Abu Ghraib, Caribbean Style

The New York Times
December 1, 2004

Abu Ghraib, Caribbean Style

Ever since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, the Bush administration has claimed that the abuses depicted in those horrible photos were an isolated problem that was immediately fixed. The White House has repeatedly proclaimed its respect for the Geneva Conventions, international law and American statutes governing the treatment of prisoners.

An article in The Times on Tuesday by Neil A. Lewis showed how hollow those assurances are. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, where the United States warehouses men captured in Afghanistan, have been subject to unremitting abuse that is sometimes "tantamount to torture." This continued well after the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light, and it may still be going on.

The Red Cross said it first complained about Guantánamo in January 2003. It found mistreatment similar to that at Abu Ghraib, including beatings, prolonged isolation, sexual humiliation and prolonged "stress positions" for prisoners. But the Red Cross found a new, disturbing practice at Guantánamo: the use of medical personnel to help interrogators get information.

The Red Cross reported the same level of abuse in the spring of 2003. By this June, it said, the regime was "more refined and repressive." The Red Cross did say fearful Guantánamo prisoners complained less frequently in 2004 than in 2003 about female interrogators who exposed their breasts, kissed prisoners, touched them sexually and showed them pornography. But it's hard to see that as progress.

The administration's response to the Red Cross report was unsurprising. The military brushed off the Red Cross's complaints when they were made, just as it did at Abu Ghraib. Yesterday, Lawrence Di Rita, a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld, said the Red Cross had "their point of view," which was not shared by the Bush administration. The Red Cross's point of view, however, is reflected in the Geneva Conventions and in American law. The recent debate over prisoner abuse has not been brought to the courts, but the Supreme Court has ruled that Mr. Bush cannot suspend due process for prisoners of his choosing.

The White House, the Pentagon and the Justice Department clearly have no intention of addressing the abuse. Indeed, Mr. Bush has nominated one of the architects of the administration's prisoner policy, the White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, to be attorney general. The general who set up the system at Guantánamo is now in charge of prisons in Iraq.

Only Congress can hold the administration accountable and begin to repair the damage to American values and America's image caused by the mistreatment of prisoners. Republican and Democratic senators - like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin - have tried hard to investigate prisoner abuse. But Republican leaders have ignored the issue. Senator John Kerry never even raised it during the campaign.

Congress should demand that the Central Intelligence Agency stop stonewalling on the release of its inspector general's report on the role of intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib. During confirmation hearings, the Senate Judiciary Committee should press Mr. Gonzales about why he signed off on two legal opinions that justified torture and claimed that Mr. Bush could suspend the Geneva Conventions whenever he liked. They should ask what he intends to do about fixing the problem.

Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, should resume his valuable hearings on prisoner abuse. Ideally, he would finally ask the Senate leadership to create a investigative committee with subpoena powers to impose accountability on high-ranking generals and civilian officials.

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U.S. to Increase Its Force in Iraq by Nearly 12,000

The New York Times
December 2, 2004

U.S. to Increase Its Force in Iraq by Nearly 12,000
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - The American military presence in Iraq will grow by nearly 12,000 troops by next month, to 150,000, the highest level since the invasion last year, to provide security for the Iraqi elections in January and to quell insurgent attacks around the country, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.

The Pentagon is doing this mainly by ordering about 10,400 soldiers and marines in Iraq to extend their tours - in some cases for the second time - for up to two months, even as their replacement units begin to arrive. The Pentagon is also sending 1,500 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division in the next two weeks for a four-month tour.

By extending the tours of some 8,000 soldiers from two brigades, the Army is risking problems with morale and retention by breaking its pledge to keep troops on the ground in Iraq for no more than 12 months, some commanders and military experts said.

Commanders had signaled for weeks that there was a likelihood that additional troops would be needed to provide security for elections scheduled for Jan. 30, and the Pentagon took a first step in October by ordering 6,500 troops to extend their tours. But the force levels announced Wednesday are larger than many officers had expected and reflect the insurgents' deadly resiliency and the poor performance by many newly trained Iraqi security forces in the face of rebel assaults, military officers said.

Senior officers in Iraq and Washington said that after the Falluja offensive, they did not want to lose the momentum in pressing insurgents in other restive parts of Iraq, like Mosul and Babil Province. At the same time, commanders say they need to keep a sizable force in Falluja to stabilize the city as reconstruction efforts get under way there.

But those requirements demand more troops, especially combat-hardened forces whose experience is seen as essential in attacking the insurgents and providing support to Iraqi security forces. Putting even a squad of Americans inside police stations will stiffen the resolve of local forces and prevent routs like that in Mosul, where newly minted Iraqi police forces fled last month when attacked by small numbers of rebels, American officers said Wednesday.

"It's mainly to provide security for the elections, but it's also to keep up the pressure on the insurgency after the Falluja operation," Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, a military spokesman, told reporters at the Pentagon.

Under the military's plan, about 3,500 members of the Second Brigade of the First Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex., were ordered to stay an additional 45 days, until early March, for a total of about 14 months. The unit had originally been scheduled to leave in mid-November, but that departure was delayed until Jan. 12, General Rodriguez said. The First Cavalry Division is responsible for security in Baghdad, but it also provided soldiers for the cordon around Falluja.

About 4,400 troops from the Second Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, a Hawaii-based unit now operating as part of the First Infantry Division north of Baghdad, had its departure date in early January delayed 60 days, bringing its total deployment to about 14 months, General Rodriguez said. The tours of 160 soldiers from the 66th Transportation Company, based in Germany, were also extended by two months, he said.

In addition, the departure date of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 2,300 marines from Okinawa, Hawaii and California, will be extended to mid-March, he said.

The two 82nd Airborne battalions will be sent to conduct security missions in Baghdad's International Zone, where top American and Iraqi government officials work, General Rodriguez said. This will free up more experienced troops from the First Cavalry Division to carry out missions elsewhere in Iraq, he said.

In advance of the elections in Afghanistan in October, the military sent about 600 troops from the 82nd Airborne to provide security there.

Military officials said Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, had decided to extend the tours of more experienced troops, and to take advantage of their knowledge of the insurgents and region, rather than accelerate the arrival of fresh troops from units like the Third Infantry Division, which will be arriving in January.

In particular, a senior military officer in Iraq said, American and Iraqi forces have forced insurgent and terrorist leaders to flee their former safe haven in Falluja, and additional troops would ensure that they remained on the run and could not settle in another Iraqi city.

At the Pentagon, civilian officials and military officers said they had been concerned that the order to increase troops would be heard by the American and Iraqi public and by insurgents as an acknowledgement that the mission was in trouble.

"But what we're really saying today is that we are committed to the mission, and that we are going to do everything we can to achieve security before the elections," a senior officer said.

American commanders said they learned an important lesson when insurgents responded to the offensive against Falluja by mounting their own counteroffensive, attacking police stations and a range of Iraqi security forces in other cities.

In Mosul, for example, a number of Iraqi policemen simply surrendered their neighborhood stations and headquarters when they came under insurgent attack, even though the guerrillas were vastly outnumbered.

But one Army commander in Iraq said that in those Mosul police stations where American troops were operating, even in small numbers, the new Iraqi security forces had shown resolve and held their ground.

The additional American troops will allow commanders to salt more Iraqi police stations with small, squad-size units of American forces to train the police, advise emerging Iraqi commanders and help steel the wills of Iraqi forces to stand up to the insurgents, this officer said.

More troops will also allow commanders to ease, even if slightly, the grueling days and long nights of missions now assigned throughout the American military in Iraq.

But military personnel specialists warned that the temporary force increases, which are scheduled to last from January to mid-March, might last longer than officials expect.

"The department is managing the force as frugally and carefully as possible, but we may not fall much below the 150,000 level for more than a year," said Richard I. Stark, a retired colonel who is a troop specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here.

The Army has previously extended deployments for soldiers in Iraq twice, causing complaints from some soldiers and some families.

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U.S. Generals in Iraq Were Told of Abuse Early, Inquiry Finds

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Generals in Iraq Were Told of Abuse Early, Inquiry Finds

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 1, 2004; Page A01

A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees, a finding delivered more than a month before Army investigators received the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that touched off investigations into prisoner mistreatment.

The report, which was not released publicly and was recently obtained by The Washington Post, concluded that some U.S. arrest and detention practices at the time could "technically" be illegal. It also said coalition fighters could be feeding the Iraqi insurgency by "making gratuitous enemies" as they conducted sweeps netting hundreds of detainees who probably did not belong in prison and holding them for months at a time.

The investigation, by retired Col. Stuart A. Herrington, also found that members of Task Force 121 -- a joint Special Operations and CIA mission searching for weapons of mass destruction and high-value targets including Saddam Hussein -- had been abusing detainees throughout Iraq and had been using a secret interrogation facility to hide their activities.

Herrington's findings are the latest in a series of confidential reports to come to light about detainee abuse in Iraq. Until now, U.S. military officials have characterized the problem as one largely confined to the military prison at Abu Ghraib -- a situation they first learned about in January 2004. But Herrington's report shows that U.S. military leaders in Iraq were told of such allegations even before then, and that problems were not restricted to Abu Ghraib. Herrington, a veteran of the U.S. counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam, warned that such harsh tactics could imperil U.S. efforts to quell the Iraqi insurgency -- a prediction echoed months later by a military report and other reviews of the war effort.

U.S. treatment of detainees remains under challenge. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross recently told U.S. military officials that the treatment of inmates held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was "cruel, inhumane and degrading" (story, Page A10). Herrington's report, which was commissioned by Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top intelligence officer in Iraq, said some detainees dropped off at central U.S. detention facilities other than Abu Ghraib had clearly been beaten by their captors.

