THE SECOND AND third paragraphs of the WMD Commission's letter accompanying its 618-page report, delivered to George W. Bush today, could hardly be clearer:

We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure. Its principal causes were the Intelligence Community's inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence. On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude.

After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. What the intelligence professionals told you about Saddam Hussein's programs was what they believed. They were simply wrong.

Not as wrong as Bush's reaction during his press conference. The commission found that the warnings that Iraq had WMD were "simply wrong." In other words, the threat was overestimated.

But Bush's handlers spun him like a dreidel. Judas H. Maccabee! Bush mentioned the word "Iraq" one time. This was the heart of his reaction to the report:

Our collection and analysis of intelligence will never be perfect, but in an age where our margin for error is getting smaller, in an age in which we are at war, the consequences of underestimating a threat could be tens of thousands of innocent lives.

Grrrr! The threat was overestimated, you ninny. And it was your handlers who did it.

But Bush's use of the word "underestimating" was no gaffe, like his famous "misunderestimate" or his brain-dead, yet dead-on, analysis last August:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

No, his handlers knew very well what he was saying Thursday. And there's no reason to doubt that, once again, the nakedly lying Bush regime will somehow be portrayed in the press tomorrow morning as fully clothed.

We knew when Bush set up the commission in February 2004 that it was a sham. Read John Dean's sharp analysis from back then. Here's an excerpt:

Everyone understands that Bush has removed the issue from the 2004 campaign by not requiring his commission to report until March 31, 2005—long after the election. But in fact, he has done much more than this to assure that this commission causes him no political problems. One need only look at the President's statement announcing the commission to understand that Bush is not playing it straight.

For example, he succinctly stated the inquiry's purpose (when reading his prepared statement) as follows: "The commission I have appointed today will examine intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and related 21st century threats and issue specific recommendations to ensure our capabilities are strong. The commission will compare what the Iraq Survey Group learns with the information we had prior to our Operation Iraqi Freedom. It will review our intelligence on weapons programs in countries such as North Korea and Iran. It will examine our intelligence on the threats posed by Libya and Afghanistan before recent changes in those countries."

What does any of that have to do with whether or not the Bush administration misused, falsely reported, or concocted intelligence to take the nation to war? Nothing.

It'll take a different group of shamuses than this commission to unravel exactly how the Bush regime twisted the intelligence info about Iraq WMD that it received from the CIA. Chief makeup artist Larry Silberman and the rest of the WMD Commission weren't even instructed to answer that all-important question, as Dean and others noted.

And the report's focus is shrewdly placed on underlings. That undoubtedly will get good play tomorrow morning, and there will be cries for "reform." Once again, in a scene familiar to practically all Americans who toil in stultifying bureaucracies, workers have to pay for their bosses' mistakes.

"Reform" this.

Dana Priest of the Washington Post summed it up best in her online exchange earlier today with readers:

St. Marys, Georgia: Who, if anyone, is going to be held accountable for being "dead wrong?" It seems no one has been held accountable in the past few years ... but "dead wrong" is pretty strong language and I hope it is not ignored.

Dana Priest: Well, President Bush gave George Tenet the Medal of Freedom. And the voters gave President Bush another term. SecDef Rumsfeld is in perfect standing with the president. His deputy is moving on to head the World Bank. The head of the other large intel agency, the National Security Agency (does eavesdropping) is becoming Negroponte's deputy. That leaves only the worker bees.

Another reader asks another question that no doubt will be glossed over by most of the press. But not by Priest:

New York, N.Y.: How could the commission possibly find out whether the intel had been "politicized" if it never spoke to the politicians involved? This is insulting.

Dana Priest: This commission was very secretive about how it did its work. We really don't know for certain if they interviewed the president or vice president (I don't think they did). I do think they interviewed then NSC director Rice and her deputy.

Priest is too busy producing some of the best coverage of the Bush regime to give long answers, so check out her entire online exchange with readers. Here's one last one:

Houston, Texas: Does this report examine the role of the White House, particularly the VP and his staff in shaping the data on WMD?

Dana Priest: No.

In other words, Houston, we have a problem.

THE FIX IS in at the World Bank, and what a fix we're going to be in.

Looks as if Paul Wolfowitz, chief architect of our unwarranted invasion of Iraq, has schmoozed Europeans into toning down their hostility. At least that's what the New York Times says today, that the critics are realizing that resistance is futile, that the guy is actually going to become president of the World Bank.

George W. Bush's handlers seem to think they're a race of supermen. Yeah, on Bizarro World.

To refresh your memory, here's a definition of "Bizarro" from Mark McDermott's Dictionary of Popular Culture:

Original source: Among the many supporting characters of the Superman comic books was Bizarro, an "imperfect duplicate" of the Man of Steel, whose face resembled white faceted stone, and who spoke in tortured English constructions like "Me am going away now." Originally intended as a tragic figure, Bizarro eventually settled on his own planet, renaming it Htrae, and peopled it with thousands of imperfect duplicates of himself, Lois Lane, and the rest of the Superman family. In later encounters with Superman, and in a series of solo stories, the Bizarros demonstrated the great lengths they went to to live up to their Bizarro Code: "Us do the opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is a big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!"

Usage: A mid-80's Saturday Night Live (NBC, 1975- ) sketch by Michael O'Donoghue portrayed the working of an imagined Bizarro White House, occupied by a Bizarro President Reagan: "It am an international crisis! Quick, Bizarro President! Go to sleep!"

Most of the people on the planet are too poor, thirsty, and starving to laugh. (Keep reading this item so you can get the full flavor of some dismal stats about them that I've placed at the end.)

Unlike Bizarro Superman, Wolfowitz speaks correctly. Here's a sample, from the Times' Elaine Sciolino this morning:

Paul D. Wolfowitz came to Europe on Wednesday as a supplicant for its good will, shedding his image as a unilateralist hawk and entreating his hosts to approve him as the world's banker for the poor.

The five-hour visit to Brussels by Mr. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and President Bush's nominee to head the World Bank, was a response to a request by the European Union for a meeting.

It was intended to prove that the man who is viewed by many here as an unrelenting neoconservative and leading architect of the invasion of Iraq can shift course and run the global organization that lends money and sets economic policy for much of the developing world.

"I understand that I am, putting it mildly, a controversial figure," Mr. Wolfowitz told reporters. "But I hope as people get to know me better they will understand that I really do believe deeply in the mission of the bank."

