The News Media Is Still Recovering From Watergate
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Monday, June 06, 2005
Sunday, June 05, 2005
What is the Media Running From?
counterpunch.org
What is the Media Running From?
We Need More, Not Fewer, Anonymous Sources
By DAVID LINDORFF
The voluntary outing of Mark Felt as the "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame puts into relief the current White House's cynical attack on journalists' use of anonymous sources.
It also should shame the corporate media, which has been caving in to this pressure, with the announcement of new stricter rules and promises to limit the use of such sources in the future at many news organizations.
As an investigative reporter who has made frequent use of anonymous sources throughout my career, let me put it bluntly-if Americans want a press that functions even minimally as a watchdog on corruption and abuse of power, they'd better get comfortable with anonymous sources. Toss them over the side and all we will be reading will be official press releases.
Nixon lovers, like Pat Buchanan, the late dark lord's former speechwriter, are blasting Felt, saying if he the erstwhile number two man at the FBI had evidence of illegal behavior he should have reported it to the Justice Department or to his boss, not to a reporter.
Excuse me, but is Buchanan expecting us to seriously believe that Attorney General John Mitchell, or FBI Director Patrick Gray, both later convicted of being feloniously involved in the cover-up of Nixon's crimes, would have done anything with such information besides sacking Felt and burying his story? Well, that and destroying his reputation?
That, after all, is what the Nixon administration MO was. Remember the Nixon "Enemies List"? If someone was a threat, like Daniel Ellsberg, for example, he went on the list. Then you broke into his psychiatrist's office and looked for damaging evidence to leak to the public. Or you sent some of that secret army of dirty tricksters-an army that Woodward and Bernstein say one source tallied at 50, but which a source I know-an anonymous source who was one of them-says numbered in the hundreds-and you messed them up somehow.
We see the same thing happening today, of course. This administration is at least as vicious as the Nixon White House was at destroying its enemies. Just look at the Valerie Plame outing case.
If anything, the cowardly corporate media, which can't even bring itself to report openly on the damning memorandum to British PM Tony Blair detailing in 2002 how the Bush administration planned to "fix" the evidence about terror links and WMDs to create a pretext for an invasion of Iraq, needs to round up more anonymous sources to report honestly about this most devious and corrupt of governments.
Just for an example, when I was breaking the story (in Counterpunch, Salon and Mother Jones) about the device under President Bush's jacket during the three presidential debates-all on the basis of named sources, I might note-there clearly were Washington reporters from all the major news organizations with sources inside the White House and the Republican National Campaign committee who could have taken the story further. Instead, they all ran with lame denials from the White House and the Bush/Cheney campaign that the lump on the president's back was a "wrinkle" in a "badly tailored" suit or shirt. The only news organization that even tried to do a genuine investigation of the bulge story, the New York Times, killed it on the eve of publication (allegedly because it was too close to the election, but then of course they never went back to it after the election).
"The New York Times can't say the president is lying," Elizabeth Bumiller famously said at a public forum on covering the campaign. I'm sure that journalists and editors at the other major news outlets, print and electronic, would say the same thing if they were honest. How far we have come from the early 1970s, when a young Dan Rather could imply just such a thing at a presidential press conference.
The reason the public has such a low opinion of the media today is not that the media uses anonymous sources. It's because the media doesn't tell the truth. The reading and viewing public are savvy enough about advertising and marketing to recognize that most of what they're getting in the "news hole" is just more of the same-official handouts from corporations and government officials, carefully packaged reports aimed at supporting advertisers, and entertainment filler.
If the media gave them red meat, in the form of hard-hitting investigative reports that looked at what government is really doing, how the war in Iraq is really going and how we got there in the first place, what is really happening to the environment, and how we are all being gouged by a tax system that gives away the store to the rich and corporations, you can bet they'd have a higher opinion of them, even if many of those stories relied on unnamed sources.
I'm not saying reporters should take shortcuts and not even try to get sources to go on the record, but let's face it-you cannot expect people with knowledge about wrongdoing to put their jobs and lives in jeopardy just to get a story out. If you want to know about those things-many of which can be life-and-death matters of public interest--you've got to accept that the information will be provided by an anonymous source.
The Bush White House knows this, and that's why it is coming down so hard on stories that use such sources.
They want to nip any chance of a return to Watergate-era journalism in the bud.
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Information about both books and other work by Lindorff can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com
Guard, Reserve monthly death toll at high
USA TODAY
Guard, Reserve monthly death toll at high
WASHINGTON (AP) — May was the deadliest month of the Iraq war for part-time American servicemen. Thirty-one of them died: 14 members of the Army National Guard, 12 from the Marine Corps Reserve, four from the Army Reserve and one Navy Reserve hospital corpsman attached to a Marine combat unit.
The overall U.S. death toll in Iraq last month — counting active-duty as well as mobilized reserve forces — was 80. That is the highest for any month since January, when 107 died as insurgent attacks rose sharply prior to the Iraqi election. Fifty-two died in April and 36 in March, when it appeared the insurgency was waning.
Iraqis bore the brunt of insurgent violence in May, but it also took a heavy toll on the approximately 140,000 U.S. troops there. The 80 deaths compares with a monthly average of 70 over the previous 12 months.
The death toll among the Guard and Reserve underscores an important aspect of their recruiting problems: More potential recruits, citing concern about being sent to the war zone, are opting for other careers. The Army Guard missed its recruiting target last year and has fallen even farther behind this year.
The previous worst months for Guard and Reserve deaths in Iraq were January, when 30 died, and last November, with 28. Those also happened to be among the deadliest months overall for American forces in Iraq.
The 12 deaths among Marine reservists in May was the most for any month of the war.
Eight of the 12 Marines were with the same unit — the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment of the 4th Marine Division. It participated in a weeklong combat operation dubbed Operation Matador that targeted hide-outs, staging areas and infiltration routes for insurgents and foreign fighters near the Syrian border.
Also killed while operating with that unit was Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeffrey L. Wiener, 32, of Louisville, a Navy reservist.
Previously, the deadliest month for Marine reservists in Iraq was last November, when an all-out offensive routed insurgent strongholds in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. Eleven Marine reservists died that month.
The National Guard and Reserve, which make up nearly half the force in Iraq, have generally had fewer than 20 deaths per month during the war, and it's not clear why their losses spiked to 31 in May.
The May total reached 31 when the Pentagon announced Friday that Sgt. Miguel A. Ramos, 39, of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, died May 31 in Baghdad when a rocket struck near his position. He was assigned to the Army Reserve's 807th Signal Company, 35th Signal Battalion, based at Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico.
Another of the month's 31 fatalities died in the United States. Staff Sgt. Tommy S. Little, 47, of Aliceville, Ala., died May 2 at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, of injuries sustained on April 19 near Iskandariyah, Iraq. A roadside bomb detonated near his Humvee utility vehicle. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 114th Field Artillery Regiment of the Mississippi Army National Guard at Columbus, Miss.
May also was a costly month for the regular Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which had 10 reported fatalities. Since it arrived in Iraq in February to become the first Army division to return for a second combat tour, the 3rd Infantry has lost 34 soldiers, Pentagon figures. During its previous tour, which lasted eight months and included the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the capture of Baghdad, the division lost 44 soldiers.
Last month also was a costly month for the Air Force, which plays a smaller and less publicized role in Iraq. On May 30, four Air Force Special Operations airmen were killed when the Iraqi aircraft in which they were flying crashed. The Iraqi pilot also died. It was the largest number of Air Force members to die in Iraq in a single month.
Bolton Said to Orchestrate Unlawful Firing
Yahoo! News
Bolton Said to Orchestrate Unlawful Firing
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved.
A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.
Bustani, who says he got a "menacing" phone call from Bolton at one point, was removed by a vote of just one-third of member nations at an unusual special session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), at which the United States cited alleged mismanagement in calling for his ouster.
The United Nations' highest administrative tribunal later condemned the action as an "unacceptable violation" of principles protecting international civil servants. The OPCW session's Swiss chairman now calls it an "unfortunate precedent" and Bustani a "man with merit."
"Many believed the U.S. delegation didn't want meddling from outside in the Iraq business," said the retired Swiss diplomat, Heinrich Reimann. "That could be the case."
Bolton's handling of the multilateral showdown takes on added significance now as he looks for U.S. Senate confirmation as early as this week as U.N. ambassador, a key role on the international stage, and as more details have emerged in Associated Press interviews about what happened in 2002.
