's foolish to cry about it.' So she brushed away her tears, and went on, as cheerfully as she could, `At any rate, I'd better be getting out of the wood, for really it's coming on very dark. Do you think it's going to rain?'
Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and his brother, and looked up into it. `No, I don't think it is,' he said: `at least--not under here. Nohow.'
`But it may rain outside?'
`It may--if it chooses,' said Tweedledee: `we've no objection. Contrariwise.'
`Selfish things!' thought Alice, and she was just going to say `Good-night' and leave them, when Tweedledum sprang out from under the umbrella, and seized her by the wrist.
`Do you see that?' he said, in a voice choking with passion, and his eyes grew large and yellow all in a moment, as he pointed with a trembling finger at a small white thing lying under the tree.
`It's only a rattle,' Alice said, after a careful examination of the little white thing. `Not a rattle-snake, you know,' she added hastily, thinking that he was frightened: `only an old rattle--quite old and broken.'
`I knew it was!' cried Tweedledum, beginning to stamp about wildly and tear his hair. `It's spoilt, of course!' Here he looked at Tweedledee, who immediately sat down on the ground, and tried to hide himself under the umbrella.
Alice laid her hand upon his arm and said, in a soothing tone, `You needn't be so angry about an old rattle.'
`But it isn't old!' Tweedledum cried, in a greater fury than ever. `It's new, I tell you--I bought it yesterday--my nice NEW RATTLE!' and his voice rose to a perfect scream.
All this time Tweedledee was trying his best to fold up the umbrella, with himself in it: which was such an extraordinary thing to do, that it quite took off Alice's attention from the angry brother. But he couldn't quite succeed, and it ended in his rolling over, bundling up in the umbrella, with only his head out: and there he lay, opening and shutting his mouth and his large eyes--`looking more like a fish than anything else,' Alice thought.
`Of course you agree to have a battle?' Tweedledum said in a calmer tone.
`I suppose so,' the other sulkily replied, as he crawled out of the umbrella: `only she must help us to dress up, you know.'
So the two brothers went off hand-in-hand into the wood, and returned in a minute with their arms full of things--such as bolsters, blankets, hearth-rugs, table-cloths, dish-covers, and coal-scuttles. `I hope you're a good hand at pinning and tying strings?' Tweedledum remarked. `Every one of these things has got to go on, somehow or other.'
Alice said afterwards she had never seen such a fuss made about anything in all her life--the way those two bustled about--and the quantity of things they put on--and the trouble they gave her in tying strings and fastening buttons--`Really they'll be more like bundles of old clothes than anything else, by the time they're ready!' she said to herself, as she arranged a bolster round the neck of Tweedledee, `to keep his head from being cut off,' as he said.
`You know,' he added very gravely, `it's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle--to get one's head cut off.'
Alice laughed loud: but she managed to turn it into a cough, for fear of hurting his feelings.
`Do I look very pale?' said Tweedledum, coming up to have his helmet tied on. (He called it a helmet, though it certainly looked much more like a saucepan.)
`Well--yes--a little,' Alice replied gently.
`I'm very brave, generally,' he went on in a low voice: `only to-day I happen to have a headache.'
`And I've got a toothache!' said Tweedledee, who had overheard the remark. `I'm far worse than you!'
`Then you'd better not fight to-day,' said Alice, thinking it a good opportunity to make peace.
`We must have a bit of a fight, but I don't care about going on long,' said Tweedledum. `What's the time now?'
Tweedledee looked at his watch, and said `Half-past four.'
`Let's fight till six, and then have dinner,' said Tweedledum.
`Very well,' the other said, rather sadly: `and she can watch us--only you'd better not come veryclose,' he added: `I generally hit every thing I can see--when I get really excited.'
`And I hit everything within reach,' cried Tweedledum, `whether I can see it or not!'
Alice laughed. `You must hit the trees pretty often, I should think,' she said.
Tweedledum looked round him with a satisfied smile. `I don't suppose,' he said, `there'll be a tree left standing, for ever so far round, by the time we've finished!'
`And all about a rattle!' said Alice, still hoping to make them a little ashamed of fighting for such a trifle.
`I shouldn't have minded it so much,' said Tweedledum, `if it hadn't been a new one.'
`I wish the monstrous crow would come!' thought Alice.
`There's only one sword, you know,' Tweedledum said to his brother: `but you can have the umbrella -- it's quite as sharp. Only we must begin quick. It's getting as dark as it can.'
`And darker,' said Tweedledee.
It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice thought there must be a thunderstorm coming on. `What a thick black cloud that is!' she said. `And how fast it comes! Why, I do believe it's got wings!'
`It's the crow!' Tweedledum cried out in a shrill voice of alarm; and the two brothers took to their heels and were out of sight in a moment.
Alice ran a little way into the wood, and stopped under a large tree. `It can never get at me here,' she thought: `it's far too large to squeeze itself in among the trees. But I wish it wouldn't flap its wings so -- it makes quite a hurricane in the wood -- here's somebody's shawl being blown away!'
http://www.sabian.org/Alice/lgchap04.htm
Re the article in my last post titled Think Again: Deficit Coverage: 'What's Missing?' -- in 3d paragraph, obvious typo (in the original): "$1.24 billion in tax cuts" should, of course, read "$1.24 trillion in tax cuts"
Think Again: Deficit Coverage: 'What's Missing?'
by Brad DeLong
February 5, 2004
"Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter," snapped Vice President Richard Cheney to about-to-be-fired Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill a little over a year ago. He's wrong – as wrong about deficits as he was about Ahmad Chalabi's popular support in Iraq or Saddam Hussein's capability to threaten America. Deficits do matter.
How much do they matter? How much they matter is what's missing from the mainstream press. In fact, you'll have a hard time finding deficit forecasts by reading the mainstream press.
You'll have an easy time finding the Bush administration's official deficit forecast for 2009: $237 billion. But reading through the news section of the Washington Post will tell you almost nothing more. You will read uncontradicted quotes from OMB head Josh Bolten about how "with Congress' help in enacting the budget… we will be well on the path to cutting the deficit in half within five years." You'll come away with the (false) impression that the Bush budget manages to do this and provide $1.24 billion in tax cuts too. You'll find news reporters writing with a straight face about Bush's "confidence" that the deficit can be halved by 2009 alongside big boosts in Defense and Homeland Security spending and the extension of all the Bush tax cuts.
You'll do somewhat better with the news pages of the New York Times: Edmund Andrews will tell you that "tough surgery on... spending... produce[s] only a tiny reduction in the... deficit," and that there are enormous unreported deficits after 2009. But you'll have to read down to and beyond the twelfth paragraphs of articles to learn that neither Democrats nor Republicans in Congress find the Bush forecast credible. Only the Wall Street Journal dares tell its readers in any article's first paragraph that the Bush budget is "fiscal sleight of hand."
You'll do much better with the editorial pages (except the Journal, of course). The Post writes of "Bogus Budgeting," and says "the likely deficit in 2009... more than $150 billion higher... the administration's fuzzy math." The Times writes of the "Pinocchio Budget" with its "central fiction... that it constitutes the first step in halving the... deficit." (And the Journal calls it the "best budget of [Bush's] tenure.")
But even the closest reading of the mainstream daily media to the very last paragraphs of articles won't give you more than a vague picture of what the deficit is likely to be. And we need to have a sharper picture. Make no mistake: the Bush administration's current tune in public is very different from what Cheney says in private. In public it says that reducing the deficit is one of its highest priorities. But don't be fooled. Cheney has carried the day.
So let me fill in what's missing, and give an honest forecast of what the policies the Bush administration espouses are likely to do. The honest forecast is for a deficit of $400 billion in 2009, rising to $600 billion in 2014, and then rising still further thereafter.
What effects will these deficits have on the American economy? The media tell you that deficits are bad. They may even tell you that deficits slow growth, and raise the chances of a financial crisis that will turn into not a recession but a depression. But we need to have a sharper picture. So let me once again fill in part of what's missing. I cannot put a number on the chance that Bush deficits will trigger a financial crisis and a depression. But I can put a number on how the growth slowdown: big enough to cut an average American family's income by $4,000 by the end of the standard 10-year budget forecast period.
Think of it that way: George W. Bush wants to give your family a $4,000 annual pay cut in a decade.