"Detainees captured by TF 121 have shown injuries that caused examining medical personnel to note that 'detainee shows signs of having been beaten,' " according to the report, which later concluded: "It seems clear that TF 121 needs to be reined in with respect to its treatment of detainees."

A group of Navy SEALs who worked as part of the task force has been charged with abuse in connection with the deaths of two detainees they arrested in the field. One died in a shower room at Abu Ghraib on Nov. 4, 2003, a month before Herrington arrived for his review.

A military source who participated in Task Force 20, the predecessor to TF 121, said the task forces comprised several 12-man units that had targeted missions, such as searching for Hussein loyalists and terrorists. TF 20, which had about 1,000 soldiers, incorporated Army Rangers, members of Delta Force and Special Forces units working with CIA agents. They planned their missions nearly autonomously and answered either directly to the theater commander or to officials in Washington, the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the missions were classified.

Task Force 121 added Navy SEAL units but was slightly smaller overall. Herrington wrote that an officer in charge of interrogations at a high-value target detention facility in Baghdad told him that prisoners taken by TF 121 showed signs of having been beaten.

Herrington asked the officer whether he had alerted his superiors to the problem, and the officer replied: "Everyone knows about it."

While several investigations have been completed into the Abu Ghraib scandal and U.S. interrogation practices in Iraq, an official military inquiry into the detention activities of Special Operations forces has not been released. That probe, headed by Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica, was expected to be presented to Congress earlier this year, but a Pentagon spokesman said it is ongoing.

Of the Herrington report, a Pentagon official said top generals in Iraq, including Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who at the time directed U.S. forces there, reported the alleged abuses to officials at U.S. Central Command, which oversees military activities in the Middle East. The official said TF 121 was investigated, but he could not provide results.

"The Herrington report was taken very seriously," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been released.

The report also provided an early account of the practice of holding some detainees -- sometimes called "ghost detainees" -- in secret and keeping them from international humanitarian organizations. Herrington also wrote that agents from other government agencies, which commonly refers to the CIA, regularly kept ghost detainees by not logging their arrests.

Nearly six months later, Defense Department officials were forced to acknowledge the practice because of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Soldiers who worked at the prison said several detainees were hidden, and a prison logbook showed a consistent stream of them from October 2003 to January 2004.

Herrington, who is considered an expert in human intelligence operations, ran programs during Operation Desert Storm and in Panama and was part of the controversial Phoenix Program, which targeted the roots of the Viet Cong insurgency in Vietnam. He compiled his report after a week-long trip to Iraq beginning Dec. 2, 2003, joined by a military intelligence officer and an Army intelligence official from the Pentagon.

His ultimate conclusion was that much needed to be done to increase intelligence capabilities, which he called below average, though he praised Fast's determination.

"Given the fact that the United States and its coalition partners paid and continue to pay a steep price in losses and national treasure to lay our hands on these detainees, it is disappointing that the opportunity to thoroughly and professionally exploit this source pool has not been maximized, in spite of your best efforts and those of several hundred MI [military intelligence] soldiers," Herrington wrote to Fast in the Dec. 12 report. "Even one year ago, we would have salivated at the prospect of being able to talk to people like the hundreds who are now in our custody. Now that we have them, we have failed to devote the planning and resources to optimize this mission."

Herrington, contacted by telephone, declined to discuss the report. A Pentagon official said Fast personally requested Herrington's visit, and the report indicates Fast was interested in improving U.S. intelligence and detention operations, saying that "in spite of efforts to upgrade this effort, [she] remained concerned about its state of health."

In the 13-page report, Herrington wrote that overcrowding and a lack of resources caused the Army to use "primitive prison accommodations" for even the most important targets. He said that led to the loss of considerable significant intelligence and might have fueled the Iraqi insurgency.

He added that some detainees were arrested because targets were not at home when homes were raided. A family member was instead captured and then released when the target turned himself in -- a practice that, Herrington wrote, "has a 'hostage' feel to it."

A separate report by the Center for Army Lessons Learned, issued this past May and intended for internal use, gave the sense that some Army tactics served to "alienate common Iraqis who initially supported the coalition."

The 134-page CALL report singled out the practice of detaining female family members to force wanted Iraqi males to turn themselves in, similar to Herrington's findings.

"It is a practice in some U.S. units to detain family members of anti-coalition suspects in an effort to induce the suspects to turn themselves in, in exchange for the release of their family members," the report stated. The CALL report also was critical of the delays in notifying family members about the status of detainees held in U.S. custody, reminding family members of Hussein's tactics.

Herrington's report also noted that sweeps pulled in hundreds and even thousands of detainees who had no connection to the war. Abu Ghraib, for example, swelled to several thousand more detainees than it could handle. Herrington wrote that aggressive and indiscriminate tactics by the 4th Infantry Division, rounding up random scores of detainees and "dumping them at the door," was a glaring example.

As the United States recently has picked up its counterinsurgency efforts, the number of new detainees has again surged.

"Between the losers and dead end elements from the former regime and foreign fighters, there are enough people in Iraq who already don't like us," Herrington wrote. "Adding to these numbers by conducting sweep operations . . . is counterproductive to the Coalition's efforts to win the cooperation of the Iraqi citizenry. Similarly, mistreatment of captives as has been reported to me and our team is unacceptable, and bound to be known by the population."

Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.

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More than one kind of black box

msnbc.com
December 01, 2004

More than one kind of black box
Keith Olbermann

NEW YORK - I’ve been avoiding this topic for four weeks now, but given what I understand are a lot of dropped jaws around the blogosphere, I think I better spill this.

I don’t think Bev Harris of Black Box Voting is doing anybody any favors.

I suggested as much tonight on Countdown and there were a lot of understandably surprised emails. Some profane, incidentally, which had previously been the exclusive province of those who notified me of their opposition to anybody covering anything about voting irregularities or especially Jesse Jackson’s F-Word.

Each and every day since our coverage of all this began on November 8, I have received a set of emails, some times a few, some times many, asking “Why don’t you have Bev Harris on Countdown?,” “Why don’t you run the Bev Harris videotapes?,” “Why don’t you show the voting tapes Bev Harris found discarded in the trash in Florida?”

Because she won’t let us.

I have not dealt with Ms. Harris directly, but my staff has, and though we have asked her on a regular basis to let us show these tapes on national television, she has declined.

We are running in risky waters as it is, offering a platform for tapes we can’t independently verify. But I have heretofore been convinced that she had credentials sufficient to make an interview segment with her both useful and reasonable.

My ample gut has lately sent me a different message, and her showdown with Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore on Monday seemed to buttress my instinct. She burst into LePore’s retirement ceremony, her cameraman rolling tape as she did so, and she raced to the podium to announce to the shocked room full of supervisors that she was “serving” LePore with papers as part of her lawsuits over what she claims are LePore’s evasions in providing records of the 2004 vote.

The usefulness of that videotape to the immediate issue at hand - were there widespread failures of the electronic voting systems in this country on November 2nd, and if so, were those failures enabledby any malfeasance - has an expiration date. If they show irregularities, if they show public servants at their worst, even if they’re guerrilla-style political confrontations, they have a public value - an urgent one.

Have you seen them?

What Ms. Harris has left herself open to is a charge that as much as any interest she has in the justifiable public concern over our most precious right - the right to a reliable, honest election - she may also have an interest in making her own documentary, on her own schedule, for her own purposes.

What Ms. Harris has also left herself - and by extension anybody who is advocating investigation, or merely covering the story - open to,is the charge of grandstanding, of tin-foil hatting, of being somebody who bursts in to a room and screams at public officials, videotape running all the time, artificially creating news.

Me - I think that can be justified. Guerrilla politics - even guerrilla news - isn’t pretty, but it’s often necessary, as long as it’s news you’re interested in. It’s necessary, as long as you take advantage of the opportunity to disperse what news you’ve gathered, promptly and professionally, especially if that opportunity can serve the public good, and comes with relatively few strings attached (“can we see it first so we know what the hell we’re broadcasting?” - the same thing we ask anybody with news videotape not shot by an NBC or affiliated camera crew, whether they’ve recorded a hurricane or a cat nursing a puppy).

It has been pointed out that Bev Harris was scheduled to be on Countdown back on November 8 but her appearance was cancelled. I haven’t addressed this before, either. But we didn’t cancel on her - we wanted, on that first night raising this touchy subject nobody else had previously covered, to have more mainstream guests. And we wanted her back another night. And since then we’ve wanted her to come back with her video. And she hasn’t.

I don’t know her motivations and I don’t know her bona fides. But I’m afraid at this stage, intentionally or by the simplest of communication failures, she isn’t helping illuminate this issue. And every step that attracts heat but not light is another step towards discrediting the entire process.

Thougths? Email me at KOLbermann@msnbc.com

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Voting errors tallied nationwide

Boston.com
The Boston Globe



Voting errors tallied nationwide

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff
December 1, 2004

More than 4,000 votes vanished without a trace into a computer's overloaded memory in one North Carolina county, and about a hundred paper ballots were thrown out by mistake in another. In Texas, a county needed help from a laboratory in Canada to unlock the memory of a touch-screen machine and unearth five dozen votes.

In other places, machine undercounting or overcounting of votes was a problem. Several thousand votes were mistakenly double-counted in North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska, and Washington state. Some votes in other areas were at first credited to the wrong candidates, with one Indiana county, by some quirk, misallocating several hundred votes for Democrats to Libertarians. In Florida, some machines temporarily indicated votes intended for challenger John F. Kerry were for President Bush, and vice versa.

In the month since the election, serious instances of voting machine problems or human errors in ballot counts have been documented in at least a dozen states, each involving from scores of ballots to as many as 12,000 votes, as in a North Carolina county. On Election Day, or in later reconciling tallies of ballots and voters, local officials discovered problems and corrected final counts. In some cases, the changes altered the outcomes of local races. But in North Carolina, the problems were so serious that the state may hold a rare second vote, redoing a contest for state agriculture commissioner decided by fewer votes than the number of ballots lost.