A spokeswoman told AP Bolton, keeping a low profile during his confirmation process, would have no comment for this article.
Bolton has been criticized for supposed bullying of junior U.S. officials and for efforts to get them fired. Bustani, a senior official under the U.N. umbrella, says Bolton used a threatening tone with him and "tried to order me around."
The Iraq connection to the OPCW affair comes as fresh evidence surfaces that the Bush administration was intent from early on to pursue military and not diplomatic action against Saddam Hussein's regime.
An official British document, disclosed last month, said Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed in April 2002 to join in an eventual U.S. attack on Iraq. Two weeks later, Bustani was ousted, with British help.
In 1997, the Brazilian arms-control specialist became founding director-general of the OPCW, whose inspectors oversee destruction of U.S., Russian and other chemical weapons under a 168-nation treaty banning such arms. The agency, based in The Hague, Netherlands, also inspects chemical plants worldwide to ensure they're not put to military use.
In May 2000, one year ahead of time and with strong U.S. support, Bustani was unanimously re-elected OPCW chief for a 2001-2005 term. Colin Powell, the new secretary of state, praised his leadership qualities in a personal letter in 2001.
But Ralph Earle, a veteran U.S. arms negotiator, told AP that he and others in Bolton's arms-control bureau grew unhappy with what they considered Bustani's mismanagement. The agency chief also "had a big ego. He did things on his own," and wasn't responsive to U.S. and other countries' positions, said Earle, now retired.
Both Earle and career diplomat Avis Bohlen, who retired in June 2002 as a top Bolton deputy, said the idea to remove Bustani did not originate with the undersecretary. But Bolton "leaped on it enthusiastically," Bohlen recalled. "He was very much in charge of the whole campaign," she said, and Bustani's initiative on Iraq seemed the "coup de grace."
"It was that that made Bolton decide he had to go," Bohlen said.
After U.N. arms inspectors had withdrawn from Iraq in 1998 in a dispute with the Baghdad government, Bustani stepped up his initiative, seeking to bring Iraq — and other Arab states — into the chemical weapons treaty.
Bustani's inspectors would have found nothing, because Iraq's chemical weapons were destroyed in the early 1990s. That would have undercut the U.S. rationale for war because the Bush administration by early 2002 was claiming, without hard evidence, that Baghdad still had such an arms program.
In a March 2002 "white paper," Bolton's office said Bustani was seeking an "inappropriate role" in Iraq, and the matter should be left to the U.N. Security Council — where Washington has a veto.
Bolton said in a 2003 AP interview that Iraq was "completely irrelevant" to Bustani's responsibilities. Earle and Bohlen disagree. Enlisting new treaty members was part of the OPCW chief's job, they said, although they thought he should have consulted with Washington.
Former Bustani aide Bob Rigg, a New Zealander, sees a clear U.S. motivation: "Why did they not want OPCW involved in Iraq? They felt they couldn't rely on OPCW to come up with the findings the U.S. wanted."
Bustani and his aides believe friction with Washington over OPCW inspections of U.S. chemical-industry sites also contributed to the showdown, which went on for months.
In June 2001, Bolton "telephoned me to try to interfere, in a menacing tone, in decisions that are the exclusive responsibility of the director-general," Bustani wrote in 2002 in a Brazilian academic journal.
He elaborated in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde in mid-2002, saying Bolton "tried to order me around," and sought to have some U.S. inspection results overlooked and certain Americans hired to OPCW positions. The agency head said he refused.
Bustani, now in a sensitive position as Brazil's London ambassador, indicated to the AP through an intermediary that he would have no additional comment.
The United States went public with the campaign in March 2002, moving to terminate Bustani's tenure. On the eve of an OPCW Executive Council meeting to consider the U.S. no-confidence motion, Bolton met Bustani in The Hague to seek his resignation, U.S. and OPCW officials said.
When Bustani refused, "Bolton said something like, `Now we'll do it the other way,' and walked out," Rigg recounted.
In the Executive Council, the Americans failed to win majority support among the 41 nations. A month later, on April 21, at U.S. insistence, an unprecedented special session of the full treaty conference was called.
Addressing the delegates, Bustani said the conference must decide whether genuine multilateralism "will be replaced by unilateralism in a multilateral disguise."
Only 113 nations were represented, 15 without voting rights because their dues were far in arrears. The U.S. delegation had suggested it would withhold U.S. dues — 22 percent of the budget — if Bustani stayed in office, stirring fears of an OPCW collapse.
This time the Americans, with British help, got the required two-thirds vote of those present and voting. But that amounted to only 48 in favor of removing Bustani — and seven opposed and 43 abstaining — in an organization then with 145 member states.
Bustani appealed the decision to the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labor Organization in Geneva, a judicial body to which agencies in the U.N. family submit personnel cases. The OPCW, meanwhile, named a new director-general, Rogelio Pfirter of Argentina.
In a stern rebuke issued in July 2003, the three-member U.N. tribunal said the U.S. allegations were "extremely vague" and the dismissal "unlawful." It said international civil servants must not be made "vulnerable to pressures and to political change."
Noting that Bustani did not seek reinstatement, it awarded him unpaid salary and 50,000 euros, or $61,500, in damages. He said he would donate the damages to an OPCW technical aid fund for poorer countries.
Reimann, the former OPCW conference chairman, says he looks back with sadness at what was done.
"I think there's no doubt Bustani wanted to serve the organization, to get wider membership and all these things," the Swiss diplomat said. "He was fighting very bravely to make it work."
Right-Wing Congressman’s Shocking Embrace of Extremists
thinkprogress.org
Right-Wing Congressman’s Shocking Embrace of Extremists
Yasith Chhun counts among his friends Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA), and the warm feelings are mutual. According to yesterday’s L.A. Times, Rohrabacher says he’s “a supporter of Chhun and his allies.”
Just one problem: Yasith Chhun has “often boasted to newspapers and magazines about masterminding an attack on government buildings in Cambodia,” and has now been indicted by a U.S. grand jury for “attempting to kill the prime minister, attack government buildings and launch small-scale attacks on karaoke bars and fuel depots.” Chhun’s “allies” – a group called the Cambodian Freedom Fighters – are considered a terrorist organization by the State Department. Just last year, after the group made a failed coup attempt, Chhun plainly admitted to the New York Times that “he planned more violence. ‘We won’t stop. We’ll have more plans in the future. … Next time we will attack the whole country.’”
And, to be clear, Rohrbacher says he supports Chhun despite being “aware of the State Department’s concerns.”
Even more frightening, this apparently isn’t the first time Rohrbacher displayed a delusional willingness to place trust in avowed extremists. According to federal documents reviewed by the Orange County Weekly, Rohrabacher “lobbied shamelessly for the Taliban” throughout the 1990s, with a 1996 Washington newsletter pointing out his claims that the “Taliban could provide stability,” that its leaders were “not terrorists or revolutionaries,” and that it would develop a “disciplined, moral society” that did not harbor terrorists. Ignoring an explicit federal law banning unauthorized individual attempts to conduct American foreign policy, Rohrabacher in April of 2001 “opened negotiations with the Taliban at the Sheraton Hotel in Doha, Qatar,” meeting with Taliban Foreign Minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, an advisor to Mullah Omar.
As Kevin Drum points out, Rohrbacher’s philosophy appears to be, “As long as they target people I don’t like, terrorist groups are OK with me.”
Trial to Reveal Reach Of U.S. Surveillance
washingtonpost.com
Trial to Reveal Reach Of U.S. Surveillance
Wiretaps to Be Used Against 4 Terrorism Suspects
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
For a decade, FBI agents covertly monitored every telephone call and fax sent and received by Florida university professor Sami al-Arian as he communicated with alleged top leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group about its suicide bombings of Israelis, shaky finances and high-level turf struggles.
Starting tomorrow, many of those 20,000 hours of phone calls and hundreds of faxes will be revealed in a federal courtroom in Tampa, where al-Arian and three other alleged members of the terrorist group will be tried on charges of conspiracy to commit murder through suicide attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The trial, expected to last at least six months, will provide a rare view of what the government contends are the clandestine operations of a terrorist group. It is the first case in which vast amounts of communications monitored under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will make up the bulk of the evidence in a criminal prosecution of alleged terrorists -- demonstrating the enormous power the government now wields under that counterterrorism law.