How will this happen? A deficit means that the government is spending more than it takes in through taxes. A government that spends more than it takes in borrows. Savers – households, banks, and businesses – buy Treasury bonds. Each dollar of savings used to buy these Treasury bonds and thus snarfed up by the Treasury is a dollar that cannot be used to finance the building of a house, the purchase of a machine tool to boost a factory's productivity, or the replacement of an outdated inventory-control system with a cheaper high-tech one. A bigger deficit means less investment in America. And less investment in America means slower economic growth.
Now this year's deficit isn't a mistake, or at least isn't a big mistake: we shouldn't worry about this year's, or next year's deficit. As long as unemployment is high and capacity utilization low, a deficit is a good thing, but over the long term, as N. Gregory Mankiw, current chair of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), put it: the fact that budget deficits slow economic growth is "the most basic lesson about budget deficits." This lesson "follows directly from their effects on... supply and demand.... When the government... [runs] a budget deficit, the interest rate rises, and investment falls. Because investment is important for long-run economic growth, government budget deficits reduce the economy's growth rate."
By how much? Mankiw and Federal Reserve economist Doug Elmendorf – a Clinton administration official at the Treasury Department – have some crude rules of thumb. Each dollar of deficit reduces economic growth enough to reduce America's real GDP by seven cents. The $400 billion deficit of 2009 will lower GDP that year by $28 billion – and GDP will stay $28 billion lower than otherwise in all subsequent years: that lost economic growth will not be made up.
Apply this rule of thumb to honest forecasts of what Bush administration policies will do, and find that by 2014 deficit-induced lower investment and slower economic growth will leave America's GDP some $300 billion a year lower than it would have been otherwise. A lot of the benefits from what would otherwise have been higher investment – a lot of the buildings and machines that would have helped America's workers do their stuff – will simply not be there. Productivity will be lower. And wages will be lower. That's $4,000 per family in lost income every year. That's a lot of clothes dryers not bought, a lot of vacations not taken, a lot of doctor's visits not made, a lot of old cars driven into the ground for an extra two years. That's a poorer America with less money to fund education or environmental cleanup. That's what will be missing.
And what will we have in exchange? Big cuts in taxes for the $300,000-plus-a-year crowd, profits for politically well-connected companies, and very little else. It looks to me at least like a very bad bargain.
This is not a partisan view. From the left my friends will point out that faster economic growth is not the only thing, and that budget surpluses plus faster capital accumulation are not worth the price they cost if they are funded by cuts in education or public investment or the safety net. And they are right. But they will also admit that budget surpluses and higher investment are better than tax cuts for the $300,000-plus-a-year crowd.
From the right my friends and non-friends will say that well-designed tax cuts that improve incentives could boost production by enough to outweigh the drag of deficits for a decade or so, but they will also admit that the Bush tax cuts are not the well-designed incentive-compatible ones they have in mind.
Everyone else will have few problems with what I have written. After all, it is what the chairs of Bush's CEA teach their classes when they are at their academic jobs. It is what O'Neill begged Cheney to help him get Bush to understand. It is what Bolten and NEC Chair Stephen Friedman and current Treasury Secretary John Snow said before they joined the Bush administration. Why aren't they effective on the inside in getting policies like those they used to advocate when they were on the outside? That's really what's missing.
Brad DeLong is a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, and former deputy assistant secretary for economic policy. You can read his blog here.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=27156
Good Cop, Bad Cop
Why it made sense to threaten unilateral war in Iraq, but not to wage it
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Updated: 10:35 a.m. ET Feb. 06, 2004
Feb. 6 - Some of the most beautiful streets in Baghdad are concrete jungles now, enormous blast-wall mazes inhabited by Iraqi guards with AK-47s and American soldiers with Abrams tanks, all standing watch against suicide bombers. They’re roads to hell, in fact, in this town where every foreigner is a target and when I threaded my way through them this morning I couldn’t help thinking they’re paved with the good intentions of politicians who argued that only the credible threat of war could actually prevent a war.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell-and Sen. Hillary Clinton and, yes, Sen. John Kerry-all took that basic position in 2002 because, quite simply, 16 months ago it seemed a reasonable one to take.
President Bush seemed reasonable too, at the time. He had just presented an eloquent ultimatum to the United Nations, after all, galvanizing that torpid institution, mobilizing world opinion and sending something like the fear of God into Saddam Hussein. After years defying the U.N., suddenly the Iraqi dictator allowed its inspectors back into his country, into his palaces, into the forbidden corners of his murderous republic because, and only because, Washington was threatening war and regime change. That was a great and a necessary accomplishment, and recognized as such.
The cliché of the day cast Blair and Powell as “the good cops,” speaking and acting with moderation, urging Bush to go to the U.N. rather than acting alone, promising a way out. Bush—or at least the hawks in his administration-were “the bad cops,” always on the verge of violence, ever ready to terrify and intimidate the suspect Saddam. A little over a year ago, what many people thought, or hoped, was that this was a calculated drama, and clearly it was working. Again and again Saddam, two-bit thug that he is, would put up a tough-guy pose of resistance, then crumble completely. But the war party in the administration just wouldn’t take his “yes” for an answer.
Forget all the technical debate in Washington right now discussing the way the American people and the world were misled about phantom “stockpiles” of ghastly weapons. We were depending on reasonable leaders and members of the administration—especially Powell-to keep U.S. policy rational and avoid war unless it was absolutely necessary. President Bush, for his part, kept saying for the record that’s what he really wanted to do, too.
Looking back, the good cop/bad cop scenario gives you a pretty good picture of what happened, and it’s like something from an episode of “NYPD Blue”:
The suspect is folding, but slowly. “I ain’t got no weapons,” he keeps saying, and every time he holds his head up in defiance, the bad cop threatens him with a baseball bat. The good cop offers a cup of coffee. “C’mon buddy, give us the combination to that safe where you keep the weapons.” The thug gives, but the safe is empty.
Now the bad cop says he is really, really pissed off, and acts it. “Who made these weapons for you. Names! I want names!” The baseball bat is raised high. The thug gives the names, but everybody says the same thing, “no weapons.” Meanwhile, detectives are searching the suspect’s hideout. Nothing. At this point, the good cop starts to figure this is going to be a long, frustrating interrogation, but it’s getting closer to the truth, when suddenly the bad cop goes ballistic. “No more questions,” he says, pulls out his .44 Magnum and blows off the suspect’s head.
In all of these shows, the good cop feels duty bound to cover for a fellow officer. The thug deserved what he got, the good cop tells himself. The thug’s wife and kids, who were terribly battered and abused, are better off without this monster. The bad cop is really a good guy at heart. He really believed the suspect was lying and the clock was ticking and people’s lives were in danger. He acted badly-but in good faith. Let’s give him another chance.
Then the doubts set in, especially after the bad cop moves in with the thug’s battered family, takes over their property and bank accounts, and winds up in a bloody, running battle with his sons and friends. Was the killing premeditated? What if the bad cop had been planning it for years? What if he had an old score he wanted to settle? What if he was only using the good cop to give him a little cover and to make excuses for him? What if he doesn’t really respect the law at all, just his own raw power when he’s got that .44 in his hand? What if what he wanted all along were those bank accounts?
Maybe we should drop the metaphor at this point, because these are just the kinds of rhetorical questions Shadowland readers keep sending in about President Bush and the people around him—questions about their motives. Most of those readers seem convinced by what they’ve read and seen that Bush and his war party had decided on their basic course of action from the earliest days of their administration. There is that oft-remarked line of Bush’s about Saddam trying to kill his daddy. There were the many precedents of the Bush administration walking away from any semblance of international law and order as an unnecessary restraint on American action. There’s the matter of oil. And Halliburton.
But, you know, all that is so much a part of the public record now, it’s not really the “bad cop’s” motives that interest me. It’s those of the “good cop,” or cops. Did Blair and Powell really think they could avert a war by playing along with the war party? Or did they knowingly let themselves be used to dupe American, British and (not very successfully) international opinion? Did they fight for solid rationality and common sense, or did they just provide the veneer? And what about those Democratic senators who voted authorization in October 2002 for Bush to use unilateral action as he deemed necessary against Saddam?
Their explanations at the time sounded somewhere between principled and pusillanimous, and The New Republic summed them up nicely right after the vote with a headline that read “Make War, Not War.” “Bipartisan support for this resolution makes success in the United Nations more likely, and therefore, war less likely,” declared Sen. Clinton.