After the disputed vote in Florida four years ago, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and authorized $4 billion so states could create central computerized voter lists and replace outdated voting systems such as punchcards by 2006. But many states have not completed the overhaul, and this year's election unearthed enough problems -- both with older technologies and newer electronic touch-screens -- that two federal agencies plan unprecedented nationwide inquiries. The investigations by the Government Accountability Office and US Election Assistance Commission will begin early next year and be completed by mid-2005, at the earliest.

In addition, minor presidential candidates requested recounts in four states -- a partial one completed yesterday in New Hampshire, and statewide in Ohio, New Mexico, and Nevada.

None of the recounts or inquiries is expected to affect the results of the presidential election, which Bush won by more than 3.3 million votes.

Those who believe that either or both of the past two presidential elections were manipulated by a vague conspiracy to elect Bush have done statistical analyses of voting patterns in Florida and argued that the voting discrepancies were much larger and systemic, but their studies have not stood up to scrutiny from academics and other analysts.

Most of the concerns, which have rocketed through the Internet, center on computerized voting or tabulating machines, including some that do not keep a paper record for audits and recounts. Some computer scientists acknowledge that these systems could be vulnerable to tampering.

''I would hesitate to take seriously the conspiracy theories, but there are certainly gaps and vulnerabilities that have got to be addressed," said DeForest B. Soaries, chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission, which was created by the 2002 law and plans to conduct hearings around the country on the voting.

''We are convinced that while the election went relatively smoothly compared to what many had expected, that does not eliminate the need to study the results and collect data to document machine malfunctions and other administrative matters," Soaries said.

Since 2000, watchdog groups have intensified their monitoring and cataloging of complaints and errors. The nonpartisan Verified Voting Foundation and other groups built a database of more than 30,000 ''election incidents" reported across the country this year. Most were routine, but nearly 900 involved significant e-voting problems, including malfunctions that shut down machines, lengthening waits at the polls. There were 42 reports of total breakdowns of machines in New Orleans and 28 in Philadelphia and ''15 reports of catastrophic machine failure" in Mercer County, Pa.

The most serious problems occurred in North Carolina, where 4,438 e-votes disappeared in Carteret County. In at least five other counties, major double-counting or undercounting was discovered and corrected by North Carolina officials during their tabulations.

Johnnie McLean, deputy director of the State Board of Elections, attributed many mistakes to ''the human element, brought on by fatigue." In Carteret, for example, election workers apparently did not notice the ''Voter Log Full" message on the black box as the UniLect touch-screen failed to record the electronic votes, she said.

''If we had problems in the past, they were not magnified like this," McLean said, referring not only to the closeness of the statewide race, but also the extraordinary scrutiny of voting since 2000.

Examples of other major problems that were reported on and after Nov. 2, then later corrected, include:

Thousands of ballots were mistakenly double-counted in Sandusky County, Ohio; Sarpy County, Neb.; and Grays Harbor County, Wash. Democrats in Washington must decide by Friday whether to seek a second recount in the closest governor's race in state history. One recount has been held, reducing Republican Dino Rossi's 261-vote lead to 42 votes over Democrat Christine Gregoire.

In Gahanna, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, Bush was temporarily credited with 3,893 more votes than he actually received in a precinct where only 638 voters cast ballots on a Danaher electronic voting machine.

In Franklin County, Ind., a tabulator credited about 600 straight-ticket Democratic votes to Libertarian Party candidates.

In Collin County, Texas, the memory card of a Diebold Election Systems touch-screen machine had to be sent to a laboratory in Canada a week after the election to extract information about 63 votes cast before the machine froze and was taken out of service.

In South Florida's Broward County, ''multiple misrecordings" occurred when votes for Kerry on touch-screens made by Election Systems & Software Inc. appeared as Bush votes, and there was at least one account of a Bush vote going to Kerry, the Verified Voting group reported. Broward voters discovered the problem on screens that allowed them to check their selections before entering them electronically.

The long list of documented problems has fueled the suspicions of conspiracy theorists, activists, and the minor presidential candidates who requested the New Hampshire and Ohio recounts.

Ohio decided the 2004 contest, but since the 2000 election, Florida remains the focus of the doubters and the devotees of various scenarios that suggest skullduggery, in part because early exit polls overstated Kerry's strength.

No group has been more aggressive than Seattle-based Black Box Voting, which bills itself as ''consumer protection for elections." Led by founder Bev Harris, the organization is seeking election records from around the country for audits of the results. The primary focus is Florida, where internal computer records have been requested in all 67 counties, and the results in glitch-plagued Volusia County, in the east-central part of the state, are being contested.

Four years ago, during vote-counting on election night, a faulty memory card initially deducted 16,022 votes from Democrat Al Gore's vote total in Volusia. Despite spending about $300,000 to upgrade equipment and avert a repeat, there were memory card problems this year in tabulators for six Volusia precincts. The optically-scanned paper ballots were re-fed into other counting machines to reach an accurate tally, a county election official said.

''All day long, I get desperate calls from people who are in so much pain," said Harris, the Black Box founder, who said she is convinced fraud occurred in some places Nov. 2. ''They say: Can you fix it? Can you solve it? Can you turn around the presidential election? We're not trying to turn the election around. We're trying to get elections to be more transparent, because with the new machines, it's not transparent."

Deanie Lowe, Volusia's supervisor of elections, said she has complied with Harris's record requests and offered to recount, free of charge, any three of Volusia's 179 precincts selected by Harris.

Harris, however, said records for all precincts were not turned over, and Black Box will seek a 50-precinct recount in the county, which Kerry won but by a smaller margin than Gore did in 2000.

Much of the postelection focus on Florida resulted from a pair of analyses that claimed Bush's vote totals in the state were inflated by two vote-counting technologies.

The first analysis originated on the Web and cited results in rural, overwhelmingly Democratic counties in Florida's panhandle, where Bush crushed Kerry. All use optical scanners. What the analysis failed to note is that Bush routed Gore by nearly equal margins four years ago in the same conservative counties that have been tilting Republican for years in national elections. A team of Miami Herald reporters reviewed 17,000 ballots in three of the counties, basically confirming the election results.

Then, a broadly reported second study by a team at the University of California at Berkeley, using an academic statistical method, asserted that ''Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida." In Broward County alone, the study said, Bush ''appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes." Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, which also use touch-screens, were also cited as anomalies.

But if Bush had actually received 72,000 fewer votes in heavily Democratic Broward, his total this year would have been less than it was in 2000 -- even though nearly 132,000 more ballots were cast. Kerry won all three key counties, Broward by more than 209,000 votes.

Bush carried the state by 380,978 votes, or about 5 percent of 7.6 million cast.

If recounts are the skeptics' best hope to uncover systemic irregularities, they got off to a rocky start in New Hampshire. Completed yesterday at the request of independent candidate Ralph Nader, the Granite State re-tally of 50,600 votes in 11 towns and city wards that use optical scanners increased Kerry's total by 87 votes and Bush's by 62.

Secretary of State William M. Gardner said scanned ballots have worked well in New Hampshire. Indeed, the largest discrepancies found this year were in a legislative race involving hand-counted ballots, he said.

On deck is Ohio, which tipped the Electoral College to Bush. At the earliest, the recount of 88 counties won't begin until Dec. 13, according to the secretary of state's office, the same day the Electoral College is scheduled to formalize Bush's reelection. The recount could take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Minor presidential candidates Michael Badnarik and David Cobb of the Libertarian and Green parties, respectively, have said they would formally seek the recount once the state certifies the official results Monday. They will incorporate the review of 155,000 provisional ballots, which were not included in preliminary tallies that showed Bush winning Ohio by 136,483 votes, or about 2.5 percent.

How long the recount takes will depend on whether Badnarik and Cobb ask for a manual inspection of any or all of the 5.5 million ballots, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Ohio's secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell.

Of complaints about long lines that discouraged some from voting and allegations that there was a shortage of machines in some urban Democratic areas, LoParo said such decisions in Ohio are made by county boards of elections with two Republicans and two Democrats.

Long waits in Ohio and elsewhere resulted from the system being overwhelmed by a high turnout, said Doug Chapin, director of the nonpartisan electionline.org, which monitors reform efforts.

More attention should be paid to providing an adequate number of machines in polling places, he said, as well as ''finishing the job" mandated by the Help America Vote Act. Forty states, for example, have yet to comply with a mandate to establish a central, statewide database of registered voters. That will reduce questions about voter eligibility at election time, Chapin said.

Whatever the outcome of the recounts and the official inquiries by federal agencies, the impetus for improve voting systems will not fade, he said.

''This is not a fringe issue, because a sizable group is interested in pursuing this as a policy issue going forward," Chapin said. ''There's now a critical mass of people involved who want to address the problems that occurred in 2004. This issue is not going to go away."

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Public Records lawsuit against Palm Beach County

blackboxvoting.org

Black Box Voting files Public Records lawsuit against Palm Beach County

NOV 30 2004: Today's lawsuit was filed naming Teresa LaPore as defendant, citing her for failure to comply with the Black Box Voting public records request of Nov. 2, 2004.

Black Box Voting filed the lawsuit this morning in Palm Beach County, served it per Florida law on LaPore's attorney. Black Box Voting then made a surprise visit to the podium at the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections meeting held today in Orlando, where LaPore was scheduled to make a speech on records retention.

We went in through the kitchen, using a reconassaince map provided by a colleague, led by Kathleen Wynne dressed as hired help. Black Box Voting investigator Kathleen Wynne, in black jeans and a white polo shirt had earlier traveled through the route to the back entrance to the supervisor's meeting, nodding to the waiters.

"Very nice, very nice," Wynne said authoritatively.