The wiretaps, approved in 1993 through 2003 on as many as 10 phones by a secret FISA court, were originally intended for use only by FBI agents conducting open-ended "intelligence" probes, and not for use in criminal trials. But after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the enactment of the USA Patriot Act and a ruling by the supersecret FISA court of appeals allowed much greater use of intelligence material in investigations such as this one.
Many civil liberties experts express grave concern about U.S. officials' introduction into criminal court of years of wiretaps approved by FISA judges under a lower standard of proof than that demanded by criminal-court judges. But U.S. District Judge James Moody has rejected defense attorneys' arguments that the information should not be heard in court.
Using FISA wiretaps in court is "a serious problem" that puts defendants at a disadvantage, said David Cole, a Georgetown University expert on the law related to terrorism. "Unlike with criminal wiretaps, FISA doesn't give defendants any meaningful chance to challenge the validity of the tap."
U.S. officials say al-Arian and three associates who worked with him at a cluster of institutes affiliated with the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa were secretly top leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, sharing duties with other leaders in Syria.
Attorneys for al-Arian, a USF professor of computer engineering until he was fired in 2003, and the other defendants contend that their clients do not condone the terrorist group's violent tactics, and that U.S. prosecutors are criminalizing their opposition to Israeli policies. The U.S. government declared the Palestinian Islamic Jihad a terrorist organization in 1995, making any association with it illegal. Defense attorneys have said that any promotion of the organization by al-Arian and others before then was protected political speech.
"The government has a major leap trying to connect people talking on the phone in Tampa, and doing fundraising, with bombs exploding in Israel 6,600 miles away," said lawyer Stephen Bernstein, who represents defendant Sameeh Taha Hammoudeh, a former USF student. "The government is trying to say, 'If you have an interest in a subject, and if you talk about it with other people, then you must have been involved in it.' "
Moody has also ruled that he will limit defense attorneys' efforts to bring up during the trial the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in their bid to dramatize the Palestinians' plight and their right to resist what they see as Israeli oppression. The defense asserts that the U.S. government has embraced the Israeli government's intelligence findings on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and that the group represents no threat to the United States.
Lawyer Kevin Beck, who represents defendant Hatim Naji Fariz, manager of an Illinois-based Muslim charity, said there will be clashes in court over "the context and meaning of some conversations," including some in which he said officials unfairly assert the defendants spoke in code about the terrorist group. The prosecutors' case "is built on assumption built on assumption built on assumption, with some hearsay," he said.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, founded in Egypt in 1979 and largely funded by Iran, has devoted itself to two missions: the destruction of Israel and the creation of a Muslim Palestinian state. The group is bitterly opposed to peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians and has often stepped up attacks when talks show promise. It has also targeted sites symbolic of coexistence, such as a Haifa restaurant co-owned by Jews and Palestinians, where an operative of the terrorist group exploded a bomb that killed 21 people in 2003.
The al-Arian case has been the subject of intense controversy for a decade. It is a kind of proxy battle for the Middle East conflict, and it has stirred emotions as raw as those in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
In October 1995, after years directing a campaign of deadly attacks on Israelis, Fathi Shiqaqi, then the head of the terrorist group, was assassinated in Malta by the Israelis. His successor was Ramadan Shallah, a longtime top official of al-Arian's USF-affiliated think tank in Tampa. Al-Arian and others at the think tank, the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), said they had no idea Shallah had ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Weeks later, federal agents raided the homes and offices of al-Arian and his associates. Al-Arian denied any wrongdoing or any link to the terrorist organization, and for years academic-freedom activists supported his contention that he was being pilloried for being an anti-Israel Muslim activist.
Much of that controversy died when al-Arian and eight other people, including Shallah, were indicted in 2003. The indictment included lengthy quotes from FISA intercepts indicating that al-Arian had been in close contact for years with Shiqaqi, Shallah and other top group leaders about the group's most secret internal operations.
U.S. officials were allowed to use the FISA intercepts in the case because the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and a FISA appeals court decision in 2003 had torn down the long-unbreachable wall between FBI criminal investigators and intelligence personnel. The legal wall had previously prevented FBI intelligence agents from sharing any information about the FISA taps with agents pursuing criminal cases.
Conviction on the main charges -- including conspiracy to commit racketeering through the murder of Israelis, money laundering and other crimes -- could bring life sentences for al-Arian, Hammoudeh, Fariz and a fourth defendant, Chicago dry cleaner Ghassan Zayed Ballut.
All four also are accused of extortion as part of that conspiracy, on the theory that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad threatens Israelis with death if they do not leave Israel. Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, said he believes that is an unprecedented use of the extortion law, but he added that it appears to be legally sound.
McCarthy said the case most resembles a classic Mafia trial, in which prosecutors charge that simply by being in, say, the Gambino family, all the defendants conspired to commit the array of crimes that each committed individually. "You've got to convince the jury the entity is evil," he said.
Prosecutors said they intend to place on the witness stand dozens of Israeli survivors of Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacks. To illustrate the effects of an attack, officials may also play videotapes they made of a bus being blown up in Florida.
Five of the nine indicted defendants are overseas and not in custody and will not be tried. They are Shallah, who still runs the organization from Syria; Abd al Aziz Awda, its original spiritual leader; al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar; leading Muslim scholar Bashir Nafi; and Muhammed Tasir al-Khatib, the group's alleged treasurer.
In the early- to mid-1990s, al-Arian, Shallah, al-Najjar and Nafi were all at the WISE think tank in Florida, and U.S. officials said they were four of the 10 members of the terrorist group's worldwide Shura Council, or top leadership body.
Last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter E. Furr III said in court that the Tampa group was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad "cell" that acted as "the communications center" for the Syria-based group by, among other things, disseminating announcements of its suicide attacks.
Al-Arian's alleged role as a conduit of information among group leaders is outlined in the intercepted conversations and faxes. The intercepts also detail the alleged roles of al-Arian and the other WISE defendants in straightening out the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's financial problems, as well as the arguments with various group leaders about how much to tell their Iranian financial patrons about the embezzlement allegedly committed by the group's treasurer.
Al-Arian's attorneys note that he was well known for advocating that Muslims participate in U.S. politics. Al-Arian worked hard to get himself invited to gatherings of powerful officials, meeting with President Bill Clinton and with then-presidential candidate George W. Bush in 2000. Those meetings "seem to belie the notion that Dr. al-Arian was in any way considered by anyone in the intelligence or law enforcement communities to be any kind of threat," his attorney, William Moffitt, said in a court document.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
FBI hurt terror probe
nydailynews.com
FBI hurt terror probe:
customs chief
BY ADAM NICHOLS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
A probe into suspected Al Qaeda fund-raising was blocked by the FBI in a petty turf war, a customs chief said last night.
Joe Webber, a Sept. 11 survivor and now chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Houston, said FBI chiefs stood in the way of his probe. And he alleged they barred it because the information came from outside the bureau - despite President Bush's directive that law enforcement agencies must work together to beat terrorism.
Webber told Dateline NBC, "My concern is that we have learned nothing from the events of Sept. 11."
Webber, who was based in the World Trade Center when he was chief of the New York office of U.S. Customs, was inside the building when it collapsed. He was rescued by two firefighters. He began his Houston investigation into the suspected terrorism fund-raising operation 2-1/2 years ago.
"There's clearly probable cause to believe that the target of the investigation was in communication with those involved in international terrorism, with those associated with Osama Bin Laden," he said.
He said a wiretap was needed to get more evidence, but that required approval from FBI headquarters in Washington.
His request sat on a desk for four months, he said, and eventually he asked for a direct meeting. "The answer was, 'We have too many people on vacation,'" he said. "I was shocked."
Eventually, friends in the FBI told him the delay was because the case was not generated by the FBI. "That's absolutely my impression," he said. "If one dollar found its way into the hands of a terrorist that impacted the life of a U.S. citizen or a soldier in Iraq...we lost."
An FBI statement said, "There is often healthy debate about the best approach, [but] it's never at the expense of public safety or national security."
W backs way off on Soc Sec plan
nydailynews.com
W backs way off on Soc Sec plan
WASHINGTON - President Bush has all but conceded his plan for private accounts for Social Security is dead, admitting privatization won't save the federal retirement system.
"You can solve the solvency issue without personal accounts," Bush said in an interview with the Radio-Television News Directors Association.
Private accounts have been the cornerstone of Bush's Social Security plan, and the White House insisted he's not abandoning them. He still plans to talk up privatization as an option for young Americans, but his primary focus now will be on keeping the program healthy.