As for Sen. Kerry, he offered a pretty solid critique of Bush’s policy: “There is no justification whatsoever for sending Americans for the first time in American history as the belligerent, as the initiator of it, as a matter of first instance, without a showing of an imminent threat to our country.” Kerry claimed he supported UN inspections and, only if Iraq refused to cooperate, true multinational military action against Saddam. Yet Kerry voted, in effect, to put the loaded .44 in the Bush’s holster and tell him “do what you got to do.” Pressed for an explanation the next week, Kerry actually did say, “He has a free hand to make a catastrophic mistake.” Was Kerry opposing Bush or appeasing him? Hard to tell.
I’m inclined to give all the good cops, including Blair and Powell, the benefit of the doubt. It’s disappointing that so few chose to take a firm stand against the final, hysterical, hyped-up rush to invade. (British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who resigned, is the only one who comes to mind.) But I’m not sure that, even collectively, they would have had the power to stop the war. Saddam was stupid. Those in the Bush administration who intended all along to eliminate him were not. Nobody wanted to be cast as defending the Butcher of Baghdad. And the brinksmanship, after all, did work-until the bad cop went ballistic.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4191765/
Touch of Harry In the Night
In 1988 it was Dukakis who looked silly in a tank. This time, Kerry shivs George Bush for 'playing dress-up aboard an aircraft carrier'
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Feb. 9 issue - Max Cleland reads Shakespeare. In Columbia, S.C., last week, the triple amputee who lost his Senate seat in 2002 quoted "Henry V" to an audience of fellow Vietnam veterans who support John Kerry: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers." But perhaps because "happy" and "Vietnam" don't go well together, the occasion called for another great line from that play. When an African-American gunner from Kerry's Swift Boat told of Kerry's courage and personal concern for his men, Cleland spoke of leadership in battle as "a little touch of Harry in the night."
A little touch of Kerry won't be enough to beat President Bush. If Kerry sews up the nomination (still not a sure thing in a season of accelerated buyers' remorse), he will face a barrage of incoming fire across a dozen swing states this spring. It has already begun, with Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie noting that congressional scorecards show him as "more liberal than Ted Kennedy."
Other Republicans are signaling that they will make an issue of Kerry's opposition to the death penalty until 2002, when he decided to run for president. The point will be to depict him as soft on terrorists and drug kingpins and a political opportunist to boot. With the help of a talk-radio monopoly and $100 million or so in negative ads, Bush operatives will make sure every voter knows about the Kennedy connection and the death-penalty conversion. To win in November, Kerry must pivot repeatedly from defense to offense and take the battle to Bush.
Wartime heroics are helpful in politics but rarely decisive. World War II vets George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole both lost to draft dodger Bill Clinton. I'll never forget watching Cindy McCain burst into tears the night of the 2000 South Carolina primary when aides told her husband, John, that he had not just lost to George W. Bush, but had lost among veterans. Cleland lost in Georgia in 2002 to Saxby Chambliss after Chambliss, who ducked the draft, had the nerve to attack Cleland's patriotism.
When I asked Kerry why the Republicans wouldn't do to him what they had done to Cleland, he said that Cleland failed to fight back against attack ads, a mistake he wouldn't make. Cleland himself has learned his lesson and is now going preemptive on behalf of his man Kerry. While he challenged Michael Moore's claim that Bush was a "deserter" during Vietnam, Cleland did argue to me that "Bush was AWOL and was kicked out of the Alabama National Guard" when he worked on a Senate campaign instead of fulfilling the second year of his guard duties.
The Bush camp denies this, noting that the young guardsman received an honorable discharge. But even if Cleland turns out to be wrong (the facts are hazy and inconclusive), the dustup symbolizes the determination of Democrats to match the GOP blow for blow. Anyone who tries to make Kerry look soft will get an earful not just about Bush but Dick Cheney, who escaped the draft because he said he "had other priorities" during Vietnam. Raising this doesn't win many votes. But it might make it at least a little harder to depict the Democrats as girly-men who won't keep us safe, the not-so-subtle subtext of the GOP campaign.
At the same time, the "liberal, liberal, liberal" attack line may be getting stale. After years of success with liberal-bashing TV ads, consultant Arthur Finkelstein suffered a string of losses in Senate races in the late 1990s. Kerry's notion that voters are "tired of labels" may be wishful thinking, but they will clearly want to hear more about Kerry than that he supported a nuclear freeze 20 years ago and opposed the gulf war in 1991. The more recent death- penalty flip-flop will be harder to rebut. But even there, he'll counterpunch, arguing that he helped put more cops on the streets, while Bush is taking them off.
The aim is muscular liberalism, an effort to "de-Dukakisize" the man who once served as Michael Dukakis's lieutenant governor. In 1988 it was Dukakis who looked silly in a tank. This time Kerry shivs Bush for "playing dress-up aboard an aircraft carrier" and builds his stump speech around the idea that the only ones with their "Mission Accomplished" are wealthy special interests coddled by the president. His attack on "Benedict Arnold CEOs" who get tax breaks to move jobs offshore is always a crowd pleaser. And he's already clocking Bush for trying to cut combat pay and veterans' benefits in wartime.
Both the risk and the hope for Kerry is that the true character of the candidate has a way of oozing through in a presidential election. Will his aloofness resurface? Or will voters in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania see the strength and grit of the Mekong Delta? Kerry was decorated for turning his boat toward shore under heavy fire and heading straight for the enemy hiding in the bushes. He found them.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4121330/
Patriot Games
Bush strategists may feel tempted to attack John Kerry’s opposition to Vietnam. Why it’s a battle they can’t win
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 1:45 p.m. ET Feb. 02, 2004
The voters don't want to refight the Vietnam war, but with John Kerry looking like the likely nominee, Vietnam returns to the front pages. Kerry is accompanied on the campaign trail by the men he served with in the Mekong Delta. "I know a little something about aircraft carriers for real," he says, in an allusion to President George W. Bush's premature "Mission Accomplished" landing last spring on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
There is another chapter to Kerry's war history that Republicans are examining, and that is his leadership in 1971 of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Some GOP strategists envision television ads linking Kerry with Jane Fonda in order to undermine his credentials as a decorated war veteran.
Highlighting Kerry's antiwar activism is a risky strategy for the Republicans. To quote Kerry, who quotes the president: "Bring it on." If the election turns into a debate over war records, Bush can't win.
Retired general Wesley Clark was widely criticized for not objecting when left-wing activist Michael Moore called Bush a "deserter" in his presence. As a military man, Clark knows that deserting is a capital offense, reserved for those who have been court-martialed and found guilty. The charge against Bush is that he was AWOL for a year of his service in the National Guard. Once the pundits finished critiquing the impact on Clark of the presumed gaffe, the next logical question is to ask where Bush was during that year, how he got away with his absenteeism, and does it matter?
Boston Globe reporter Walter Robinson did an exhaustive study of Bush's military service, which was published in May 2000. Robinson concluded that during Bush's final 18 months in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 and 1973, he did not fly at all and was "all but unaccounted for," with no records to indicate that he attended any of the required drills. Bush was working for a Senate campaign in Alabama for part of the time, and was supposed to appear for duty there, but never did. After the November '72 election, Bush returned to Houston, but he was a no-show there, as well.
Under the rules at the time, guardsmen who miss duty were supposed to be reported and could then be drafted. Seven months after Bush returned to Houston, two of his commanding officers filed a report noting that Bush had not been "observed" at his unit during the previous 12 months. That evidently shocked Bush into performing. Over the next three months, from May to July 1973, he spent 36 days on Guard duty, for which he was rewarded with an early discharge to attend Harvard Business School.
In his new book, "American Dynasty," author Kevin Phillips traces three generations of Bushes and the web of favoritism and influence that perpetuates the line. Phillips says it was against Navy regulations in 1942 to place 18-year-old George H.W. Bush in flight training, but the rules were bent for the son of Prescott Bush. The Los Angeles Times found a similar bending of the rules 26 years later, Phillips writes. George W. didn't qualify for either a direct commission or flight training, but he received both when he jumped several waiting lists for a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard.
Bush senior was a member of Congress at the time, and, according to Phillips, had a friend speak to Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes about young George. Barnes in turn contacted the commander of the Texas Air National Guard, who greased the way. Direct commissions were generally reserved for doctors because the military needed flight surgeons, and expensive flight instruction was not normally given to somebody like Bush, who didn't score well on the aptitude test for pilots and who had shown no professional commitment to flying. According to Phillips, it was arranged for Bush to train on F-102 fighters, dated aircraft being phased out of service—added insurance that Bush would not go to Vietnam.