Wynne led Bev Harris and Andy Stephenson through the back way without raising so much as an eyebrow, since she looked like hotel staff.

Harris went onto the podium and introduced herself to the crowd. "I know I'm interrupting. This will only take a minute." She turned to LaPore, "Since we can't get your attention any other way, I'm serving you with a courtesy copy of the lawsuit we served on your office this morning."

LaPore glared, turned her back on Harris, and refused to take the lawsuit, so Harris set it on the table in front of LaPore.

Stephenson stood up in front of the crowd of perhaps 200 Florida elections officials.

"This was a courtesy call on Ms. LaPore for failing to produce public records," he said. "For any of you who have not complied, we have more of these coming."

Black Box Voting has identified 13 Florida counties who have earned litigation due to failure to comply with public records requests.

The elections officials erupted into deafening shouts, boos, gavel-pounding, and then Wynne stepped up smack dab in front of the crowd, took a sturdy stance and panned the crowd with her video camera.

"This is what democracy looks like," she said, as the officials scowled and shouted for the sergeant at arms.

Unfortunately, the sergeant at arms was nowhere to be found. (Perhaps imbibing in the Sequoia Voting Systems lounge, just down the hall? We may never know.)

Harris, Stephenson and Wynne made haste out the back door, but accidentally tripped a loud screeching alarm. The meeting broke up and people fanned out all over the place seeking to capture the rude individuals from Black Box Voting.

Black Box Voting went to the meeting because it was on the official schedule as a speech by LaPore on retention of election records. LaPore seems to have been retaining records too aggressively, by failing to provide public records to the public. Unfortunately, it seems that the agenda was changed, unbeknownst to Black Box Voting, and instead of a speech it was to be an event honoring LaPore prior to her retirement (she was voted out of office by Palm Beach County residents), and congratulating her on surviving so many lawsuits.

LaPore has one more lawsuit to go.

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Demonstrators greet Bush in Canada

CNN.com

Demonstrators greet Bush in Canada



OTTAWA, Canada (AP) -- Holding up signs calling U.S. President George W. Bush a "war criminal" and "liar," a few thousand demonstrators rallied in the Canadian capital Tuesday to protest his visit, the U.S.-led war in Iraq and a host of other issues.

Organizers said about 5,000 people, many of whom rode buses overnight from across Ontario and Quebec, held a rally at Ottawa's City Hall before a planned march on Canada's Parliament buildings. Police put the figure at between 2,500 to 3,000.

Making his first official visit to Canada, Bush arrived Tuesday for talks with Prime Minister Paul Martin. Bush was welcomed by many placards and signs along his motorcade route, including a truck parked nearby that was emblazoned with the phrase "Bush is a war criminal." Another placard branded him an "assassin."

Much the anger seemed focused on Bush's decision to invade Iraq. Canada decided against sending troops to Iraq -- a decision supported by more than 80 percent of Canadians.

"Canada is not against America. We're totally against Bush," explained Fredric White, a 40-year-old who works for an entertainment company, who stood by the Parliament building as the president's motorcade arrived.

"He's arrogant and ignorant. We totally disdain his policies on the war and his treatment of the U.N.," White said. "The administration has an imperialist attitude where he thinks he can take over countries by bombing them."

One group, the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, planned to roll out a so-called "unwelcome mat" for Bush -- a giant carpet-turned-protest-sign.

Protesters also voiced disapproval over trade issues and U.S. efforts to get Canada involved in the continental missile defense shield.

Christy Ferguson, a 27-year-old activist with Greenpeace, held a large banner saying "Stop Star Wars."

"We think Canada shouldn't even be talking to the U.S. about missile defense because it's driving nuclear proliferation around the world," she said.

Martin has promised an open debate in the House of Commons on whether Canada should take part in the defense program. Polls show a majority of Canadians are against joining the system, calling it destabilizing and a misguided effort to put weapons in space.

An Ipsos-Reid/CTV poll released Tuesday shows 58 percent of Canadians think Bush's re-election was a "bad thing," while 26 percent believed it was good. The poll surveyed 1,000 Canadians and had an margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Joe Cressy, an organizer for the anti-Bush rally and a student at Carlton University in Ottawa, called the protests a "direct communication link to Bush" -- but also "a message to our prime minister that he should not support Bush's policies."

Gathered at the City Hall rally, Lawrence Wueft, a 60-year-old sculptor from the eastern province of New Brunswick held up a banner made from a bed sheet that read: "Bush, go home. Keep your bloody hands off Canada."

"Bush, you're involved in an illegal war. Don't involve Canada in that illegal war," he said.

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Can Howard Dean Save the Democrats?

Newsweek

Can Howard Dean Save the Democrats?

The Vermont firebrand is essentially a centristwith conviction and passion. He's an obvious choice to lead the fractured party

By Eleanor Clift

Nov. 26 - The struggle to be Democratic National Committee chair is round one of the battle for the soul of the party. The obvious choice is Howard Dean, who has the clarity of conviction and the passion that voters hunger for even if they don’t always agree with him.

Party activists around the country are furious at the Washington Democrats for blowing the election. Wresting control away from the entrenched establishment is their goal. Dean would spark a Red State rebellion within the party, but the Heartland’s leading contender, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, withdrew his name from contention after being shown numbers suggesting Dean would win.

Dean is talking to a lot of people, and what he’s telling them is that if a consensus African-American or minority candidate emerged, he would not seek the job. Clinton Labor Secretary Alexis Herman’s name surfaced, but she said she wasn’t interested, and so far nobody else has assumed the mantle. A DraftHoward.com Web site has sprung up, and a Democratic source says Dean is planning a series of speeches “to position himself as a centrist. A campaign aide with close ties to the governor protests that he “wouldn’t be positioning himself. Remember in Iowa, the nicks came from the left. Rival campaigns attacked Dean for once agreeing with Newt Gingrich that Social Security’s growth rate should be slowed, and for winning the endorsement of the National Rifle Association as Vermont’s governor.

Dean is essentially a New Democrat who happened to be against the war. Signing legislation legalizing civil unions is the only outsized liberal thing he did, and he did it reluctantly in a compromise forced by court action. Only a few staffers were present at the signing ceremony, and photographers were banned. In the heyday of his campaign, when Internet contributions were rolling in and he was the front runner, he talked about broadening the party’s base and talking to voters with Confederate decals on their pickup trucks. He should have said gun racks because his message got lost in a debate over whether a politician invoking Confederate symbols is making a racist appeal.

Democrats who have spoken with Dean say he is moving toward a decision about the DNC post. But they caution that it could go either way. Anybody who has run for president doesn’t get it out of their system fast, particularly anybody who came as close as Dean thinks he came. Deciding to lead the party would probably take Dean out of the running for the ’08 nomination. Maybe that’s why the Clintons are quietly pulling for Dean. He would be one less party favorite for Hillary to dispose of. It’s not just his own ambition that Dean is weighing. The DNC job is no nirvana. It’s a place where he could make a difference, but it’s like any other Washington bureaucracy, says a Democratic operative. “There is a huge institutional pull in the same direction‘We do it that way because we’ve always done it that way'.

Dean gave hope to Democrats around the country with his maverick campaign. It was shock therapy, and Democrats need more of it. Every four years, one or the other party is written off. But stuff happens. President Bush is not immune to the second-term woes that have afflicted other presidents. He’s got a war that isn’t going well and a borrowing binge that could spiral into a recession if our allies decide to cash in the U.S. bonds they’re holding. For all the bravado, the Bush mandate is fragile. If 70,000 votes in Ohio had gone the other way, we’d be talking about the Republican enclave in the Old Confederacy and the Rocky Mountain states, and the resurgence of Blue America.

John Kerry’s biggest problem is that he never stood for anything that was big and bold. A headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion captured the emptiness of his campaign perfectly: KERRY’S ONE-POINT PLAN FOR AMERICA: GET RID OF GEORGE BUSH.

Thomas Frank, the author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas, says the moment he knew Kerry was going to lose was when he read an article about socialites raising money for Kerry by encouraging their friends to forego buying expensive shoes and give the money to Kerry. “I tell my girls I’m investing their inheritance, said one.

“It’s like rattling their jewelry for Kerry, says Frank, whose book confronts the cultural landscape that allowed conservatives to win the heart of America. Frank was in Washington this week at a panel on how to revive progressive politics. Democrats have to give “values voters some reason to come back. In the absence of a compelling economic message from Democrats, working-class Americans, once the core of the Democratic Party, are voting Republican. “Jesus’ message wasn’t them that has gets, he says, arguing that economic populism is the only comparative advantage the Democrats have in winning over these voters.

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The Orange Revolution

Time Magazine
Monday, Dec. 06, 2004

The Orange Revolution

Why Russia, the U.S. and Europe care so much about Ukraine's disputed presidential election

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW; YURI ZARAKHOVICH/KIEV

It was both a symbol and a symptom of the revolution that rippled across Ukraine last week. On Thursday, as the presenter of state-controlled UT1's main morning news program was updating viewers on the Central Electoral Commission's decision to declare Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych the winner of the country's Nov. 21 presidential vote, Natalya Dmitruk, the woman who translates broadcasts into sign language, decided to send a very different message. "When the presenter started to read the news," Dmitruk tells TIME, "I said, 'I address all deaf viewers. Yushchenko is our President. Do not believe the Electoral Commission. They are lying.'" In a week filled with remarkable acts of political protest, Dmitruk's silent rebellion was one of the most defiant.