"The personal accounts, optional personal accounts, would make Social Security a much better option or deal for young workers, because you'd get a better rate of return," Bush said.
Kenneth R. Bazinet
White House Downplays Missing-Arms Report
White House Downplays Missing-Arms Report
By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House on Friday played down a report in which U.N. weapons inspectors documented additional materials missing from weapons sites in Iraq.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Bush administration had taken steps to ensure sites were secured, and he suggested it was doubtful the looted material was being used to boost other countries' weapons programs.
In a report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said that satellite imagery experts had determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles had been removed from 109 sites, up from 90 reported in March.
The sites have been emptied of equipment to varying degrees, with the largest percentage of missing items at 58 missile facilities.
For example, 289 of the 340 pieces of equipment to produce missiles - or about 85 percent, had been removed, the report said.
Biological sites were the least damaged, according to the analysts at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
Perricos said he's reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased.
He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. "However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair."
McClellan said that the United States has helped to remove low enriched uranium and radioactive sources, offered jobs to weapons experts from Saddam Hussein's programs to keep them from taking their expertise elsewhere, and helped Iraq establish an independent radioactive source regulatory authority.
"We have been working closely with the government in Iraq to ensure that Iraq's former weapons of mass destruction personnel and proliferation materials do not contribute to proliferation programs in other countries," McClellan said.
U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003. They have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.
Since the war, U.S. teams took over the weapons search. Former chief arms hunter Charles Duelfer and his Iraq Survey Group found no weapons of mass destruction in the country, discrediting President Bush's stated rationale for invading Iraq.
McClellan referred to findings by Duelfer, saying that "any looting was the work of uncoordinated elements rather than directed at an effort to try to export equipment to a country that might obtain or have a weapons of mass destruction program."
He also noted that Duelfer had concluded that, since the looted materials are easily obtained elsewhere, "other governments are not likely to look to Iraq to buy used versions of it."
Bush Returning Funds From Coin Dealer
enctoday.com
Bush Returning Funds From Coin Dealer
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush is returning $4,000 in campaign contributions from an Ohio coin dealer who is the subject of state and federal investigations, the White House said Friday.
Tom Noe, who is from suburban Toledo, is under investigation for his handling of $55 million the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation gave to him to invest in rare coins. Noe's lawyer has reported that $10 million to $12 million is missing.
"I think that there are some serious allegations that have been raised against this individual," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in Texas while Bush spent time at his ranch.
"They have raised concerns with people in Ohio. They have raised concerns with the White House. And the president felt it was the right thing to return those contributions that came directly from him," McClellan said.
Aaron McLear, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said Thursday that the $2,000 donated by Noe to the RNC will be given to charity. McLear added that Bush has no immediate plans to return more than $100,000 Noe raised for the Bush-Cheney campaign last year.
"Those are from other individuals," McClellan said. "In the past, I think, the campaign - if you'll go back and look - has returned contributions from individuals that maybe have been convicted of crimes, and so forth."
Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, three other statewide officeholders, several House lawmakers and Sen. Mike DeWine also said they were giving up campaign contributions from Noe totaling nearly $60,000. Many of the officials designated charities or a workers' compensation fund to receive the money.
Meanwhile, a former governor's aide has told federal authorities that he gave $2,000 to Bush's re-election campaign at the urging of Noe and was later reimbursed by the coin dealer, a newspaper reported Friday.
H. Douglas Talbott appeared this week before a federal grand jury in Toledo that is looking into whether Noe, who headed the Bush-Cheney campaign in northwest Ohio, skirted campaign finance laws by giving others money to donate, according to a report published in The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.
Noe also contributed $10,000 to a fund supporting California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's legislative priorities. "Allegations about Mr. Noe became public a year after we accepted his contribution," Marty Wilson, executive director of the fund, said Friday, and Schwarzenegger has no plans to return the donation.
Bush Neglects Counterror Agency
huffingtonpost.com
Bush Neglects Counterror Agency
The nation's primary agency for analyzing terrorist threats and planning counterterrorism operations at home and abroad is waiting for President Bush to name its director and settle whether that person will report directly to the president or go through Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.
The legislation that established the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) requires the organization to begin operations by June 17. The center was established last fall under a presidential executive order.
The Russert Watch: What Important Questions Won’t He Ask This Week?
huffingtonpost.com
Arianna Huffington: The Russert Watch: What Important Questions Won’t He Ask This Week?
Okay, it’s Friday, time to gear up for another round of missed opportunities and vital questions that won’t be asked on this week’s edition of Meet the Press.
Welcome to Week Three of The Russert Watch. For those of you who missed our previous installments (and we know who you are), this is the plan: every Friday we’ll give you a sneak peak at the guest list for the upcoming MTP (gathered from our moles on the show... okay, we’ll actually just look at the MTP website) and offer up a few of the hard-hitting questions we’re sure that our man Tim won’t be asking. We’ll also ask for your suggestions for questions Russert should be asking his guests, and we’ll post the best of them. And if Russert doesn’t take them, they will stand in virtual reality as a reprimand, conspicuous by their absence. Then, on Sunday, after the show, we will count the bodies.
This week, according to the MTP website, Russert will have an "Exclusive!" (love the exclamation point!!!) tete a tete with "Ken Mehlman in his first Sunday show interview as Chairman of the Republican National Committee." They also helpfully note: "This Sunday, June 5th, due to NBC coverage of the French Open, Meet the Press will air at a special early time." (At least we know NBC has its priorities straight.)
Hmm... A full hour with the Chair of the RNC (and the campaign manager for Bush/Cheney 2004) should leave Russert plenty of time to really dig in... and, since Mehlman is basically a mouthpiece for Bush and Rove, ask all the hard hitting questions one might want to ask of the White House. But knowing Russert and his love of inside the Beltway arcania, will he instead "grill" Mehlman about his success raising money for the party (having helped raise over $32 million in the first quarter of 2005)? That’ll really make Ken sweat.
So here are my top four questions I’d love to hear Russert ask Mehlman (but am sure he won’t):
"Ken, following on the heels of one of the bloodiest months of the Iraq war, can you seriously tell us that the White House believes that the insurgency is in its 'last throes'? And if so, what are they smoking over there?"
"Ken, 31 days ago Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and 88 other members of Congress sent a letter to President Bush asking him to respond to the many questions raised by the Downing Street Memo. Why won’t the White House respond to this exercise of Congressional oversight?"
"Ken, at different times this week, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary Rumsfeld all dismissed the new Amnesty International report criticizing the U.S. for human rights abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay -- without ever denying the facts in the report. When is this administration finally going to come clean about -- and accept responsibility for -- the horrors that have been perpetrated in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib?"
"Ken, you won the election by scaring the American people into believing that your guy was better equipped to keep this country safe. Given the sorry state of port security -- and the potentially even more deadly lack of security around our nation's chemical plants -- why isn’t the president willing to spend more money securing the homeland? Is it because we’re spending too much money on Iraq?"
And here’s a bonus, uh, query: "Ken, as a man who has famously refused to comment on rumors concerning your personal life... do you believe that matters such as a person’s sexual orientation have no place in the public arena? And, if so, how do you feel about the unseemly way your party -- and specifically the campaign you managed -- used wedge issues such as gay marriage to win re-election?"
Now it's your turn, HuffPost readers. Go to the comments section (of huffingtonpost.com) and send us your "Questions Russert Should Ask But Almost Certainly Won’t".
US Guantanamo guard kicked Koran
BBC NEWS
US Guantanamo guard kicked Koran
US guards at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre kicked, threw water and splashed urine on copies of Koran.
The Pentagon has released details of five incidents in which the Koran was mishandled by US personnel at the camp, some intentional and others accidental.
In another incident a two-word English obscenity was found written in a Koran.
The Pentagon carried out the investigation after Newsweek published, then retracted, a report that the Koran has been flushed down a toilet.
Water balloons
According to a newly-completed military inquiry into the alleged mishandling of Korans at the high-security detention centre in Cuba, some of the incidents were unintentional.
In one instance, a guard urinated near an air vent.
The wind allegedly blew his urine through the vent, soiling one detainee and his Koran.
According to the report, the guard was reprimanded and sanctioned, and the inmate was given a new uniform and Koran.
Other Korans became wet after night-shift guards had thrown balloons filled with water into a cell block, the report found.
In a third case, an interrogator reportedly apologised to a detainee after stepping on his Koran.
In a fourth incident, a soldier deliberately kicked Islam's holy book.