In fairness, Bush has been candid about why he enlisted in the Air National Guard. Like many young men of his generation, he wanted to avoid Vietnam. He told one reporter, "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."
He has not been candid about his absences from the Guard. After the Boston Globe story broke in 2000, Bush said through a spokesman that he has "some recollection" of attending drills during the time period in question, but conceded that he was not consistent. Records unearthed by the Globe showed that Bush was removed from flight status in August 1972 for failing to take his annual flight physical. Bush aides said he didn't take the physical because his personal physician was in Houston, and he was in Alabama working on a political campaign. But that explanation didn't hold up because flight physicals must be administered by certified Air Force flight surgeons, and Bush easily could have found one at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., where he was living.
Kerry's candidacy was elevated when a former Green Beret whose life he saved showed up on the campaign trail in Iowa to attest to Kerry's courage. In addition, former Georgia senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam and was defeated in 2002 after GOP attacks on his patriotism, appears regularly with Kerry. Bush can't match that. If he's smart, he won't try.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4114162/
"Dishonest Dubya" Lying Action Figure
be sure to have your sound on, and do check out all of the (absolutely genuine) statements by dubya:
http://homepage.mac.com/webmasterkai/kaicurry/gwbush/dishonestdubya.html
(COMTEX) B: On Law: Will 2004 be a repeat of 2000? ( United Press International )
WASHINGTON, Feb 06, 2004 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- The wafer-thin margin of victory in last Tuesday's Oklahoma Democratic primary reminds us that the days of courts intervening in elections, even presidential elections, may be far from over.
Not that the Democrats are suddenly going to be turning to the courts to resolve close elections or force recounts in their primaries. But all the elements are still in place for the major parties to turn to the courts come the general election in November.
The truth -- and we try tell the truth here -- is that the country is deeply divided over who's going to run the country.
And with the Electoral College system, victories in individual states are far more important that a majority of the popular votes. Remember, then-Texas Gov. George Bush prevailed over Vice President Al Gore because he narrowly won the majority of electoral votes when the victories in the states were counted, even though Gore racked up a half-million more votes nationwide.
It's not outside the realm of possibility that slim victories in one or two or even three states next fall will determine the next occupant of the White House, even if the popular vote is more decisive.
That's one strike out of three.
Strike two is that very little has been done to effectively prevent a miscount of votes in any given large election. Congress tried to pass a law in 2002 that forces the states to centralize and computerize voting. The result has been a confusion of hacker-vulnerable, glitch-prone systems that inspires confidence in no one that your vote will actually be counted.
Strike three is the realization that for too many of us our votes almost certainly will not be counted.
The five-justice majority in 2000's Bush vs. Gore tried to anticipate that problem, and as usual, issued a sunny prediction that has no basis in reality.
"The closeness of this election, and the multitude of legal challenges which have followed in its wake, have brought into sharp focus a common, if heretofore unnoticed, phenomenon," the majority said in its per curiam opinion stopping the Florida recount. "Nationwide statistics reveal that an estimated 2 percent of ballots cast do not register a vote for president for whatever reason ... This case has shown that punch card balloting machines can produce an unfortunate number of ballots which are not punched in a clean, complete way by the voter. After the current counting, it is likely (state) legislative bodies nationwide will examine ways to improve the mechanisms and machinery for voting."
This is the same Supreme Court that confidently predicted in Clinton vs. Jones that if the court allowed a sexual harassment case to proceed against President Bill Clinton during his term in office it would not disrupt the presidency.
This is the same Supreme Court that confidently predicted last year in the University of Michigan cases that the need for affirmative action will gradually wither away.
Perhaps you share the high court's rosy view. Don't think 2 percent will matter one way or another?
In that Oklahoma presidential primary we talked about earlier, retired Gen. Wes Clark apparently prevailed over Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., by less than 1 percent of the vote. Given the problems in counting ballots and our lack of progress in solving those problems, do we know who really won?
Now picture next November.
If one presidential candidate wins a majority of the Electoral College through tiny margins in a handful of states and is inaugurated in January -- even if that candidate receives less than a majority of the popular vote -- we will have a president, but will we really know who won?
For a nation engaged in a war against terror, struggling in the coils of the global economy and seeking confidence in its institutions, the answer is important.
--
(Mike Kirkland is UPI's senior legal affairs correspondent. He has covered the Supreme Court and other parts of the legal community since 1993.)
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Legal Affairs Correspondent
Copyright 2004 by United Press International.
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My Dime -- I just thought it was interesting that Kyoto (Japan) found this worthy of note while the American mass media pretty much hasn't said word one about it . . .
(COMTEX) B: U.S. editorial excerpts+ ( Kyodo )
NEW YORK, Feb 06, 2004 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- Selected editorial excerpts from the U.S. press:
GIVING PAKISTAN A PASS (The Washington Post, Washington)
The attempt by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to whitewash his country's marketing of nuclear weapons technology to rogue dictatorships and sponsors of terrorism comes as no surprise. The general and his government have been lying for years about the illegal traffic.
Now that their cover has been blown by evidence supplied to the United Nations by Libya and Iran, they are attempting to pin all the blame on a single scientist while stonewalling any international investigation. On Wednesday Abdul Qadeer Khan, the chief designer of Pakistan's atomic weapons, confessed on television to selling his work through an international black market and claimed he acted alone -- contradicting his previous implication of Mr. Musharraf and other top generals.
Yesterday Mr. Musharraf duly pardoned him, called him a hero and declared that Pakistan would not supply documentation to the International Atomic Energy Agency or admit its investigators.
Such belligerence could be expected from a military ruler. What's hard to believe is the Bush administration's reaction to it.
Rather than moving to impose sanctions on Pakistan -- action that might be expected for a government that has been caught providing the technology for nuclear weapons to such countries as Iran, Libya and North Korea -- it has swallowed his coverup and even congratulated him on it.
The administration's dilemma is that it has banked its policy toward Pakistan on its relationship with Mr. Musharraf, who has been showered with aid and praise in exchange for half-measures against terrorism and promises about stopping proliferation. Perhaps there is no alternative to a relationship with the general.
But that relationship cannot be the only defense against further delivery of Pakistan's nuclear weapons technology to enemies of the United States. Mr. Bush should insist that Pakistan supply the details of its trafficking to the IAEA and allow outside monitoring of its programs.
Stopping Pakistan's proliferation is vital to U.S. security. It cannot be left to Mr. Musharraf to decide how or whether it will be done. (Feb. 6)
2004 Kyodo News (c) Established 1945
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Bush vs. Kerry: Who Will Win? Vote in this urgent poll
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The media and others want to know your opinion. Vote today!
http://www.newsmax.com/bushkerry/
(BSNS WIRE) Halliburton CEO Featured in New Television Advertising;
Lesar Touts Company's Work in Iraq
Political Writers / Business Editors
HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HAL--
Halliburton today announced the launch of a new
television commercial featuring its president and CEO David J. Lesar.
The 30-second ad addresses a number of the misrepresentations the
company says have been part of the national political debate during
the presidential campaign.
Specifically, Halliburton answers the suggestion that its
contracts in Iraq were awarded because of anything but the quality of
the company's work.
"We're serving the troops because of what we know, not who we
know," Lesar says during the commercial.
"You've heard a lot about Halliburton lately," Lesar opens the ad.
"Criticism is OK. We can take it. Criticism is not failure.
"Our employees are doing a great job. We're feeding the soldiers.
We're rebuilding Iraq.
"Will things go wrong? Sure they will. It's a war zone.
"But when they do, we'll fix it. We always have -- for 60 years
for both political parties.
"We're serving the troops because of what we know, not who we
know."
The spot closes with the company's slogan used in other
commercials: Halliburton. Proud to serve our troops.
A Halliburton spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said the ads address
misstatements and wrong information put forward recently in the
presidential political campaigns.
"We are clearing up the record," Hall said. "Just as our ad says,
we want people to understand that we get our business based on the
skills and abilities of our employees to deliver quality services to
those who need them. We are very good at what we do, and we have done
it for 60 years for both Republican and Democratic administrations."