Uh-huh. Under the surface of the likely Wolfowitz ascension, the prospects for relief from the World Bank that's not highly politicized and partisan are even worse. Here are some things to ponder as the Bush regime reaches out to grab control of the bank's billions of dollars and clout:

Wolfowitz's girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, is acting manager of external relations for the bank's Middle East/North Africa region. The official word is that there's no conflict of interest there. But that's bullshit. Riza's job is to be the flack for bank officials for projects in that region, which includes Iraq, which is the country we invaded at the behest of Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz.

And she's no minor functionary. When Yasser Arafat died, World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn's official statement—"deepest condolences" and all that—was issued under her name. She was the powerful bank's official spokesman on the matter.

In the U.S., of course, the neocon-dominated Bush regime, fearing the wrath of their pals in Israel's right-wing Sharon government, didn't even send Secretary of State Colin Powell to Arafat's funeral—even though that would have been a shrewd step toward at least pretending to have a more balanced and enlightened policy on the Israeli-Palestinian death dance.

And then there's the World Bank Staff Association, the group of almost 10,000 workers at the massive financial institution. They strongly oppose Wolfowitz's nomination, as The Guardian's Julian Borger has reported. As usual, Borger brings some hidden points to the surface:

Staff at the World Bank fear Mr. Wolfowitz might push through longstanding U.S. proposals to make it an organization that gives out grants rather than loans. "It's much easier to politicize grants," an official said. "Loans have to be economically feasible."

You want to fight terrorism? Then fight suffering. But under Wolfowitz, look for more World Bank money to be poured into, say, Iraq projects brainstormed by the Bush regime's bidness pals. Not just in Iraq, but anywhere there's oil and other riches to be plundered.

The Staff Association itself has reason to fear Wolfowitz: Even under more benign leaders than Wolfowitz would be, World Bank employees have faced serious censorship of their views. Here's a passage from "Bank Staff Criticize 'Thought Police,'" a January 2002 article posted by the Global Policy Forum:

The World Bank's clumsy attempts to censor its own researchers have resulted in stinging criticism by Bank staff.

The latest edition of the World Bank Staff Association newsletter carries two editorials about Bank staff members who were disciplined after publishing separate articles in the Financial Times. Both have now left the Bank. The editorials question whether the Bank's "public image matters more than germane research findings" and complain about the Bank's internal governance mechanisms. These are important issues given the Bank's ever-expanding publication and training agenda.

And the topic of the bank's censors wasn't esoteric. It was Afghanistan. In one of the cases, staffer Ashraf Ghani wrote a piece for the Financial Times on September 26, 2001, urging the U.S. to resist allying itself with his native country's warlords and to not blitz the country without figuring out how to set up a transitional government.

Wolfowitz and the other neocons wound up ignoring that advice, of course, and we're now having to kiss the butts of Afghanistan's corrupt and brutal warlords in order to preserve the illusion of "democracy" we've placed there.

Meanwhile, at the time, Ghani was advised by the bank's External Affairs division not to have his article published. But he chose to express his opinion and decided to take a leave without pay to do so. The article was published. Read the whole story of this intrigue in the Staff Association's newsletter. Here's the really interesting part:

While Ghani was on leave without pay, he had a stroke of luck: President Wolfensohn and the managing directors asked him for a briefing on Afghanistan. At the end of the briefing, Wolfensohn expressed full support for Ghani’s engagement on Afghanistan and indicated that the Bank would support him. Then Kofi Annan, Nobel Laureate and Secretary-General of the U.N., personally contacted Wolfensohn and asked if Ghani could work with the U.N. on events unfolding in Afghanistan. Ghani was then seconded to the U.N. with Bank pay and benefits for a year.

Do you think the Wolfowitz would have reacted the way Wolfensohn did? Of course not. And who works in the bank's External Relations unit of flacks? Wolfowitz's gal pal Riza. They'll be a formidable team.

She is just as much of a hawk as he is, as the Arab News points out:

While battle lines have hardened over President Bush’s nomination of Wolfowitz to become president of the World Bank, what many say is really fueling the controversy is concern within the bank over Wolfowitz’s reported romantic relationship with Shaha Ali Riza, an Arab feminist who is the acting manager for External Relations and Outreach for the Middle East and North Africa Region at the World Bank.

Political foes of Wolfowitz portray him as a leader of Washington’s Jewish neo-conservatives driving a blindly pro-Israel policy in the Middle East. Critics have also noted that his sister, Laura, a biologist, lives in Israel and has an Israeli husband.

But Wolfowitz, a married father of three, is said to be so blinded by his relationship with Riza, that influential members of the World Bank believe she played a key role in influencing the Pentagon official to launch the 2003 Iraq war. As his trusted confidant, she is said to be one of most influential Muslims in Washington.

What does all this mean for the World Bank? Well, there are huge problems there—a constant internal struggle to get bankers to figure out deals that actually will help Third World countries—and even bigger problems on the planet that it's supposed to help.

Check out "Challenges Facing the World Today," a list of horrifying stats about the inhabitants of Earth. It appears on the World Bank's Office of the President page. On second thought, maybe Wolfowitz and Riza will hit the DEL key. So I'll just reprint the whole thing:

¶ 2.7 billion people live on less than $2 a day.

¶ Another 2 billion people will be added to the world's population by 2036. Of these, 97 percent will be in developing countries, and the majority will be in urban areas.

¶ 800 million people, most of them in low-income countries, are chronically undernourished.

¶ In low-income countries, 24 percent of the population is undernourished.

¶ Low birthweight, which is associated with maternal malnutrition, increases the risk of infant mortality and stunted childhood growth. In low-income countries, 21 percent of the babies are less than 2,500 grams at birth, compared to 7 percent in high-income countries.

¶ More than 10 million children die each year in the developing world, the vast majority from causes preventable through a combination of good care, nutrition, and medical treatment.

¶ In low-income countries, 78 percent of all relevant-aged boys, and 68 percent of all relevant-aged girls, finish primary school. The rest either drop out or never attend.

¶ Although middle-income countries have generally been more successful in reducing poverty than low-income countries, they are still home to 280 million people living on less than $1 per day, and to 870 million people living on less than $2 per day.

¶ Low levels of per capita health expenditure is a major factor in poor provision of basic heath services to people in developing countries, especially to women and children. Total health expenditure in developing countries is only $23 per capita in low income countries, and $72 per capita all developing countries. This compares to total health expenditures of $2,841 per capita in high income countries.