Finally, a prisoner found a "two-word obscenity" in English written in his copy of the Koran.
Brigadier General Jay Hood, commander at Guantanamo, concluded in his report that the words might have been written by a guard or by the detainee himself.
'Lasting damage'
The Newsweek report sparked protests across the Muslim world. In Afghanistan riots resulted in the deaths of at least 15 people.
Thousands rallied in Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon and Malaysia, demanding apologies from the US and punishment for those involved.
The magazine withdrew its story after saying it could no longer corroborate the report.
The inmate who made the original allegation about the Koran being flushed down the toilet had retracted it, said Brig Gen Hood.
The White House rounded on the magazine, saying its report had done "lasting damage" to the US image in the Muslim world.
Friday, June 03, 2005
The Other Bomb Drops
thenation.com
The Other Bomb Drops
by JEREMY SCAHILL
It was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war.
But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially. This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq, two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began.
At the time, the Bush Administration publicly played down the extent of the air strikes, claiming the United States was just defending the so-called no-fly zones. But new information that has come out in response to the Downing Street memo reveals that, by this time, the war was already a foregone conclusion and attacks were no less than the undeclared beginning of the invasion of Iraq.
The Sunday Times of London recently reported on new evidence showing that "The RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war." The paper cites newly released statistics from the British Defense Ministry showing that "the Allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001" and that "a full air offensive" was under way months before the invasion had officially begun.
The implications of this information for US lawmakers are profound. It was already well known in Washington and international diplomatic circles that the real aim of the US attacks in the no-fly zones was not to protect Shiites and Kurds. But the new disclosures prove that while Congress debated whether to grant Bush the authority to go to war, while Hans Blix had his UN weapons-inspection teams scrutinizing Iraq and while international diplomats scurried to broker an eleventh-hour peace deal, the Bush Administration was already in full combat mode--not just building the dossier of manipulated intelligence, as the Downing Street memo demonstrated, but acting on it by beginning the war itself. And according to the Sunday Times article, the Administration even hoped the attacks would push Saddam into a response that could be used to justify a war the Administration was struggling to sell.
On the eve of the official invasion, on March 8, 2003, Bush said in his national radio address: "We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force." Bush said this after nearly a year of systematic, aggressive bombings of Iraq, during which Iraq was already being disarmed by force, in preparation for the invasion to come. By the Pentagon's own admission, it carried out seventy-eight individual, offensive airstrikes against Iraq in 2002 alone.
"It reminded me of a boxing match in which one of the boxers is told not to move while the other is allowed to punch and only stop when he is convinced that he has weakened his opponent to the point where he is defeated before the fight begins," says former UN Assistant Secretary General Hans Von Sponeck, a thirty-year career diplomat who was the top UN official in Iraq from 1998 to 2000. During both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Washington has consistently and falsely claimed these attacks were mandated by UN Resolution 688, passed after the Gulf War, which called for an end to the Iraqi government's repression in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south. Von Sponeck dismissed this justification as a "total misnomer." In an interview with The Nation, Von Sponeck said that the new information "belatedly confirms" what he has long argued: "The no-fly zones had little to do with protecting ethnic and religious groups from Saddam Hussein's brutality" but were in fact an "illegal establishment...for bilateral interests of the US and the UK."
These attacks were barely covered in the press and Von Sponeck says that as far back as 1999, the United States and Britain pressured the UN not to call attention to them. During his time in Iraq, Von Sponeck began documenting each of the airstrikes, showing "regular attacks on civilian installations including food warehouses, residences, mosques, roads and people." These reports, he said, were "welcomed" by Secretary General Kofi Annan, but "the US and UK governments strongly objected to this reporting." Von Sponeck says that he was pressured to end the practice, with a senior British diplomat telling him, "All you are doing is putting a UN stamp of approval on Iraqi propaganda." But Von Sponeck continued documenting the damage and visited many attack sites. In 1999 alone, he confirmed the death of 144 civilians and more than 400 wounded by the US/UK bombings.
After September 11, there was a major change in attitude within the Bush Administration toward the attacks. Gone was any pretext that they were about protecting Shiites and Kurds--this was a plan to systematically degrade Iraq's ability to defend itself from a foreign attack: bombing Iraq's air defenses, striking command facilities, destroying communication and radar infrastructure. As an Associated Press report noted in November 2002, "Those costly, hard-to-repair facilities are essential to Iraq's air defense."
Rear Admiral David Gove, former deputy director of global operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on November 20, 2002, that US and British pilots were "essentially flying combat missions." On October 3, 2002, the New York Times reported that US pilots were using southern Iraq for "practice runs, mock strikes and real attacks" against a variety of targets. But the full significance of this dramatic change in policy toward Iraq only became clear last month, with the release of the Downing Street memo. In it, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon is reported to have said in 2002, after meeting with US officials, that "the US had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime," a reference to the stepped-up airstrikes. Now the Sunday Times of London has revealed that these spikes "had become a full air offensive"--in other words, a war.
Michigan Democratic Representative John Conyers has called the latest revelations about these attacks "the smoking bullet in the smoking gun," irrefutable proof that President Bush misled Congress before the vote on Iraq. When Bush asked Congress to authorize the use of force in Iraq, he also said he would use it only as a last resort, after all other avenues had been exhausted. But the Downing Street memo reveals that the Administration had already decided to topple Saddam by force and was manipulating intelligence to justify the decision. That information puts the increase in unprovoked air attacks in the year prior to the war in an entirely new light: The Bush Administration was not only determined to wage war on Iraq, regardless of the evidence; it had already started that war months before it was put to a vote in Congress.
It only takes one member of Congress to begin an impeachment process, and Conyers is said to be considering the option. The process would certainly be revealing. Congress could subpoena Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Gen. Richard Myers, Gen.Tommy Franks and all of the military commanders and pilots involved with the no-fly zone bombings going back into the late 1990s. What were their orders, both given and received? In those answers might lie a case for impeachment.
But another question looms, particularly for Democrats who voted for the war and now say they were misled: Why weren't these unprovoked and unauthorized attacks investigated when they were happening, when it might have had a real impact on the Administration's drive to war? Perhaps that's why the growing grassroots campaign to use the Downing Street memo to impeach Bush can't get a hearing on Capitol Hill. A real probing of this "smoking gun" would not be uncomfortable only for Republicans. The truth is that Bush, like President Bill Clinton before him, oversaw the longest sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam against a sovereign country with no international or US mandate. That gun is probably too hot for either party to touch.
Waiting for a scandal
Waiting for a scandal
Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange.com
06.02.05 - I have a three-word response to the media frenzy that followed Tuesday's revelation of the long-secret identity of Deep Throat.
Downing Street Memo.
Here's what John Dean, key Watergate figure, wrote about Dubya's case for the Iraq war in a June 2003 column for findlaw.com: "To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked... Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be a 'high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause."
That's exactly what the Downing Street Memo, first reported a month ago by the Times of London, proves. The memo is an account of the report given to British leadership by Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's MI-6 (the equivalent of the CIA), after a meeting with top White House officials. Dearlove described, fully eight months before Dubya went to war, an American determination to go to war and to manipulate public and Congressional opinion with what Dearlove characterized as a "thin" case for WMD and links to Al-Qaeda.
It's hard not to contrast the frenzy that greeted the revelation of a 30-year-old secret with the thudding indifference U.S. media has given the Downing Street Memo. The memo has scarcely been mentioned in the country's leading newspapers, and has been completely ignored by evening network news.
The reasons are numerous, but it adds up to a depressing reminder that Watergate, as reported in 1974, would never be reported today. The same secrecy, paranoia, and demands for absolute loyalty that were the undoing of the Nixon Administration have been used, in our modern media climate, to resoundingly successful effect by the Bush Administration. Media outlets today are far less willing to invest the time and money into investigative journalism, far less willing to rock the boat or risk being tagged with the dread "liberal media" tag. The right-wing firestorm that followed the miscues of Dan Rather and Newsweek has further cowed big media outlets from taking risks, but the barriers were already there; as Gary Webb could testify, the career costs are enormous for enterprising journalists who want to take on power, and the chances that your publisher will back you up these days, as Woodward and Bernstein were once backed up by the Post, are nearly nil.