Independent Ukraine's fourth presidential election since the collapse of the Soviet Union was supposed to reach a conclusion in the Nov. 21 runoff. On Monday the Electoral Commission said preliminary tallies showed Moscow's favored candidate, Yanukovych, ahead by 3 percentage points. But immediately there were widespread accusations by Ukrainian and foreign monitors of massive fraud including voter intimidation, physical assaults and the torching of ballot boxes. Yet the state-controlled media, which had backed Yanukovych through the five-month campaign, were reporting no major violations. Convinced that the election was being stolen from the rightful victor, supporters of Western-leaning opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko poured into Kiev's Independence Square to demand that their man be recognized as the winner. City residents mixed with swarms of protesters from across the country, all wearing something orange, the color of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party. Despite heavy snow and freezing temperatures, the crowd was in a festive mood, eager to embrace Yushchenko's orange revolution against the country's Moscow-backed old guard. When a mob of students took over part of the nearby Ministry of Education building, staff members served them tea and cookies.

Yushchenko, his face disfigured by what he claims was an attempt by government authorities to poison him in September, urged people not to leave the square until the commission's ruling was overturned. "We appeal to citizens of Ukraine to support the national resistance movement," he told the cheering throng. "We should not leave this square until we secure victory." And his supporters did just that. On Saturday evening, after six days of nonstop peaceful protests, the state and its candidate were forced to back down. In a nonbinding vote, Parliament declared the poll results invalid but did not recommend a date for the rerun, although many deputies expect that to happen in mid-December. The Supreme Court, which has final jurisdiction over elections, will examine the fraud allegations and make its ruling this week. But news that Yanukovych would not be inaugurated caused jubilation in Kiev, where hundreds of thousands continued their vigil. "Nobody will stop us now," exulted Vasily, a Kiev engineer.

In a race that was fought largely over whether Ukraine would pursue Western-style reforms and closer ties to Europe or stick with state control and a tight relationship with Russia, coming that far was a remarkable achievement for Yushchenko. But even if he does ultimately prevail at the ballot box, that doesn't mean the crisis is over. Rather like red-state-blue-state America, Ukraine remains a divided and distrustful nation, with the Russian-speaking, industrialized eastern part of the country backing Yanukovych and the more nationalistic, agricultural west wanting Yushchenko. The two camps are as polarized as the reporting on UT-1's morning news broadcast.

While Yushchenko's voters celebrated in Kiev and the West, a wave of rallies rolled through Yanukovych strongholds in the east to protest what people there saw as a stolen election. Political leaders, defiant of Kiev's authority, angrily rejected the decision to hold another poll and called for the creation of a new autonomous region. Some even threatened to join eastern Ukraine with Russia. The electoral impasse could crack the country along the acute cultural and political rifts that divide it. "We are dealing with a deep split in the country," says Andrzej Zalucki, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for Poland, which shares with Ukraine a border that stretches more than 250 miles. "It's worse than just a political partition. It's ethnic and nationalistic. God forbid there's any kind of stupidity."

There's also the risk that a wayward Ukraine could damage relations between Moscow and the West. During the campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin made no secret of which side he was on: he visited Ukraine twice to broadcast his support for Yanukovych. Political consultants and media specialists close to the Kremlin played a major role in shaping the strategy and message of the Yanukovych campaign, and according to specialists like the Carnegie Endowment's Anders Aslund, Russia pumped millions of dollars into his election bid. On Monday, Putin was the first world leader to congratulate the Prime Minister on his victory, a full two days before the Electoral Commission declared him President-elect.

Sources well briefed on Kremlin affairs tell TIME that as protests in Kiev gathered momentum, Putin urged discredited outgoing President Leonid Kuchma eager to secure a safe retirement amid charges of corruption and political violence to declare Yanukovych the winner. The sources say Putin made it clear that a Yushchenko victory would not be acceptable. If the Russian President sticks to that hard line, it could provoke serious trouble, not only abroad but also at home. "The Russians have raised the stakes," says Stephen Sestanovich of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations. "They've made this a very emotional issue domestically, and there will be a lot of people on Putin's nationalist flank saying, 'Are you going to take this lying down?'"

Yanukovych, 54, has made no secret of his pro-Moscow leanings. Just as important, Ukraine's business and political elites have flourished in one of the world's most corrupt economies, and they trust that he won't rock the boat. If Yanukovych seems a throwback to the Soviet era, Yushchenko, 50, wants to bring Ukraine into the free-market age. In opposition, he turned Our Ukraine into a powerful bloc that's threatening to undo the current ruling clan's lock on power.

Almost before the final votes were tallied, international election monitors raised allegations of widespread fraud. According to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which sent in observers to watch the balloting, there were "highly suspicious and unrealistic" turnouts in key Yanukovych areas. Monitors recorded acts of harassment, intimidation and multiple voting and noted that the list of the country's eligible voters mysteriously grew 5% on Election Day. The OSCE investigated and dismissed as groundless complaints of multiple voting and ballot fixing leveled against Yushchenko's campaign by Yanukovych officials. Senator Richard Lugar, who represented the U.S. at the vote, was scathing in his assessment: "A concerted and forceful program of Election Day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities."

With each day of drama and denunciations, more and more Ukrainians poured into Independence Square to challenge the official outcome. The whole capital was, in the words of a Russian TV correspondent, "one big demonstration." Pro-Yushchenko organizers, some of them trained by the same dissidents who helped coordinate successful electoral revolutions in Serbia and Georgia, rallied volunteers with rock music, puppet shows and free food. Even famed Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa made an appearance, telling the crowd, "I opposed the Soviet Union, and I opposed communism, and I came out victorious. Ukraine has a chance!"

In fact, the institutions of power were already showing cracks. Olexandr Skibinetsky, a general in Ukraine's Security Service, told demonstrators that he shared their "well-founded doubts" about the election. Lieut. General Mikhail Kutsin, the military commander for western Ukraine, said his men would not "act against their own people." In other parts of the country, cities and towns created strike committees and announced campaigns of civil disobedience.

As the tumult in the streets escalated, Yanukovych seemed at a loss. At first, he tried to pretend nothing was wrong. Then he disappeared from public view until last Friday, when he told a crowd of 6,000 miners and metalworkers who had been transported by bus and train to Kiev's central station from the east: "I'll give it to you straight. A creeping coup is taking place. We must do everything possible to prevent this coup from happening." After Parliament called for a fresh vote, many felt that the coup had succeeded. "This is banditry," said Irina, 39, a waitress in a Kiev cafe. "I voted for Yanukovych. He was legally elected. They should have let him start working. I'm scared to think what will become of us now."

However the disputed election finally plays out, it has undermined the Bush Administration's cozy relations with Putin, at least behind the scenes. In his first term, George W. Bush was willing to give Putin a free hand in what Russia calls the near abroad, the states that spun off from the broken Soviet Union. At the same time, Bush has made encouraging democracy around the world a central pillar of his presidency. In Ukraine those two policies clash mightily. Washington spent much of Ukraine's bitterly fought presidential campaign studiously avoiding confrontation with Putin and stuck to that line in the early days after the vote. But at midweek, Secretary of State Colin Powell made clear Washington's support for Yushchenko, saying the U.S. was "deeply disturbed by the extensive and credible reports of fraud." The next day, at an European Union-- Russia summit, Putin emphasized that the dispute should be settled without outside interference. No other country has a "moral right to push a major European state to mass disorder," he warned.

The Kremlin regards countries like Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus as vital buffers between Russia and the West. Like Russian rulers for the past two centuries, Putin "equates security with well-defined zones of interest," says James Sherr, an Eastern Europe specialist at Oxford Uni-versity. Those zones have shrunk in recent years as the Baltic states and Georgia turned sharply toward the West. Putin doesn't want to see the same thing happen in Ukraine.

But analysts in the U.S. are worried that Putin may have overplayed his hand. If he were seen to be encouraging the east in its secessionist plans, the protests could turn violent. As the Ukraine Supreme Court weighs its decision, there will be opportunities for Russia to stir up separatism. Whether that happens will depend on Putin's ability to reconcile traditional Russian interests and fears with the reality of modern Europe, says Michael Emerson of the Center for European Policy in Brussels. "The more Putin pushes realpolitik," he says, "the more Ukrainians will want to go in the other direction."

Those who want Ukraine to one day join the European Union watched last week's events with special interest. The country has been caught in a kind of catch-22, says Andrew Wilson, a lecturer at University College London and author of The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. "Brussels has been reluctant to give an invitation until Ukraine internalizes European values in politics and business, and Ukraine has been unwilling or unable to reform until that invitation is given." The current crisis could prompt both sides to break the impasse.

In Independence Square, Taras Kuchma, a physician from Drogobych, in the west, sarcastically thanked Yanukovych and Putin for having achieved the impossible. "They finally forced the Ukrainians to unite to become a nation," he said. But that unity was not in evidence last week, and it may still turn out to be an impossible dream.

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Washington; Helen Gibson/ London; Valeria Korchagina/ Moscow; Tadeusz L. Kucharski/Warsaw; Andrew Purvis/Vienna; Jonathan Shenfield/Paris

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Blackwell on Countdown

msnbc.com

November 29, 2004

Recount Si, Jesse No
Keith Olbermann

NEW YORK - We have been inviting Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to appear on Countdown since we began to cover the voting irregularities story on November 8th.

It struck me as not quite coincidental that he finally joined us the same day the Ohio GOP issued what might be the first Republican recognition of any kind that there are questions about the vote - a news release with the gaudy headline “Democrats Struggle to Justify Unnecessary Recount / (Jesse) Jackson swoops in to fuel conspiracy theories even Kerry lawyers admit are baseless.”

While it was the Greens and Libertarians filing for the recount, the Republicans seemed to prefer silence. But after Jackson spoke in Columbus Sunday and Cincinnati Monday, suddenly Mr. Blackwell was available. “I think what happened,” he said, “is that Jesse Jackson ran around the block and tried to get out in front of a parade that was already on the march.”