¶ The complications of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death and disability among women of reproductive age in developing countries. In low-income countries, 657 women die per 100,000 live births from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth, compared to 106 in middle-income countries, and 13 in high-income countries.

¶ About one out of every 16 women in Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to eventually die from pregnancy or childbirth, compared to one in 46 women in South and Central Asia, and one in every 2,800 women in high-income countries.

¶ Developing countries spend about as much on health (approximately 2.7 percent of GDP) as they do on military expenses (2.6 percent). Conversely, high-income countries spend about 6.3 percent of GDP on health compared to 2.4 percent on military expenditures.

¶ High-income and middle-income countries account for most water pollution from organic waste: high income countries account for 36 percent; middle income countries excluding China, 20 percent; and China, 31 percent.

¶ In low- and middle-income countries, 93 percent of the urban population and 70 percent of the rural population have reasonable access to at least 20 liters of water per person per day from an "improved source," such as a household connection, public standpipe, borehole, protected well or spring, or rainwater collection within 1 kilometer of each person's dwelling. For people in rural areas, this is up from 61 percent in 1990.

¶ One billion people lack access to safe water and 3 billion people lack safe sanitation.

¶ The global distribution of freshwater resources is uneven: Latin America and the Caribbean have an estimated 30,925 cubic meters per person; Europe and Central Asia, 13,511; East Asia and the Pacific, 6,020; South Asia, 2,684; and, in the arid Middle East and North Africa, 1,377.

¶ High-income countries, with only 15 percent of world population, use more than half of the world's energy.

¶ People in high-income countries use more than five times as much energy per capita as people in low-income countries.

¶ The share of people living in rural regions is declining in all regions of the world. For example, the share of rural population in Latin America and the Caribbean has declined from 35 percent in 1980 to 24 percent in 2002, which is similar to the average share of rural population in high income countries (22 percent). Globally, 52 percent of the world population lived in rural areas in 2002 compared to 61 percent in 1980.

¶ The use of coal, which releases twice as much carbon dioxide as natural gas, has increased in low-income countries but decreased in high-income countries and in sub-Saharan Africa. Many countries have increased their reliance on natural gas, though its use in low-income countries seems to be replacing oil rather than coal.

¶ Due to high fertility rates, 31.2 percent of the population in developing countries in general is under the age of 15, compared to 18.3 percent in high-income countries. The highest proportion is in Uganda, where 49 percent of the population is aged 0 to 14.

¶ The conditions of poverty increase the risk of disability: malnutrition, lack of access to health care, bad drinking water, and high-risk working conditions all can cause, or contribute to, permanent disability. In turn, disability increases the risk of poverty: people with disabilities are frequently excluded from education, vocational training opportunities, health care programs, and other services that could enable them to avoid, or break out of, poverty. Consequently, as much as 15 to 20 percent of people living with poverty in developing countries have disabilities compared to 10 percent of the general population.

¶ Even in high-income countries, about 7 out of every 1,000 children die before age 5. But in developing countries, about 88 of them die, including 174 out of every 1,000 children in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 95 in South Asia.

¶ In low-income countries, 37.4 percent of the population has access to electricity, compared to 94 percent in middle-income countries, and near-universal access in high-income countries.

¶ About 1.6 billion people do not have access to electricity. Unless new, vigorous polices are put in place, 1.4 billion people will remain without electricity in 2030.

¶ In Sub-Saharan Africa, every 100 workers need to support 82 children at home who are under the age of 15, compared to only 27 for workers in high-income countries.

Data from the World Development Indicators database and other sources, December 2004.

IT'S BEEN MORE than two weeks since carnivorous-plant aficionado Terry Ratzmann shot to death eight people, ending with himself, during his church's services in suburban Milwaukee, and authorities still say they don't know exactly why.

According to the current predictions of his sect, the Living Church of God, life on Earth wasn't supposed to end until 2017.

As I pointed out in my earlier item "Little Church of Horrors," Ratzmann devoted much of his life to listening to his church's apocalyptic sermons. Surely that wouldn't have anything to do with his March 12 rampage, would it? Even though he jumped the gun?

One of his religious friends, of course, has it figured out:

"I don't believe, in all honesty, that was Terry Ratzmann who walked in," said Thomas Geiger, who had known Ratzmann for 20 years. "I believe he was under control of a high-ranking demon, and maybe the highest one."

It all depends on what kind of demon you're talking about. Some readers have chimed in on this. Here's a sampling:

Mark Oliver wrote:

What voice tells you that we are not supposed to believe the Bible? Satan?

Thanks for writing, Mark. The only voices I hear are the ones telling me to "shut the fuck up." I occasionally listen.

Hannah Ellams wrote:

I would just like to thank Ward Harkavy for "The Little Church of Horrors." Usually most churches have to pay for such publicity, and you gave more in-depth coverage than any paper will usually do!

You managed to be informative and knowledgable to a very large degree, which makes me almost think insider knowledge or someone who has far too much time on their hands!

Why should you imply what you say are "doom and gloom" sermons which Ratzmann generally only heard for one hour per week can be a motive for murder?

What really bothered me, to be honest, is what does it really have to do with beating Bush anyhow? If you had done your research properly you would have found they are a non-political group and the members don't have political feelings in any way and most don't vote. I know this and I am not even a member!

Thanks for writing, Hannah. Extremists fascinate me. The Bush regime, like Living Church of God patriarch Herbert W. Armstrong, has done a great job of whipping up fear. And it uses religion to do it.

Besides, we might be in the "end-times" right now, if Bush's handlers decide to attack Iran this summer, as former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter warns.

For other predictions of TEOTWAWKI (The end of the world as we know it), see the fascinating collection of doom dates at ReligiousTolerance.org. The first one on that list is part of the spiel Ratzmann was continually exposed to:

2010+: In early 2005, Roderick C. Meredith, leader of the Living Church of God wrote in his church's magazine Tomorrow's World that the end of the world is near. He said that events prophesied in the Bible are "beginning to occur with increasing frequency....We are not talking about decades in the future. We are talking about Bible prophecies that will intensify within the next five to 15 years of your life."

Just read your article on the shootings that took place in the Living Church. I was a member for six years. Was kicked out for asking uncomfortable questions. Shooting was unbelievably tragic and a warning Rod Meredith needs to change his approach to members.

Thanks for writing, Richard.

I wanted to thank you very much for the article you did on the Living Church of God. As a former member for 20+ years in the WorldWide Church of God (mother church of the LCG), what you said was very correct.