"We understand that the war is a legitimate campaign issue," said
Hall. "But in the words of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
people are entitled to their own opinion. They are not entitled to
their own facts."
The company did not discuss where the advertising will run.
SOURCE: Halliburton
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Halliburton, Houston
Wendy Hall, 713-759-2600
wendy.hall@halliburton.com
*** end of story ***
(COMTEX) B: Bush's budget based on wishful thinking ( The Dallas Morning News )
Feb 05, 2004 (The Dallas Morning News - Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service via
COMTEX) -- President Bush, in a budget message longer on wishful thinking and
political calculation than on realism, set his top goals as winning the war on
terror, maintaining domestic safety and spurring economic growth.
Only then did he list, as "another important priority, cutting the budget
deficit brought on by recession and war."
The order of his priorities suggests that the nation's first president with a
master's degree in business administration continues to resist any suggestion
that his own fiscal management has contributed to the way that the massive
long-term budget surplus he inherited became an equally massive long-term
deficit.
To Bush, the chief factors are a sharp decline in revenue, stemming largely from
the drop in the stock market and a recession that began soon after he entered
office, plus increased spending on defense and homeland security to meet the
terrorist threat. He also notes he inherited increased domestic spending
initiated by his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
"Had there not been one dime of tax relief under President Bush, we would have
still run substantial budget deficits," his message said.
To the president's critics, the added costs of defense, homeland security and
domestic programs are dwarfed by the revenue losses from the series of Bush tax
cuts.
Discretionary domestic spending has been relatively stable, said the liberal
Center for American Progress, contending that more than half of this year's
record $521 billion deficit stems from the tax cuts.
Comptroller General David Walker, a nonpartisan appointee, has made the rounds
in Washington for some months, warning that the situation is worse than
advertised and requires action to limit the tax cuts, reduce spending and curb
the burgeoning costs of Social Security and Medicare.
Though many people in both parties agree, the chances for meaningful action in
an election year probably are minimal.
With Bush seeking to extend his tax cuts, any rollback clearly is off the table.
And on spending, both Congress and Bush have talked a better game than they have
played.
Lawmakers have larded their budgets with all sorts of pork, and Bush has shown
no inclination to use his veto power to enforce greater discipline.
In his new budget, Bush sought to put the burden on Congress by inviting
lawmakers to consider his plan a ceiling and develop a mechanism to limit
spending and make additional cuts.
But he undercut his credibility by failing to include funds for continued U.S.
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that almost certainly will make the deficit
even worse.
Looking to the future, most Democrats, including presidential front-runner John
Kerry, want to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. But
they would use much of the savings to expand federal health and education
programs.
Such proposals are nonstarters this year. Indeed, there's no guarantee they
would pass next year, even if Kerry wins the presidency. Republicans are certain
to keep the House and quite possibly the Senate, meaning that a Democratic
president could face significant obstacles in passing a deficit plan that
includes tax hikes.
The last two decades suggest that the only solution is for a president and
lawmakers to join in crafting explicit proposals. Deficit reduction plans in
1982, 1986 and 1990, raising taxes and cutting spending, passed only with
bipartisan support, though Democrats in 1993 passed Clinton's plan without a
single GOP vote.
The controversial memoir of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill provides an
ironic footnote. According to Ron Suskind's "The Price of Loyalty," O'Neill and
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed in 2001 that any tax cut should
include a "trigger" to suspend the cuts if the budget outlook deteriorated.
The goal would have been to keep the cuts from exacerbating the situation if the
projected surplus began to vanish and to save as much of it as possible to
bolster Social Security and Medicare.
But Bush opposed the plan and passed his tax cuts without it.
Its inclusion might have kept the deficit under control and prevented a
situation that will have to be faced sooner or later, either by this president
or the next one.
---
ABOUT THE WRITER
Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Readers
may write to him at the Dallas Morning News Washington bureau, 1325 G Street NW,
Suite 250, Washington, D.C. 20005, or via e-mail at: cleubsdorf@dallasnews.com.
---
By Carl P. Leubsdorf
The Dallas Morning News
CONTACT: Visit The Dallas Morning News on the World Wide Web at http:/
www.dallasnews.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
(C) 2004 The Dallas Morning News
-0-
*** end of story ***
rooster -- it's a pity you're not working for dubya's campaign . . .
rooster -- have you ever seen that old Monty Python bit about the guy who keeps challenging one of the Knights of the Round Table to one more combat, having lost each previous combat??
Tenet to defend CIA on Iraq intelligence
From David Ensor
CNN Washington Bureau
Thursday, February 5, 2004 Posted: 4:52 AM EST (0952 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a speech Thursday, CIA Director George Tenet will defend his embattled agency's prewar judgments about Iraqi weapons and try to clear up mistaken impressions of U.S. intelligence on Libya's and Iran's nuclear programs, U.S. officials said.
Tenet is scheduled to speak Thursday morning at his alma mater, Georgetown University, the CIA announced. U.S. officials said the speech was scheduled on short notice.
Tenet also will warn Americans that intelligence is not a "crystal ball," officials said.
The speech will give Tenet a chance to respond to last week's Senate testimony from former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay, who was critical of intelligence given to the Bush administration leading up to the war. (Full story)
Kay told a Senate panel his team, the Iraq Survey Group, hasn't found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and said he didn't believe significant stockpiles of such weapons would be found.
"It turns out we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing," Kay said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing during which he called for an independent probe of the apparent intelligence failure
President Bush announced Monday that he would appoint a presidential commission to to review U.S. intelligence on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (Full story)
Kay put the blame firmly on the shoulders of U.S. intelligence, rather than the White House, for statements by Bush and others predicting weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq.
"It will be a long speech," one U.S. official said about Tenet's response.
The official said Tenet will "correct what's wrong about the public perceptions" on what U.S. intelligence did and did not say about Iraqi weapons programs and will give his take on where the search for weapons now stands.
"He will convey the picture that those who say the work is 85 percent done are 100 percent wrong," the senior official said. Kay has said the Iraq Survey Group has completed about 85 percent of its mission.
CIA officials have said the group under its new director, Charles Duelfer, has millions of pages of documents to translate and thousands of Iraqi scientists, former officials and others to interview.
Tenet also will respond to Kay's statements that the CIA was apparently wrong about how advanced Libya and Iran's nuclear programs were, officials said.
They said the agency had detailed knowledge about those nations' programs.
The officials said Libya decided to give up its program, in part, after hearing what the CIA knew about it.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/04/tenet.wmd/index.html
In Reversal, Bush Agrees to New 9/11 Panel Deadline
Wed February 4, 2004 11:57 PM ET
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite initial objections, President Bush agreed on Wednesday to extend until July 26 the deadline for the panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to complete its final report, setting the stage for its release at the height of the presidential campaign.
The extension was requested by the commission, which wanted the original May 27 deadline pushed back 60 days to complete hundreds of interviews and review millions of documents.
"We are pleased to support their request for an extension and we urge Congress to act quickly to extend that timetable," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
If Congress approves the extension, the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, said it planned to release its public, unclassified final report not later than July 26 and wrap up the rest of its business by August 25.
The commission may also produce a classified version for the administration and lawmakers.
Some lawmakers wanted to delay release of the commission's potentially damaging public report until next January, well after the November election.
"If the commission has information that can help prevent another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, we need to have that information as soon as possible," McClellan said.
The White House had until now resisted granting the commission any extension, arguing it should finish its work on schedule.
But pressure has mounted on the White House to back down -- from relatives of Sept. 11 victims and the commission itself.
Panel members have complained for months that the administration has been slow to provide the documents they need.
Bush's Democratic rivals have accused his administration of stonewalling, a criticism that could resonate with some voters in an election-year.
"I'm glad to see that President Bush has finally decided to take the commission's work seriously ... I just hope this latest reversal will also bring with it more cooperation from the administration," said New Jersey Democrat Sen. Frank Lautenberg.
INVESTIGATE INTELLIGENCE
Earlier this week, Bush reversed himself and agreed to establish a new panel to investigate intelligence that was used to justify the Iraq war.
The Sept. 11 commission plans this weekend to interview Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. It has already interviewed her deputy, Stephen Hadley.
Bush may also be questioned, officials said.
The commission has completed 900 interviews and several hundred remain. It is also reviewing more than 2 million pages of documents.
"We welcome the administration's support and commitment," commission Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton said in a joint statement.
Several issues remain unsettled, however.