The result is that the information needed to impeach George Bush for lying to Congress, the U.N., and the American public about the most serious imaginable matter -- the use of military force -- is all out there. It's been reported, in foreign media, in alternative press, in the margins. But it has not been championed by major media, and it has subsequently not been taken to heart by either the American public or by Congress. George Bush and his aides intentionally lied about the case for mounting an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country. The outcome has been a conflict that has left over 1,400 American soldiers dead, many thousands more maimed, and an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead. If there were ever any doubt about the intentional nature of the disinformation campaign waged upon us to justify this war, the Downing Street Memo erases those doubts.
Obviously, a Republican-controlled Congress is not about to impeach its own president. Enormous public pressure would have to be brought to bear first. But that public pressure has also been missing, starting with the media coverage. It's difficult to imagine, at this point, any sort of "smoking gun" sufficient to generate that sort of momentum against the Bush Administration. Vietnam era dissident Daniel Ellsberg has been touring the country for the past year, urging federal officials within earshot to do as he did with the Pentagon Papers, to do as Deep Throat did with the Watergate cover-up, and to leak to the press what they know of the Bush Administration's misdeeds. But that may not be enough -- because there is no guarantee that the press would even carry, let alone highlight in their proper context, such allegations.
We now know the identity of Deep Throat. Fine. But take a moment to mourn the fact that the courage and integrity displayed by Deep Throat would not be possible today, because there is nobody, in our country's major media, willing to hear such secrets. Without that, we've lost an essential tool for accountability of our country's highest powers. They still lie and cheat -- only, today, we no longer seem to care.
"'Papers, please': I smell the long-forgotten rot of fascism"
smirkingchimp.com
"'Papers, please': I smell the long-forgotten rot of fascism"
-Doris Colmes
Those were the magic words of the time: "Papiere, Bitte."
(Translation: "Papers, Please.") Hearing those words, even now, causes
dull echoes of sounds akin to bodies hitting dirt, or bullets
penetrating flesh to thud into my mind. Because, if those papers
weren't correctly in order, or, if you were a Jew sneakily present in
any place (including the grocery store) which displayed the usual "NO
JEWS OR DOGS ALLOWED" sign, you were dead meat--literally. And, yes,
of course I'm talking about my childhood as a little Jewish kid in
Nazi Germany.
No one ever forgets stench. Whether it is a long-forgotten encounter
with a ripe skunk, or a ripe egg, or a ripe decomposing body, once one
of those odors has been brain-documented, then even the slightest
tinge of such an aroma pops back up immediately, along with the
circumstances under which it first offended the nostrils.
And, that's what's happening now. I smell the long-forgotten skunk,
the long-forgotten rot of fascism. What is happening all around can no
longer be denied. What I ran away from so desperately in 1938 is
coming back full circle. Only the jack-boots have not yet arrived.
America quite literally saved my life. The love and gratitude deep in
my heart for this country will never go away. But I'm scared now.
Haunted by deep fear for the generations to come, who may wind up as I
did -- looking over their shoulders, scurrying for cover, mute with
terror. And it hurts.
Think I'm some kinda elderly nut-job neurotically manufacturing
dictatorship? Well, let's look at the 82 billion dollar defense bill
passed just a few weeks ago, which (with a vote tally of 100 to 0) had
the Real ID Act hidden inside it. This law allows a national
identification process in which each and every person in the U.S.A.
will be on computer.
This ID will be based on driver's license applications, although it
isn't just for driving. Just like the infamous "Internal Passport" of
Nazi Germany, no one will need it unless needing to fly, cash checks,
apply for jobs, walk the streets, enter federal buildings -- or drive.
As stated in TIME magazine on May 15, 2005, "If you are a wealthy
recluse with liquid assets, it doesn't concern you." Everyone else
better watch out! Well, maybe that wealthy recluse had better watch
out also. After all, he/she might be of a forbidden religion, or of
suspicious racial origin.
Legal "ID Theft" and legal "illegal surveillance?" [1] The Real ID Act
links driver's licenses of all states, creating a data base including
the private details of every single U.S. citizen. It mandates that
your driver's license share a common machine-readable digital photo of
you, all the better to track your every movement. It hands the federal
government unfunded mandate power to dictate what data all states must
collect for license holders, including everything from fingerprints to
retinal scans". And, if you don't drive, you'll still need to submit
to the national ID card. How else, after all, will the cop who doesn't
like the shape of your face, or the fact that you are (God Forbid)
wearing a turban get to arrest you? Yes, "Papiere Bitte" has come home
to roost.
And, folks, that's only the beginning. More technically sophisticated
techniques will be implemented as they occur. If the Nazis had had
electronic surveillance, phone bugging and all else that the Patriot
Act not only condones but advises, there would have been an even
tighter grip on the populace.
After all, the Patriot Act is modeled directly after Gestapo methods:
Those 3:00 AM home intrusions -- without warrant or reason for arrest
-- will get our undesirable "domestic terrorists" straight to the
nearest version of Guantanamo with no need for trial. The USA is
currently building thirty seven "detention centers" nationwide, and
they'll soon be filled with persons who protest too much, or are
simply of the wrong nationality. After all, it worked very well in
Germany, successfully eliminating Jews, Gypsies, and anyone willing to
stand up, and refuse to "Hail Hitler."
What's next? Well, it's already happening: The Geneva Conventions were
initiated after WW II to prevent the insane war crimes and crimes
against humanity perpetrated by Nazi Germany from ever happening
again. Now, with blithe disregard of all of the above, the U.S.A. not
only institutes torture (not just physical, but deliberately mental
and emotional) on its prisoners, but actually exports these folks to
countries in which such torture is governmentally approved. What the
U.S. domestic prison system has kept hidden for years, is now right
out there for everyone to applaud. How long it will take before the
prison guards tie together the legs of a woman in labor and then make
bets on how long it will take her to die? After all, that's what
guards did for fun in Nazi Germany. Abu Ghraib, anyone?
So, you ask, "If that's all true, why doesn't the media expose it
all?" Now, that's such a classic example of Nazi strategy, it's almost
funny. The Nazis took over the media, folks. No newspaper published a
single sentence without governmental approval, and propaganda was fed
to the populace instead of news. Sound familiar? A TIME magazine
article, (April, 2005), gave illustrated examples of how the current
administration administers this process.
And, last but certainly not least, the Nazis took over the German
government in its entirety with one simple maneuver: They simply took
over the courts. You know, like it's happening right now, today, even
as we speak: Our filibuster was busted, and those neo-con activist
judges are a-sittin' on the bench, ready to take over the Supreme
Court. Because, once that Supreme Court is co-opted, hey, driver's
license ID cards are gonna be the least of our worries. Ask me. I
know!
[1] Jim Babka, Canyon Lake Week, Canyon Lake, TX 5-11-2005
Doris is an independent writer and may be contacted at:
dhcolmes@msn.com
Payrolls Grow by Just 78,000 in May
Yahoo! News
Payrolls Grow by Just 78,000 in May
By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer
Employers throttled back hiring in May, boosting jobs by just 78,000, the government reported Friday. The most sluggish pace of payroll expansion in nearly two years dramatized the erratic behavior of the nation's job market.
Despite the slow growth in payrolls, the Labor Department's latest snapshot of the jobs picture in the United States showed that the civilian unemployment rate actually dipped fractionally last month — to 5.1 percent. That was down a notch from April's 5.2 percent jobless rate and was the lowest overall since September 2001.
The payroll gain of 78,000 followed a hiring spurt of 274,000 in April. Job cuts last month were reported in the categories of manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, and professional and business. Those losses tempered gains elsewhere.
The generally lackluster performance surprised economists. Before the report was released, they were predicting jobs to grow by around 175,000 and the jobless rate to hold steady at 5.2 percent.
"Clearly there's some disappointment here," said Anthony Chan, senior economist at JP Morgan Asset Management. "But this may be a gift to financial markets and Main Street because the Federal Reserve might not have to be so aggressive in raising rates. In that regard, it is almost a good report."
But on Wall Street, the report disheartened investors. The Dow Jones industrials were off 26 points and the Nasdaq was down 7 points in morning trading
The employment report often can offer seemingly conflicting pictures of what is happening in the labor market because figures are based on two separate statistical surveys. And there clearly was a mismatch between the two surveys in the report released Friday.
The unemployment rate is calculated on the basis of a survey of 60,000 households, sort of a poll of the jobs market. That survey showed that 376,000 people said they found employment last month, outpacing the number of people who couldn't find work.
But economists tend to give more credence to a much broader survey of business payrolls, one which examines 400,000 work sites. And that's the one that showed only 78,000 jobs added to payrolls.