Members were subjected to psychological horrors by the leader/ministers of these cults, and although I'm no longer a member, I still suffer from all that I was taught since early childhood.

Words like "tribulation", "Lake of Fire", "Place of Safety" are all catch words used by the leaders to terrify members into staying in the cult and to continue being abused financially, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, etc. Members are taught that they are at fault for any depression that they may have. They are taught that depression is of "Satan" and that if you are depressed you learn to hide it and pretend you're happy.

Doctors, psychologists, etc. are not to be frequented, as they are "of the devil," according to the leaders. Medicine is also not to be taken. Many people have died as a result of these teachings, and even those survivors of the deceased are taught to not grieve for them so all their emotions are kept inside with no outlet.

All members of these cults are afraid of losing their salvation, which the leaders teach will happen if they are not a part of "God's true church." Of course they teach the members that this is the only true church, so they cling to it at all cost.

Thanks again for getting the truth as to what is truly happening in these destructive "churches."

[Signed] A former Worldwide Church of God Member

Thanks for writing, Mzkiss.

EARLIER THIS MONTH, George W. Bush's official tape-recordist Doug Wead flagellated himself on the pages of USA Today (penning a treacly piece called "I'm Sorry, Mr. President," and stopped in at the stations of the cross Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity to plead guilty and ask forgiveness.

You may not hear about the preacher, peddler, and Beltway meddler again until his next book—about presidential siblings—comes out.

For God's sake, though, don't feel sorry for the guy. Whatever the ace Amway evangelist and motivational speaker is doing is working for his current books about presidential kids and families. Wead's "Hair Shirt Tour," as Robin Abcarian called it in a smart Los Angeles Times story a few days ago, shows that proclaimed virtue has its own rewards:

It's not clear yet whether Wead's sorry-palooza tour will be a good marketing move, but the tapes' revelation seemed to boost sales, at least temporarily. PR Week, a trade publication, awarded the story its "PR Play of the Week," and gave it a rating of 4 ("savvy") on a scale of 1 ("clueless") to 5 ("ingenious").

"There was a spike," said Justin Loeber, vice president, director of publicity for Atria Books, the division of Simon & Schuster that published The Raising of a President. The day before the New York Times splashed the secret tapes story on A-1, Loeber said, the book was ranked by Amazon at No. 5,000. A day later, "it was No. 70," Loeber said. "The book went into a second printing."

The hubbub ebbed, however, and the book's Amazon ranking fell rapidly, Abcarian reports. Likewise, my recent flood of Wead stories (including some regurgitations from the early '90s, when I wrote about him extensively) generated a brief downpour of mail, but that has slowed to a drop.

However, here's an interesting one I hadn't run.

Bryce Raley wrote:

I've been a fan of Doug Wead's for years. I've listened to most of his tapes, and seen him speak multiple times. I have read some of his books and researched him a great deal. He was highly responsible for leading me to Jesus Christ four years ago.

I believe he made a mistake here and has done all we could ask him to do to rectify the situation. He has apologized, turned over the tapes, and assigned profits from his book sales to charity. You didn't see him all over TV either did you? Makes you wonder about the claims of "fame and fortune" many are making. Did your research turn up Canyonville Christian College, or Mercy Corps, which Doug Wead pours his life into year after year?

By the way, Breaking the Cycles of Self Destruction has been out of stock for about four years now. But you wouldn't know that because your research of Wead, although better than most everyone else's, just picked up again when this story broke.

I believe he is a man of God, and he is human. This makes him an imperfect person like everyone else, and is exactly why we need Jesus as our savior.

[Signed} A Christian Conservative

If I'm wrong I've lost nothing but if I'm right many have lost eternity.

Thanks for writing, Bryce. I'm glad you're feeling better about your life now. Hey, I've said, and I meant it, that Wead is one fantastic speaker. You can't be faulted for saying Wead didn't go on TV to capitalize on the moment, because you wrote me before Wead's last spasms on Matthews and Hannity's shows. (Check out the unintentionally hilarious transcript of Wead's March 17 exchange with Matthews.)

He's sure a hell of a lot better than either of them. Maybe he'll wind up with a talk show out of all this. As I pointed out a few weeks ago, Wead once told a graduating class at Oral Roberts University:

"God didn't put you here to watch television! He put you here to be on television!"

And, yeah, I know about Canyonville; it's a Christian boarding school in the Northwest that counts Wead among its alums. Mercy Corps was a Christian charity founded in Portland, Oregon, by Dan O'Neill, the son-in-law of Wead buddy Pat Boone. It's now a worldwide organization after it merged with a Scottish charity—it even got one of the first big USAID contracts in Iraq, by the way. (See the Open Society Institute's Iraq Revenue Watch.)

There's an interesting sidebar about Dan O'Neill's wife, Cherry Boone O'Neill, and her battle with bulimia some years back.

And it figures that her near-death from starvation would weave its way into the Terri Schiavo saga. Search out Cherry's name on this CapitolGrilling.com page.

Cherry Boone O'Neill's book is quite famous in eating-disorders circles. It's called Starving for Attention. Doug Wead has undoubtedly read it; maybe he should re-read it.

IT TOOK A one-two punch to the jaw of the Defense Department by reporters probing the case of War of Terror detainee Murat Kurnaz, but now we know a little bit about what's been going on during the Bush regime's military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay.

And part of what we've learned is that there are just too many damned defense contractors not only picking our pockets but even running our absurdly banana-Republican system of "justice."

No wonder Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Alberto Gonzales, and crew have desperately sought to keep the tribunals a secret.

First, Carol D. Leonnig of the Washington Post reported Sunday that a tribunal's decision to hold Kurnaz, a German national, indefinitely after seizing him in Pakistan in 2001 appears dubious. Leonnig had broken through the Pentagon's walls of silence to peruse formerly secret evidence.

Defense Department officials claimed that they couldn't comment on Leonnig's article. Here's a passage from it that may explain why they wouldn't say anything:

The three military officers on the panel, whose identities are kept secret, said in papers filed in federal court that they reached their conclusion based largely on classified evidence that was too sensitive to release to the public.

In fact, that evidence, recently declassified and obtained by the Washington Post, shows that U.S. military intelligence and German law enforcement authorities had largely concluded there was no information that linked Kurnaz to Al Qaeda, any other terrorist organization or terrorist activities.