The White House and the commission are at odds over access to notes taken by panel members from highly classified presidential briefing papers.
A November agreement allowed four members of the commission to review documents known as the President's Daily Briefs, including one from August 2001 that warned of the possibility of an al Qaeda plot to hijack airplanes.
But the White House has balked at allowing the notes to be shared more broadly among commissioners and investigators. Commission officials say negotiations are underway and an agreement could be reached this week.
If the talks break down, however, the commission could issue subpoenas for the notes, sources said.
"We are continuing to make sure they have all the information they need to do their job," McClellan said.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4287276
bulldzr -- oh sure he's a liability; but then again, compared to what, lol -- dubya's been a workable-enough (. . .) figurehead so far and is from the right 'background', but is far too stupid and simple to actually be in charge of anything; and Rove is just a comfortably rabid lapdog of a hired gun who'll disappear the moment anyone who counts wants him to -- all I'm saying is that if 'they' get rid of Halliburton-boy, who is the top dog there now in terms of having the real day-to-day power and responsibility for actually running the business, then 'they' will have to insert somebody else into the picture (who might or might not be the new veep candidate) to take that role
spree -- I believe the term for these far-right talk show hosts and what they do is 'agitprop' -- pound the ideological drums relentlessly and keep the citizens misinformed and angry at any who think differently
bulldzr -- Sean Hannity of Fox's Hannity and Colmes
btw -- Alan Colmes, who's Fox's token liberal, has his own talk radio show 9p-mid M-F -- not bad if you're looking for a change of pace -- 570 KLIF carries the part of his show from 10p-mid in NC TX (has Savage till 10p . . .)
bulldzr -- no doubt that's the plan now; can't help thinking the plan originally was it'd never come up . . . and of course Halliburton-boy knew all about it, as you say -- if anything, he probably directly dictated to those immediately engaged the course of Halliburton's, um, negotiation of the deal -- no question that was definitely a ceo's-direct-attention magnitude of a situation
I might not bet on Halliburton-boy not being on the ticket -- he is, after all, the one actually in charge at the White House, telling dubya and telling or at least trying to tell everybody else what to do -- if he isn't on the ticket and dubya is re-elected, I would bet he'll remain in a key appointed position physically inside the White House and keep right on doing what he's done throughout this term, i.e., run the show . . .
rooster -- so the (as it turns out) ever so aptly-named "Rush", with his history of pleasuring himself by spreading his seed of enlightenment while loaded with enough illegally-obtained prescription painkillers to kill a large herbivore, has apparently not yet seen the current polling showing dubya's approval rating below 50%?
if I may ask, what exactly makes you think "the Demo crap" is going to subside? -- you ain't seen nothing yet, bunky -- just getting warmed up -- and more to the point, SO much to work with . . .
as for when "hedges boys start to counter all the crap" -- counter with what (beyond more bs and lies, that is)? -- and what makes you think they haven't started yet? -- in reality, they've been running flat-out, trashing anyone who disagrees with them, pandering politically to the base that elected dubya (while in fact screwing that base, along the rest of us, every which way but loose in relentlessly pursuing their carefully-guarded agenda to serve those who run them), and otherwise running for re-election non-stop, since the day dubya was sworn in . . .
CIA Chief to Correct 'Misperceptions' on Iraq WMD
Wed February 4, 2004 06:04 PM ET
By Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CIA Director George Tenet plans to try and correct what he considers "misperceptions" about prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in his first public appearance since fresh controversy erupted over the issue, an intelligence official said on Wednesday.
In a speech at Georgetown University on Thursday, Tenet will "correct some of the misperceptions and downright inaccuracies concerning what the intelligence community reported and did not report regarding Iraq," the U.S. intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.
"He will point out it is premature to reach conclusions," the official added.
The furor over whether Iraq possessed banned weapons before the U.S.-led war, flared again recently after former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said he believed there were no large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.
Kay, who was appointed by Tenet, had led the hunt since June for evidence of banned weapons and an active program to build nuclear weapons -- the centerpiece for the U.S. decision to launch a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq last year.
After resigning in late January, Kay said the WMD search team had found probably 85 percent of what there was to be found in Iraq.
His blunt comments that prewar intelligence on Iraq had been wrong bolstered calls for an independent inquiry and prompted the White House to agree to set up a commission to investigate the intelligence.
Tenet is expected to reject some of the criticisms that have been leveled at the intelligence agencies.
"People who have leaped to the conclusion that the intelligence was all wrong simply aren't right," the intelligence official said. "Those who say the search for WMD is 85 percent finished are 100 percent wrong."
Tenet plans to echo what other administration officials and congressional Republicans have been saying -- that it is premature to reach firm conclusions.
"He's going to make the point that in the search for WMD, there is still plenty of work that needs to be done on the ground before any conclusions should be reached," the intelligence official said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the war in testimony to congressional committees on Wednesday and held out the possibility that the team still hunting for banned weapons in Iraq eventually might find them.
He said the intelligence agencies had a "tough assignment" trying to crack closed societies and avoid surprises from threats that can emerge suddenly.
Rumsfeld noted that when the intelligence agencies fail "the world knows it. And when they succeed, as they often do to our country's great benefit, their accomplishments often have to remain secret."
Rumsfeld said he hoped Tenet would make some of the recent successes public "so that the impression that has and is being created of broad intelligence failures can be dispelled."
Tenet is expected to talk about the "difficulties and complexities" of intelligence work, where it is unusual to have a complete picture but fragments of information must be pieced together. He also plans to discuss proliferation issues in other countries, the intelligence official said.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4285959
Rumsfeld: Jury still out on Iraq WMD
Defense secretary says it's too soon to reach conclusion
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:12 p.m. ET Feb. 04, 2004
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday he is not ready to conclude that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before U.S. troops invaded to depose him last year.
Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that U.S. weapons inspectors need more time to reach final conclusions about whether chemical and biological weapons existed in Iraq before the war, as the Bush administration had asserted before sending American troops into battle.
In a prepared statement, Rumsfeld said he was confident that prewar intelligence, while possibly flawed in some respects, was not manipulated by the administration to justify its war aims.
In his first public comments on the subject since David Kay told Congress last week that he believed it was now clear that U.S. intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs was fundamentally flawed, Rumsfeld praised the efforts of U.S. intelligence agencies and stressed the difficulty of penetrating secretive societies like Iraq.
Rumsfeld offered several examples of what he called “alternative views” about why no weapons have been discovered in Iraq, starting with the possibility that banned arms never existed.
‘Possible, but not likely’
“I suppose that’s possible, but not likely,” he said.
Other possibilities cited by Rumsfeld:
Weapons may have been transferred to a third country before U.S. troops arrived in March.
Weapons may have been dispersed throughout Iraq and hidden.
Weapons existed but were destroyed by the Iraqis before the war started.
Or, Rumsfeld postulated, “small quantities” of chemical or biological agents may have existed, along with a “surge capability” that would allow Iraq to rapidly build an arsenal of banned weapons. Commenting on that possibility, Rumsfeld said, “We may eventually find it in the months ahead.”
Lastly, he offered the possibility that the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction “may have been a charade” orchestrated by the Iraqi government. It is even possible, he said, that Saddam was “tricked” by his own people into believing he had banned weapons that did not exist.
The Kay team, known as the Iraqi Survey Group, did confirm one thing, Rumsfeld said: “The intelligence community got it essentially right” with regard to Iraq’s ballistic missile programs. It found that Iraq was working on missiles of longer range than was permitted under U.N. sanctions.
It took 10 months to find Saddam
Regarding the possibility that Iraq managed to hide some banned weapons of mass destruction, Rumsfeld noted that it took 10 months to find Saddam Hussein and that the hole in which he was found on Dec. 13 “was big enough to hold biological weapons to kill thousands” of people.
“Such objects, once buried, can stay buried,” Rumsfeld said.
The findings of the Kay group, he added, so far have “not proven Saddam Hussein had what intelligence indicated he had and what we believed he had. But it also has not proven the opposite.”
President Bush on Monday said he would appoint a commission to conduct an independent investigation of prewar intelligence on Iraq’s weapons and take a broader look at U.S. intelligence-gathering operations.
Bush, initially cool to the idea, changed his mind while under pressure from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill after Kay testimony that prewar intelligence was almost all wrong.