That’s an odd phrase. Show of hands, please! Who out of the 20% who believe the election is illegitimate would have believed that a Republican state official would ever compare an Ohio recount to “a parade that was already on the march”? Sounds like a campaign phrase - for Democrats.

Suddenly the recount itself seems like an old pal to Ohio’s top election official. Last week, the incoming president of the association of county election officials mused out loud about a suit to stop the Glibs, so I asked Blackwell if he was saying that his office would take no step to try to prevent the recount. “Once they ask for a recount, we will provide them with a recount… we will regard this as yet another audit of the voting process.”

As to the audit of the perception of conflict of interest in Blackwell’s other role as Honorary Co-Chair of the Bush-Cheney Ohio Campaign, he seemed less definitive. “We have a bi-partisan system in Ohio where the Hamilton County Chairman of the board of elections, Tim Burke, is also the Democrat chairman of the Democrat party in that county.” I’ll pause the quote here to note that said party does business as the Democratic Party and the Republicans’ obsession with that little ‘ic’ has always seemed peevish to me, even when it’s coming out of John McCain’s mouth. Blackwell continued: “The same for Dayton. The Democrat Chairman is the Chairman of the Board of Elections in Montgomery County.”

This is interesting, and this is troubling (why should you be able to be both Chairman of the Montgomery County Democratic Party and Chairman of the Montgomery County Board of Elections?). But it also seemed to be self-evidently irrelevant - something akin to the political version of “They started it,” whether the ‘they’ are Republicans or Democrats.

The Democrats, of course, didn’t start the recount push in Ohio, the Glibs did, and the distinction seems vitally important to Blackwell. Messrs. Badnarik and Cobb “have a standing, not Jesse Jackson, and because Senator Kerry has conceded and has not asked for a recount he has no standing, and so I would anticipate that the Electoral College will be held on the 13th of December and 20 votes will go to the certified winner.”

We had already gone way past our scheduled length of the interview, and were throwing out other political stories, when I had to choose between two last questions to which I wanted Secretary Blackwell’s official answers. Judging by email response to the show, a lot of people would have asked the one I didn’t - about the still inexplicable “terrorist threat” lockdown of vote-counting in Warren County.

Not to get too Inside Baseball on you, but my thinking in the heat of the moment was that Mr. Blackwell would respond to questions about Warren County much in the way he veered off from my earlier question about what the Ohio GOP news release termed “a costly $1.5 million dollar recount…” He quickly agreed that the Recount Gap between actual costs and the $10 per precinct charge was the fault of nobody but Ohio’s legislature, which hasn’t updated the rate card since 1956. Then came what I expected we’d have heard again if I’d asked about Warren: “Ohio has a delicately balanced bi-partisan system that counts votes at the local level. I have nothing to do with counting the votes.”

For answers, we need the Warren County election authorities and - here’s a surprise - they haven’t commented since the FBI denied issuing them any kind of ‘terrorism warning.’

So, instead, I went for a straight yes-or-no on the latest ‘sources say’ story from the many and varied internets: did he, or did he not, meet with President Bush, in Ohio, on election day. “That’s just hogwash, absolutely zero, not true. And it’s the sort of mythology that grows out of, you know, a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands and the imaginations of Jonathan Swift.” While earning points for referencing the author of Gulliver’s Travels, Secretary Blackwell also threw a gauntlet down at the feet of the net’s Baker Streets Irregulars: there darn well better not be anybody willing to swear an oath they saw such a meeting take place.

We had no expectations that this interview was going to produce a “Eureka” moment and we were correct. But the salient point seems to be that -- as was meekly forecast here some time ago -- as the prospect of the actual recount loomed, the story would be driven into the mainstream media. Why, even CNN’s Inside Politics interviewed Jackson briefly Monday - and the Reverend’s use of the new F-word (fraud) seemingly motivated Blackwell to go on the record (and bring up Jackson’s presence in Ohio eight times after I stopped asking him about Jackson).

I did not see the CNN interview, but I am told Jackson did not repeat his strong weekend comments about Kerry supporting the Ohio investigations, which to me implies again that the only people more sensitive to the prospect of Kerry participation in the recount than the Republican Party, is the Democratic Party. This eludes my capability for analysis beyond what I have written here previously about the pulling back of last week’s news release by the Ohio Dems because it read the Kerry/Edwards campaign “joins” the recount, and its replacement a few hours later by an otherwise identical statement saying the Kerry/Edwards campaign “participates in” the process.

There is more parsing going on here - by both parties - than at a reunion of the Ken Starr fan club.

For the record, Jesse Jackson is scheduled to join us Tuesday night on Countdown, with the caveat that his day planner is notoriously fluid - so if he’s not there, don’t assume he’s been - I don’t know - fired.

Email at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

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Newsweek

Four More Years to Finally Get It Right
In the new devices, a voter has no way of proving that his or her choice is reported in the final tally

By Steven Levy
Newsweek

Dec. 6 issue - Almost a month after the presidential election, I'm still getting missives from people who insist that things don't smell right. They draw on a litany of irregularities that are well-circulated in the blogosphere, the Blue States and maybe even subterranean corners of the Red nation. Some are of the dead-canary-in-the-coal-mine variety, like the computer in Ohio that delivered Bush 4,258 votes when only 638 humans actually cast ballots. Others are more sweeping, like the charges that e-voting peculiarities could have somehow lost Kerry 260,000 votes in Florida. Not all of these people charge fraud, but clearly many believe the worst. And if they go to the popular blackboxvoting.org site, a headline assures them IT'S OK TO SAY THE F-WORD.

It would be easy to dismiss this bunch as a society of paranoids. Indeed, their complaints seem beyond the pale when key e-voting critics claim that despite some problems, there's no evidence that the outcome was affected. Anyway, at this point, even pictures of Karl Rove personally hacking Diebold machines wouldn't budge the incumbent from the White House. Is it time for these folks to shut up already?

To the contrary, their curmudgeonry serves an important purpose. The nature of the ATM-style voting terminals used by a third of the country in 2004—and set to increase over the next few cycles—doesn't merely invite controversy. It makes doubt a permanent part of the process. The problem is that the new devices have no way of proving to the voter that his or her choice is reported in the final tally. Researchers have demonstrated that the machines themselves are not foolproof—and, worse, are potentially susceptible to vote-stealing schemes.

You would think that some means of verifiability (like a paper printout that can be saved and used in a recount) would be a minimal requirement. Yet legislation that would have mandated such protections in 2004 was bottled up in Congress.

As a result, even though the e-voting machines seem to have performed decently this time around, we're still stuck with doubt. How do we know that they haven't massively misreported the totals? "It's like saying that there are no stealth bombers overhead because none can be seen on the radar," says Avi Rubin, the Johns Hopkins professor who has identified severe weaknesses in e-voting technology. He doesn't dispute the 2004 outcome, but worries about next time. "I'm afraid there could be undetectable fraud."

So what are the chances of fixing this by 2008? Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey intends to reintroduce his voter-verification bill in the next session. He will have new ammunition: this year Nevada's e-voting terminals successfully used paper backups, refuting critics who claimed that the extra technology would gum up the works. "The issue is not who won or lost this year," says Holt. "The issue is voter confidence."

Of course, verification is only one component of voting reform. Why is it that the companies that make the machines are run by executives who favor one party over another? For that matter, why is it that the so-called referees of the process are often partisan politicians themselves? When tackling the problems of provisional ballots, supplying precincts with sufficient voting machines and handling recounts, wouldn't it make sense to have neutral parties in charge?

After the 2000 debacle, one might have expected that our leaders would move mountains to make the next election an exemplary one. The fact that we cannot convince the doubters proves otherwise. Don't call them paranoid, but recognize their passion for fairly run, accurately tabulated elections. If only their zeal were more contagious.

Comment: Although the above is an otherwise excellent article, the author and those he chooses to quote claim that they don't believe there was fraud in this election, but if we don't fix the process there 'might' be some in the next one, while at the same time saying that the problems this time actually point strongly to probable fraud (although not saying so in so many words). This double-speak on the part of the media is part of the problem, and why many US citizens are still not paying attention to the facts that show widespread problems including strong appearances of fraud and corruption.

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U.S. death toll in Iraq nears monthly record

MSNBC.com

U.S. death toll in Iraq nears monthly record
Car bomb kills at least 7 civilians; Iraqi forces suffer new attacks

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 5:49 a.m. ET Nov. 30, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. Army soldier died from injuries sustained after a roadside exploded next to his patrol north of Baghdad, the military said Tuesday.

The death brings to 134 the number of American troops killed in Iraq this month, according to an unofficial count. This makes November the deadliest month for the U.S. military since last April when 135 troops died.

The attack on the 1st Infantry Division patrol occurred near the town of Alazu at about 10 p.m. on Monday, the statement said. The injured soldier was evacuated to a field hospital for treatment, where he later died of his wounds.

His name was withheld pending notification of next of kin.

The U.S. military command reported five new American deaths on Monday. Separately, 13 U.S. Marines were wounded in a mortar attack south of Baghdad.

On Tuesday, a car bomb exploded near a U.S. military patrol in the town of Beiji, north of Baghdad, killing at least seven Iraqis and wounding 20 people, including two U.S. soldiers, doctors and the military said. Another American soldier was wounded in a separate attack in the city.

In related news, about 21,000 American soldiers, most of them from units sent to Iraq, have been treated at the biggest U.S. military hospital outside the United States since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, the hospital said Monday.

Of the total, 17,878 of the U.S. soldiers treated were serving in Iraq, while 3,085 were from units in Afghanistan said Marie Shaw, hospital spokeswoman for Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Landstuhl handles many U.S. combat casualties but it did not break down the figure into battlefield and noncombat patients.

Car bomb explodes near U.S. patrol

On Tuesday, a U.S. military spokesman said the car exploded in a northern section of Beiji, 112 miles north of Baghdad. He said the civilian casualties were taken to Beiji hospital and the U.S. soldiers were evacuated.