In recently declassified portions of a January ruling, a federal judge criticized the military panel for ignoring the exculpatory information that dominates Kurnaz's file and for relying instead on a brief, unsupported memo filed shortly before Kurnaz's hearing by an unidentified government official.

Kurnaz has been detained at Guantánamo Bay since at least January 2002.

"The U.S. government has known for almost two years that he's innocent of these charges," said Baher Azmy, Kurnaz's attorney. "That begs a lot of questions about what the purpose of Guantánamo really is. He can't be useful to them. He has no intelligence for them. Why in the world is he still there?"

The Kurnaz case appears to be the first in which classified material considered by a "combatant status review tribunal" has become public. While attorneys for Guantánamo Bay detainees have frequently complained that their clients are being held based on thin evidence, Kurnaz's is the first known case in which a panel appeared to disregard the recommendations of U.S. intelligence agencies and information supplied by allies.

The story stirred up a ruckus, and Rumsfeld trotted out what the Pentagon describes as his "designated civilian official for the Detainee Administrative Review Processes at Guantánamo," Secretary of the Navy Gordon England, this afternoon in D.C. to field questions.

England, you understand, was brought on in early 2001 from General Dynamics, where he was a big exec known as an expert on information systems and aviation.

As World Policy Institute muckraker Bill Hartung was quoted as saying in a New York Times article last summer, the Bush regime in 2001 appointed defense contractors to head the Army, Navy, and Air Force—"the first time in recent memory that heads of all three services came directly from government contractors."

Hartung added:

"There's a danger when you have too many folks from the corporate world advising you. It can lead to inbred decision-making that is pro-corporate and anti-taxpayer."

Hey, why not have them run some courts as well?

On Tuesday, England had to spend some time trying to show how the government is now behaving itself, saying, "For the last 10 months, we have focused on being open, fair, and rigorous."

Yeah, well, not by choice. Last summer's Rasul decision by the Supreme Court affirmed the right of detainees to appeal the secretive tribunals' decisions through the federal court system.

Lawyers all over America have been palavering about Rasul ever since—after all, it was a major instance of the courts' putting the brakes on the runaway Bush regime.

At a December luncheon in the Chicago offices of the big firm Jenner & Block, the lead counsel for the detainee Rasul explained:

"The Rasul decision marks the first time the Court has found it necessary to insert itself into the on-going administration of the war power, a position that became necessary because of the unlimited reach of the Executive’s position," said Joseph Margulies, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center and the lead counsel for the petitioners in Rasul.

To implement Rasul, the federal court in the District of Columbia will hold hearings to determine whether the detentions are lawful. But, Mr. Margulies said, Rasul also raises questions about federal court jurisdiction at other facilities around the world.

"There should be no prison beyond the law," he said in his remarks. "If the Executive [referring to the doofus POTUS and his handlers] refuses to extend the protections of the law to detention facilities other than Guantánamo, or if it uses Rasul as an incentive to imprison people elsewhere, the Court may again be forced to intervene."

A phrase worth repeating: "There should be no prison beyond the law." Thanks, Margulies.

(And click here for more briefs than you ever want to read on the Guantánamo Bay cases.)

Anyway, on Tuesday afternoon, when Gordon England finally took questions, first up was Bob Burns of the Associated Press. Lifted from the official Pentagon transcript, part of the colloquy between Burns and England:

Burns: Mr. Secretary?

England: Bob?

Burns: Bob Burns from AP. In the written procedures that laid out the way these review boards were to be conducted, it said that regarding the government evidence that's presented during the procedure, that the evidence is to be considered, quote, "genuine and accurate," unquote. Is that the same as saying that these are facts presented about these individuals?

England: Well, they're the facts as certainly as we know them, as people report them, as they're compiled. So—I mean, it's as factual as we know they're factual. I mean, people report. There's data to support it. So again, it's like facts presented, I think, in the legal context to a jury, same type of data that would be presented. So I would say yes.

Is that your final answer, Gordon? Yeah, it's like "facts presented" to a jury—assuming that we had a secretive process like, say, the old Soviet style that our neocons claim to hate so much. Here's more of the exchange:

Burns: Does it include hearsay information?

England: Pardon?

Burns: Does it include hearsay information?

England: I would say it includes information that we consider reliable, and the board looks at the totality of the information. So we look at the preponderance of the evidence, and if there isn't a preponderant amount of evidence to support the conclusion that a person is an enemy combatant, then we would conclude they're not an enemy combatant. And that's why there's 38 that are not enemy combatants—designated as such.

Hearsay? Say what? Huh? Here's where Burns gets to the heart of the matter reported by Leonnig:

Burns: Okay. How do you reconcile that description of the process with what we now know about the Murat Kurnaz case, where there was one unsupported memo from some unspecified military officer that said this guy may be associated with someone who's a suicide bomber, but SOUTHCOM's intelligence and Germany's intelligence both said they had no evidence of it at all, and yet he was designated an enemy combatant by this process?

England: I read the [Washington Post] article. The article is partially correct, but the article does—the reporter did not have access to all the information. All the information has not been declassified and, in fact, a lot of the information that was inadvertently declassified, all of it wasn't. So again, the tribunal bases their decision on the preponderance of the evidence, classified, unclassified, from all sources, and they make the very best decision they can—

Yeah, we trust you, Gordon. (Oops, he was still talking.)

England: Keep in mind, I mean, this is a tribunal. We have three military officers sworn to do the very best job they can for the United States of America. So you look at this data. I mean, my analogy is, the same way a judge or a jury looks at data. They make the best evaluation based on the data that they have available. And they make those decisions. I mean, just like in a legal sense, just like sometimes judges are overruled or juries are overruled, I mean, the systems aren't perfect. These are human beings looking at data, but they are as right as we can make them based on the data. And we have very, very high quality people that do this—

Yes, "the same way a judge or a jury looks at data." No, Gordon, it's not the same. Your tribunals are Cardassian—you know, the reptilian military oligarchy that's at war with the Federation and whose justice system demands that defendants prove their innocence. (Oops, England was still talking. I'm always interrupting people.)

England: So, it is fair, it's equitable. And as I said before, we actually bend over to the benefit of the detainee—I think we go as far as we possibly can for the detainee to provide any data they also wish to provide. So it's as fair and balanced as we can possibly make it.

As "fair and balanced" as the Bush regime "can possibly make it"? Now that I believe.