Claims that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were the main reason cited by Bush for the war, in which more than 500 U.S. troops have died.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4049012/
Another Halliburton Probe
Already under fire for its contracts in Iraq, the company now faces a Justice Department inquiry about business done during Dick Cheney’s tenure
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Newsweek
Updated: 4:16 p.m. ET Feb. 04, 2004
Feb. 4 - The Justice Department has opened up an inquiry into whether Halliburton Co. was involved in the payment of $180 million in possible kickbacks to obtain contracts to build a natural gas plant in Nigeria during a period in the late 1990’s when Vice President Dick Cheney was chairman of the company, Newsweek has learned.
There is no evidence that Cheney was aware of the payments in question and an aide said today the vice president has not been contacted about the probe. Still, the inquiry by the Justice Department’s fraud section—which prosecutes federal anti-bribery law violations—is likely to bring new public attention to the vice president’s past at the giant oil-services firm. Halliburton has been under intense scrutiny in recent months over its handling of hundreds of millions of dollars contracts relating to the rebuilding of Iraq.
The Justice inquiry, along with a related probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission, parallels a separate investigation into the Nigerian payments that is being conducted by a French magistrate and has received widespread attention in recent months in the European press. But the Justice Department and SEC probes have not previously been reported, although they were briefly mentioned by Halliburton last week near the end of a lengthy filing with the SEC.
In the filing, the Houston-based company disclosed that the French magistrate was investigating the Nigerian payments and then added: “The U.S. Department of Justice and the SEC have asked Halliburton for a report on these matters and are reviewing the allegations in light of the US. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Halliburton has engaged outside counsel to investigate any allegations and is cooperating with the government’s inquiries… If illegal payments were made, this matter could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.”
A Justice Department official confirmed to NEWSWEEK today that prosecutors have been seeking information from Halliburton related to the Nigerian contract and that the company was cooperating. But the official said the company’s reference to being asked for “a report” by Justice was “not accurate.” Rather than a report, Justice has sought documents from the company—and Halliburton has been turning them over, the official said. Another Justice official described the inquiry as a review of documents supplied by Halliburton and said it was still in its early stages.
In an e-mail response to questions from NEWSWEEK about its disclosure, a Halliburton official, Cathy Gist, said: “Management made the decision to include these statements because of the politically charged environment in which we now operate. We are trying to keep the investment community informed of the accurate facts about the company’s business.” She added that that “while Halliburton has no basis to assume that any of its employees…have ever done anything in violation of the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), it has undertaken an examination and intends to cooperate with officials of the U.S. government.” (In a later e-mail response, Gist added: "In future SEC filings, Halliburton will include more precise language regarding the nature of this examination as well as our continued commitment to cooperate with U.S. government officials regarding this matter.")
The investigation could raise sensitive political questions for the Justice Department because—unlike Pentagon probes now underway into Halliburton’s Iraq contracts—the Nigerian matter specifically involves corporate conduct during the period between 1995 and 2000 when Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the company.
That could raise potential conflict-of-interest questions for Attorney General John Ashcroft similar to those that recently prompted Ashcroft to recuse himself in another investigation involving the Bush White House—the probe into who leaked information that disclosed the undercover identity of the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson. The Justice official declined to comment on what role Ashcroft has played in the Halliburton probe so far and whether there have been any discussions about whether he might need to recuse himself from decisions relating to it. So far, there is no evidence suggesting any involvement by Cheney in the matters under review, another Justice official said.
The Justice Department inquiry involves a trail of payments to unknown recipients that were routed through off-shore bank accounts and were allegedly handled by a longtime Halliburton lawyer in London who, according to French press reports, was also a financial advisor to Nigeria’s late dictator Gen. Sani Abacha. The payments were made in connection with the construction of a giant liquefied natural gas plant on a remote island in Nigeria.
The plant, one of the largest in the world, was built by TSKJ, a consortium of four major international construction firms, including Kellogg, Brown & Root, a major Halliburton subsidiary that has been the principal recipient of the company’s contracts in Iraq. Halliburton touted its role in the Nigerian project in a March, 2000 press release headlined: “Four Industry Leaders United to Execute World Class Project in Nigeria.”
The question Justice is probing is how exactly Halliburton’s subsidiary came to play that role. According to lengthy accounts of the probe in the French newspaper, Le Figaro, the TSKJ consortium in 1994 had created a subsidiary called LNG Services on Madeira, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic where companies are not required to pay any taxes. The French investigation was triggered, according to Le Figaro, when an official of one of the consortium’s French partners, Technip, was charged two years ago with embezzlement growing out of a separate, long-running corruption case involving the French oil company Elf Aquitaine.
According to Le Figaro, George Krammer, the accused Technip official, was outraged when Technip refused to defend him and turned state’s evidence. The paper reported that he told French authorities about an alleged $180 million “slush fund” that TSKJ maintained to bribe Nigerian officials relating to the natural gas plant in Nigeria. French authorities then tracked close to the same amount in “support contracts” from LNG Services—the subsidiary on the Portuguese island—to yet another obscure entity called Tri-Star, which was located on the British tax haven of Gibraltar. Tri Star, according to Le Figaro, was headed by a London lawyer named Jeffrey Tesler, who has long done work for Halliburton, and was known to have close relations with officials in Abacha’s Nigerian government. Tesler did not respond to a request for comment from NEWSWEEK.
The allegations that TSKJ may have made improper payments to Nigerian officials prompted a Paris prosecutor to open up an investigation into the case in October, 2002. The probe was among the first in France under a new international treaty banning the payment of bribes in commercial contracts—a prohibition that became part of French law in 2000. (U.S. law has banned such payments for more than 25 years.) The case in France has since been transferred to a French investigative magistrate, Reynaud van Ruymbeke—an indication that it is being taken seriously by French authorities.
One key question for Justice Department prosecutors is what knowledge, if any, Halliburton officials in the United States had of any illicit payments that might have been made in Nigeria. According to lawyers familiar with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases, U.S. corporate officials are only liable for the actions of their foreign subsidiaries if it can be determined that they had a control or personal knowledge of the subsidiary’s improper actions.
In this case, Halliburton would seem to have a natural defense: the conduct in question involved actions of a consortium, TSKJ, in which it was only a 25 percent owner. But a Technip official told NEWSWEEK that the Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, was the chief principal and decision-maker in the venture. “Halliburton is the leader of the JV (joint venture),” said Christopher Welton, chief of Technip’s investor and analyst relations. Welton also said that his company recently had conducted its own internal audit of the venture’s operations and found no evidence of any improper payments. Halliburton told NEWSWEEK that the companies involved in the venture were equal partners and "no company has more influence than any other. It is simply not accurate to say that any one partner or company is dominant."
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4163810/
Neglecting Intelligence, Ignoring Warnings
A chronology of how the Bush Administration repeatedly and deliberately refused to listen to intelligence agencies that said its case for war was weak
January 28, 2004
Updated January 29, 2004
Download: DOC, PDF, RTF
Former weapons inspector David Kay now says Iraq probably did not have WMD before the war, a major blow to the Bush Administration which used the WMD argument as the rationale for war. Unfortunately, Kay and the Administration are now attempting to shift the blame for misleading America onto the intelligence community. But a review of the facts shows the intelligence community repeatedly warned the Bush Administration about the weakness of its case, but was circumvented, overruled, and ignored. The following is year-by-year timeline of those warnings.
2001: WH Admits Iraq Contained; Creates Agency to Circumvent Intel Agencies
In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam Hussein was effectively contained after the Gulf War. In fact, former weapons inspector David Kay now admits that the previous policy of containment – including the 1998 bombing of Iraq – destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs.