A doctor at Beiji hospital, Samir Mehdi, said he had received seven civilian dead and 18 wounded, including a child.

The U.S. military gave the death toll as four, with 17 civilians wounded.

Witnesses said the attack occurred in a busy market area of the city, destroying dozens of stalls.

In a separate attack, an insurgent fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. tank in the town, wounding one U.S. soldier, a spokesman from the U.S. 1st Infantry Division said.

A hospital official in Beiji said a child and three traffic police were among the wounded.

Beiji, site of a major oil refinery, has seen a surge in violence over the past three weeks, since U.S. forces launched their offensive to retake the rebellious town of Fallujah.

U.S. tanks and armored vehicles, backed by helicopter gunships, launched an assault on parts of Beiji two weeks ago to suppress insurgents hiding out there. Since then there have been frequent clashes between U.S. forces and rebels in the town.

Security forces targeted

On Monday, insurgents stepped up attacks on Iraq’s fledgling security forces, killing seven Iraqi police and guardsmen in a suicide bombing hours after storming a police station north of the capital. The military reported five U.S. deaths.

Thirteen Marines were wounded Monday in a mortar attack south of Baghdad, the military said. No further details were released.

Monday’s suicide attack occurred in Baghdadi, a Euphrates River town about 120 miles northwest of the capital, where a driver detonated his vehicle near a police checkpoint, police Lt. Mohammed al-Fehdawi said. A hospital official, Hatim Ahmed, confirmed seven police and Iraqi National Guard members were killed and nine were wounded.

Late Sunday, gunmen stormed a police station west of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, looted the armory, commandeered several police cars and fled after encountering no resistance, Iraqi officials said.

U.S. troops went to the police station Monday morning and arrested two dozen people, police said. American officials had no comment. U.S. and Iraqi troops recaptured Samarra from insurgents in September, but the city remains tense.

Deadly route

Two American soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were killed and three wounded Monday in a roadside bomb explosion in northwestern Baghdad, the U.S. command said. One American soldier died and two were injured in a vehicle accident 30 miles northwest of the town of Kut in eastern Iraq, the military said.

Attacks have increased against U.S., Iraqi and other targets on the road leading from the center of Baghdad to the city’s international airport, located on the western outskirts of the capital.

The British Embassy announced Monday that its staff would no longer be permitted to travel on the airport road, which the U.S. State Department has identified as one of the most dangerous routes in Iraq.

“We advise against all but essential travel to Iraq,” the British Embassy said in a statement. “We urge all British nationals in Iraq to consider whether their presence in Iraq is essential at this time. Even essential travel to Iraq should be delayed, if possible.”

Paving the way for elections

South of the capital, U.S., British and Iraqi forces pressed an offensive aimed at clearing insurgents from an area known as the “triangle of death.” Two Marines were killed there Sunday, U.S. officials said, and British troops escaped serious injury Monday when a bomb exploded next to a Scimitar light tank of the Queen’s Dragoon Guards.

The offensive, called Operation Plymouth Rock, was launched in part as a follow-up to this month’s assault on Fallujah, the main insurgent bastion 40 miles west of Baghdad.

U.S. commanders want to cut off an escape route for Fallujah fighters and pacify the area so that national elections can be held Jan. 30. Sunni Muslim clerics have called for an election boycott, and leading Sunni politicians urged the vote be postponed. They say violence makes a viable vote impossible, but the country's main Shiite Muslim parties say it should go ahead.

The U.S. military has warned that violence will worsen in Iraq as elections scheduled for Jan. 30 approach.

Asked Monday if he were optimistic that the elections would take place as planned, Secretary of State Colin Powell said there was no reason why they should not.

“We’re working hard on it. The U.N. has increased its presence. There are thousands of Iraqis who are working on registration and getting ready for the elections. We’re encouraging all parties to participate in the political process, especially in the Sunni heartland,” Powell told reporters.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Muslims hate our policies, not our freedom

unfilteredradio.com
November 30, 2004

TALKING POINT:

So it turns out Muslims around the world don’t hate our freedom after all… Instead, they hate U-S policies. And I quote, “There is no yearning to be liberated by the US groundswell among Muslim societies. In the eyes of the Muslim world, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. When American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.”

Who’s saying all this? Not Al-Jazeera... not the folks at Air America Radio... not even academics... actually, it’s the Pentagon. Specifically, the Defense Science Board.

Hours before you chowed down on turkey last week, you probably missed the release of the Pentagon Defense Science Board report that is hyper-critical of the US policy toward the Muslim world and US military actions in the Middle East.

Here's a link to the report: Defense Science Board

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90% of PAC's support Republicans

The Progress Report

Roughly nine out of 10 major corporate political action committees gave
more money to Republicans than to Democrats, according to a study by
PoliticalMoneyLine (http://www.politicalmoneyline.com/) . Top
GOP-leaning corporate PACs included Outback Steakhouse Inc. (96%), Exxon Mobil
Corp. (96%), Wendy's International Inc. (93%), and Halliburton Co. (91%).

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Environment in Peril

The Progress Report

ENVIRONMENT - IN PERIL:

With Republicans in control of both the White House and Congress, environmentalists are becoming increasingly nervous about the future of environmental protections. At issue are " possible sweeping Bush-backed rule changes
(http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/10293634.htm) on clean air, Arctic
drilling, roadless areas in national forests, endangered species, sewage
dumping and mountaintop removal to mine for coal." Clean air is at
risk, for example, with industry groups pressuring industry-friendly
conservatives in Congress to "relax pollution limits for ozone, eliminate
vehicle tailpipe inspections and ease pollution standards for cars, sport
utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment." As
clean air lobbyist Frank O'Donnell worries, "There are many breaks yet
to be dished out to big campaign contributors.'' Karen Wayland of the
Natural Resources Defense Council is pledging environmentalists will
fight back, stating the Bush administration "'risks a hornet's nest of
public opposition' if it rolls back health, environmental and conservation
protections to benefit oil, coal and mining industries."

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More on that Omnibus Bill

The Progress Report

OMNIBUS -- TRICKY BUSINESS: Today's Roll Call exposes some tricky
business tucked into the massive omnibus bill recently passed by Congress.
"Without floor debate or a single hearing, Congress changed election
laws last week (http://www.rollcall.com/issues/50_55/news/7533-1.html)
to allow members to transfer campaign funds raised for a federal race to
a run for state or local office." A small, "four-paragraph provision
taking up less than half a page in the 3,300-page omnibus appropriations
measure struck a portion of the landmark campaign laws adopted in 2002
and once again freed Members to apply dollars raised for federal
elections toward bids for governor, mayor or other offices." Some lawmakers,
like Wisconsin's Sen. Russ Feingold (D), were outraged by the maneuver.
"Regardless of the merits of the provision allowing Members of Congress
to use their federal campaign accounts for state campaigns, a few
senior Members of Congress or their staffs should not be permitted to
rewrite the campaign finance laws by slipping something into the omnibus
appropriations bill," said Feingold.

OMNIBUS -- SPECIAL INTEREST BONANZA: More details have emerged
(http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/26/no_shrimp_left_behind)
about the self-described "lean and clean" $388 billion spending bill
Congress passed last week: $443,000 set aside to make salmon baby food;
$236,000 to research blueberries; $335,000 to help North Dakota shoo
blackbirds off sunflowers; and $1 million for a "Wild American Shrimp
Initiative." (As an outraged Sen. John McCain quipped, "Are American shrimp
unruly and lacking initiative? Why does the US taxpayer need to fund
this `No Shrimp Left Behind Act?'") While special interests -- such as
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which got $350,000 for "education
programs" -- hit the jackpot, other programs weren't quite so lucky -- the
bill slashes eligibility for college Pell grants, which help low-income
students pay for education.

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HOMELAND SECURITY -- THE FORGOTTEN PORTS

The Progress Report

HOMELAND SECURITY -- THE FORGOTTEN PORTS:
A veteran U.S. counterterrorism agent has a scary message about the vulnerability of the nation's ports: "If I was Al Qaeda and I was looking for a hit, that is exactly
where I would look." According to the LA Times, "For all the concern
about safety at the nation's airports, counterterrorism officials and other
experts say the nation's ports may now present an even greater threat
(http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-port26nov26,1,3704469.story?coll=la-headlines-california)
. Since Sept. 11, they have received far less security funding than
airports, yet they continue to process far more cargo — more than 9.5
million containers a year." For example, about 12,000 containers arrive
every day at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports in California. Under
current screening measures, officials only scan about 720 of these
containers and inspect roughly 43 by hand. Dale Watson, former FBI head of
counterterrorism, states, "Even though there were manifests, some of us got
the sense we really didn't know what was coming and going."