Which geezer do you trust? Above is a '30s poster featuring a smiling gramps celebrating the birth of Social Security. Below is a Zero Decade photo of a smiling gramps promoting the death of Social Security. (Library of Congress, White House photos)

NO ONE CAN say that Dick Cheney doesn't have a sense of humor. He stopped in Reno, Nevada, on March 22 for a "town hall" meeting to tell Americans to gamble with their Social Security money.

The only surprise was that he didn't double down in the gambling town by bringing along the Bush regime's bookie of virtue, William Bennett.

But Cheney really hit the jackpot with his opening remarks. Eschewing his usual bilge about how he met his wife, the most powerful vice president in the history of the country remarked:

My paycheck actually comes from the Senate.

What Cheney didn't tell the carefully selected crowd was that he also gets a paycheck from Halliburton.

The point of Grandpa Cheney's 911 call in Reno was that Social Security was in trouble:

"We've got to do something about all that red ink that's [out there] if we want to make certain that my kids and grandkids and your kids and grandkids are going to have the kind of confidence that, in fact, that basic floor of retirement security will be there for you when you need it."

He's concerned about red ink? While we're spending almost $6 billion a month in Iraq and after tax cuts for the wealthy have turned future generations of middle-class Americans into permanent debtors? We were warned on the very first day of 2005 about this propaganda campaign. As I noted in mid-January, the Washington Post's Jim VandeHei rang in the New Year with this loud noise:

President Bush's allies are raising millions of dollars for an election-style campaign to promote private Social Security accounts, as Democrats and Republicans prepare for what they predict will be the most expensive and extensive public policy debate since the 1993 fight over the Clinton administration's failed health care plan.

For some more perspective, consult Paying the Price, the newly updated fact sheet produced by the Institute for Policy Studies on the mounting costs of the war. Print out this neat two-page PDF file and stick it on your refrigerator as a kitchen counterpropaganda tool. Here's an excerpt:

Estimated cost of war to date to every U.S. household: $2,000

Average monthly cost of the Vietnam War, adjusted for inflation: $5.2 billion

Average monthly cost of the Iraq War: $5.8 billion

Amount contractor Halliburton is alleged to have charged for meals never served to troops and for cost overruns on fuel deliveries: $221 million

Kickbacks received by Halliburton employees from subcontractors: $6 million

Remember that while you're bombarded with White House propaganda images (willingly reproduced by the establishment media) like this one from Reno of Cheney gambling with your children's money:

And once again we point to the hard-working people at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who noted at the beginning of this debate:

It is certainly true that the federal government will face serious fiscal problems by the 2020s. But those problems will be in the federal budget as a whole, and their two main causes will be: (1) the cost of the Administration's tax cuts, if they are extended permanently, and (2) growing Medicare costs, which are being driven primarily by rising health care costs throughout the economy.

Over the next 75 years, the combined cost of the tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit—the President's two principal domestic priorities during his first term—will be at least five times as large as the Social Security shortfall.

I can't imagine how cranky I'm going to be in 2080.

FOR MONTHS NOW, we've been hearing that Iraqi police and other security forces are being trained to take over control of their chaotic, dangerous country.

But a Voice review of the Bush regime's official weekly "status reports" indicates that the number of police may have actually fallen by more than 33 percent in the past year.

And that's not counting Bernie Kerik, who was supposed to train them back in '03 but left before doing anything.

Before we further examine the number of Iraqis available to take over the killing for our soldiers, here's a recent example of how numbers are just lying around waiting to be lied about.

It was considered good news last week that Iraqi police commandos, with U.S. troops in only a supporting role for a change, killed 85 rebels in what was touted as a major battle at Tharthar Lake, northwest of Baghdad.

Well, that's what the Iraqi government (our puppet regime) reported. But U.S. troops who arrived after the battle, which took place at a clandestine training camp for rebels, found no bodies, the Washington Post's Steve Fainaru reported. His story continued:

A spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said he presumed the announced death toll was accurate, but he played down the scope of the fighting.

"I wouldn't call it a major incident," said the spokesman, Sabah Kadhim. Its significance, he said, was that it was "the first major operation" to be conceived and executed by the nascent Iraqi security forces with U.S. soldiers in a supporting role.

The reported rout appeared to bolster recent claims by U.S. commanders that Iraq's beleaguered security forces are improving. U.S. officials have said repeatedly that American troops will withdraw from Iraq only after the Iraqis are deemed able to defend the country.

So how many rebels were killed in the Battle of Tharthar Lake? The Post's reporter tried to find out:

Major Richard L. Goldenberg, spokesman for the 42nd Infantry Division, said, "I can't confirm the estimate" given by Iraq about the number of insurgents killed in the fight. He said that by the time additional U.S. ground forces arrived, "the insurgent forces who had fled . . . were able to recover their casualties and take them with them."

Noting that an Islamic militant group had said 11 insurgents were killed, Goldenberg said: "I would tell you that somewhere between 11 and 80 lies an accurate number."

Oh, between 11 and 80. Fainaru was fair, letting the American major explain:

Goldenberg said uncertainty surrounding the casualty figures should not take away from the performance of the Iraqi commandos. "We could spend years going back and forth on body counts," he said. "The important thing is the effect this has on the organized insurgency."

Yes, I'm sure we will spend years going back and forth on body counts. Part of the reason is that we can't get any straight information out of the Bush regime's puppet governments in D.C. or Baghdad about the number of people being killed. In fact, we're no longer even being told the number of people available to do the killing.

I pointed out last month that breakdown in the breakdown of just how many Iraqis are fighting on "our" side, and how the Defense Department and now the State Department are releasing fewer and fewer details in their official weekly reports.

Astoundingly, the already hazy totals are admittedly padded: There's an asterisk to note that "unauthorized absences personnel are included in these numbers."

In other words, we're counting the Iraqi cops and soldiers who have run away for fear of being branded collaborators and getting blown up by the insurgents.

The figures, bad as they were last month, are no better now. In the February 2, 2005, official report, the total number of "trained & equipped police and highway patrol" was listed by the U.S. State Department as 57,290. The March 9 report puts that figure at 55,015. That's progress?

But of course, the total of "other forces" went up by about 5,000. What these "others" are is not known. Please. We weren't born yesterday.

But why stop at yesterday when we're going backward? Let's go back a year, when the weekly reports, issued in those days by the U.S. Defense Department, provided much more detailed breakdowns. The March 2, 2004, weekly report listed the number of Iraqi police at 81,852.

So, there were 81,852 police in March 2004, and in March 2005 there are 55,015? That's a drop of 32.8 percent.