OCTOBER 8, 1997 – IAEA SAYS IRAQ FREE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: "As reported in detail in the progress report dated 8 October 1997…and based on all credible information available to date, the IAEA's verification activities in Iraq, have resulted in the evolution of a technically coherent picture of Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme. These verification activities have revealed no indications that Iraq had achieved its programme objective of producing nuclear weapons or that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapon-usable nuclear material or had clandestinely acquired such material. Furthermore, there are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for t he production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance." [Source: IAEA Report, 10/8/98]
FEBRUARY 23 & 24, 2001 – COLIN POWELL SAYS IRAQ IS CONTAINED: "I think we ought to declare [the containment policy] a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." He added Saddam "is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors" and that "he threatens not the United States." [Source: State Department, 2/23/01 and 2/24/01]
SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 – CHENEY ACKNOWLEDGES IRAQ IS CONTAINED: Vice President Dick Cheney said that "Saddam Hussein is bottled up" – a confirmation of the intelligence he had received. [Source: Meet the Press, 9/16/2001]
SEPTEMBER 2001 – WHITE HOUSE CREATES OFFICE TO CIRCUMVENT INTEL AGENCIES: The Pentagon creates the Office of Special Plans "in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true-that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States…The rising influence of the Office of Special Plans was accompanied by a decline in the influence of the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. bringing about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community." The office, hand-picked by the Administration, specifically "cherry-picked intelligence that supported its pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest" while officials deliberately "bypassed the government's customary procedures for vetting intelligence." [Sources: New Yorker, 5/12/03; Atlantic Monthly, 1/04; New Yorker, 10/20/03]
2002: Intel Agencies Repeatedly Warn White House of Its Weak WMD Case
Throughout 2002, the CIA, DIA, Department of Energy and United Nations all warned the Bush Administration that its selective use of intelligence was painting a weak WMD case. Those warnings were repeatedly ignored.
JANUARY, 2002 – TENET DOES NOT MENTION IRAQ IN NUCLEAR THREAT REPORT: "In CIA Director George Tenet's January 2002 review of global weapons-technology proliferation, he did not even mention a nuclear threat from Iraq, though he did warn of one from North Korea." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03]
FEBRUARY 6, 2002 – CIA SAYS IRAQ HAS NOT PROVIDED WMD TO TERRORISTS: "The Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is also convinced that President Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related terrorist groups, according to several American intelligence officials." [Source: NY Times, 2/6/02]
APRIL 15, 2002 – WOLFOWITZ ANGERED AT CIA FOR NOT UNDERMINING U.N. REPORT: After receiving a CIA report that concluded that Hans Blix had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants "fully within the parameters he could operate" when Blix was head of the international agency responsible for these inspections prior to the Gulf War, a report indicated that "Wolfowitz ‘hit the ceiling’ because the CIA failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program." [Source: W. Post, 4/15/02]
SUMMER, 2002 – CIA WARNINGS TO WHITE HOUSE EXPOSED: "In the late summer of 2002, Sen. Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03]
SEPTEMBER, 2002 – DIA TELLS WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS: "An unclassified excerpt of a 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency study on Iraq's chemical warfare program in which it stated that there is ‘no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.’" The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions." [Source: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 6/13/03; DIA report, 2002]
SEPTEMBER 20, 2002 – DEPT. OF ENERGY TELLS WHITE HOUSE OF NUKE DOUBTS: "Doubts about the quality of some of the evidence that the United States is using to make its case that Iraq is trying to build a nuclear bomb emerged Thursday. While National Security Adviser Condi Rice stated on 9/8 that imported aluminum tubes ‘are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs’ a growing number of experts say that the administration has not presented convincing evidence that the tubes were intended for use in uranium enrichment rather than for artillery rocket tubes or other uses. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright said he found significant disagreement among scientists within the Department of Energy and other agencies about the certainty of the evidence." [Source: UPI, 9/20/02]
OCTOBER 2002 – CIA DIRECTLY WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa." [Source: Washington Post, 7/23/03]
OCTOBER 2002 — STATE DEPT. WARNS WHITE HOUSE ON NUKE CHARGES: The State Department’s Intelligence and Research Department dissented from the conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. "The activities we have detected do not ... add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons." INR accepted the judgment by Energy Department technical experts that aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking to acquire, which was the central basis for the conclusion that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, were ill-suited to build centrifuges for enriching uranium. [Source, Declassified Iraq NIE released 7/2003]
OCTOBER 2002 – AIR FORCE WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The government organization most knowledgeable about the United States' UAV program -- the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center -- had sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons" – a WMD claim President Bush used in his October 7 speech on Iraqi WMD, just three days before the congressional vote authorizing the president to use force. [Source: Washington Post, 9/26/03]
2003: WH Pressures Intel Agencies to Conform; Ignores More Warnings
Instead of listening to the repeated warnings from the intelligence community, intelligence officials say the White House instead pressured them to conform their reports to fit a pre-determined policy. Meanwhile, more evidence from international institutions poured in that the White House’s claims were not well-grounded.
LATE 2002-EARLY 2003 – CHENEY PRESSURES CIA TO CHANGE INTELLIGENCE: "Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration's claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed." Additionally, CIA officials "charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president's office had 'pressured' agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam's capabilities and intentions." [Sources: Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03]
JANUARY, 2003 – STATE DEPT. INTEL BUREAU REITERATE WARNING TO POWELL: "The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned Secretary of State Colin Powell during the preparation of his speech that the evidence was questionable. The Bureau reiterated to Mr. Powell during the preparation of his February speech that its analysts were not persuaded that the aluminum tubes the Administration was citing could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium." [Source: Financial Times, 7/30/03]
FEBRUARY 14, 2003 – UN WARNS WHITE HOUSE THAT NO WMD HAVE BEEN FOUND: "In their third progress report since U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 was passed in November, inspectors told the council they had not found any weapons of mass destruction." Weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council they had been unable to find any WMD in Iraq and that more time was needed for inspections. [Source: CNN, 2/14/03]
FEBRUARY 15, 2003 – IAEA WARNS WHITE HOUSE NO NUCLEAR EVIDENCE: The head of the IAEA told the U.N. in February that "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." The IAEA examined "2,000 pages of documents seized Jan. 16 from an Iraqi scientist's home -- evidence, the Americans said, that the Iraqi regime was hiding government documents in private homes. The documents, including some marked classified, appear to be the scientist's personal files." However, "the documents, which contained information about the use of laser technology to enrich uranium, refer to activities and sites known to the IAEA and do not change the agency's conclusions about Iraq's laser enrichment program." [Source: Wash. Post, 2/15/03]
FEBURARY 24, 2003 – CIA WARNS WHITE HOUSE ‘NO DIRECT EVIDENCE’ OF WMD: "A CIA report on proliferation released this week says the intelligence community has no ‘direct evidence’ that Iraq has succeeded in reconstituting its biological, chemical, nuclear or long-range missile programs in the two years since U.N. weapons inspectors left and U.S. planes bombed Iraqi facilities. ‘We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs,’ said the agency in its semi-annual report on proliferation activities." [NBC News, 2/24/03]
MARCH 7, 2003 – IAEA REITERATES TO WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF NUKES: IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said nuclear experts have found "no indication" that Iraq has tried to import high-strength aluminum tubes or specialized ring magnets for centrifuge enrichment of uranium. For months, American officials had "cited Iraq's importation of these tubes as evidence that Mr. Hussein's scientists have been seeking to develop a nuclear capability." ElBaradei also noted said "the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that documents which formed the basis for the [President Bush’s assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic." When questioned about this on Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney simply said "Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong." [Source: NY Times, 3/7/03: Meet the Press, 3/16/03]
MAY 30, 2003 – INTEL PROFESSIONALS ADMIT THEY WERE PRESSURED: "A growing number of U.S. national security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the $30 billion intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq . A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terrorist groups. This team, self-mockingly called the Cabal, 'cherry-picked the intelligence stream' in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a official at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The DIA was "exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD," or weapons of mass destruction, he said. Greg Thielmann, an intelligence official in the State Department, said it appeared to him that intelligence had been shaped 'from the top down.'" [Reuters, 5/30/03 ]
JUNE 6, 2003 – INTELLIGENCE HISTORIAN SAYS INTEL WAS HYPED: "The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq , a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements." [Reuters, 6/6/03]
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=24889
My Dime -- we give dubya 4 more years and there may never BE another presidential election beyond this one (heck, I'm honestly concerned there's a chance dubya will go off the cliff and declare martial law before we have THIS election)
obviously enough I hope, I appreciate your thoughts and information as well
rooster -- if contracts were awarded to Halliburton on Clinton's watch AND there was corruption involved in any of those contracts/contract awards, then Clinton and any members of his administration who were actually involved do indeed deserve crap for that -- but even if that was the case, just how exactly could that possibly serve to justify or to excuse the mutiple known cases of blatant corruption involved in contracts awarded to Halliburton on dubya's watch?? and what would that have to do with any democrat other than Clinton or a member of the Clinton administration who was actually involved??
My Dime -- thanks -- and I strongly agree re the role Dean has played -- going forward, we gotta close this deal -- no excuses, not this time