President Bush wants to see the economy and the job market in good shape, especially as he tries to sell the public and Congress on his vision for revamping Social Security, which includes letting workers set up individual investment accounts.
Earlier this week, the president declared that the economy was strong, with more than 3.5 million new jobs added in two years. "Obviously, these are hopeful signs," he told a news conference Tuesday. "But Congress can make sure that the signs remain hopeful."
The 78,000 gain new jobs registered in May was the smallest since August 2003, when payrolls grew by a tiny 2,000.
Some analysts believe the high energy prices, rising costs for health care and certain raw materials could be making some employers cautious.
Oil prices surged to a new all-time closing high of $57.27 a barrel at the beginning of April and are now hovering above $54 a barrel.
To thwart an inflation flare-up, the Federal Reserve has boosted short-term interest rates eight times — each in modest, quarter-point moves — since last June. Economists still expect another increase when the Fed meets next at the end of this month. But Chan and other economists believed the report raised the odds that the Fed might take a pause or order fewer rate increases in the future.
Workers' average hourly earnings rose to $16.03 in May, up from $16 in April.
The average time that the unemployed spent in their search for work in May was 18.8 weeks, an improvement from the average of 19.6 weeks registered the month before.
On the payroll front, the report showed that manufacturers cut 7,000 jobs in May, following a loss of 9,000 in April. Leisure and hospitality companies shed 6,000 jobs last month, compared with a gain of 63,000 in April. Professional and business services trimmed payrolls by 1,000 in May, a deterioration compared to an increase of 33,000 reported in April.
Retailers added more than 10,000 jobs in May, a deceleration from the nearly 27,000 added in April. Construction companies boosted payrolls by 20,000 last month, compared with 48,000 in April.
Whistleblower of the year
townhall.com
Whistleblower of the year
Michelle Malkin
originally published December 27, 2002
(but relevant to the current state of affairs!!)
A young, tenacious journalist did our country a great service this year by refusing to accept conventional wisdom and the status quo. He blew the whistle on powerful figures of authority, exposed deceit and forced change. But you won't see him celebrated on the cover of Time magazine.
That's because Joel Mowbray, a Townhall.com columnist and reporter for National Review magazine and its online counterpart, is too politically incorrect and fearlessly skeptical of official lies to be embraced by the media elite.
Mowbray, 26, hammered the State Department and scooped the jaded Beltway press corps with story after story exposing the bureaucratic foul-ups and diplomatic sellouts that led to national security nightmares.
Mowbray first targeted Visa Express, a corner-cutting gift program created by the State Department that allowed wealthy Saudi Arabian tourists to obtain visas through travel agencies. Among the recipients: three of the September 11 terrorists.
It took relentless questioning from Mowbray before the Bush administration killed the craven program -- ten months after the terrorist attacks.
State tried to punish the messenger. In mid-July, Mowbray was physically detained. Not in Beijing or Baghdad, mind you, but in our own nation's capital. Government security guards prevented him from leaving the State Department building after a daily press briefing. Officials leaned on Mowbray to produce a classified memo he had obtained. He refused.
Here was a clear act of government intimidation of the press. Shamefully, not a single reporter in the State Department media herd criticized these bullying tactics against a fellow journalist. But Mowbray remained undaunted.
He investigated State's Consular Affairs chief Mary Ryan, a Clinton holdover, who "wanted to eliminate the interview requirement for vis a applicants wherever possible." Ryan was forced to resign as a result of Mowbray's whistleblowing. (Mowbray later reported that Ryan received a $5,000 cash bonus, perhaps to soothe the veteran bureaucrat's bruised ego.)
Mowbray charged that Ryan "knowingly deceived Congress" by telling lawmakers "that there was nothing State could have done to prevent the terrorists from obtaining visas." He debunked Ryan's bald lie in an exhaustive Oct. 28 cover story for National Review. One of the most underappreciated pieces of journalism of the year, Mowbray's "Visas for Terrorists" article laid out how the State Department violated its own laws repeatedly in allowing at least 15 of the 19 September 11 terrorists to obtain visas.
Their applications forms, obtained exclusively by Mowbray, were a deadly mess.
Only one of the 15 provided an actual address as required by law -- and that was only because his first application was refused. "The rest listed only general locations -- including 'California,' 'New York,' 'Hotel D.C.,' and 'Hotel.' One terrorist amazingly listed his U.S. destination as simply 'No.' Even more amazingly, he got a visa," Mowbray reported. Another terrorist listed his occupation as "teater" and his travel destination as "Wasantwn."
Consular officials ignored a basic provision of immigration law known as 214(b), which holds that almost all non-immigrant visa applicants are presumed to be would-be immigrants and must prove to interviewers that they won't break the terms of their visas.
Mowbray concluded: "(I)f the law had been enforced, most of the 9/11 terrorists never would have entered the United States. Most of them were young, single men with no demonstrated means of support, and with few or no ties to their home country -- meaning that they were classic 'overstay' candidates. Given that visa applicants have the burden of proving their eligibility, this raises the question: How did they clear the hurdles the law is intended to put in their path when they were already saddled with forms that could generously be described as sloppy?"
Countless red flags in the visa application process were negligently overlooked -- at the expense of 3,000 innocent people. Both the General Accounting Office and the State Department's Inspector General have come to similar conclusions in lengthy reports. State's "existing policies," the Inspector General noted just last week, "remain inadequate."
Gutsy and tireless, Mowbray has only just begun. His unyielding pursuit of the truth in the interest of national security may be bad news for the State Department. But it's welcome news for all Americans who prefer pit-bull journalism to the passive puppy act so common in the media today.
What Should We Really Be Afraid Of?
oldamericancentury.org
Forget 9/11 — Just For a Minute
What Should We Really Be Afraid Of?
By W. David Jenkins III
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be
maintained by violence. ~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Although tyranny...may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can
stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national
institutions of its own people. ~Hannah Areddt
That's right, I said it. Forget about 9/11. Just put all
those horrible images away. I mean no disrespect but I think it's time
to put things in perspective.
9/11 has become an excuse for those who would exploit it and the world
is a sadder and more dangerous place because of those who have used
the tragedy for their own gains. This isn't exactly a news flash but
it is reality. An unfortunate reality that you and I had no part in
making. That responsibility lays with the people who are still scared
and those who would continue to exploit their fear. And that fear is
the very foundation, the very source of strength of the present
administration. Fear is now the guiding principle of almost every
aspect of almost every person in America today. We have all become
afraid — just for different reasons.
Lately I've been doing a bit of research on fear and the
odds we all face when it comes to our eventual deaths. Let's face it;
we're all going to go sometime.
With acknowledgements to The National Safety Council (NSC), the FBI,
the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and some great work by writer,
John Schettler (Scare Tactics), I've come to the conclusion that many
Americans are afraid of the wrong things.
The Bush administration has been able to thrive by not
only perpetuating the fear that "the terrorists will strike again" but
also, they've managed to keep secret the reasons why the terrorists
were able to hit us in the first place. You can see the results of
their efforts from those who defend Bush by always going back to 9/11.
So what if we torture people? So what if we have fewer liberties? So
what if we cause "collateral damage" in other countries? So what if
the Qu'ran gets thrown into a toilet? So what if we're using all that
leftover duct tape to silence the media? Bush is bringing the war to
them so we don't have to fight them here or experience another 9/11.
You and I have heard all this alleged reasoning ad nauseum for years
now but this line of reasoning (or lack thereof) is the real problem —
not the solution.
There are people in this country who are still scared to death of
another attack (even though they insist Bush has made us safer) by
those dastardly terrorists but, guess what? These yahoos have a better
chance of dying by committing suicide than being attacked by
terrorists.
Really, I'm not kidding.
According to the CDC and NSC there's a better chance that any one of
us will die by our own hand rather than by a terrorist attack. And ya
know what else? You better be on the look-out for falling vending
machines more than that next-door neighbor about whom you've had
suspicions. That's because you have a one-in-six-million chance of
dying in a terrorist attack but you have a one-in-three-million chance
of dying from a Coke machine falling on top of you. Think about it;
you have more chance of kicking it putting a dollar in the slot for a
bag of Doritos than you do getting stuck in another 9/11. And don't
even get me started on the "eye" 4 in Orlando or I95 coming into
Boston . If you're from out of town and find yourself on either one of
those interstates then just build yourself a box, climb in and nail it
shut.