Keep in mind that it's difficult to compare the figures, but that's not our fault. The reports look the same and have the same format, but the government is no longer releasing the detailed breakdowns it was routinely issuing last year. (See the flimsy chart from the March 9, 2005, report below.)

It's no surprise the U.S. government is trying to massage these numbers (mostly by not releasing them), considering how depressing the breakdowns were. Here's the one from March 2, 2004:

Total required: 75,000
On payroll (untrained): 54,270
On duty (partially trained): 20,299
On duty (fully qualified): 2,718
In training: 4,565

Frightening, isn't it? Only 2,718 fully qualified and on-duty cops.

By September 2004, the weekly reports no longer broke down the totals into untrained, trained, qualified, and all that. Guess the news was just too terrible to share with the American public.

Let's forget about the breakdowns. That's what our government has done. This year's reports no longer even list the number of security forces "required."

General Tommy Franks's immortal comment at the beginning of the war, "We don't do body counts," referred to dead Iraqis. Apparently, the news is so bad concerning live Iraqis that we're not counting them either.

WE INTERRUPT THOSE Easter Week telecasts of child protesters in Florida who are pawns of their Schiavo-obsessed parents to bring you a story about child protesters in Baghdad who are pawns of an oil-obsessed U.S. government.

The Iraqi kids are members of families whose homes were pulverized by the U.S. invasion and whose still-homeless clans were squatting in government buildings in Baghdad's Green Zone. Now, those families have been kicked out of the humorously named "Freedom Complex" buildings.

Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers and officials are still living in the Iraqi people's government buildings, including Saddam Hussein's former palaces, where Americans dine under chandeliers and splash around in the ex-dictator's swimming pools.

You enjoy the fine dining scene pictured directly above? The one with the chandeliers and waiters in one of Saddam's former palaces? Well, here's a factoid that wouldn't even register with the Iraqi squatters who are being evicted but might gall some of you readers:

This particular shot is from the official Web site of former Florida election official (and now congresswoman) Katherine Harris. (I knew that would piss you off.) The picture was snapped during Harris's 2003 junket to Baghdad. See it in context in her photo gallery.

Speaking of Florida, which protest would Jesus have attended this past week, the squatters' rally in Baghdad or the Schiavo spectacle in Tampa? I'd say the one in Baghdad, and my boss is a Jewish carpenter (actually it was my dad who was Jewish, and he was a veterinarian).

But as Easter neared, the squatter families in Baghdad had little hope for resurrection. The deadline for their eviction was this weekend. Earlier in the week, they mounted a protest to try to draw attention—that real news didn't get much notice in the U.S., what with the GOP's cynically manipulated 24/7 reality-show death watch on Terri Schiavo.

The U.N.'s IRIN news service, which plays events strictly down the middle, reported:

Over 300 people demonstrated on Tuesday at the gates of the heavily fortified Green Zone in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, calling on the government to allow them to stay in government buildings as they have no homes following the conflict in 2003.

Nearly 200 Iraqi families have been ordered to leave the buildings in a government complex, called the Freedom Complex district, by the end of this week. There are approximately 2,000 people and some families have up to 10 members.

So we invaded Iraq to "liberate" its people? I guess that's why L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer seized one of Saddam's most well-appointed palaces and converted it into headquarters for the Coalition Provisional Authority. In fact, we've seized most, if not all, of the palaces. It's tough work keeping all that gold and glass gleaming.

Here in the U.S., our right-wing religious zealots are crusading to keep poor Schiavo living as a symbolic vegetable—against her and her husband's wishes.

Overseas, our right-wing religious zealots, like Marine Lieutenant Colonel Gareth Brandl love to play shoot-'em-up with Satan. Thousands of kids and women have been killed in the process.

Jesus wept.

And of course, Americans are still squatting in the Iraqi people's "liberated" buildings. Squatting in style, too.

The Bush regime got a regime change yesterday in Kyrgyzstan for far less than the going rate. The cost of an oil change in Iraq, for instance, is at least $200 billion and thousands of uncounted corpses and, damn it, they're still not finished.

One small steppe for man, one giant leap for oilmankind.

That doesn't mean the U.S. had a hand in wiping that annoying grin off Askar Akayev's face. We have no idea whether that's true. But Akayev, as I noted yesterday, was drifting away from the U.S. and toward Russia in this 21st century version of the "Great Game."

The original Great Game was the 19th century struggle between the British Empire and Imperial Russia for control of Central Asia. This is a new century, so the players are different and considerably bulked up, and oil has made an already slick game more slippery. Lutz Kleveman, author of The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia, explains, in an article posted by the Zurich-based Center for Security Studies's ISN Security Watch:

The U.S. has taken over the leading role from the British. Along with the ever-present Russians, new regional powers such as China, Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan have entered the arena, and transnational oil corporations are also pursuing their own interests in a brash, Wild East style.

Since 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration has undertaken a massive military buildup in Central Asia, deploying thousands of U.S. troops, not only in Afghanistan but also in the republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia. These first U.S. combat troops on former Soviet territory have dramatically altered the geo-strategic power equations in the region, with Washington trying to seal the Cold War victory against Russia, contain Chinese influence, and tighten the noose around Iran.

And here's a shocker: It's about oil. Kyrgyzstan doesn't have any, but the country's a vital piece of the jigsaw puzzle of power politics in Central Asia.

After 9/11, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (always an interest-bearing figure) and the other Bush handlers assiduously cultivated Akayev's regime (see photo below), getting the OK to plant a strategic U.S. air base (named after New York City fallen firefighter Peter Ganci) in Bishkek.

No wonder Wolfie gave Aitmatov the star treatment. As Elizabeth Wishnick of ISN Security Watch explained in July 2003, shortly after they huddled at the Pentagon:

With the announcement on 5 June 2003 of a three-year extension of the U.S. abase in Kyrgyzstan, with Russia’s decision to station its own forces in Kant [an air base only 15 miles from the U.S. base], and with China’s new interest in boosting security ties with Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan has become a focal point for great power rivalry in Central Asia.

But as Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com now points out, Akayev "did not take direction well." In other words, he knew how to play the Great Game—by playin' the playas. And lately, Akayev wasn't playing the game the way the U.S. wanted him to.

Raimondo notes a smart Eurasianet story from mid-February, in which Gulnoza Saidazimova reported:

Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Askar Aitmatov said yesterday that American AWACS reconnaissance planes will not be deployed at the Ganci air base outside the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Aitmatov made the statement after a trip to Moscow. Some observers say the Kyrgyz government’s decision was made to please Russia, with the aim of gaining the Kremlin’s support ahead of February 27 parliamentary elections and the presidential election in October.