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MILITARY -- WOES OF AN OVERSTRETCHED NAT'L GUARD

The Progress Report

MILITARY -- WOES OF AN OVERSTRETCHED NAT'L GUARD: Equipment and
manpower shortages are placing increasingly strenuous demands
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guard25nov25,0,7278305.story?coll=la-home-headlines)
on the "citizen soldiers" in the National Guard and Reserves, now being
transformed into active duty, front-line combat troops. Members of the
California Army National Guard say they were "under strict lockdown and
being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by Army commanders"
while training at a remote desert camp in New Mexico. Moreover, the Los
Angeles Times reports, the training they received was so poor and
equipment shortages so prevalent "that they fear their casualty rate will be
needlessly high when they arrive in Iraq." One sergeant remarked, "I
came back to the National Guard specifically to go to Baghdad, because I
believed in it, believed in the mission. But I have regretted every day
of it. This is demoralizing, demeaning, degrading." Meanwhile, local
papers across the country continue to document the "backdoor draft."
Recent call-ups (http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/11/28/13638/635)
include a 43-year-old single mom (http://ydr.com/story/war/50585/) who
was honorably discharged 12 years ago, a 48-year-old Alabama man with a
hip replacement and fused vertebrae, and one man "with a hospital
identification band still on his wrist. He'd just had knee surgery.
(http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04319/411224.stm) "

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The Moral Minority

The Progress Report

VALUES
The Moral Minority

Yesterday on Meet the Press
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/politics/28cnd-talk.html?oref=login&hp&ex=1101704400&en=42662331be50689b&ei=5094&partner=homepage)
, Reverend Jerry Falwell reaffirmed the Christian Right's narrow focus
on two issues: gay marriage and abortion. Asked by progressive
religious leader Jim Wallis (http://www.sojo.net/) to engage in a "broader
and deeper" conversation about values, Falwell and fellow conservative
preacher Dr. Richard Land resorted to bigotry and misdirection, lashing
out against gays, women and religious progressives. Falwell's priorities
fly in the face of the "moral values" most often cited (though not
most often reported (http://mediamatters.org/items/200411240001) ) on Nov.
2, where polls showed
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38001-2004Nov9.html)
voters were more concerned with "greed and materialism" (33 percent) and
"poverty and economic justice" (31 percent) than they were with issues
like gay marriage (http://blog.au.org/2004/11/values_voters_a.html)
(12 percent). Nevertheless, Christian conservatives around the country
are following Falwell's lead, dismissing concerns
(http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/print?id=280881) about separation of church
and state and setting out to refashion the federal courts
(http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2004/11/27/m11a_mcevoy_1127.html)
around a narrow agenda which conflicts with the values of most
Americans.

FALWELL DEMEANS RELIGIOUS PROGRESSIVES: Falwell went out of his way on
Sunday to divide America, saying those who voted for John Kerry did not
" take the bible seriously (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6601018/) ."
Wallis shot back, saying, "Jerry, there are millions and millions of
Christians who want the nation to know that you don't speak for them...that
Jesus, our Jesus isn't pro-rich, pro-war and only pro-American. We
don't find that Jesus anywhere in the Bible
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6601018/) ."

FALWELL REAFFIRMS BLAME FOR 9/11 ON GAYS, FEMINISTS: Falwell refused to
back down from his comment that 9/11 had been caused by "the pagans,
and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians [and]
all of them who have tried to secularize America." He reiterated that,
" when we defy the Lord, I think we pay a price for it
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6601018/) ."

FALWELL FLIP-FLOPS ON GOD, WAR: Falwell contradicted himself on the war
in Iraq, cited by 42 percent of respondents
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38001-2004Nov9.html) as
the moral issue which most influenced their vote on Nov. 2. When Rev.
Wallis asked him why he had said God was "pro-war," Falwell said, "I
don't believe God loves war...everybody hates war." The name of Falwell's
1/31/04 commentary? " God is Pro-War
(http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36859) ."

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON CIVIL RIGHTS: Falwell and Land tried to
cast their anti-abortion crusade as similar to the civil rights
movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. But Al Sharpton reminded Land it was
his own church that fought against King. "What [King] did was fought
against the Southern conservative values of those days," said Sharpton. "
He fought the Southern Convention that you represent
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6601018/) . Dr. King fought that
convention. Let's not rewrite history." Wallis added that King had served as a
model of how religion and values could play a part in political life: "He
reminded us of this wonderful vision of a beloved community where no
one gets left out and those who are always left out have a front-row
seat."

RELIGIOUS RIGHT SETS AFTER COURTS: The Palm Beach Post's George McEvoy
reports Congressmen pandering to the Christian right wing are planning
ways to strip federal courts of " their right to hear cases involving
the separation of church and state
(http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2004/11/27/m11a_mcevoy_1127.html)
." Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN), addressing a special legislative
briefing of the Christian Coalition last month in Washington, said he planned
to introduce a bill that would "deny federal courts the right to hear
cases challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, which bans same-sex
marriage." Unimpressed by America's system of checks and balances,
Hostettler inveighed, "When the courts make unconstitutional decisions, we
should not enforce them. Federal courts have no army or navy...At the end of
the day, we're saying the court can't enforce its opinions." Rep.
Robert Aderholdt (R-AL), recently advocated "court stripping as a means to
protect state-sponsored Ten Commandment displays."

DR. KENNEDY WARNS BUSH: Another conservative religious leader, Dr. James
Kennedy, whose sermons are broadcast in 3 million homes, has warned that
God will "be angry" if President Bush does not act soon on abortion and
gay marriage. "He said he knows of no timetable for God's wrath, but
wants results fast." Asked about the millions of Americans who are not
Christian, or have a different interpretation of Christianity, Kennedy
recommended they "repent" and said he " couldn't care less
(http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/print?id=280881) " about their views.

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The 2 Trillion Dollar Travesty

The Progress Report

SOCIAL SECURITY
The 2 Trillion Dollar Travesty

President Bush and his cronies in Congress -- in pursuit of a radical
right-wing agenda that is anything but conservative -- are working a
Social Security privatization scheme that would add trillions to the
national debt, cut retirement benefits and raise taxes
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/politics/28secure.html?ei=5094&en=cd5a720c6da1c654&hp=&ex=1101704400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=)
. It is all part and parcel of the president's plan to cut guaranteed
Social Security benefits in favor of risky privatized accounts. Under
the current system, the payroll tax collected from today's workers goes
to benefits for people who are already retired. Bush seeks to divert
some of that money into privatized accounts for workers who won't retire
for years, which won't leave enough money to pay today's retirees. Even
Joshua Bolton, one of Bush's top economic advisors, acknowledges that
the shortfall, which could exceed $2 trillion over 10 years, would
likely "require additional borrowing." This would significantly increase the
national debt, which already stands at $7.5 trillion. (The Bush
administration managed to add $413 billion last year alone). Meanwhile, Bush
allies like Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) -- seeking to reduce the amount of
borrowing to around $800 billion -- are backing significant Social
Security benefit cuts and tax increases to off-set the cost of the
administration's privatization scheme. (For all the details of the costs of Social
Security privatization, read this paper
(http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/%7bE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03%7d/socialsecurityreport.pdf)
.)

IGNORING THE PRICE TAG: The administration and its congressional allies
have come up with a clever way to avoid dealing with the financial
consequences of Social Security privatization: Ignore them
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-socsec28nov28,1,33658.story?coll=la-headlines-nation)
. Despite its potential $2 trillion price tag over 10 years -- and the
president's insistence that it is a top priority -- top conservatives
in Congress are considering keeping the costs of privatization "out of
the five- and 10-year deficit projection that Congress looks at when it
writes the annual budget."

NO PROBLEMS WITH SOCIAL SECURITY FOR THE NEXT 48 YEARS: There is a
dirty little secret in Washington that the Bush administration doesn't want
you to know about: Social Security is in pretty good shape. In fact, "
Social Security is more financially sound today than it has been
throughout most of its 69-year history
(http://www.cepr.net/publications/facts_social_security.htm) ."
According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, without any changes
at all, the Social Security program can pay all benefits through at
least 2052.

TAX CUTS FOR TOP 1 PERCENT EXCEEDS COST OF FIXING SOCIAL SECURITY FOR
75 YEARS: During the next 75 years, the total shortfall for Social
Security amounts to just 0.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Meanwhile, during that same period, President Bush's tax cuts just for the
top one percent of earners (a group of people whose average income
exceeds $1 million) will cost 0.6 percent of GDP. All of Bush's tax cuts will
cost 2 percent of GDP during the next 75 years -- or five times the
projected 75-year Social Security shortfall
(http://www.cbpp.org/6-14-04bud.htm) . The current system could be made
solvent for the indefinite future with adjustments in the tax code far
more modest than those approved by Ronald Reagan in 1983
(http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-saul4056961nov27,0,2589308.column?coll=ny-news-columnists)
to protect Social Security.

PRIVATIZATION MEANS MORE MONEY WASTED ON ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS: Another
little-known fact: Social Security is run very efficiently
(http://www.cepr.net/publications/facts_social_security.htm) . In the
current system, because the funds are managed together, less that 0.6
cents of every dollar paid out in Social Security benefits goes to pay
administration costs. In England, which has adopted privatized accounts
for its retirement system, 15 cents of every dollar paid out in benefits
goes to administrative fees. Even by the Bush administration's own
estimates, in a system of privatized accounts, 5 cents of every dollar
would go to administrative costs, more than 8 times the amount spent on
administrative costs today.

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Big Fat Turkey

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Halliburton faulted on oversight in Iraq

StarTribune.com

Halliburton faulted on oversight in Iraq
Associated Press
November 28, 2004 HALLI1128

WASHINGTON, D.C.-- A third or more of the government property that Halliburton Co. was paid to manage for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq could not be located by auditors, investigative reports to Congress show.

Halliburton's KBR subsidiary "did not effectively manage government property," and auditors could not locate hundreds of CPA items worth millions of dollars in Iraq and Kuwait this summer and fall, Inspector General Stuart Bowen said in two reports to Congress.

Bowen's findings are the latest bad news for Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, which is the focus of both a criminal investigation into alleged fuel price gouging and an FBI inquiry into possible favoritism from the Bush administration.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that FBI agents have extensively interviewed an Army contracting officer who last month went public with allegations that the Bush administration was awarding contracts to Halliburton without competitive bidding. Halliburton and the Pentagon deny wrongdoing and say they are cooperating in all investigations.

Company spokeswoman Cathy Gist said Friday that KBR recently conducted a "wall-to-wall" review of all property it is managing for the Pentagon in war zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and produced results far better than Bowen's findings. "We are pleased to report that this total inventory review confirmed 99.4 percent accountability of all property," she said.

Bowen reported that an audit this summer found that KBR had lost track of more than $18 million worth of equipment in Iraq.

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