The Fear of Knowing the Truth
Look, not to make light of death or the tragedy which affected us all,
but we have far more important things to be afraid of than al Qaeda or
another 9/11. It's just that the Bushies and their media pals don't
want anybody to know that and — so far — they've been quite
successful. But as I've stated many times before; the fact that we
haven't been attacked again should raise more questions than it does.
But it would appear that even the 'independent" 9/11 Commission was
too afraid to raise those questions. Take, for example, former
Attorney General John Ashcroft's testimony before the commission last
year.
>From the hearing transcript:
MR. BEN-VENISTE - "Let me ask you, as my time is expiring, one
question which has been frequently put to members of this commission.
Probably all of us have heard this one way or another and the -- we
are mindful that part of the problem with the Warren Commission's work
on the Kennedy assassination was the failure to address certain
theories that were extant, and questions, and much of the work was
done behind closed doors. So I would like to provide you with the
opportunity to answer one question that has come up repeatedly.
At some point in the spring or summer of 2001, around the time of this
heightened threat alert, you apparently began to use a private
chartered jet plane, changing from your use of commercial aircraft on
grounds, our staff is informed, of an FBI threat assessment.
And indeed, as you told us, on September 11th itself you were on a
chartered jet at the time of the attack. Can you supply the detail,
sir, on -- regarding the threat which caused you to change from
commercial to private, leased jet?
You folks remember this little tidbit of information,
right? Many of us were convinced that this was just one of the events
that had come to light after the attacks which showed that the
administration knew a hell of a lot more than they were letting on
about what happened that day. Now here's what Ashcroft told the
commission:
ATTY. GEN. ASHCROFT: "Let me just indicate to you that I never ceased
to use commercial aircraft for my personal travel. My wife traveled to
Germany and back in August. My wife and I traveled to Washington ,
D.C. on the 3rd of September, before the 17th -- before the 11th
attack, on commercial aircraft. I have exclusively traveled on
commercial aircraft for my personal travel, continued through the year
2000, through the entirety of the threat period to the nation."
Oh really, Reverend? You continued to use commercial
aircraft for your "personal travel" right up until September 11? Shall
we go back to the news story that started all this? From the CBS story
dated July 26, 2001 :
Fishing rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend
trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet,
reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.
In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling
exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the
Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the
FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet
for the remainder of his term.
"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting
under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the
Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when
it was detected or who made it.
So there it is. Another source that contradicts Ashcroft's
testimony easily obtained on the Internet. But did the commission
pursue the line of questioning?
MR. BEN-VENISTE: "Well, I'm pleased to have been able to give you the
opportunity to clarify that issue for all who have written to this
commission and communicated in other ways about their questions about
that, sir."
Apparently not. But are enough people asking why? Was the
9/11 Commission so hell-bent on appearing non-partisan that they just
avoided the obvious contradictions in testimony by members of this
administration? Were they afraid to pursue this and other
contradictions?
Author David Ray Griffin has published two remarkable
books that point out what Americans really need to be concerned about,
even more than terrorism. And that is the unsettling fact that this
administration has gone out of its way to hide what happened that
grizzly day in September and the days that led up to it. And as
Griffin points out in New Pearl Harbor, one would have to believe in
an impossible set of coincidences and incompetence, which can only be
applied to that one day, in order to accept the official version of
the events of that day. In other words, one would have to be more of a
conspiracy theorist in order to believe the official version rather
than any alternative explanation. So basically, many Americans
continue to live in fear because they've been convinced to have faith
in an explanation that makes no sense and doesn't hold up to even
minimal scrutiny.
Ignorance of the Real Threat
This mindset of irrational fear based on a series of various illogical
excuses and denials has allowed those in positions of power to
implement policies and laws that otherwise would never have seen the
light of day, let alone be embraced by a quivering electorate. And
this choke-hold on the country is aided further by a fearful and
derelict media.
For instance, there is an ongoing story out there right
now that should demand the attention of anyone who truly cares about
this country and what is happening to it and that would be the
circumstances surrounding the Sibel Edmonds case. Unfortunately, far
too many people, even those who don't support the Bush administration,
aren't familiar with her story.
Edmonds is a former FBI translator who expressed concern
to the Department of Defense, the Attorney General and members of
Congress that intelligence data is being compromised by another FBI
translator who happened to be the wife of Air Force major, Douglas
Dickerson. She also stated that members of her family were threatened
with arrest due to her actions. She has also made other statements
regarding cover-ups in the FBI's translation department, complete with
documentation and corroborating witnesses. Edmonds was subsequently
fired from the FBI and courageously filed suit to get her story out.
In turn, she has been shut down repeatedly by the courts and gagged by
the Department of Justice. Why? What is the government afraid of?
Obviously, they're afraid of the truth coming out. The
Edmonds case shows that there is more of a threat to our national
security from within our own system than there is sitting behind a
fence down in Guantanamo Bay . However, as long as the media continue
to ignore this story and run out the clock, more people will continue
to live in fear – of the wrong things.
Only through the destruction of the rights we hold dear
(at least we used to) has this rogue administration been able to
survive without question as long as they have. But imagine if there
had been no 9/11 for them to exploit in order to destroy the fabric of
this country. Does anybody remember where Bush was pre-9/11?
Like Flies to……….
George W. Bush was in the process of becoming the original
first-term lame duck president in history. Half the country believed
(correctly) that he pulled a fast one in order to slither into the
White House in the first place. One of his first orders of business
was to eliminate repetitive motion injury claims for working
Americans. Vermont Senator, Jim Jeffords, defected to an independent
status in order to hand power to the Democrats in protest of the
bullying tactics displayed early on by the White House. Bush's tax-cut
package was already doing damage to the surplus. America was bumped
off the UN Human Rights panel while Bush was letting Russia know that
he was dumping the ABM Treaty. Cheney was holding fund raisers in the
Veep Mansion (shades of Clinton White House Teas!) while his and
Bush's pals at Enron were laughing about soaking somebody's grandma in
California for a "C note" every time she used her toaster.
There were also the twenty-four military personnel that
had been held hostage until Bush said he was really, really sorry for
them colliding into a Chinese aircraft which prompted his neo-con
buddies to weep and whine that Bush had been made to look "weak." Oh,
and let's not forget about "faith-based environmentalism" which
started getting airplay around the same time that Bush told everyone
to go pound salt when it came to the Kyoto Treaty. Then there was his
speech from Crawford, Texas, on that August night (after he saw the
"Bin Laden is gonna get you good" PDB) regarding his tortuous policy
on stem cell research where Bush shared the stage with a huge
Texas-sized fly for all of America to see. It just kept buzzing around
the set, occasionally causing the Boy King to divert his gaze while
many Americans realized the irony of the situation. After all, we do
know flies are attracted to…
And to make matters worse; the NORC recount results from
the sham election of 2000 were due out the second week of September.
One can almost imagine the bells clanging and whistles blowing in the
White House. Talk about your "Maydays."
That Blessed "Trifecta"
Does anybody really believe we would be stuck in the
quagmire that is Iraq if it weren't for the Bushies whoring of 9/11?
Could the Patriot Act have been passed, let alone expanded without
9/11? Could this administration have gotten away with gagging the
media, torture, arrests without charge or due process, or arresting
citizens for speaking up during one of those orchestrated, pathetic
Bush "town hall" meetings without 9/11? Could the administration have
gotten away with impeding the investigations into the very crime that
allowed them such lawless and arrogant behavior without 9/11? Do you
see how this goes around and around? As Griffin asks in his writings
of that day, when a crime is committed the first thing to ask is who
benefits?
Folks need to put 9/11 away for just a second and take a
real good hard look around at what's happening to their country. We're
on the brink of reinstating the Draft in order to facilitate not only
the continuing farce (illegal) in Iraq but also the designs these
ideological vermin have on Iran, Syria, North Korea and possibly
certain South American neighbors who might have a bit of that Texas
Tea.
See, most Americans don't even know what they should
actually be afraid of. Although the fear of what happened on 9/11 is
very real to many, those same people haven't a clue as to what
actually happened and, what's worse, they've stopped asking.
Although terrorists were less of a threat four years ago than they are
now (the Bushies have done a remarkable job inciting more and more
Arabs into becoming anti-American recruits), the odds are still in
your favor. For now, that looming vending machine poses a greater
threat to your life than a terrorist attack. But as long as Americans
are more concerned with the finals of American Idol rather than the
dangers that are being cooked up and covered up by the Bush
administration, then those odds are going to change.
When that happens, they'll really have something to be scared of.
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