Aitmatov’s visit to Moscow resulted in two decisions.

The first—announced on February 11—was to send more Russian military equipment and weaponry to the Russian Kant air base near the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. The other decision was to deny the U.S. request to deploy the AWACS reconnaissance planes at the U.S. Ganci air base, which is also near Bishkek.

Hey, Akayev, you can piss off your people by crushing dissent and having the cops beat them, but don't piss off the big oil companies. Akayev's increasingly despotic rule, which included his rigging the aforementioned parliamentary elections, didn't keep Bush and Don Rumsfeld from sharing grins with him, but as he drifted toward Russia (which has now offered him asylum, by the way), he was no longer of use to us.

For those of you ready to celebrate this as a victory of democracy, Justin Raimondo details the sordid pasts of Kyrgyzstan's new leaders and adds a cautionary note:

The idea that the people of Kyrgyzstan have risen up, all on their own, to establish "democracy" and the "rule of law" in a land that has never known either, is the sort of fairy tale that even the most naïve will probably greet with a considerable degree of skepticism.

As for Foreign Minister Aitmatov? Interfax just reported that he has been dismissed, along with a host of other Akayev cronies. Looks like no more "honor guard" visits to the Pentagon for Aitmatov.

But keep in mind what the Central Asia struggle is all about. Before the Kyrgyzstan coup, New Great Game author Kleveman summed it up:

The Bush Administration is using the "war on terror" to further U.S. energy interests in Central Asia. The bad news is that this dramatic geopolitical gamble involving thuggish dictators and corrupt Saudi oil sheiks is likely to produce only more terrorists, jeopardizing U.S. prospects of victory.

The main spoils in today's Great Game are the Caspian energy reserves, principally oil and gas. On its shores, and at the bottom of the Caspian Sea, lie the world's biggest untapped fossil fuel resources. Estimates range from 85 to 190 billion barrels of crude, worth up to $5 trillion. According the U.S. Energy Department, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan alone could sit on more than 130 billion barrels, more than three times the U.S. reserves.

And don't blame the Bush regime for reviving the hazardous Great Game. As Kleveman noted:

The aggressive U.S. pursuit of oil interests in the Caspian did not start with the Bush Administration, but under Clinton, who personally conducted oil and pipeline diplomacy with Caspian leaders. US industry leaders were impressed. "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian," declared Dick Cheney in 1998 in a speech to oil industrialists in Washington. Cheney was then still CEO of the oil-services giant Halliburton.

In May 2001 Cheney, now U.S. Vice President, recommended in the Administration's seminal National Energy Policy report that "the President make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy," singling out the Caspian Basin as a "rapidly growing new area of supply."

You know what Cheney thinks about danger. I wrote last August about Cheney's lust for the Caspian, pointing to Amarillo business writer Greg Rohloff's capture of the future veep's June 1998 comments to Texas oilmen:

The potential for this region turning as volatile as the Persian Gulf does not concern Cheney.

"You've got to go where the oil is," he said. "I don't worry about it a lot."

Unlike the families of our soldiers.

Like a dyspeptic cat, Kyrgyzstan has apparently expelled its little fur-ball dictator, Askar Akayev, this afternoon. That may end about 15 years of rule by the Soviet-era grinning goon whose White House was overrun by protesters only hours before.

The self-styled "father" of his country, this papa is now a rolling stone, and where he'll stop, nobody knows. One of his former opponents, Ishinbai Kadyrbekov, was elected to temporarily replace him, according to the BBC, whose latest dispatch from Bishkek adds:

The demonstration that ousted the government grew rapidly from a few hundred people in the morning to as many as 10,000 a few hours later. Protesters chanting "Down With the Akayev Clans" marched through the capital to the presidential palace, known as the White House.

Security forces surrounding the building repelled an initial attempt to storm the compound, but offered little resistance when the demonstrators fought back.

Police melted away as hundreds of protesters flooded into the compound.

Hundreds of protesters rampaged through the building, smashing windows and throwing out furniture and documents.

And so ends what had once been a happy marriage between Akayev and George W. Bush. The two smiling figures exchanged vows of cooperation in September 2002. Lately, though, Akayev had been drifting back into Russia's orbit, so his ouster may work out well for the U.S.—unless the country's Muslim extremists have a say.

So, pull yourself away from Schiavo and steroids and start learning about Kyrgyzstan. For instance, read Michael A. Weinstein's think piece, "Kyrgyzstan's Chronic Complications," from last week's Power and Interest News Report. In it, Weinstein says:

Alone among the Central Asian states that succeeded the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan had adopted democratic reforms and had embraced privatization shortly after it declared independence.

In the early years of his tenure, Akayev had appeared in the guise of a genuine reformer, presiding over the creation of a parliamentary system and the blossoming of independent civic groups, many of them funded from overseas.

In the eyes of the West, Kyrgyzstan was at that time an incubator of Central Asian democracy, allowing a constitutional opposition to function and nurturing a civil society.

That Kyrgyzstan would be a model of political and economic liberalization was unrealistic from the outset.

A landlocked country bordering China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan, it had been closed off from the rest of the world during the Soviet period and had never modernized, preserving its traditional clan structure beneath the imported super-structure of Soviet institutions. Like all of the other new Central Asian states, Kyrgyzstan was not ready for Western-style market democracy.

Like Bush, Akayev was part of a family-based empire-building team. (That's my comparison of Bush with Akayev, not Weinstein's.) Here's more from Weinstein about Akayev's increasing authoritarianism:

He started to fall in line with neighboring leaders, harassing and sometimes jailing opposition figures, gaining dominance over the communications media, engaging in electoral manipulation and building an economic and political empire based on his family and spreading out in a network of regional and business connections—a "clan" of cronies typical of post-Soviet systems.

Some of that sounds awfully familiar. And so does this:

Although with a population of five million people, Kyrgyzstan is the smallest Central Asian state, it is a land replete with complexity and contradiction that result primarily from its recent history of a phase of reform followed by a drift back to authoritarianism. Economic liberalization and privatization have given it a business class, yet half of the country's people live below the poverty line.

Maybe the only thing we know for sure is that, as long as Bush is in power, the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. will continue to widen. In Kyrgyzstan, on the other hand, the ouster of Akayev, if it's permanent, means its wide gap will probably narrow, at least a little.